A game with alternating visual novel segments (where the plot is advanced as you interact with the other characters and sometimes make dialog choices) and escape-the-room puzzle segments.

You’re an ordinary college student who gets abducted and wakes up imprisoned with eight other abductees, and together you are forced to play “the nonary game” - you must work together to solve puzzles in order to progress through your prison to an ultimate promised escape. However, if you break any of the nonary game’s rules, you will be killed, and the nonary game is structured such that its players can screw each other over and get them killed - leading some to try to defend themselves pre-emptively. Your goal is to escape with your life as well as solve the mystery of who abducted you and why - and which of your fellow abductees can be trusted.

A weird parallel universe version of Papers, Please with an absurd premise. You must accept or reject animals with no clear guidelines and no explicit explanation of what happens as a result. Characters with believable personalities, stakes that gradually rise, and a story that’s told using the game’s own mechanics all combine to create a surprisingly compelling experience.

A retro RPG heavily influenced by Earthbound and other SNES-era RPGs that deconstructs many of their traditions. Most notably (and apparently most acceptable to spoil) it’s possible to get through the game without making a single kill. Combat is active and engaging, though once you’ve figured out how to spare a particular type of enemy going through it again is just rote. The pacing is a little bit strange, with some extended comic-relief bits placed at times when the player is likely to want answers to serious questions about the game world and backstory, but most of the comedy and other mood-setting works well. There are a lot of secrets, surprises, and developer foresight, but it all feels interesting and valuable in its own right rather than existing solely to fuel an internet scavenger hunt. The soundtrack is standout wonderful, the important characters feel very real and lovable, and the game’s best ending is very satisfying. It’s not hard to see why there’s such a devoted community around this game.

An isometric run-and-gun shooter set in a sci-fi B-movie. The combat and platforming are adequate if a bit unpolished, and while the upgrades and the collectibles that pay for them feel a bit superfluous the exploration to find the collectibles is actually fantastic. The game mostly consists of climbing an incredibly high tower and at any time you can look down over the edge, which gives a great feeling of progress as you look down from higher and higher up. If you see something you want when looking down, you can jump right off which feels surprisingly good due to animation that makes you feel like you’re zooming through the air even though you aren’t actually going that fast (terminal velocity being surprisingly low on this planet) and music that sounds exhilarating and free. The game also has some very exploration-friendly features so you don’t regret jumping off the tower - you can freely teleport to any checkpoint you’ve visited or instantly return to any ledge you’ve just jumped off of.

A retro-styled horizontal scrolling shooter whose action comes in ten-second increments. In between, you have a few seconds to pick one of three random modifiers - there are hats, different weapons, upgrades or downgrades, and various silly cosmetic effects. Everything is presented with tongue held firmly in cheek and the jokey descriptions for the modifiers and their unrelated icons make it hard to suss out what your options actually are in the few seconds available. It may have flowed better to simply apply a modifier at random and not bring the gameplay to a grinding halt every ten seconds. The shooting is fast-paced, but since the game can’t do anything scoped greater than a few seconds, its bite-sized novelty-over-depth gameplay would probably have been more suited to mobile than to PC and PlayStation.