A fifteen-minute or so 2D platformer that makes heavy use of option restriction and then extensively berates the player for playing the game in the only way available.

Like some other games, it deliberately invokes common game tropes and then subverts the player’s expectations of them. In this case, the gimmick is that the player character doesn’t want you to play the game. He’s happy hanging out in his castle until the player forces him outside onto an adventure he doesn’t want. Things escalate when the player starts killing innocent creatures that just happen to be in the way, and it gets worse from there.

A visual novel with adventure game elements. You play as a teenage boy who can reach back in time to certain key moments and change history - but it soon becomes clear you’re not the only one who can alter the past. You must manipulate time to save your friends and family members from various disasters while learning who is meddling with your own history and why.

A cute and relaxed adventure game casting the player as a young boy in a Tokyo suburb in the 1970s. You mostly run around and interact with the local children and adults. The kids actually act like kids, and it’s easy to get swept up the games and stories that are so important to them. Adults humor the children and while they clearly have their own grown-up concerns, to you and your friends these are inscrutable and unimportant.

A twin-stick shooter roguelike that casts you as a robot shooting up other robots in procedurally-generated caverns with touches of dark comedy.

The moment-to-moment gameplay feels good and there’s an interesting variety of enemies and weapons. The visibility mechanics, which hide enemies if you don’t have line of sight on them, make for exciting surprises. The tension never really lets up except at the end of each level (which I found exhausting) and aspects of the player training are weak (at the end of each level you choose one of three doors to go through, differentiated by icons that are supposed to tell you what to expect from the next level, but I never understood what they all meant).

A free-to-play match-3 RPG. The core of the gameplay is turn-based combat where you queue up as many matches as you can and then execute them simultaneously to power your attacks. Between fights there are a number of complex progression mechanics to become stronger that rely on some deliberate slowdowns, such as the spoils of combat only gradually turning into money and combat itself consuming a slow-recharge stamina meter. You can speed up progress by spending the premium currency, but there’s no way to permanently remove the stamina mechanic or other slowdowns.

A puzzle platformer based around the “switch” mechanic. Each level features blocks that can move between the foreground and the background. By hitting the switch button, the player can toggle the position of all such blocks in the level simultaneously. The player must use this ability - along with standard running, jumping, and shooting - to navigate the level, avoid hazards, and defeat enemies. In each level, the player character must round up five endangered civilians and then reach the exit.

A puzzle platformer based around the “switch” mechanic. Each level features blocks that can move between the foreground and the background. By hitting the switch button, the player can toggle the position of all such blocks in the level simultaneously. The player must use this ability - along with standard running, jumping, and shooting - to navigate the level, avoid hazards, and defeat enemies. In each level, the player character must round up five escaped convicts and then reach the exit.

The third of three games using a puzzle system somewhere between Minesweeper and Picross. Puzzles are presented on a hex grid with numeric clues that allow the player to deduce which cells must be colored in and which must be blanked out. The clues are a mix of Picross-like ones giving information about the cells in a row or column and Minesweeper-like ones giving information about the cells near another cell, but in both cases there’s some extra variation and complexity mixed in.

The second of three games using a puzzle system somewhere between Minesweeper and Picross. Puzzles are presented on a hex grid with numeric clues that allow the player to deduce which cells must be colored in and which must be blanked out. The clues are a mix of Picross-like ones giving information about the cells in a row or column and Minesweeper-like ones giving information about the cells near another cell, but in both cases there’s some extra variation and complexity mixed in.

The first of three games using a puzzle system somewhere between Minesweeper and Picross. Puzzles are presented on a hex grid with numeric clues that allow the player to deduce which cells must be colored in and which must be blanked out. The clues are a mix of Picross-like ones giving information about the cells in a row or column and Minesweeper-like ones giving information about the cells near another cell, but in both cases there’s some extra variation and complexity mixed in.

A game featuring a modified three-dimensional variant of Picross. Instead of a grid made of squares to selectively fill in to reveal an image, the player is presented with a rectangular prism made of cubes to selectively chip away to reveal an object. The clues work differently as well - not every row or column has clues, and the ones that do have a single number indicating how many cubes should be left in that row or column. The number is presented alone if the cubes are contiguous, circled if they are in exactly two contiguous groups, or in a square if they are in three or more contiguous groups.

A Color Picross game. The pictures are more interesting than in standard Picross, but at least in this case some puzzles feature colors that are very similar and difficult to tell apart, which is needlessly frustrating. It’s also not always easy to paint the right blocks with your finger on a phone’s touchscreen, which is probably why the puzzles are kept so small. Unfortunately, the result is puzzles that are not very engaging and only take a couple of minutes to finish. After each puzzle you’re given a score of one, two, or three stars based on your completion time - which is a bad idea, since it encourages immediate replay of levels if you don’t hit the goal time on your first play.

A downloadable Picross game for the 3DS themed on and structured as a Pokémon RPG. Catch Pokémon by solving puzzles to reveal their images and then use their various abilities when fighting more Pokémon solving more puzzles. The standard assist features are available here as Pokémon abilities instead, generally themed by type - for example, water Pokémon tend to have “Blue Force”, which is the ? Navigation effect. There are hundreds of puzzles in standard and Mega Picross variations, and two Micross puzzles are available as well.

A downloadable Picross game for the 3DS themed on The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. There are 45 puzzles that can be played as standard Picross or Mega Picross puzzles (with the order changed so you don’t know which is coming next when you redo the puzzles in the other mode) plus one Micross puzzle.

The third in a series of budget-priced downloadable Picross games for the 3DS.

There are 130 standard Picross puzzles up to 15x15 in size. Unfortunately, you can’t choose between Normal and Free rule sets; the puzzles are divided into ones that must be played Normal and ones that must be played Free. Additionally, there are 20 Mega Picross puzzles bringing the total up to the familiar 150.

The second in a series of budget-priced downloadable Picross games for the 3DS.

There are 150 standard Picross puzzles up to 15x15 in size. Unfortunately, you can’t choose between Normal and Free rule sets; the puzzles are divided into ones that must be played Normal and ones that must be played Free. Additionally there are five Micross puzzles.

The first in a series of budget-priced downloadable Picross games for the 3DS.

There are 150 standard Picross puzzles up to 15x15 in size. Unfortunately, you can’t choose between Normal and Free rule sets; the puzzles are divided into ones that must be played Normal and ones that must be played Free.

One of the first Picross video games. There are 192 puzzles played with Normal rules, giving time penalties for mistakes made. After completing these, a further 64 puzzles are available in “Time Trial” mode, which follows Free rules but also randomizes the order of the puzzles. The only assist available is Hint Roulette, which unfortunately can’t be disabled completely - if you don’t want it, you have to say “no” to it (which is not the default option) every time you start a puzzle (outside of Time Trial).

A text-based idle game where you play as a paperclip maximizer. Click to create paperclips, then buy upgrades to increase your ability to create paperclips, and go on from there - like many of the best idle games, there are a number of phases each with their own focus and surprises. Some phases take some time to properly understand, partly because the UI leaves a lot unexplained (you might want to look up how to read a payoff matrix if you don’t already know), but the game does an excellent job teaching through mechanics. If you experiment and pay attention to which strategies work and which don’t, you’ll unavoidably derive some basic principles of economics, game theory, and the mathematics of Von Neumann machines. I did feel the game ran a bit long, with some phases that keep going after they’ve taught what they had to teach, but I acknowledge that may be because I happen to have a foundation in most of these topics. Others may find the length gives them time to reinforce and internalize the concepts.

This game casts you as the healer standing behind the tank who takes on wave after wave of enemies. Spend your slowly-regenerating mana, items dropped by enemies, and level-up skill points in order to keep the tank alive for as long as possible. You will eventually fall, and the goal is to get farther next time. As such, the gameplay has elements of roguelikes, tower defence, and resource management puzzles.