10 Games to get to Know Me

February 9th, 2023

I did this on twitter and ended up getting long winded about it and realized hey wait this is the type of thing that'd work well on cohost. SO, a list of not my favorite 10 games, but 10 games that reflect me and my tastes, WITH DETAILS. An extended version of my twitter thread.

Akumajou Densetsu/CV3

I swear I didn't get into this, or frankly any of the Classicvanias until I was almost 30. Such a perfect blend of sound, aesthetic and game design. These games made me re-evaluate my relationship with the NES library and changed my taste in platformers on a deep, fundamental level. Honestly big overlap with Dark Souls level design, even in 2d.

A Meat and Potatoes choice

Guilty Gear XX Accent Core +R

I didn't know I could be good at games until I started playing GGXX. That game changed how I think about everything, how I think about building skills, everything. Like for real, learning and getting okay at GG and heading out to locals and learning from that gave me so much more confidence in my life. I could honestly be a totally different person right now. I don't even know if there is IWBTG with GG. Thinking about fighting games helped me think about game design.

It could be any GG, but +R is alive and all the shit with FRCs and no buffer and everything -- those were the conditions I was forged under and it changed me. I swear to god it might be the single most influential piece of media in my life.

Bionic Commando

If CV1 and 3 are a late life addition, BC is my childhood fave. The type of movement you can achieve in it reflects deeply of the type of things I would enjoy later in life. Clunky, yet somehow fluid. Probably the game I've beaten the most. But for real I made Gaiden just because I love Bionic Commando so much. And it solved a big design problem (how to make IWBTG not be an ever restricted series of pixel perfect spike jumps).

King's Field 1 / Shadow Tower

Yeah, this could be DS1, or a metroidvania or something, but this weirder choice has so much more aesthetic and mechanical weirdness. Melanat and the Shadow Tower are such vivid, unique places that have etched themselves deeply in my mind. Just FANTASTIC but minimal map design. It's amazing how an ugly ass game like KF1 can be so evocative. Shadow Tower on the other hand is chillingly stunning, and brutally lonesome. Wonderful games.

EVO: A Theory of Evolution

I will never shut up about this game. Funny, quirky, beautiful pixel art. The type of weird oddball thing that I'm willing to sit down and get absorbed into, flaws and all. Also a good example of, as much as I value actiony gameplay, given the choice between this and The Search for Eden, I take this every time. Charm wins in the end.

Also I love sexy satan. God, go play this game.

Jurassic Park: Trespasser

A bad game I was OBSESSED with. I enjoy finding the beauty and ambition of just completely failed games. God the ambition in this game. Despite everything it manages to be impactful. Being able to appreciate something as caustic as this is a challenge.

IL-2 Strumovik

like games where you feel like you're piloting a character more than being them. I like the fussy nuances. So of course I love a game where it's ALL piloting, all fuzzy dials, and overheating engines, and procedures, where doing anything is so INCREDIBLY hard. But as time goes on, you grow intimate with your plane, you learn where everything is, you learn the sounds it makes when it's mad at you, you learn to cope with it's blind spots. This is a game where starting an engine, getting to the runway, and taking off for the first time feels like an accomplishment. Shooting shit down feels like an impossibility. No one hit anything from the air in WW2 and neither will you. It fucking rules.

Also I just love flight gear and head tracking technology.

Getting Over it with Bennet Foddy

Foddy embodies the spirit of shit I did in IWBTG so much better. The skill needed, the absurdity and unyielding nature of the task. The fact that Foddy tried not to compromise in his design of the map. He didn't want a course, he wanted a mountain. Something naturalistic yet absurd. The mountain isn't for you. It is an object you can chose to conquer or lose to. The unyielding nature of the games design is just wonderful. Foddy said he stopped making things easier because he felt like he was cheating. He was just the first man to climb the mountain -- to set the bolts, to grade the route.

Also the voice overs rule. 50+ ascents and I never turned them off. Mastery of something that previously felt impossible feels beautiful.

Modded Minecraft

When I play a Zachtronics game, when I play Kerbel, Besieged, factorio... it all comes back to this and the crazy, logistic mess of systems that I can spent months tinkering with. I love just programming shit in computer craft, or designing machines with Create, or just balancing logistics and complicated autocrafting. I love that the goal can be not only to do these things, but to do them beautifully. It appeals to my artistry and my love of engineering.

Artificial technical challenges are so much more rewarding than real ones, sadly.

Brave Earth: Prologue

I'll be honest. IWBTG doesn't reflect me very well. I enjoyed making it and am proud of it, but it is as much the zeitgeist of time as it is me. You'll learn more about my favorite VG music than actual game design taste... but BEP...

... BEP is me. BEP is my taste in everything, Music, art, anime, gameplay. Even as a linear game it reflects what I like about metroidvanias. It reflects the corny ass "cringe" shit I've loved and designed, setting wise, since I was a teenager.

So when one day you get to play it, you, more so than anything I've released before it, will be playing a part of me. An open, honest, hard as hell part of me.

tags: Chost-Repost , Games
games: Castlevania (Classic Era) , Guilty Gear X2 (series) , Bionic Commando , King's Field (series) , Jurassic Park：Trespasser , IL2 Strumovik：Great Battles , Getting Over it with Bennett Foddy , Minecraft , Brave Earth：Prologue