Every Wario game, well at least the good ones, try to be a very specific kind of odd. It feels like people included mechanics in a lot of these titles because they thought it would be funny above all else. This is the most realized i think that weirdness has ever felt since Wario Land 4. Blending so many styles, so many mediums of drawing and 3d models, it genuinely feels like wario commissioned games at random and shoved them into one product. It is all very manic and I remember laughing as a child at any new minigame I hadn’t seen yet.
If you are someone who hates motion controls via principle I feel so sorry for you.

The Perfect Wii Game. A lot of overly ambitious wii games try to make motion controls the whole deal, in my humble opinion, there are only a few games that manage to do that well, and this is one of them. The whole idea of this game is hard to describe, a bunch of cute critters being in charge of all electricity get weird and you gotta capture them! I dunno mostly I am enthralled by the way this game handles physics. You get a gravity gun and are told to go totally wild, turn on stuff, rip clocks off of walls, throw toast into toasters, try not to make too much noise, please don’t break the plates, it’s so chaotic but so well realized. The slight delay between your beam and your controller does wonders for the actual controls of the game, and catching little guys to get stronger and become able to lift that fridge to get the little dudes under it! I guess i am mostly just gushing at this point, if you don’t check out this game, at least check out the soundtrack because it is stellar.

Also the rabbit from silent hill is in it.

There is nothing like this game. Ok technically it’s a pretty basic acrobatic platforming game that is based solely on super mario style gameplay quite unabashedly, but what this game is makes me so happy.

It’s one guy’s ocs based on his old flash animations running through worlds based entirely off of games and media that fall into such heavy obscurity that finding something you recognize is kind of amazing. This is a game where the penultimate world is called Video World and is based on youtube videos one of the devs likes.

The game is free and they don’t care about copyright, they can just have whatever they want in there, it’s a hand drawn pixel art game but it is authentically kitbashed feeling, and that extends to the soundtrack, which is one of the best sets of plunderphonic jams i have ever heard.

The appeal of this game is hard to put into words to be honest, have you ever wanted to have a boss fight against a massive jpeg of that one bootleg MJ Thriller guy? which is in turn a reference to a weird flash game? or have you ever wanted to have a level based entirely off of a creepy pasta that nobody has ever heard of? what about a Stick Figures on Crack level based on specifically a rip off by someone else, or what about a bonus level based on Moppa Wars! (look it up you will find nothing)

Worth mentioning is that this game is dickhead level difficult, as someone who loves tough as nails videogames (not as a hardcore get gud gamer but as a total masochist), this walks the line of what i consider fun and frustrating. But the esthetic, music, quasi nostalgic vibes, and just generally how this game handles itself make me very happy and willing to jump through hoops just to see what else gets this game has hidden in it, i have been on board this game was about Obama dressed as Mario, and i can’t tell you how happy i am this game turned out just as insane as i was wishing.

You can tell this is a Slavic game because the devs made sure every speaking role character just says “Breh” as their text box voice bark.

What is it? Ok not speaking as a total hate train person, legitimate question, What is it? I won’t forgive this game for making timed shop exclusives a thing, or popularizing battle passes, or the weird thing they do where all of my favorite items don’t exist anymore for a whole, but mostly i just kinda look at this game and wonder what the heck is going on in there. It’s not something that can easily make sense to me, it’s a game where you try to be the last one alive, yeah, but it’s also a game where you can default dance as Rick Sanchez in the middle of a lovingly crafted MLK remembrance digital museum, and a game where goku can put a suction cup on you and ride a weird ball, and a game where you get resources and when you shoot someone they construct a tower in two seconds the size of a traveling fair slingshot. I am glad kids are having fun with something, everyone needs a childhood brain empty thing, i had roblox, these kids have fortnite…it’s just so wild to see this glob of pop culture move and swirl, what is it?

There are games where obviously bad decisions on high ruin a game. And then there are games where you can see the dev team trying to use the cards they have been dealt under such a system to make something at least fun. That is what this game is to me. They were told to make Iron Giant fight, so they made him an actual giant who attacks via accidentally knocking people away while enjoying life. The design, animation, and actual thought put into these fighters makes me so happy, they could have made this so bad but they made it so fun. Shame it doesn’t grab you a ton, the actual core experience is great but it feels like booting up a game of fortnight whenever i turn this thing on, making me wonder why i am here playing this corporate compromise no matter how interesting i find it. I will be sad to see this game go under eventually. I am a proud Tom and Jerry main.

Oh my god, ohhh my god I am in pain and i might not love or hate it. If you already get frustrated at RNG in rougelike or rougelite style experiences, DO AND AT THE SAME RIME DO NOT play this. You can kind of adjust your fate for better or worse in this thing but it’s kind of more like how holding or hitting adjusts your fate in blackjack. The tools are there you just have to get lucky. This game is the closest i will ever get to frying my face off on the eternally spinning cosmic grindstone of random chance and i am still stuck on Witch Elimination Round after 3 years god help me. Soundtrack is good though!

Ok, so, a lot of people love this game for the lol so weird factor, and that is a definite part of the experience. But LSD Dream Emulator is kind of a work of art? like I get it, it’s easy to bounce off of it because it doesn’t get especially wild until time has passed, but it’s kind of full of emotion. Osamu Sato is one of my favorite visual artists, and while his point and click games are cool if not obtuse, this game is the equivalent of being thrown in the deep end filled with vibrant oil and sharp corners. This game is surprisingly abrasive, effectively surreal and not afraid to jerk the player around or make them feel like something is definitely wrong. All while your controls are just walk, turn, look up, look down. Honestly while the game itself is amazing and one of my favorite things ever, the cutscenes sort of make it a five for me. Randomly getting shown a little short film with music made by or commissioned by Osamu of varying lengths and intentions is so very rad, my favorite being a tie between the UFO and the Fish Bowl Elevator. Also if you are in a need for a surrealist breakcore experience listen to the soundtrack for this game, legitimately primo i have the remixes on vinyl.

Legitimately this game inspires me. Is it perfect? Nah, but it’s something I consider much more important. Pizza Tower is authentically itself, it’s confident, it’s silly, it’s not afraid to be a little bit home-made. It’s a passion project and I didn’t even need to be on board the dev discord for years to see that it is…even though i was. Pizza Tower lets the player trip around for a while, and then kind of teaches you how to ride a total anxiety flow state from start to end to start. To call this game’s controls and flow tight is an understatement. I think aside from raw gameplay the pure unadulterated joy that i get from the game’s animations is fantastic, i probably don’t need to point it out but it’s kind of an achievement, it’s so fluid and wacky and off the walls yet you never lose where you are or what is happening. It is the closest i have ever come to feeling like i was playing a cartoon, and i have played cuphead. I could gush for ages, but even if i am in love with this game i am afraid of it getting Undertale’d by everyone talking about it and contrarians forgetting that it is in fact good even if it is popular-ish. So shhhhh, good game but shhhhhhh play it shhhhhhh.

I am still obsessed...

I can't easily put into words the emotions pikmin gives me, it's so odd. Pure joy is just...seeing a bunch of pikmin carrying back several things at once and admiring your work. I have spent several hours just reading about things in this game, captains logs about enemies and their biology, theories as to what a duracell battery was, sales pitches for an alien fruit that is just a strawberry to us, cooking instructions for how to prepare a massive grub shaped like a pig that breathes fire.

I really enjoy the gameplay on the face of it too, there are so many unforgettable moments and set pieces, and as simple as the tactical elements are, they really make you feel more in on the action as opposed to a true blue rts.

Search Breadbug on google images.

I cannot think of a game I have thought more about.

This game has followed me throughout most of my life and I can't help but feel sentimental, I used to just be a lil baby running around 2Fort setting people on fire, now I know all the best sentry spots, all the coolest spy hang outs, what all the weapons do and why they are cool, so so much.

This is a social game, sure you are shooting eachother and throwing jars of urine, but people are not afraid to act silly. I have had so many lovely moments of a firefight ending in two people of opposing teams doing rock paper scissors to see who wins. I have seen a scout yell "no" when he saw me about to backstab someone, sending my ragdoll flying with a swing of his bat. It is a fun as hell experience.

Also there is a lot to learn, I have played the game since i was in middleschool and I still don't know how to do some things, it is the most intentionally depth filled shooting game I have ever played.

The Heavy is also funny.

This game is not perfect, but dear god do I consider it an honorary flawless crystal of collectathon game design, in my heart at least.

This is a game where you do kids game stuff. You collect things, you fight robots, you play 3 swappable characters, and you laugh at squidward. I will not act like this game has some secret special design choice that makes it a cut above, it was mostly just...a really solid platformer!

And it was also my first, I never beat it as a kid, only recently have I completed it on an emulator. The way this game worked, it was so smooth yet so jaggy in the best ways, you had a very nice linear sand box to mess around in, but if you wanted to you could just jump up geometry and use crazy stuff to get around, the game has very little boundaries, seriously watch speedruns this game is broken in half.

The main reason it is here as my favorite game though, is that it instantly inspired me. I had only played edutainment my whole life up until i tried this game and it cracked me open like an egg. I enjoyed the game quite a bit, but what really got me was saving up enough shiny objects to go into the theater, I expected there to be a little level to complete in there...but no, it was a bunch of concept art! I had never seen concept art in my life, and seeing the visual thought process behind levels, enemies, bosses that never made it into the game, worlds before they were concrete in structure, it made me so excited! I started to draw my own levels, make my own robot designs, imagine my own characters running around drawings i made, it was magical.

It gave me brainrot too, as a kid I kept saying "if you wanna do this, press THIS button and you will do a spin attack" to random kids and my parents who had no clue what was happening. This was the start of me aspiring to be a genuine game designer, and even today I type out game design documents in google drive for that fateful day I get to actually make something...

But yeah the game is fun you can bellyflop as patrick and there is a robot with cartoon gloves that spins around and slaps you in the face. Would recommend.

Full disclosure, I played this game with a friend closeby where we both voice acted and turned in game VA to classic so we had more room to do so, he also sorta acted as a thinking aid for me when I didn't get something.

I adore this game, it turned me on to hardline dialogue only role playing videogames entirely, and the whole esthetic and framing devices employed here are...mwah, chefs kiss, there are so many moments and characters I will never forget, and so many moments where I felt like I was deep in character yet knew exactly what to say!

Yeah that's another thing! I usually dont like these kinds of games because the main character is built to be such a stand in for the player, and while The Detective is definitely a conduit for the player to interact with the world, I definitely felt like I was encouraged to play the game thinking in a new way. It was less thinking about "what would I do in this situation" and more "ok what would THIS guy do in this situation, what do I want HIM to do" which is so far my favorite way a game can handle a protagonist in this fashion.

I am sure if I were to dig hard enough into this game I would have issues, but I feel like I am pretty secure in saying this is my favorite RPG of all time...so far, like I said I haven't played a lot haha.