The first game I truly fell in love with. Its world is just so tactile to me. I can FEEL it--the wind in my hair, the salt on my tongue, it's all there, still, even a full decade and change later.

The first time I remember being invested specifically in a game's narrative, where it felt like the story was on equal footing with the mechanics, not separate from or subservient to them. Also a big "this game's world pops into my head about once a week" moment. Also my first introduction to the concept of an indie game, which I imagine is a very common experience.

Ok so like this game is pretty mid but that one puzzle that made you close the DS in order to stamp the map pops into my head a lot and made me think about how games can play with physicality for probably the first time.

Just... the vibe. The confidence in its own aesthetic. Every inch of this thing felt so alien to me at the time. Obviously it has its own inspirational lineage, one that has become more visible to me over time, but it was operating in spaces I had never been in before. Probably my first experience with a game that intentionally tried to Do Things Differently. Adversarial is how I would describe it--intentionally contrarian with regards to the dominant trends, in game design, aesthetics, music, all of it. The fact that it was so alien and still Worked definitely changed the way I think about creative homogeneity within the games industry, and probably cultural hegemony on the whole.

Cracked my brain wide open. The first game I played where that balance between narrative and mechanics was entirely flipped, where the mechanics were 100% in service of the story. We talk a lot in The Games Media about mechanics that serve a game's story but games (still!) rarely commit to storytelling as a #1 priority. I could teach a class on this game. It's Literature, by the most pretentious stuffy-academic definition, a landmark work that pushes storytelling towards something entirely new. It goes beyond changing my understanding of games as a form into changing my understanding of storytelling on the whole. The way it plays with unreliable narration and player complicity, the relationship between author and audience, so much more, I don't think there's a single work of art that made a stronger impact on my way of thinking.

Johnathan Blow is a shithead and this game is definitely a little too far up its own ass but the way it plays with player perception and calls attention to its world's constructed nature was pretty mind-blowing to me at the time--and still sort of is! There's a thing that happens where as one plays a game, the eye gains an intuitive sense of how to make meaning out of its world--how to read the shapes in front of them and decode it all. You literally see the world differently than you did at the start. The Witness takes that idea and turns it into the core progression system of the game, stripping out damn near everything else. Top of my "wish I could play this for the first time again" list for sure.

Ending E!!

Had to include a shoutout to Analgesic somewhere in here. Two of the smartest and most inspiring people working in games today. Their writing in and around games constantly informs my thinking about design and narrative--I think about Marina's essay on "shape-meaning resonance" all the time. There's a specific section in this game that blew my mind and pops into my head near-constantly that I can't talk about because it would be spoilers. Also Melos follows me on here so if ur reading this hi lol.

Just so Up My Alley that it helped me pin down a lot of elements of my taste, as a critic and a creator.

Up until I played this I was a "turn-based RPGs are boring except for Persona and the M&L series" guy, and this made me realize that that was a fucking lie. Not as deep of a change as the other entries on this list but still seems noteworthy.

The way this game turns the act of looking at its world into a mechanical interaction, and then turns the act of bearing witness into its central narrative theme is just really great. Also a masterclass on level design, the way it tells a story almost entirely through its levels is incredible. Definitely wasn't my first experience with either of these, but it executes it all in such a special way that it made me think deeper.
A lot of talk about "good narrative design" in games, specifically stuff that "only games can do", is focused on player agency, on the ways in which the player can inflict their will upon the world, but I think there's more to it. I think one of the things games excel at is making you feel like a part of a world that is in fact bigger than you, and part of that might have to do with limiting player agency, creating a world that doesn't bend to the player's will.
Didn't as much change the way I think about "polish" in games as it refined my thinking. Rough edges, technical imperfections, they're Just Good. I've always enjoyed games with rough edges, and always on some level believed that the standards of polish expected in even indie spaces was absurd, but this game really clarified that feeling for me.

Yeah yeah everything I could say about this game has been said a million times before but, as my first Souls game, it did all the stuff it does to everyone to me too! Many of the usual thoughts about the role of friction in games and the way that a lot of AAA design is orienting itself towards erasing friction altogether, thinking about the sinister intentions and implications of that with regards to monetization and "forever games" etc etc etc.
Another one of the big things for me was the way it chipped away at that wall that existed in my head between "mechanically-driven games" and "narrative-focused games". I don't necessarily think that's a useful framework for me anymore, and I'm still working towards a different, non-reductive way to think and talk about that interplay.

idk... Something about the way this game immersed me in its world even with such a technically sparse presentation really affected me. Made me realize the way we talk about "immersion" is fuckin dumb lmao.

Still haven't played this but the music re-wired my brain chemistry so it gets a mention.

Made me fall in love with pre-rendered backgrounds. Also, along with DQ1, Bloodborne, and Umurangi, turned world design from something I didn't really think about to a Thing that was Important To Me. Games primarily about exploration of a world rather than interaction within it is probably the closest I'll ever get to defining my favorite genre.
There's other stuff but I haven't actually played the whole thing so I'm withholding the bulk of my critical thought until that PSP fan translation comes out.

Something about the way FFXIV (accidentally?) encourages RP in the blank spaces left by its largely-silent protag is fascinating to me. If I were being reductive, it may just have to do with a great story with good hooks and a nice character creator but I get the feeling it's more than that—something closer to the TTRPG adage "draw maps, leave blank spaces."

Also: turns out I can like an MMO, if it happens to be one of the best video games ever made