1000xResist is a game I want to put at the very top of this list, for a million, billion reasons (or, perhaps, 1000 of them). It was my game of the year 2024, and one of my top three games of all time. To keep it as spoiler-free as possible (because, truly, the game is best played with no knowledge of what's inside at all), 1000xResist is a game about the trauma we carry with us, learned and genetic, and about clones trying to please their mother.

It is a game that is made with such genuine love and care, such an amazing story and such a fascinating and compelling plot. I cried multiple times playing it. You can see the love in all of the pieces that don't work as well as they should. Every character is fully voiced, even if they didn't have the knowledge to do lip sync. Every environment is beautiful and detailed, even if a bit hard to navigate. It's clear that this was such a passion project for those working on it that despite lacking some of the requisite knowledge, it was a game they had to make. It's so beautiful.

I suggest 1000xResist to literally everyone, always, all the time. One of the games that, no matter your familiarity with games or your skill level, you can enjoy. It's just beautiful. Hekki Allmo.

Plus, here's my official backlogged review on the game.

You're on a path in the woods.

Slay the Princess (now available on its Pristine Cut, with more branches!) is such a cool fucking project. You rarely see something in ren'py so polished and complete, with fully voiced characters, a TON of branches, and a twist that is... truly magnificent. A lot of games on my list are games that I don't want to spoil, which is so tough, because there's so much I want to talk about! I'd love to talk about The Long Quiet, or the Shifting Mound, or the mirror scene, or all of this really cool shit, but it's just so much better experienced on your own.

I will say that Slay the Princess is about mortality, and what it means to die (and, more importantly, what it means to live). It's about who we are in our lives, the way that we take in our experiences, and the way that those experiences build out who we are as people. It's about the relationship we have with others, and the way that our every move affects not just ourselves, but those around us. It's about stagnation, and it's about moving on.

My review on it may have only given it four and a half stars, but truly Slay the Princess is one of my favorite games, and I cannot recommend it hard enough to everyone. It's not even long - just play through, see what endings you get, and how you feel by the end. You can always look up the others, or go back through, again and again.

You are, after all, on a path in the woods.

Alright, so this is going to be a weird one, but hear me out. You do have to finish the first Portal to play this game, but I swear to god it's so worth it.

This one I can finally talk about without worrying about spoilers! The first Portal is a 2007 puzzle game created by Valve of Half Life and Team Fortress fame. It is, in my opinion, one of the most perfect puzzle games. The way that it guides players through its puzzles, the way that it leads without pulling, the process of trial and error that leads to player understanding, is just so masterfully crafted. I truly think that even more than it is a fantastic puzzle game, Portal (2007) should be the model of how games are built for new players in terms of level design and ease of access.

Portal 2 on the other hand, is maybe one of the best games I've ever played full stop. Everything that Portal excels at, Portal 2 takes to the next level. Level design, guiding, the strange and a bit spooky story, the character motivations, the environments; all cranked up to 11. The Part Where He Kills You is still one of my favorite moments in video games ever just for the sheer goofiness of it all, while retaining a sense of genuine fear and driving motive. So fucking cool! Plus it introduces a ton of new mechanics and concepts, all while driving home the stuff that made the first Portal such a special game.

Can't recommend enough, tbqfh. The first Portal takes like, I dunno, 5 hours for a new player or something, and the second is maybe double or triple that, so it's like playing the prologue. Go play them both right now.

The last one on my list is also a bit of strange one, in that it only came out a few months ago! Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a French RPG (a French JRPG? an FRPG?) about some of the last people alive in a world where a mysterious Paintress on a far off island paints a new number each year, one less than the last, and everyone older than that number is killed. The expeditions work in reverse order, and are now at 33, there is no one alive over the age of 33 years old. The story follows Gustave, his adopted daughter/sister Maelle, and their friends as they traverse the mainland in search of a way to stop the Paintress.

And that is... not even beginning to scratch the surface of what Expedition 33 is. Not even close. That doesn't cover the end of Act 1, or Verso, or Renoire, or the Gestrals, or Esquie, or a million of the other things. From the jump, from the opening cutscene all the way up to the actual title drop of "CLAIR OBSCUR: EXPEDITION 33", the game immediately nails home exactly what the entire point of it is about. The game is about grief. It's about loss and what we do about it. What we hold onto when it's all slipping away, and what we're willing to give up for the future of others. What does a legacy mean? What does suffering mean? Who is suffering?

There's a moment in the first fifteen or so minutes when Sophie says to Gustave, "I feel sorry for her. [The Paintress]. She looks sad." to which Gustave replies, "Only you could choose empathy at a moment like this." She says, "It's one of the only choices I have", and he replies "I couldn't do it."

"It's okay," she tells him, softly. "You don't have to."

That's right, motherfucker, we're starting with a BROWSER, TEXT-BASED GAME. If you clicked that link you'll see it took you to itch.io where this free puzzle game is embedded into the site itself. It's FREE, so you have NO reason not to go play it. I personally suggest using a note-taking app like Obsidian, as it allows you to attach a bunch of dispirate notes together like a crazed, coked out detective with their stringboard of murders. Because, hey, that's what you're about to do!

Type Help is a murder mystery puzzle game. You are an investigator that has been brought on to slog through an old archive from the previous detective. It appears that a group of individuals found their way to the front step of a manor called Galley House, said to have been abandoned for years, and inside they found a series of corpses in various state of death. What happened to the people? Where did they come from? You, as the investigator, must now dive into the audio logs taken in Galley House and discover what happened to the poor souls inside, and what kind of death was wrought.

Genuinely one of the COOLEST games like this I've ever played! I won't clutter the niche section with them, but it's very similar to games like Return of the Obra Dinn and The Roottrees Are Dead, games that function like those old grid logic puzzles, in which you have to figure out who died, where, how, and why. Fantastic games, and I honestly think despite the format, Type Help is the best of the three. If the format REALLY isn't up your alley, they (alongside the studio that made Roottrees!) are working on a refurbished version called The Incident at Galley House which will be more in depth, have a more usable UI, and voice acting.

I will always remain a Type Help purist because I think that the "aha!" moments found in that game will never ever surpass any other game I've ever played, and the dawning horror as you realize what exactly went on in Galley House is unlike any other mystery I've ever played. Really, really cool game that I cannot recommend enough! And free!!! Go play it!

Okay, I will say, if you're on my website, you probably have heard of Signalis. It's the yuri game, and beloved by many a transbian, but if you HAVEN'T heard of it:

Signalis is a top down horror shooter, similar to games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill, specifically drawing on the DNA and game concept ideas of the early PlayStation era. It's the kind of game where you have to stop moving to aim and shoot with the second stick, and camera angles are fixed from above as you enter each room. Really cool horror fare.

Without getting into too much detail, you are Elster, a "Replika" unit aboard the Penrose-512, and you have no idea where you are. You remember bits and pieces of your past, and more than that, you remember the other passenger of the ship. You know that she's missing, and now you have to find her. Which is not easy, considering this is a horror game.

Drawing on some really interesting and fucked up horror lore, Resident Evil and Silent Hill aside, it draws on a lot of literary horror too, especially The King In Yellow (the horror short story collection that inspired authors like Lovecraft). It's a beautifully crafted story with so much interesting shit going on in it, so much cool lore and lesbian love. Really worth playing.

Last one I'm going to talk about for the niche section, because unfortunately I want these to be games anyone can pick up and play before diving deeper into more interesting stuff. SUPERHOT is a game where time moves when you do. It's a shooter game about killing all of the red guys that are rushing you with weapons. Improvise by picking up a bottle and throwing it, knocking the shotgun out of an enemy's hand, grabbing it in midair, and blasting him and his friend in the chest! These are all cool, easy things you can do because of the way that time moves in SUPERHOT.

And that's it, right? Just a cool shooter with a fun gimmick that lets you do superhuman feats because of how much time you have to process things. I've called it a "turn based shooter" before (facetiously). Is that it?

On the surface, yeah. But as I go into more in my review, it's less about having a fun time blasting people and doing sick stunts, and more about what video games are about. It is both a distillation and a pulling back the curtain of the violence of video games. Most put theirs behind some sort of conceit ("Well you're fighting bad guys", "Well they're zombies", "Well no one ACTUALLY dies") but SUPERHOT pulls no such punches.

SUPERHOT, and especially Mind, Control, Delete, looks you in the eye and says "You like the violence, don't you, sicko? You're here because you want to kill. We aren't making you kill anything at all. Time only moves when you move. If you stop, the game stops. If you turn it off, you end the killing. But you love it, don't you? You want to keep killing, and killing, and killing. So kill. Go on, mutt."

"Sicc 'em."