Games I Recommend

Each of the Creeper World games are all essentially different takes on the same core gameplay mechanic, an asymmetric real-time strategy game based on a fluid simulation. When I say different takes, I mean that each game tries to reimagine the core concept under different constraints to add a new layer of creativity to the design. For example, the original Creeper World takes place from the top down, while Creeper World 2 takes place from the side to incorporate gravity and add an anti-creeper mechanic. Creeper World 3 goes back to top-down, brings back the Creeper vs. Anti-Creeper mechanic, adds new mobile enemies, and a new type of terrain.

At their core, Knuckle Cracker games are mechanics-driven games. I find them extremely fun. Part puzzle, part power fantasy. While story battles can have all sorts of difficulty curves with sneaky reversals, counters, unique constraints, set piece action scenes, and surprises; the procedurally generated battles emphasize what makes the core gameplay so compelling. Each battle begins with a plan of attack. You try to quickly capture as much territory as you can practically defend, and then you begin to build your strength. You need to upgrade your weapons, build units that produce resources, and watch out for unexpected weaknesses in your defences. When you have enough strength, you begin to slowly creep into enemy territory. As you go, you continue to fortify and build, each piece increasing the pace of your advance until your advance becomes a charge and a fait accompli.

When I say the games are focused on mechanics, I mean there are other elements like music, story, graphics, juice, etc., but they're not what keeps me coming back to play. The story and the writing are more flavour than fibre. Music and sound effects are there, but mostly to fill the silence rather than a focus of the game. If you buy games for thought provoking narrative or stunning visuals, I wouldn't recommend these to scratch that itch.

If you're curious but don't want to commit, the old Flash-based versions of Creeper World are available in the Flashpoint archive. If you've played those and want more, you should definitely consider buying a copy of Creeper World III: Arc Eternal. I've played hundreds of hours on that one with all the community maps available and I think it's the most fleshed out of all four.

If the 2D graphics aren't your thing, Creeper World 4 is a dramatic step up in visuals to the third dimension. It's quite nice compared to the previous instalments and even has some new ideas and changes to keep it fresh. Unfortunately, the underlying grid meant I often positioned the camera directly overhead, recreating a 2D view. It's a lot of fun, but my indifference is probably a product of how much time I've spent with previous titles and how accustomed I've become to reading the depth gauge.

TIS-100 is a puzzle game about programming a strange little computer in assembler. You already know if this is something you'd be into. Seriously, if your idea of a good time is opening a real PDF programming manual to learn the instructions this weird little virtual machine can execute to solve programming problems, look no further.

I like programming, and now that I work as a programmer, I have a messed up relationship with the joy I used to find in it. This allowed me to get some of it back. It's a world where programming isn't a trillion dollar industry. You're not just a middleman between a text editor and a search engine or chatbot. You don't have a thousand tools and libraries to haphazardly cobble together. There are no thought leaders espousing their one true religion of development practice. There's no tech debt, no office politics, no deadlines, no compromises, no meetings, nobody else's mistakes to clean up. Just you, the machine, the problem, and the reference manual.

What's more, statistics about your solution, such as how many instructions you used, how many nodes were involved, or how long it took to execute, are collected and compared to everyone else's solutions. Since the solutions are trivially verifiable by the leader board server, there's nobody who's solution runs in 0.1 seconds with 1 instruction. This allows you to challenge yourself, to reconsider your solution and squeeze it to improve.

If you're curious, the TIS-100 Reference Manual is available online at the Zachtronics website. You'll have to read the manual to play the game anyway. Why not read it first to see if it sparks some joy?

Antichamber is a first-person puzzle game. That's not why I recommend it. Instead, the game is a puzzle game in a world that routinely defies the laws of Euclid, stylized with some of the coolest shader art in video games. Kind of like playing The Stanley Parable and Portal at the same time, without a narrator, while the hue and contrast controls freak out in a good way.

There's no plot or story, just a world to explore and experience as you overcome the puzzling obstacles in your path. You just start walking around, and almost immediately the world shows you that every expectation you have about how physical space works doesn't apply in the antichamber. After toying with you the game begins to slowly introduce mechanics. I found that most of the puzzles have that wonderful sense of "Ah, ha!" where once you know the solution, it doesn't drag on unnecessarily. Soon you'll find the manipulation tool that allows you to pick up and place the colourful blocks of the world, and from there you're off on an adventure.

The game has an ending. It's visual and beautiful, but it was also kind of sad. You know it means it's over. You've experienced all the visual delights and wondrous geometry that the game has to offer. This game is an experience. It doesn't try to take hundreds of hours to play, and I'm very grateful for that. I find that too many games drag on until they're no longer fun, and I'm left to either push through with brute force or I just give up. Not this one.

It's a game that really explores the possibilities of video game world design. It clearly shows you that video game worlds don't have to follow the same rules that govern our own. That it's not necessary to push harder and harder for realism and immersion, and that trying to make a video game mimic the real world is but a fraction of what they have to offer.

Ever wanted a crash course through the artistic and mechanical elements of early Zelda and Final Fantasy games and their clones? This game essentially plays out what that looked like, with some flair of its own. I like to think of it as the game design equivalent of Coles Notes. In this case, of course, because it's about games and not books, it's a game and not a book.

If you want a mechanically deep game or a game with a complex narrative, this is not the game for you. It's very one-dimensional. You go on an unspecified adventure until you find out there's a BigBad™. Defeat it and the world is safe. Mechanically, it's all rudimentary versions of the mechanics from the source material it's based on. They could use more polish, but the game is also constantly throwing away art and engine code that any other game would reuse and build upon. I'm not surprised that compromises on were made in the feel of something that the player will experience for maybe twenty minutes. Don't get me wrong, it would be nice to have a deeper game, but I still recommend it.

I find this game interesting as a concept. For those who study game design, I think it's a great piece to think about how upgrades in technology often present trade-offs. There will be some upgrades you unlock that you wish you could undo because they take away something you enjoyed. Much like fans who wish the new game didn't remove that thing they enjoyed from the last one. If you engage it critically, it helps you appreciate what you can dissect when you bring so many styles together in one game.