The 100 Games That Taught Me Game Design

From Space Invaders to Shadows of Doubt

For the last ten years, Game Maker's Toolkit has operated on a pretty simple principle - that one of the best ways to learn about game design is to just play a bunch of video games.

Games can introduce us to new mechanics and systems. They can teach us about fundamental game design concepts like feedback loops and input and output randomness. And games can act as a handy reference point when discussing ideas with other game designers.

But there are a lot of video games out there.

Across more than fifty years of video game history, there have been hundreds of thousands of video games across different genres and eras and platforms and styles. And so if you were going to play some games to learn about game design, it can be tricky to know where to start.

And so that's what this video is all about. I've picked the 100 games that most helped me on my journey to understand game design. These are the games that levelled up my game design literacy, and opened my eyes to what this medium can do.

And so this is not a list of the 100 greatest games ever made - though I would recommend pretty much all of the games on this list. And it's not a list of the 100 most important or influential games ever made - though you will pick up some history lessons along the way.

Instead, it's a list of the 100 games that most helped me to learn about game design.

Which is to say, this is unapologetically my list. While I got some outside help to narrow down the candidates, the final list of games is all me - to reflect the games that most helped me on my journey. So this list is missing entire genres and massive franchises. And there are two Zelda games on this list, and that was me showing restraint.

For each game, I'll try to focus on just one aspect that I think makes it worth playing, but you'll need to play the game for yourself to get the full effect.

To that point, I've noted where the game is available to buy digitally on PC, Xbox, PlayStation, or Switch. But sadly, due to the sorry state of video game preservation, some older titles are just impossible to get digitally. So in those instances, you'll either have to do the legwork to seek out a physical copy of the game and maybe an old console, or use the alternatives I suggest to play something somewhat similar.

With all that being said, let's jump in.

I'm Mark Brown, and this is the 100 games that taught me about game design.

Space Invaders - 1978

Space Invaders was arguably the first game with the sort of difficulty curve that we'd recognise today.

It was partly a quirk of engineering. As you shoot aliens and remove them from the battlefield, the machine’s primitive processor had one fewer sprite to draw and so the whole game runs a little quicker. Every invader you swat, the faster - and harder - the game becomes.

But also, each level was intentionally designed to be a little more difficult than the one before, as enemies start closer to the bottom of the screen.

Together, these create that wonderful spiky difficulty curve where the game is gradually getting harder and harder, but things do ease off when you start a new level. This undulating staircase provides rising tension… but also moments of relief in which to catch your breath. It’s essentially the exact same difficulty curve that’s used in games today - making it an effective way to start learning about the topic.

You can play Space Invaders in your browser through the link in the description. Also check out Space Invaders Extreme on Steam, which reimagines the game as a neon-dipped score-chaser with a thumping techno soundtrack.

Pac-Man - 1980

One of my favourite things about Pac-Man is the way the game swings between two very different states.

By default, the game is about fear. As you try to clear all the pellets in the maze, you are chased around by four meddlesome ghosts who follow your every move, and seem to be able to work together to pin you down and catch you out.

But then you grab the power pellet. And for a brief moment, the tables are drastically turned. Now you are the predator, and the ghosts are the prey. They run away from Pac-Man, and if you touch a ghost you’ll earn points, and temporarily remove it from play.

It is a satisfying reversal of roles that feels wonderful every time you pull it off. And it also keeps the game varied and engaging - Pac-Man is not a one-note game about a single emotion, but a dramatic back-and-forth tussle between power and powerlessness.

Pac-Man can be played in your browser, and there are ports on Steam and other major platforms. You might also want to check out the semi-official sequel Ms. Pac-Man, and the addictive, modern reimagining Pac-Man: Championship Edition.

Rogue - 1980

With there being only a few years between the launch of Dungeons & Dragons and home computers, it’s not surprising that a lot of early PC games were basically computerised D&D, with the machine taking on the role of a digital dungeon master.

But one game stood out more than the rest: Rogue.

Designers Michael Toy and Glenn Wichman wanted to make an RPG that would feel completely different each time you play, so hit upon the idea of using procedural generation. Now the dungeon layouts are randomly cobbled together by a computer, which is following certain rules for how to place down rooms, corridors, loot, and enemies.

They also didn’t want a way for players to simply learn the dungeon through rote repetition, and so hit upon another idea that would come to define a genre: when you die, you die. No check points, save states, or respawns. It’s back to the very beginning and on to an entirely new dungeon.

Now I'll admit - I didn't play Rogue as a kid. But it's been so influential on the games I play today that I just had to include it. We'll have to wait until much later in the list to see these ideas truly come into their own. You can play Rogue in your browser, or on Steam.

Super Mario Bros. - 1985

It took a surprisingly long time for game developers to think of letting a character jump. It took even longer to make that jump feel fun.

Consider Mario’s first game: Donkey Kong, in which Mario has three, predictably preprogrammed jumps - up, left, and right. But by Super Mario Bros., Mario has, well, essentially an infinite number of jumps. That’s because the height is determined by how long you hold the button. Because the distance is driven by how fast Mario is running before you leave the ground. And because you can even influence the plumber’s mid-air movement.

By having a jump that is driven by the push-and-pull of physics, gravity, and player input, the simple act of leaping around is made incredibly fun, expressive, and challenging - a mechanic that could sustain an entire game. Or indeed, an entire genre of games.

Mario’s platforming has certainly improved in later games. The physics were tweaked and perfected in Super Mario Bros. 3. They were perfectly reimagined in 3D in Super Mario 64. And new moves like the spin, ground pound, wall jump, long jump, and hat throw add even more expressive action. But Super Mario Bros. is still worthy of study for its ambitious first stab at a proper video game jump.

Super Mario Bros. is available as part of the NES library on the Switch Online service.

The Legend of Zelda - 1986

While Shigeru Miyamoto and co. were finishing up Super Mario Bros., they were simultaneously working on another game that would, you know, kick off a 40 year franchise and change the course of video game history. What’s your side hustle, huh?

That game was, of course, The Legend of Zelda. An adventurous fantasy epic, designed to emulate Miyamoto’s childhood memories of exploring the Japanese countryside. And it did this by giving the player a huge amount of freedom.

You’re dropped into a forest clearing and told to, essentially get on with it. Your goal is to find eight pieces of a giant golden triangle but how you do this is largely up to you. You can now go in any direction, explore where you like, and take on challenges in any order you see fit.

Sure, there are some obstacles that can’t be overcome until you find certain power-ups. Many areas are filled with tough baddies who will flatten an inexperienced adventurer. And the eight underground dungeons are technically numbered. But still: Zelda 1 gives a remarkable amount of freedom to players. And this makes your journey through the game feel personal and special. It’s driven by curiosity, rather than a designer’s leading hand.

You can get it on the Switch Online service.

Mega Man - 1987

After the success of Super Mario Bros., platformers fell into a predictable formula: a series of levels, split into a series of worlds, played in whatever order the designer intended. But Capcom shook that idea up with Mega Man.

This game begins on a stage select screen, with six buttons that take you to the lairs of six different robot masters. And you can take these dudes on in any order you like. This gives the player a greater sense of freedom, and encourages replay-ability as the game will feel subtly different each time you play.

But it’s more than just picking the order. Every time you defeat a robot master you’ll take on one of their powers. And those powers will prove helpful in other levels and against other bosses. For instance, you can defeat Guts Man to unlock a rock-chucking super arm - which will destroy Cut Man in a couple hits.

Rock beats scissors, after all.

Now I don’t think the idea is perfect - it didn’t take long for magazines to start sharing the optimum route through the game - but it was a start, and is absolutely still the go-to cultural touchstone for a game where you pick your own order to undergo challenges. Mega Man can be played as part of the Mega Man Legacy Collection, which contains all six original NES games.

Tetris - 1989

Tetris is the perfect game. I don’t mean it’s the best game ever made, or anything. But I mean it feels like a complete, pure specimen - like a natural property of the universe that was discovered, rather than designed. Like a Rubik’s cube, a chess board, or Ryan Gosling.

But the aspect I want to focus on is the interesting way it handles difficulty. Because as the game goes on - with you manically trying to drop blocks into perfect lines - the game ramps up the challenge in two different ways.

The first way is that the speed increases after you clear a certain number of lines. This is a sort of ‘artificial difficulty’ - the designer essentially reaching in and tweaking the numbers to make your life harder.

But the second way is what you might call ‘diegetic difficulty’. Basically: the more blocks there are on screen, the less time it takes for new blocks to fall, and the harder it is to play. The game becomes more difficult, as a natural outcome of the play space. It arises from the rules of the game’s universe - hence, diegetic.

You can see a similar thing in a game like Snake, where the longer your body grows, the harder it is to avoid crashing into it. It’s an elegant way to make a game more difficult in a way that is clearly visible and immediately understandable.

You can play Tetris in your browser. But you might as well play the beautiful modern reimagining, Tetris Effect.

DOOM - 1993

There’s so much you could say about the influence and importance of Doom. It was a pioneer in 3D graphics, online deathmatch, shareware, cheat codes, community-driven map-making, and it was so formative for the first person shooter genre that similar games were all called "Doom-clones" for about half a decade.

But this isn’t supposed to be a history lesson. And, luckily, Doom is more than a stuffy old historical artefact. In fact - it’s still wildly fun to play in 2024. And that’s because - among other reasons - the game is fast.

Doomguy whips around the environment like the dude’s on rocket powered roller-skates. Where many modern shooters feature flat-footed characters who run out stamina while jogging towards cover points, Doom’s protagonist is lighting quick, which makes encounters feel frenetic and fast-paced.

And that plays perfectly with the enemies, who all play with space and position. Like the biting pinky - you’ll want to keep a lot of space between you and them. Or the imp’s meandering fireball projectiles, which can be dodged with fancy footwork.

There’s so much to learn from Doom. But at the end of the day, it’s just a really fun game. It’s available on Steam and the major consoles.

Super Metroid - 1994

With the Metroid franchise - which really found its footing in 1994’s Super Metroid - Nintendo stumbled upon a powerfully potent gameplay loop: one that centres on the joy of exploration.

The game takes place on the planet Zebes - which is not split up into distinct levels or worlds. Instead, it’s a single, contiguous play-space - a non-linear, interconnected ant farm of corridors and elevators.

Then again, your travel is often impeded by obstacles like doors that require special missiles or superheated rooms that will burn you alive if you stick around for too long. So… go explore elsewhere, and hopefully you’ll find a new power-up: maybe some missiles, or hi-jump boots, a grapple beam, an ice beam, or an insulated suit that can withstand heat. Now you can travel back to that obstacle and overcome it.

That might reward you with a handy upgrade. Or it might reveal the next chunk of the map.

So through this repeating loop of explore and unlock, Super Metroid is all about using exploration, and your memory of the world map, to slowly unpick a giant knot of locks and keys. Until you find your way to the final boss. It is a wonderfully satisfying formula that has sustained an entire genre of so-called Metroidvania games - from PS1 favourite Symphony of the Night, to modern indie gems like Hollow Knight.

Super Metroid is available on the Switch Online service.

Pokemon Blue Version - 1996

For some of the older games on this list, you might have to cast your mind back to the 80s or 90s to truly understand what made them so special. But for Pokemon Blue, it would be very helpful if you could actually time travel back to 1996.

Because, sure, Pokemon is a cute little RPG in its own right. It’s a game about catching monsters, training them up, teaching them moves, and then doing battle with other Pokemon trainers. And you’ll need to think about elemental pair-ups, as grass-type monsters will mop the floor with water-types, but get burnt to a cinder by fire-based critters.

But what made Pokemon so special was the fact that you could trade monsters from one Game Boy to another, using a link cable.

To encourage this, Pokemon was split into two games - Red and Blue - which are almost identical except for a number of Pokemon that are exclusive to each game. So if you want Vulpix or Electabuzz, you’ll need a link cable. Other Pokemon would only evolve after being traded. And the starter Pokemon never show up again in your game, so you’ll need to beg your friend for their Bulbasaur.

Pokemon is an excellent example of building community around a game, not just through competition, but through trading and helping each other out. Pokémon Blue Version is sadly not easy to play today, but it’s also not recommended you walk up to a 10 year old and ask if they want to see your Geodude. So maybe check out a more recent version and use your imagination for what it would be like to trade these things on the school playground.

Tomb Raider - 1996

In my mind, two games really defined the jump to fully 3D gameplay: Super Mario 64 and Tomb Raider. And both were about jumping around tricky three-dimensional obstacle courses. But, then again, they worked in very different ways.

Mario is all about fluidity, speed, and bouncy trampoline jumps. Whereas Tomb Raider is about positioning, patience, and precision. Making your way through these ancient ruins is almost like navigating a submarine or setting up an elaborate machine. You must observe the environment and execute moves perfectly to get Lara Croft from A to B.

Today, in a world of games where characters magnetically snap to ledges and automatically clamber up walls, this sort of precise movement can feel antiquated and frustrating. But once you get into it, and feel the satisfaction of overcoming a bunch of obstacles, you realise that there’s something to be gained by making movement more involved.

Tomb Raider can be played on all platforms, as part of a remaster that features all three PS1 games. You can press a single button to revert the game back to its original style.

Resident Evil - 1996

Resident Evil was certainly not the first survival horror game. In fact, many of its ideas were inspired by Alone in the Dark - including the iconic fixed camera perspective. But, hey, one game led to a thriving franchise of critically acclaimed games and the other led to an Uwe Boll movie. So, here we are.

There are plenty of ways that Resident Evil made players feel scared and unsettled. From the aforementioned camera angle, to the clunky movement, to good ol’ fashioned jump scares. But the one I want to point out is the way Resident Evil simply restricts how much stuff you can have.

Key items like ammunition and healing herbs are rare, which means you can’t blast your gun at anything that moves. Instead you need to carefully conserve ammo, consider every shot, and sometimes choose to just run away from enemies. And then there’s the inventory - a tiny cramped grid. Instead of carrying about an entire arsenal of different guns, you have to think carefully about what items you need right now.

It's a perfect lesson in how a designer can make a player feel empowered, or disempowered, simply by turning the big dial labelled "resources". Resident Evil is hard to play outside of using original hardware in 2024, so feel free to check out the impressive HD remake which is available on all major platforms.

Half-Life - 1998

Valve’s Half-Life tells a complete story… but without ever stopping for a cutscene.

The game follows Gordon Freeman - a nerdy scientist who gets caught up in an alien invasion. He’ll have to fight monsters, solve puzzles, fend off the military, and even spend a bit of time on the aliens’ home planet of Xen.

But the game’s narrative innovation is that this whole thing takes place from Gordon’s perspective. And in real-time - without breaks, level transitions, or cutscenes. This gives the game an immersive and grounded feel which operates on the strengths of video games - rather than simply copying what works in movies.

So when characters talk to you - they look directly into the camera. When explosions happen, they feel more impactful because they’re happening in real time. And the game never takes away your control or sense of agency. This might feel a little trite, seeing as a lot of first-person shooter games now feature flashy cinematic set-pieces. But it all goes back to Half-Life, and that slow tram ride into the heart of Black Mesa.

The game’s on Steam. And, obviously, play Half-Life 2 as well.

Thief: The Dark Project - 1998

Thief: The Dark Project follows burglar Garrett into mansions, cathedrals, and any other place that might hide valuable treasure. And because Garrett is not much of a fighter, you’ll need to focus on sneaking past enemies if you want to get back out alive.

This means reading the environment, and using it to your advantage. And that operates on two axes. You’ve got light - you’ll be spotted in bright areas, so stick to the shadows. And sound - echoey surfaces can give your footsteps away, so walk on grass and carpet where possible.

This makes for a game about patient observation, where you look, listen, and try to figure out what the guards are thinking. But you can also manipulate the environment to your own needs - perhaps using a water arrow to douse a torch, or a moss arrow to create an impromptu rug to hush your footsteps.

Thief: The Dark Project is available on Steam as Thief Gold.

Crazy Taxi - 1999

I think there’s a lot to learn about game design from the arcade. These games can’t rely on complex stories, long campaigns, or in-depth gameplay. They need to hook you immediately, explain their gameplay in seconds, and incentivise you to come back and try again when you’ve got more pocket money. All good lessons for game designers to have up their sleeve.

Take Crazy Taxi - Sega’s bonkers driving game from 1999. The game has you zig-zagging around a San Francisco-style city, trying to make as many taxi journeys as possible within a matter of minutes. So you pick up passengers, and then speed them to their destination.

The faster you get them there, the more money you earn. But you can also get a bigger tip by pulling off stunts, tricks, and driving recklessly along the way.

And then time’s up, and the game’s over. Producer Kenji Kanno says "the whole point of the game is to have a lot of fun in a short period of time", and I totally agree. It’s my go-to example of a game with an extremely simple, but utterly concentrated, gameplay loop.

Crazy Taxi is available on Steam, but this version is sadly missing the product placement and the iconic original soundtrack.

Deus Ex - 2000

So Thief was part of a legacy of immersive sims. These were games that used complex systems - like physics and artificial intelligence - to simulate a world.  And would then immerse you in that world, through a first person perspective, and realistic interactions. So… simulations that were immersive - hence, ‘immersive sim’.

But in 2000, designer Warren Spector and his team added a while new side to the term. In Deus Ex - a globe-trotting cyberpunk spy thriller about conspiracies - the idea is that the player is able to tackle objectives in just about whatever way they want.

So you can play the game as a first person shooter, like Half-Life. Or you can take the stealthy approach and sneak around in the shadows, like Thief. You can play it more like an adventure game, as you chat to characters and negotiate for information. Or you can treat it like an RPG, as you level up skills in lock-picking, hacking, swimming, and so on, to unlock more routes.

All of this led to a game of overwhelming player freedom. A game where levels are open-ended playspaces with endless routes and solutions - and it’s up to the player to direct the action. According to Spector, "the game had to be about how clever and creative players were, not how clever and creative we, as developers, were".

Deus Ex has inspired a litany of fantastic games - like Dishonored and Prey - that also work to empower the player. But the incredible original is still available on Steam.

Diablo II - 2000

If you’re looking for someone to blame for the skill trees that show up in every modern game, look no further than Blizzard’s Diablo II.

This game is a highly concentrated RPG which puts the focus almost exclusively on combat, and on powering up your character. Every time you get enough experience points to level up, you don’t just have a chance to boost your stats like attack and dexterity - but you also get to choose a node on a skill tree.

Each one of these is a handy new ability - either a move you perform actively, or a passive buff that’s helping in the background. And each new skill can dramatically change how your character works. Like, the Necromancer starts out with the ability to turn a dead body into a friendly skeleton buddy, but 5 or so hours later you’ll have a whole army of skeletons, a clay golem, and an undead mage working alongside you, while you rip apart your enemies with powerful spells.

And it’s this feeling - going from powerless rube to overpowered god - that makes Diablo II so fun, and so hard to put down. You want to see the effect of just one more skill. You want to get just a little more powerful. Being able to see the whole skill tree is also hugely important: much of your time is spent simply reading what later upgrades will do and dreaming of the time you’ll finally unlock it.

The original Diablo II is available on Battle.net, but requires a little jiggery pokery to get working on modern machines. So feel free to play the remastered version if you want an easy life.

The Sims - 2000

After the success of SimCity - a city-building simulation game about urban planning - designer Will Wright decided to zoom in, and make a game about individual households. And he called it The Sims.

So we ended up with a game that follows the lives of a user-created family of digitised humans. And the game acts like an ant farm - you can just watch these people go about their day, using smart utility AI to autonomously fulfil their needs and desires. Or you can reach in and exert control.

For some players, The Sims was about telling stories, and using the simulation gameplay as a means for creation. For others, The Sims was about playing god - putting the sims in strange and uncomfortable situations, or torturing them with a capricious flick of the mouse. Pretty much everyone who has played The Sims has sent a sim into the swimming pool… and then deleted the ladder.

But this was the joy of The Sims - it was whatever you made of it. 20 years later, The Sims still remains an essential touchstone for player-led game design.

The original game can be found on abandonware websites - but the very good The Sims 3 is available more easily on Steam, if you prefer.

Grand Theft Auto III - 2001

Grand Theft Auto III and its sequels might be best known for their many, many media controversies. But when it comes to game design, GTA is best know for popularising the idea of an open world game. Pretty much every game that takes place in a giant, contiguous city has to pay a debt of influence to Rockstar and Liberty City.

But GTA actually does something that most open world games still get wrong.

You see, the game has missions - which are carefully scripted levels with goals, cutscenes, fail states, and rewards. And doing these will advance the story and unlock more of the world.

But between those missions, the game encourages you to simply run riot, and let off steam. You can drive off ramps to do stunts. Steal an ambulance and become a paramedic. Or simply get into a ridiculous city-wide car chase with the police.

In other open world games, there’s either little of interest to do in the open world, or the story and fantasy precludes you from causing chaos. But by making you a criminal, and filling the city with opportunities for mischief and mayhem, Grand Theft Auto allows for unadulterated sandbox thrills.

It’s sadly only available as the iffy, Definitive Edition, ‘remaster’ these days. But you can get a surprisingly good version of GTA 3 on iOS and Android.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 - 2001

I sometimes like to talk about how games feel on the thumbs. How the simple joy of interacting with a mouse or controller can feel deeply, inherently satisfying. So whether that’s pulling off a flaming uppercut in Street Fighter, snaking in Mario Kart DS, or bunnyhopping in Quake, these kinaesthetic qualities can elevate a game to a higher level of fun.

For me, though nothing beats Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3, and other games in the series. These anarchic, score-chasing skateboarding games are filled with quirky little inputs that feel satisfying to pull off.

For one, there are the tricks, which you unleash by pressing a button and a direction simultaneously. Then there’s the manual which is achieved with a tasty up-down twitch of the analogue stick. And then there’s the revert, which is achieved by slamming a shoulder button at the exact moment your board hits the wood of a half pipe.

Do these tricks - and others, like grinds and board flips - in a continuous combo, and you’ll feel like a gaming god. There are few games where I can boot them up - even after being away for years - and just instantly slip back into the groove. I can’t ride a skateboard for toffee in real life, but I’ll never forget how to trick in Tony Hawk’s.

Sadly, the only games easily available as of now are in a remake collection featuring the first two games. So you’ll have to make do with those if you’re not willing to do a little work.

Ico - 2001

Developer Fumito Ueda is fond of a game-making approach called ‘Design by Subtraction’, which is all about removing extraneous elements to get at the core of the game.

He was inspired by the French title Another World - a cinematic adventure that did away with typical video game elements like the user interface, score system, health bar, and lives. And it even got rid of dialogue. Instead, it depicted the relationship between two characters entirely through actions.

If you’ve played Ico, that probably sounds familiar. The game is about escorting a princess through a castle filled with monsters - but you can’t speak each other’s language, so have to rely on input and actions to get along.

You can hold Yorda’s hand, give her vague commands, and bat away enemies to keep her safe. Your relationship grows throughout the game, but is cemented when she’s taken away for a while. Yorda, after all, grants you the ability to save your game - wso hen she’s gone, there’s no way to lock in your progress, and you’ll have to do the whole next section in one go.

Ico showed me the power of saying and doing less - and I can see its influence in so many games released since.

Sadly you’ll have to seek out Ico on PS2 or PS3 to play it today. Once you’ve done that, though, make sure you play Ueda’s other games - the incredible Shadow of the Colossus, and the - well, interesting The Last Guardian.

Rez - 2001

Tetsuya Mizuguchi is one of gaming’s most interesting designers because, for much of his career, he’s focused on achieving one goal: syncing up music, visuals, and gameplay to put players in a trance-like state of synesthesia.

Perhaps his most successful attempt is Rez - an on-rails shooter where blasting enemies creates sound effects which dynamically synchronise with the background music. Mizuguchi explains that "the rhythms of play would always be synched, and play would feel good. When we first made this work, it felt like magic."

And it’s true! Rez is not a complex game by any means, but there’s something truly meditative and engrossing about it. Especially when you play it in the dark, with a good set of headphones on, and - if you’re feeling spicy - the trance vibrator peripheral nestled somewhere on your person.

It’s perhaps even better in VR, so if you can’t track down the Dreamcast original, check out Rez Infinite on your headset.

Silent Hill 2 - 2001

While the Resident Evil games focused on campy B-movie horror - all rubber suit monsters and haunted houses - the Silent Hill games were going for something more… cerebral. Silent Hill 2, for instance, focuses on psychological horror, that stems from the protagonist’s trauma and guilt.

This is achieved in many ways, but perhaps the most effective is in the design of the titular town itself - Silent Hill. Because the layout of this place, and the way you move through it, can be more unsettling than any creature or monster.

This is achieved through long, quiet hallways that slowly build a sense of unease. Through rooms that have scary noises, but no actual monsters, which keeps you on edge at all times. And through the dense fog that hangs over the whole town, making it impossible to know what’s too far ahead.

But I think my favourite touch is the way the game deals with verticality. There are sections where protagonist James Sunderland travels down - maybe going down a staircase or jumping into a dark pit. And then he goes down again. And again. And at some point you realise: I shouldn’t be able to go down this deep. That’s not how buildings work. It defies logic and physics.

But then again, Silent Hill was never really logical, because the town is ultimately a metaphor for James’s tortured mind. And as the one running around this psychological space, you’re right there with him, living through his trauma. Spooky stuff!

Silent Hill 2 is unfortunately not available on any current platforms, so you’ll have to unearth a PlayStation 2 to play it today.

Animal Crossing - 2003

Right now we’re in the midst of a cozy game revolution. Every other indie developer is making a comforting little game without combat, time limits, fail states, or challenges. But if there’s a patient zero for this viral outbreak in coziness, it’s probably Animal Crossing.

This game casts you as a villager in a town filled with animal critters and it leaves you to just… live your life. You can buy furniture for your house, dig up fossils and catch fish, chat to your neighbours, and send letters. The game is full of objectives and things to do but, crucially, there’s no pressure to finish any of them anytime soon.

Because sure, it’s a familiar meme that Tom Nook is a ruthless landlord who has trapped you in an infinite mortgage repayment scheme - but find me a real-world bank that doesn’t mind if you never actually pay off your home and I’ll transfer my mortgage to them immediately.

Animal Crossing also works hard to force you into a leisurely pace. You cannot binge through the game’s content as some stuff only happens once a day, and shops open and close at specific hours. Where some designers never want you to stop playing their game, Animal Crossing shows that there’s real value in giving players a reason to switch off and touch grass. Playing Animal Crossing will require you to dig out a Gamecube but, in all honesty, you’ll get a similar experience playing the latest version on Switch.

WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgames! - 2003

Making a game is hard. Now imagine making 200 of them. But that’s the idea behind WarioWare - a rapid-fire micro game collection where the player needs to see, understand, and complete a microscopic video game in a matter of seconds.

That might involve directing a finger up a man’s nose, catching a falling stick, or deploying an air bag.

Each game is a tiny weeny masterclass in design. Because imagine making a video game where you have to communicate how to play in the blink of an eye. So each micro game must express its idea through colour, shape, composition, and a single-word prompt like ‘bounce’, ‘catch’, or ‘jump’.

But the real thrill is playing these things back to back, as you must be ready to change your skills every 4 seconds. You play WarioWare games in a heightened grip, ready to test your reactions and reflexes.

There’s almost nothing like WarioWare - outside of its many sequels. But I think it’s a beautiful idea for a game, and an excellent reference point for getting the most out of the absolute tiniest idea. It’s available on Switch Online.

September 12th - 2003

I wanted to include at least one game on this list that fits into the category of serious game, or newsgame. These are games that comment on serious, political, or newsworthy topics - using game mechanics and systems to make a point.

September 12th is perhaps the most famous of the bunch. The game features a middle eastern village that’s occupied by both terrorists and innocent civilians. The game asks you to drop bombs on the terrorists but it quickly becomes clear that it’s impossible to attack them without accidentally killing civilians in the explosion.

What’s more, other villagers will mourn the dead and some will be turned into terrorists themselves. It’s up to the player to realise that nothing good can come of this approach and the only way to win, so to speak, is to stop playing. September 12th is the perfect example of how a game can be used to provoke thoughts and debate. And a reminder that video games don’t have to be fun - their interactivity can also be used to make a serious point.

You can play it in your browser.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time - 2003

Game design is inextricably linked to failure. Unlike other forms of entertainment, games are built around the idea that you can lose, fail, die, and screw up.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was one of the first games I played that really explored this idea - both mechanically and narratively.

In terms of mechanically, the Prince has access to a magic hourglass that lets you rewind time, so any mistakes made in the game’s tricky platforming challenges can be undone.

It’s perhaps only a slight twist on the typical checkpoint or save state systems but it puts power into the player’s hands and makes fixing your failures a precious resource that the player can spend or save.

But then there’s the narrative side. The whole game is given a meta-textual twist as it’s actually a bedtime story, told by the Prince himself. And so any deaths are explained away as a simple mistake in the storytelling.

Now. Okay. I’m not sure how that actually works. Imagine telling a story about your last holiday where you say "and then I fell into some spikes and died… oh wait, hold on, that’s not what happened". But hey, it hung a lampshade on one of gaming’s weirdest quirks in a way that I still reference to this day.

Sands of Time is on Steam.

Katamari Damacy - 2004

Katamari Damacy is a charming and imaginative game... about garbage.

The game is about a pint-size prince who must roll up giant balls of garbage, to recreate the stars and moons that his dad destroyed in a drunken bender.

So you start small - picking up staples, thumbtacks, and erasers. Before moving on to picking up cars, elephants, and people. And then buildings, bridges, and giant squid.

That constant power creep, that feeling of getting stronger and stronger, is always fun in games - but now it’s visible and tactile. It’s just joyful to start out small and end up big. To look back and see how far you’ve come.

Designer Keita Takahashi focused on four key pillars for the game - novelty, ease of understanding, enjoyment, and humour. And if you ask me, he nailed the lot of them. Katamari Damacy is available on all platforms, as part of the REROLL remaster.

Devil May Cry 3: Dante’s Awakening - 2005

The humble scoring system, which showed up in most arcade games, fell out of favour by the mid 2000s. It was deemed archaic, and - in a world of more cinematic games - kinda video-gamey. Ew, gross.

But Devil May Cry 3 shows that, when used carefully, a score can elevate a game and push players to truly engage with a piece.

So DMC features a complex combat system with all sorts of different moves that require intricate inputs. And these moves can be chained together for non-stop combos. And you can even swap weapons mid-way through a combo to unleash even more attacks. Which is… a lot to ask of players! But you don’t need to know half of this stuff to get through the game - you can simply fumble your way through most encounters.

But that’s where the scoring system comes in. Your combat prowess is ranked based on how stylish you are - from Dope, all the way to SSStylish. with three Ss. To get the best grade, then, you’ll need to show full understanding of the system by performing the hardest moves, keeping your attacks varied, and never dropping your combo.

Devil May Cry 3 is best on PlayStation 2, but you can also get it as part of the DMC HD Collection on all major platforms.

Resident Evil 4 - 2005

I could give a dozen reasons for playing Resident Evil 4. But lemme stick to just one: the game’s perfect sense of pacing.

For the most part, Resident Evil 4 is a series of chaotic pitched battles. Perhaps best seen in the game’s opening tussle in which Leon is trapped in a tiny village filled with zombified farmhands. And - oh yeah, a crazed dude with a sack on his head and a chainsaw in his hands. This is a tense, no-holds barred encounter that will leave your palms sweaty.

But then it mixes things up. A bit of downtime, perhaps, with puzzles to solve, or locations to scout, or items to scavenge. Or a cutscene - a campy action-flick story beat. Or maybe a bit of time shopping as you upgrade your items and rearrange your attache case. Or maybe it’s a boss fight - an epic showdown with some ugly zombified nasty.

This is a masterclass in keeping the player engaged: as soon as one idea, enemy type, or location starts to wear out its welcome, Resident Evil 4 changes things up and tries something new. You never become bored or overstimulated. Which makes it genuinely hard to put down the controller.

There’s so much else to love about Resident Evil 4. But you’ll have to play it yourself to truly appreciate it. Start with the 2005 original, available on all major platforms - and then check out the 2023 remake to see how Capcom updated the game for today’s sensibilities.

Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved - 2005

When the Xbox 360 launched in late 2005, it came with a feature that would go on to define a new type of game - and would change the fortunes of a handful of now famous developers.

Because if you got sick of such great launch titles as, uhm, Amped 3 or, errr, NHL 2K6, you could

pop into the Xbox Live Arcade and download small, cheap, time-waster games like Zuma, Bejeweled 2, and - my favourite - Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved.

This is a twin stick shooter, where the two analogue sticks take care of moving around the screen, and blasting your enemies. This allows for masterful movement through the environment. You can run away from enemies, while still shooting in their direction. And bobbing, weaving, and slicing through waves of enemies just feels good.

Of course, the twin stick genre wasn’t new - Geometry Wars is basically just a pimped out version of Robotron: 2084 from the early 80s. But what made Geometry Wars stand out was the presentation. The polish. What we’d now call: juice

The game explodes with colour, and dead enemies erupt into messy particle fountains. When you launch a bomb it literally warps the playfield, which sells the impact of that explosion. Pair it up with a thumping techno soundtrack and you can see why Robotron had to give way to Geometry Wars.

Of course, there are many games to study if you want to learn about juice - most notably the work of Vlambeer. But Geometry Wars was the first game I played where I realised that the presentation was sucking me in, just as much as the gameplay itself. You can get Geometry Wars on Steam and Xbox.

Dead Rising - 2006

Time limits are one of the most interesting - but challenging things to toy with in games. Take Dead Rising. This zombie apocalypse game is built around a ticking clock. You’ve got to survive for 72 hours before a helicopter comes to pick you up - and you can feel this time limit hanging over your head at all times.

So, you can’t just waste time endlessly killing zombies: you need to get on and make a move with the main quest. You also realise that you can’t save every NPC - each one will be killed at the end of a timer, so unless you move at super sonic speed, you’re going to have to pick and choose who you can lead to safety.

Getting better at the game means managing your time more efficiently. And learning the layout of the game’s shopping mall so you can move more effectively.

So the time limit adds to the sensation of being in a fraught situation. But… it can also be a drag, and in every game with a time limit, there are plenty of players who moan about it, or ask for it to be removed through a cheat or mod. Therefore, I recommend you play Dead Rising and decide for yourself - does the timer add to the experience, or detract?

Sometimes, the most polarising games are helpful in letting you decide which side of the fence you fall on. Dead Rising is available on Steam, Xbox, and PlayStation.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - 2007

There’s a lot to say about Call of Duty 4.

The campaign is filled with great designs - like a training facility which will suggest a difficulty level, based on how well you perform, and a tense stealth mission set in the Ukraine wilderness. But also some stuff that’s… perhaps fallen out of favour, like regenerating health, highly scripted set-piece levels, and infinitely re-spawning enemies.

But the one aspect I’d like to point at is the perks system in multiplayer. Call of Duty cleverly took aspects from RPG games - like stats and level ups - and applied them to an online shooter.

So now, each battle you fight will earn you experience points that can be spent on new guns, kill streak rewards, perks, and so on. None of these give you an outright advantage over the enemy - each one has disadvantages and counters - but they let you create a highly personalised load-out that fits your play style.

This gives the online multiplayer a true sense of progression. Battles aren’t just fun throw-downs, but each one brings you a little closer to that cool perk, or that handy laser sight that you can slap on top of your favourite assault rifle. It made the online gameplay crazy compelling - in fact, it’s so much fun that the top reward is the ability to "prestige" - i.e, reset your level back to zero so you get the joy of unlocking it all again.

Call of Duty 4 is available on Steam, and other stores as a remaster. But, in truth, you can play pretty much any Call of Duty game and get the same experience.

Portal - 2007

Portal has a lot of lessons for game designers. Lessons about how games can tell jokes, purely through game mechanics. How puzzles are designed. How a small idea can be expanded into a full game. How playtesting can be used. And how, sometimes, less is more.

But the aspect I want to focus on here, is how new game ideas can come around by mushing together disparate genres. Because Portal is a puzzle game - all about making logical leaps and clever connections - but you solve those puzzles with the tools of a first person shooter.

So you can run around in 3D space, and you get a portal gun which you can aim and fire like a weapon. This opens up interesting new puzzle avenues about careful aiming, and about movement and momentum. It even introduces a little light combat - but it’s more about outsmarting your enemies than fighting them head on.

It also makes the genre approachable to an audience that might not have considered puzzles. By setting it in the Half-Life universe and giving you a, quote-unquote, gun, Portal snuck its way into the hearts of FPS players, as well.

But there's one more aspect of Portal that makes it an essential teaching tool: the developer's commentary, where Valve designers explain how they made the game. Listening to this kicked off my obsession with learning about game design and, to be honest, Game Maker's Toolkit probably wouldn't exist if I didn't stumble upon this feature.

Portal is on Steam and Switch.

Mass Effect - 2007

Mass Effect - a sprawling sci-fi RPG from BioWare - is all about responding to the player’s choices. You can change Shepard from a heroic Paragon to a selfish Renegade, and start romantic relationships with one - or more - of your party members.

But the game also reacts to your choices by making significant changes to the plot. For instance - at one point, you’ll find that Krogan party member Wrex is vehemently against your plan to destroy a Krogan breeding facility. You might be able to talk him around and get him onside. Or the conversation might end in a violent shoot-out that leaves Wrex dead. He’s now permanently removed as a party member.

But what’s more - he won’t appear in Mass Effect 2 or 3, either. Because, at the risk of spoiling the sanctity of this meaningless YouTube list, you really need to play all three Mass Effect games to the get true impact.

Seeing how your decisions ripple out across three massive games is quite remarkable. And while BioWare sadly couldn’t stick the ending in the third entry - though, how could it satisfy every possible choice you’ve made over 100 hours of gameplay? - it’s still an amazing feat to allow players to have such unique and personal stories.

The Mass Effect games are available in a well-regarded remastered Legendary Edition on PC, Xbox, and PlayStation, but you can also get the original games on Steam if you prefer.

Skate - 2007

Maybe it’s a little indulgent to talk about two skateboarding games on this list. But I think it’s fascinating to see how Tony Hawk’s and Skate approach the sport in two completely different ways.

Because where Tony Hawk’s is a bonkers score-chasing arcade gem that ignores the rules of physics, Skate is more grounded and realistic.

One way it achieves this is with an innovative control scheme that makes you mimic the action of kicking a skateboard, by wiggling the right analogue stick. So, just like how you ollie in real life by pushing the board down, and then kicking the lip back up, you jump in Skate by flicking the stick down, and then up.

More complex tricks come from more complicated inputs on the analogue stick. It’s difficult - but that’s the point. In Tony Hawk’s it’s hard to do a 900 degree spin over a helicopter. In Skate it’s hard to jump down a five step staircase without rupturing your spleen.

Playing both Tony Hawk’s and Skate is a fantastic lesson in how you can tackle a topic from vastly different angles. And it makes you wonder whether there are different ways to approach the other sports. What if football games were less like FIFA, and more like Rocket League?

Skate is available on the Xbox store.

Team Fortress 2 - 2007

Multiplayer games are balanced around counters. No matter what character, move, or strategy you pick, the other player can respond with an option that will shut you down.

And in Team Fortress 2, that extends to a complex interlocking web of nine different character classes, who all have strengths and weaknesses when fighting each other.

Like… the engineer’s turrets are great at stopping scouts, but the demoman’s grenades can quickly destroy a turret. Then again, the speedy scout is perfect for downing the demoman. And then the spy can sap the turret or backstab a sniper, but the pyro’s flame can quickly disable a spy’s disguise. And then the heavy… well, you get the point.

This is rock, paper, scissors in four dimensions, people. And so after nearly 20 years, Team Fortress 2 is still great fun, and still a great example of how to keep a complex multiplayer game feeling balanced and fair. You can get it on Steam, for free.

BioShock - 2007

There’s so much to learn from BioShock. But the one aspect I want to focus on here is the audio diary.

So this game takes place in Rapture - a striking underwater metropolis that was supposed to be a utopia for the rich and intelligent. But, as so often happens with these things, it turned into a nightmare and now everyone is dead, or utterly deranged.

Which can make storytelling a little tricky.

So the designers of BioShock used a clever narrative device: cassette tapes that were recorded during Rapture’s downfall - and then left scattered about the city after everyone disappeared. This way, the player is able to learn about the world of Rapture by finding and listening to these logs.

It adds an archeological twist to proceedings as you feel like you’re unearthing the past and piecing together the narrative yourself. These logs can also tell side stories, flesh out character backgrounds, and explain bits of lore.

Now, BioShock didn’t invent the audio diary - they’re a mix of System Shock’s emails, Metroid Prime’s scan logs, and Metal Gear Solid’s codec calls. But BioShock’s implementation was perfect and inspired a huge number of games to add in their own audio diaries. And they led to games that told their story entirely through found objects. But, we’ll come back to that.

BioShock is available on Steam, and on consoles as a remaster.

Burnout Paradise - 2008

Burnout was already a pretty perfect game. It’s an arcade racer where the way to win is to literally crush the competition. Smashing, squeezing, and splintering nearby cars doesn’t just put them out of the race for a second, but nets you a nitrous boost that you can use to fling forward - and into your next target.

But Burnout Paradise then took the formula and plopped it into an open world.

Now, remember - this was back when such a prospect was a delight, not a threat. And so what we get is a game that never stops. You are always in your car, always racing, and always smashing. You can just pull up to a stop sign and start a race - or you can simply bomb around, break through signs, fly over jumps, or hunt down special cars.

Same goes for the social aspects. Sure, you can pull in friends and do multiplayer races and events but competition is simply weaved into the world thanks to a litany of leaderboards - with each street noting the fastest sprint and the biggest crash.

And where many open world games pen you in during missions - with invisible walls and frustrating fail states - Burnout Paradise does not: the whole world is always open to you. And so when a race takes you from point A to point B, you can take whichever route suits you to get there. Burnout Paradise is on all platforms as a Remastered edition.

Far Cry 2 - 2008

Far Cry 2 is all about friction. Lemme list just some of the ways that this game works to frustrate and rub up against the player.

So: your weapons get rusty and can jam in the middle of combat. You have malaria, and have to regularly top up your medication so you don’t just fall over and die. To look at the map you have to hold up a piece of paper - and the game doesn’t pause while doing so. Wildfires can sweep away the dry grass you were planning to use for cover. And so on, and so on.

A lot of game design is about endlessly playtesting a game to remove elements that might be annoying or off-putting. It’s about shaving off the jagged edges, providing "quality of life" features, and secretly giving the player a helping hand.

But Far Cry 2 proves that the opposite can also lead to incredible gameplay experiences. Playing this game truly feels like being a lone mercenary in a hostile country. You feel outgunned, underpowered, scared, and alone.

Far Cry 2 is on Steam and Xbox. It’s also well worth playing the later Far Cry games which are fun in their own right, but are also opposite to Far Cry 2 is almost every way. You’ll learn a lot about design - and your own preferences - by playing Far Cry 2 and 3 back to back.

Left 4 Dead - 2008

Left 4 Dead pits a team of survivors against a team of distinct zombie monsters - like a big fat bloke that explodes into a cloud of bile when shot. Or a dude who can wrap you up in his snake-like tongue. But perhaps the most interesting character of all, is one you never see.

Behind the scenes, "The Director" is an AI system that works to dynamically alter the game’s pace, difficulty, and dramatic tension.

So, the director spawns in mobs of zombies, and places down special infected monsters. But then it keeps track of each player’s level of intensity. Is the player low of health? Being incapacitated by a smoker? Or has just spent a lot of time shooting zombies?

When the intensity hits its peak, the director starts a relax phase where no zombies spawn. And maybe secretly adds some pills and ammo to nearby pick-up areas, too. And once it’s sure the players have caught their breath, it starts to build up the intensity again.

This innovative system works to keep the game interesting and engaging, specifically by reacting to the player’s current state - proving that difficulty and pace don’t have to be set once, before the game ships. Instead, they can ebb and flow based on what the player is doing.

Left 4 Dead is available on Steam. And so is Left 4 Dead 2, where the director gains the ability to change entire chunks of level layout in response to player actions.

Spelunky - 2008

Remember when I talked about Rogue? Like seven hours ago? Well, in 2008, designer Derek Yu had a super smart idea. He realised that Rogue’s most important bits - the randomly generated levels and the punishing permadeath - didn’t need to be in turn-based, tile-based games about crawling through dungeons.

And so in Spelunky, he put those ideas… into a platfomer. And, suddenly, we get a fresh new twist on a familiar genre. Where a lot of platformers are about repeating the same level as you slowly learn the exact right time to jump over each gap, Spelunky’s procedurally generated levels mean you can’t rely on memory or repetition - you have to simply improve your baseline skills.

You need to get better at jumping, at dealing with enemies, at blowing up walls, and dropping ropes.

Spelunky would kick off a whole new era of roguelikes - inspiring hundreds of games in all sorts of different genres. And while each one holds interesting lessons - like, should your progress persist from run to run? And how can you tell an interesting story in a game that keeps resetting? - Spelunky is worth playing to see how things started.

And also because it’s just incredibly fun. Spelunky Classic from 2008 is available for free - but you might want to check out the excellent HD remake, which is on all major platforms. Also read Derek Yu's book about the making of Spelunky, which is an incredible resource for would-be game designers.

Dead Space - 2008

I talked a little bit about diegetic interfaces, when I mentioned Far Cry 2's map. But the reigning king of this idea is definitely Dead Space.

This sci-fi horror game is all about immersion. And it achieves this through a bunch of different ways - including its impeccable sound design, and by never taking away your control for a cutscene. But the most memorable feature is the way the game displays its entire interface within the game world.

So Isaac Clark's health bar is a giant gauge on the back of his space suit. His current ammo count is displayed on each gun. The inventory, FaceTime camera, and shop screens are projected as holograms. Dead Space will always be the go-to example of how to hide a HUD in the game itself.

Dead Space is on Steam and Xbox, and there's a fancy remake on everything bar Switch.

Batman: Arkham Asylum - 2009

It became a meme - "this game makes me feel like Batman". Basically every review parroted the same line, with the same sentiment - Batman: Arkham Asylum actually let players fulfil the fantasy of being Batman.

But that is ultimately the game’s greatest strength. Every decision in this game is pushing the player towards feeling like the dark knight.

Whether that’s in the free-flow combat system, where the game magnetically pulls Batman towards nearby enemies and automatically pulls off cool finishing moves. Or it’s in the stealth sections, where guards are told not to turn around or look up high, so Batman can stalk his enemies like a panther.

There’s a reason why the Arkham games are now the go-to reference point for comic book games - it’s the gold standard that Marvel and DC want to hit when making games based on other caped crusaders.

The game is available on Steam, and on other platforms as part of the Arkham Collection or Trilogy.

Plants vs. Zombies - 2009

One of the best ways to learn about a genre is to seek out the most simple and succinct version of it. A game that boils a complex set of systems and mechanics down to its absolute basics.

Take Plants vs. Zombies -  a cute and casual tower defence game, which is secretly a real-time strategy game. But one that even an idiot like me can play.

So the game is about defending your house from hordes of slow-moving zombies, by placing down plants. Each plant has a specific role to play - from pea-shooting pods to walnut barriers to plants that launch globs of butter. And each zombie has its own role too - there are armoured zombies that can tank damage, pole-vaulting zombies that can leap over your defences, and more.

And on top of this there’s an economy. Sunflowers are perhaps the most important plant in the game, as they generate the solar currency needed to buy more stuff. So while it’s tempting to go fully on the offence, PvZ will teach you that you need to balance your build between attack power and economic productivity.

So while it’s not a true RTS, Plants vs. Zombies has a lot to teach about unit types, enemy differentiation, economy balancing, and more. If you’re ever unsure about how a genre works, find a game that boils it down to its absolute essentials and start there. Plants vs. Zombies is available on Steam and Xbox.

Fruit Ninja - 2010

You could argue that the history of game design is inextricably linked to the history of controller design. And so it’s always fascinating to see what games arise when a new input method is introduced.

When Apple introduced the iPhone and iPad developers had to figure out how to make games that would work exclusively on a touchscreen - no buttons, no analogue sticks, no d-pads. And so game designers had to figure out how to make a game work exclusively with a finger. And my pick of the bunch would be Fruit Ninja.

It’s a simple game: a bunch of apples, pears, bananas and coconuts are tossed up into the air. And then you slash them to bits by dragging your finger over the screen. No one would confuse Fruit Ninja for a complicated game but it’s still a lot of fun thanks, largely, to that tactile way of interacting with the game.

It’s living proof that games need to be designed around the way we interact with them, and that game design cannot be disconnected from hardware. Fruit Ninja is available on iOS and Android.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent - 2010

Survival horror games have historically made players feel powerless by reducing your combat abilities. Perhaps giving you crappy weapons like a plank of wood, or reducing the amount of ammo you can find.

But with Amnesia, Frictional decided to go one step further: remove combat altogether. Now all you can do is run, hide, and hope for the best.

But that’s only the beginning. The game also has a sanity meter which is increased by staying in the shadows or by looking at the monsters. So to stay sane you’ll need to make yourself visible and vulnerable, and to merely glimpse at the game’s grotesque creatures.

Through these design decisions, Frictional made a horror game that was truly terrifying. It basically created a whole new style of horror game which inspired both indie games and AAA. Amnesia is available on Steam, and on consoles as part of the Amnesia Collection.

Also check out Frictional’s later games, such as SOMA.

Fallout: New Vegas - 2010

If you want an example of a game with good side-quests, look no further than Fallout: New Vegas. This post-apocalyptic RPG is littered with side stories that are funny, weird, spooky, and involving. And almost all of them are staggeringly complex in the ways you can solve them.

You’ll get choices, which will affect your karma and your standing with different groups. You’ll be able to skip sections with a skill check. Maybe the quest will change depending on which companions you have with you. And sometimes you can use your initiative to find another, more interesting way to get through.

Each of these quests is a little masterclass in RPG design. In fact, The Witcher 3’s lead quest designer counts New Vegas as a big influence on that game’s… also very good side quests. Fallout: New Vegas is available on Steam and the Xbox store.

Civilization V - 2010

Civilization V starts with you establishing the first village on a prehistoric landscape. And then it follows your journey over two thousand years as you expand your kingdom, hoover up resources, discover new technologies, do battle with your neighbours, and jet off into outer-space.

It is, indeed, a big game. And so it seems like it would be overwhelmingly difficult to understand. But Civilization, as a franchise, is surprisingly… approachable. And that’s for a few reasons.

One is what the original designers Sid Meier and Bruce Shelley call the ‘inverted pyramid of decision making’. Basically: at the start you only have one choice to make: where to establish your first city. Soon you’ll have two choices: what to produce in your city, and where to send your first unit. Your web of responsibilities then grows and grows to the point where you’re making dozens of choices per turn. But by that point you’re invested, and understand all the rules.

You also can’t discount the theme - which is, like, high school-level world history. It’s easier to grok a game about Egyptians, bananas, and warplanes than a game about Protoss, Vespene gas, and photon cannons. Civilization will teach you to never underestimate the power of using stuff that the player likely already knows about.

I picked Civilization V as it’s perhaps the most straightforward of the games so far, but all six entries are superb.

Dark Souls - 2011

How could this list possibly exist without Dark Souls? It rewrote so many rules for how game design is supposed to work, and is arguably the most name-checked game in all of design. Only one title is absolutely synonymous with the concept of "this game is hard", after all.

But if I had to focus on just one single aspect for this list, then I'd point at the way the game deals with death.

When you die, you also drop all of the souls you were carrying at the time. And because these things act as an ultra powerful currency - used to power up your character and to buy new stuff from shops - it's vitally important that you make your way back to your dead body and pick your stash back up.

But if you die on route... the souls are gone for good.

This simple concept hangs over your head at all times. When you've been exploring for ages and have a massive stack of souls in your pocket, you become desperate to find a bonfire. And when you're heading back to your stash with 20,000 souls on the line, every step feels dangerous.

Dark Souls didn't invent the concept of corpse-running, but it definitely popularised it - and it now shows up in dozens of different games. For good or ill. Dark Souls is available on all major platforms, as a Remastered version.

Minecraft - 2011

Minecraft can be fun when you treat it like a digital Lego set. No enemies, no health bar, no hunger meter. And infinite access to all the blocks. Just build stuff - whether that’s the USS Enterprise, or a rollercoaster, or a working computer. Whatever takes your fancy.

But it’s also fun when you treat it like a survival game. A harrowing fight against the elements where you have to scavenge for every block, and slowly build a base that will keep you safe from a litany of enemy mobs.

And it’s fun, still, when played with others - whether you’re building together, working together, or playing in a more competitive fashion. Minecraft’s greatest strength is that the game is whatever you make of it. The game does not impose rules or structure - it leaves it up to the player to decide.

That has made it an evergreen title, and proof that many players love an opportunity to set their own goals and be creative. Minecraft is available on every platform under the sun - though the PC version is particularly interesting as you can install past versions. Check out Minecraft 1.0 to see how things begun.

SpaceChem - 2011

Spacechem, by Zachtronics, is a great example of a "problem solving" game. Unlike puzzle games, which are about finding a single, specific solution, problem solving games are about making up your own damn answer. Anything that works.

So the game tasks you with building automated factories that can turn atoms into molecules. And as long as your build meets the brief, you’ll pass. This makes your solution feel deeply personal. Designer Zach Barth notes that "people have a really strong sense of ownership" over their creations.

The set-up also encourages replayablity in a way that most puzzle games don’t. You’ll see how your machine scores when compared to other players, under three different criteria. Seeing your solution come in well below the average can be more than enough motivation to go back and in and improve your creation. To make it faster, leaner, cheaper.

Spacechem is on Steam - but check out Zach’s other games too - like the 3D Infinifactory and the hex-based Opus Magnum.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - 2011

Look, Skyrim is not the best western RPG. You’ll get better quests, better stories, better character customisation, better everything by playing The Witcher 3 or Baldur’s Gate 3.

But Skyrim is still the quintessential role-playing game. A massive fantasy world that you can explore in any way you want.

You can go where you please, following points of interest or curiosity. You can play how you want - perhaps focusing on magic spells, hand-to-hand combat, or firing sneaky arrows from the shadows. And the story of your adventure is entirely yours - driven by the places you go, the characters you meet, and the quests you tackle.

All modern RPGs - from Elden Ring to Cyberpunk 2077 - can be referred back to Skyrim, making it an essential touchstone for any student of game design. It’s also available on every device under the sun, as Bethesda will seemingly never stop porting this thing.

Journey - 2012

Journey reimagines the concept of what it means to play with others over the internet. Most so-called social games are either nakedly transactional or violent zero-sum competitions.

Journey is different.

So the game features an anonymous robed figure who is wandering a desert, before climbing an impossibly tall mountain. As you progress you may come across another hooded figure - who is controlled by another player. And you can choose to travel alongside them for a while.

But you can’t speak to each other over text or a headset. You can’t see each other’s name. You can’t compete with, frustrate, or kill each other. And the only way to actually communicate is with a single button that makes you call out a musical note.

In fact, some players might not even realise that they were working alongside a real human until the very end, when your partner’s name is finally revealed. But still - the connection you make with this other character is surprisingly deep and close. This non-traditional approach to cooperation leads to a very memorable experience, and proves there are more ways to play together than simply killing each other.

Journey is a beautiful game that should be experienced first hand. It’s on Steam and PlayStation consoles.

Mark of the Ninja - 2012

When designer Nels Anderson made Mark of the Ninja, he wanted to make a side scrolling take on a favourite stealth game: Thief, which I talked about earlier. But he made one change to the way Thief works - which makes Mark of the Ninja actually feel like a completely different game, and can teach us a lot about game design.

The change comes in the form of information. Where Thief gives you very little feedback on the state of the world, Mark of the Ninja is drenched in it. UI elements will tell you if you’re in light, or hidden in shadows. It shows you exactly how far a sound is reverberating. It shows you what guards can see, what they’re thinking, and what decisions they’re making. And it even shows you what items will do, before you use them.

So where Thief was a game about patient observation and immersing yourself in a world, Mark of the Ninja’s information overload turns this into a game about creating plans and strategies. You can use your info advantage to sneak past guards, to distract them, to lure them into traps, and so on.

By showing the player exactly how the world works, the player feels powerful and capable. It’s an effective lesson on how your interaction with a world changes, depending on how much you know about it. Mark of the Ninja is available on Steam, and all the consoles as a Remastered edition.

The Walking Dead - 2012

Developer Telltale Games started life by making point and click adventure games that harkened back to ‘90s classics like Monkey Island and Sam and Max. Games with goofy puzzles and esoteric solutions.

But the studio really hit it big when it put away the puzzles and focused squarely on storytelling and character growth. So The Walking Dead has very few moments where you’re using a monkey as a monkey wrench or gluing cat hair to your upper lip. Instead, the game is about making difficult moral decisions in the face of a terrifying zombie apocalypse.

Playing as Lee Everett, you’re routinely dropped into tricky situations where you’ll need to carefully decide what to do next. Who should get food when supplies are low? Who should come with you on a mission, and who should stay behind? And in moments of true peril - who should you save, and who should you leave to die?

At its best, The Walking Dead creates some truly powerful moments that tug on your heartstrings and make you feel guilt and regret in the way that only an interactive story can. And it rarely lets you sit and think on your choices - dialogue boxes have a decaying timer above them, and some actions must be triggered on the spot durning cutscenes.

And then, as the episodes go on, you’ll see your decisions fan out and carry over to later chapters. Small decisions are referenced, but big decisions can have dramatic ripples on the story. The Walking Dead kicked off a whole new era of games at Telltale, but also influenced other games like Life is Strange. The first season is available on all four platforms.

Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward - 2012

Virtue’s Last Reward is another game with difficult decisions, branching paths, and multiple endings. But this time the assumption is not that you will play through the game once (and maybe look up the other endings on YouTube).

That’s because when you finish the narrative, you’ll be given access to a massive flowchart showing you how the story rippled out from one decision to another, and finally to one of the game’s endings. And with this you can now jump around - inserting yourself back into the narrative at different points and then making different choices.

With this time-travelling, multiverse-hopping super power, you can unlock even more endings - perhaps learning a password in one timeline, and then using it in another. Or finding out a secret about a character and using it to gain their trust in a completely different universe. Virtue’s Last Reward takes a staple of interactive storytelling and turns it into a game of its own, making it an essential touchstone for branching paths.

Virtue’s Last Reward is available on Steam, Xbox, and PlayStation as part of The Nonary Games, which also includes the previous title, 999.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown - 2012

If there’s one feature that XCOM: Enemy Unknown designer Jake Solomon regrets, it’s hit chances.

So, XCOM is a tightly designed tactical game, where you do battle with alien nasties. You’ll tell your squad members where to go, where to take cover, which weapons to use, and which aliens to take a shot at. But whether or not that shot lands… is down to lady luck.

Before you take action, the game gives you a percentage chance for your shot landing - a number driven by sight-lines and distance. An alien ten metres away will perhaps have a 80% chance of taking damage.

It’s also worth mentioning that these numbers are, effectively, made up. Humans are bad at understanding odds so that 80% chance on screen is actually closer to 90 in the code.

But after that, what happens next is down to luck. And while it can lead to some great moments, it’s more likely to lead to disappointment. It’s such a hit in the gut for your strategy to go completely wrong, simply because of a lousy die roll. That’s why Solomon removed them in his next non-XCOM game, Marvel’s Midnight Sons.

Now - don’t get me wrong. XCOM is an awesome game with loads of other great design lessons to teach. But at the same time, when someone needs an example of output randomness - i.e., luck is applied after you take an action - XCOM is the go-to game. It’s available on Steam and the Xbox store.

Spec Ops: The Line - 2012

Spec Ops: The Line is always my go-to game when talking about invisible choices. Basically: when games give players a choice, this is usually done with a big pop-up box asking the player which option they want to pick. A or B? The heroic one or the evil one? This guy or that guy?

And that’s fine - but Spec Ops shows another way to do it. The game will regularly put you into difficult decision-making moments, but then ask you to make your choice by using the basic actions of the game. In this case: aim and shoot. So, for instance, in this moment you are asked to shoot at one of these two strung-up men.

This opens up opportunities to let the player make choices beyond A and B - maybe you don’t shoot either. Maybe you shoot at the snipers in the distance. Maybe you shoot both, you psychopath. The game is packed with these things, which feels more immersive and organic than picking between two coloured buttons.

Sadly, Spec Ops: The Line has been pulled from all storefronts, so you’ll have to dig out a physical copy of the game to play it today.

Spaceteam - 2012

With the proliferation of the internet, local multiplayer games took a bit of a backseat. But every now and again, a game would remind us how much fun it could be to play together in the same space.

Take, for instance, Spaceteam - which is described as a ‘cooperative shouting game’.

Basically, each player has a spaceship control panel with a unique set of controls, dials, knobs, and levers. And each player will be given commands that must be followed to keep the spaceship working.

As the commands are often for another player’s control panel, you’ll need to bark instructions at each other, and simultaneously listen out for instructions that pertain to your control panel.

Which leads to a game of, well, a lot of shouting. It’s a blast to play and a great example of what can be gained by making experiences designed for local play. SpaceTeam is sadly long gone from the iOS App Store, but it’s still available on Android.

Dishonored - 2012

There’s a lot to love about Dishonored - from its pitch-perfect stealth mechanics to its world-class level design. But the thing I want to focus on is the way the game world reacts to the way you play.

Throughout Dishonored you’re able to choose what sort of assassin you are: a sneaky ghost who is never seen, or a chaotic angel of death who rips every guard in half. And that extends to all of your targets: there’s always a non-lethal approach, if you so choose.

Whatever you decide, Dishonored never explicitly judges your actions. You’re not classed as ‘good’ or ‘evil’, and you don’t grow devil horns or suddenly sprout a halo.

Instead, those decisions subtly ripple out into the world. The level of chaos you cause is reflected in the state of the city - with the streets taken over by hordes of rats at the highest chaos levels. The NPCs are also affected and you might find that certain characters are unwilling to help - or may actually turn against you - if you cause too much chaos.

It’s an interesting take on a karma system, and makes players consider their actions but without it feeling overly game-y. Dishonored is on Steam and on Xbox consoles.

The Stanley Parable - 2013

Sometimes the best way to learn about game design is to play a title that seeks to poke fun at it. The Stanley Parable is a satirical game about narrative and game-design conventions - specifically player choice.

And so through an unreliable narrator, fourth-wall breaking moments, and lots of jokes made at your expense, it will make you laugh - and then make you think about how games get you to make certain decisions, and feel certain ways.

Ultimately, creator Davey Wreden just wanted to bamboozle you, saying his intent was to "mess with the player's head in every way possible, throwing them off-guard, or pretending there's an answer and then kinda whisking it away from in front of them". He also hoped that the game would spark discussion and debate afterwards.

It certainly did, considering the fact that we’re still talking about it today. The game is on Steam, and on other platforms as part of the Ultra Deluxe Edition. Also check out Wreden’s follow-up, The Beginner’s Guide, for more fourth-wall breaking shenanigans.

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons - 2013

It’s almost impossible to explain Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons without spoiling its best moment. But I’ll try.

The game follows two brothers on a journey to uncover some magical water that will save their dying father. But you don’t control just one brother, or swap between them - you actually control both, simultaneously, with one analogue stick and half the shoulder buttons dedicated to each of the boys.

This kicks off a journey where you’ll have to be in two places at once. You’ll be solving puzzles that you’d usually see in a co-op game - you know: one character distracts an enemy while the other slips past - but now you’re doing it by yourself.

Over the course of this imaginative fairy-tale journey, Brothers so firmly establishes the two boys as existing in your left and right thumbs that the most impactful storytelling happens not on screen - but actually on the controller itself. It’s a remarkable piece of interactive storytelling that should be required reading for anyone wishing to tell a narrative through gameplay.

Brothers is available on Steam and consoles, but I’d avoid the unattractive remake if I were you.

Cookie Clicker - 2013

In 2010, game research Ian Bogost made a parody game - designed to poke fun at mindless Facebook apps. So Cow Clicker was FarmVille - but boiled down to its absolute essentials. The player has a pasture containing a single cow which you can click, once every six hours, to make a number go up.

It was supposed to be a one-note joke to show how Zynga could get players addicted with the most stupidly simple gameplay… and then players became addicted to Cow Clicker. It was a Facebook megahit with thousands of players, and Bogost even started updating the game with more cows, and more mechanics.

It proved that for some players… clicking on a thing to make a number go up was a good time.

The logical conclusion of Cow Clicker was Cookie Clicker. Again, you’re clicking on an image to make numbers go up. But now there are upgrades and unlocks that can make you click faster, or do the clicking for you. This so called idle or incremental game is kind of… nothing. But it’s also weirdly compelling.

Even I will admit to having sunk a few hours into increasing my cookie empire.

What you take from Cookie Clicker is up to you - but I’d argue that as the ultimate distillation of how players can get obsessed with upgrades, progression, rewards, and optimisation, it’s an essential game to know about. You can play it in your browser or get it on Steam.

Gone Home - 2013

Gone Home is still, in my mind, the quintessential - uh, walking simulator? I guess that genre name has stuck.

So in this game you play as a young woman who has returned to her family home, to find the whole place abandoned. So to figure out what’s happened in your absence you’ll need to root through your family’s possessions and piece together the story.

It is, then, a game about reading notes, receipts, birthday cards, shampoo bottles, and poorly produced zines. Which, might sound a little dull on the surface - but it actually makes for a tremendously compelling game.

And that’s simply because the real gameplay is happening in your head. With each note you find, you’re mentally filling in blanks, making assumptions and connections, and fleshing out what you know about these characters. And because it’s a game, you naturally find these objects in a somewhat random order - or maybe miss objects entirely.

This makes your understanding of the narrative feel personal and hard won - putting you in the role of an amateur archeologist.

Games have long featured environmental storytelling - which is when a narrative is baked into the level design itself - but Gone Home proved that this alone could make for a fascinating game experience. Gone Home is available on all major platforms.

Papers, Please - 2013

Papers, Please proves that video games are perhaps the best medium for putting you in another person’s shoes.

The games casts you as a border agent of a fictional soviet country, and you have to check each entrant’s documents before deciding whether to let them in, or turn them away,

At the start it’s a fun game of spot the difference and deduction. You have to look for discrepancies in their documents, or spot ways that their application is breaking some rule or regulation.

But then you’ll meet characters who stop you in your tracks. Perhaps someone who desperately needs to get in - a woman fleeing persecution, say - but their passport is out of date or their paperwork is incomplete. Do you let them in, and live with the risk and the penalty? Or do you follow the rules and damn them to their fate?

In this precise moment, Papers, Please makes the case for games as a powerful artistic medium. Capable of not just showing you why people make certain decisions, but by putting you right there in that situation and asking… what would you do? The game is on Steam

SteamWorld Dig - 2013

SteamWorld Dig operates on a gameplay loop that can be… hazardously addictive. Here’s how it works.

As tinpot robot Rusty, you’re trying to dig through a gigantic mine that hides beneath your town. But the only problem is: you’re not the most adept miner. At the beginning of the game you only have a small health bar, a crappy pickaxe, a tiny lantern, and enough inventory space to hold about 3 lumps of gold.

So, soon enough, you’re back at the surface. You sell your plundered gold for cash and then head to the upgrade shop where you can buy better equipment. A stronger pickaxe, say, or a better lantern.

And then it’s back into the mine, so you can dig a little deeper. Stick around for a little longer. And find a little more gold for the next time you’re back on the surface. This repeats, over and over again, keeping you stuck in a trance as you just want to go a little bit deeper.

In the wrong hands, this can be a hollow gameplay loop that only serves to artificially pad out a game’s length. But, luckily, SteamWorld Dig also has varied gameplay, an interesting storyline, and enticing secrets to find. Whatever the case - you’ll see this loop in all sorts of games, making it an essential design concept to learn. SteamWorld Dig is available on all major platforms.

Alien: Isolation - 2014

Making believable AI characters is difficult - so how about you focus your efforts on making just one, really good AI opponent?

That’s the idea behind Alien: Isolation - a truly terrifying horror game that puts you up against one of the most famous movie monsters. As you explore the space station - solving problems, dealing with androids, and navigating to new areas - you’ll be stalked by an unstoppable Xenomorph.

The monster is driven by a number of complex systems - allowing the alien to see and hear the player, to sneak up behind you, and to respond realistically to fire. Most importantly, the Alien’s movements are rarely predetermined by the designers.

As designer Gary Napper explains, "we needed something that would be different every time you played it. You're going to die a lot, which means restarting a lot, and if the alien was scripted, you'd see the same behaviour. That makes the alien become predictable, and a lot less scary."

Another clever trick is that the alien will be given access to new abilities and strategies as the game goes along - which creates the illusion that the alien is learning from its interactions with the player. Alien: Isolation is an important touchstone for terrifying AI-driven characters. And it’s available on all major platforms.

Mario Kart 8 - 2014

Mario Kart is always the go-to example when it comes to talking about balancing a game around players of different skill levels. And it comes down to the way the game doles out items.

When you race through one of these item boxes, the result is far from random. Instead, the power-up you get is entirely determined by your position in the race.

If you’re up front - i.e., you’re doing well - the game will give you relatively weak items like green shells and coins. But if you’re towards the back of the pack - i.e., you’re struggling - the game will grant you super powerful weapons like the superstar, the bullet bill, or the blue shell: a missile whose sole mission is to seek out the person in first place.

This creates a negative feedback loop - a self-balancing system where struggling players are given a helping hand, and where expert racers are held back - giving everyone a chance to have fun together.

Such systems can be found in all sorts of multiplayer games - especially social and party games. But you only need to namecheck the blue shell for any game designer to know what you’re talking about.

Mario Kart 8 is on Wii U - but feel free to check out the expanded Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on Switch.

80 Days - 2014

Adventure games started with text. Games like Colossal Cave Adventure and Zork described the game world with words, and invited you to interact with a text parser. Eventually, technology allowed for graphics and mouse input - leading to point and click adventures. But the text adventure… it never went away.

It morphed into interactive fiction and has been quietly ticking along in the background ever since, through games like Photopia, Depression Quest, and, my pick of the bunch, 80 Days - a beautiful reimagining of Jules Verne’s novel where you make your way around the world by various methods of transport.

More than anything, this game really shows the power of using text as your primary technology. Because here’s the truth: text is cheap. It takes just a single paragraph to introduce a player to an entire city or a new character - things that, in other games, would require 3D models, textures, artificial intelligence, and voice acting.

And so 80 Days is a big game. Inkle’s co-founder Jon Ingold says "on one complete play through, you see perhaps 3% of the text that’s in the game". And so you’re encouraged to play the whole thing again, this time taking different routes and making different decisions.

Some of the games on this list feature branching paths and choices that ripple out into the narrative - but they pale in comparison to what Inkle can achieve through text. 80 Days is available on Steam and Switch.

Her Story - 2015

Her Story, by Sam Barlow, is a perfect example of what some call the ‘information game’.

The game sits you down in front of a database, containing interviews with a woman who’s giving testimony about her husband’s murder. And the entire story - who killed him, why they did it, and everything that led to it - is right there on the database.

But… you can’t just watch the story in chronological order. Instead, the tapes are cut up into almost 300 short clips and stored on a clunky PC interface that asks you to type in words to unearth the clips that feature those words.

This strange, and slightly contrived system means you have to uncover the plot for yourself. To find new clips you’ll need to pay close attention to Hannah’s testimony and think up words that will help you search through this massive web. And the clips you do find are rarely in order, so you’ll need to piece together the narrative from disparate clues.

It turns you into something halfway between a detective and an archeologist. You’re following leads and doing deductive reasoning - but also piecing together the past using an incomplete set of facts. It’s a wonderful experience, and a striking example of how withholding information from the player can lead to compelling gameplay. Her Story is on Steam, Xbox, and mobile.

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain - 2015

To help me pick the perfect games for this list, I totted up all the games I’ve ever shown on Game Maker’s Toolkit, and ordered them by frequency. And of the more than 1000 games I’ve discussed on this channel, there’s one game that’s appeared more than any other: Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.

Why? Well, it’s just a great example of so many design concepts.

For instance, it’s a great showing of systemic design, as each enemy camp is filled with complex AI agents that can be tricked, lured out, and trapped.

The Fulton extraction system is all about letting the player decide how to play this stealth game: by killing soldiers, or turning them into allies. The scoring system allows you to play the levels in whatever way you like, but rewards players who are quick and stealthy.

The game makes failure fun, by switching the game from a slow and sneaky stealth game… into a manic action movie full of explosions and last-minute helicopter extractions.

And the AI tries to learn from your actions - perhaps giving the guards helmets if you keep doing headshots or bringing in floodlights if you always tackle bases at night. This puts a stop to you doing the same optimum strategies and forces you to mix up your approach.

Oh, and also there's a shot of Snake with a prosthetic arm which is a great visual to use whenever I mention accessibility, which probably puffed up the numbers. But whatever the case, MGS V is full of great little design lessons and ideas, making it a must-play for anyone - not just those making stealth games.

The Phantom Pain is on PC, Xbox, and PlayStation.

Undertale - 2015

We sometimes ignore the fact that, in most games, we’re playing as a mass murderer. The story might say we’re a good guy - but just consider the body count of an average shooter or RPG. You’re basically committing genocide every time you play.

Undertale puts this fact into sharp relief. This is a short and quirky RPG where you can choose how to deal with every enemy you come across. You can either defeat them, like normal. Or you can find a way to spare the monster - perhaps by talking to them, flattering them, listening to their dialogue, or just holding out long enough for them to get bored and leave.

With this in mind, you can play through the game in different ways - perhaps trying to spare every enemy and boss character, or simply going on a psychopathic genocide run where you mow down every monster in your way. The game reacts to your choices - giving different plot points and ending scenes depending on how you choose to play.

But things get even more interesting on a second playthrough, as the game comments on your earlier decisions, and your choice to come back and try something new. Should it be possible to undo your destruction, just by starting a new save file?

Undertale is worth playing simply for being an RPG that doesn’t take 30 hours to finish. But it’s also an important reference point for how games handle morality and murder. It’s available on all major platforms.

Downwell - 2015

Downwell is always my go-to example when talking about "dual purpose design", or the idea that one mechanic can have more than one function.

So, the jump button doubles up as your shoot button when used in mid-air. Shooting kills enemies, breaks blocks, and slows your descent. Killing enemies reloads your gun boots and can add to your combo. And landing on the ground clears your combo and resets your ammo.

Because everything in the game is doing two or more jobs, we get a game with a lot of depth for half the number of mechanics.

Downwell is also a great example of risk and reward. The best way to play is to jump on enemies, rather than shooting them - that will net you the biggest rewards. But this is decidedly more risky so it’s only intended for more seasoned players.

With this, Downwell has a natural difficulty curve where new players will shoot enemies and just try to survive, while expert players will eventually decide to graduate to bopping enemies and playing for score. Downwell is on all major platforms.

Yakuza 0 - 2015

Video games have a unique opportunity to transport us to new and interesting locations. To let us play as virtual tourists and interlopers. And few games do that better than Yakuza 0.

This game - and to be honest, all of the games in the Yakuza series - take place in a beautifully realised Tokyo district. And while Kamurocho doesn’t really exist… it’s extremely close to its real life counterpart, Kabukichō.

Yakuza achieves this through extremely detailed recreations of Japanese shops, vending machines, and buildings. By letting you buy familiar foodstuff from convenience stores and restaurants. And by giving you all sorts of side activities that make you feel like a local - whether that’s darts, karaoke, a hostess bar, or an arcade filled with Sega machines.

The idea of "the city is almost another character!" is trotted out a lot, but it’s very true of the Yakuza games. And it only gets better the more of them you play. It might be cheeky to reuse the same city block across almost 20 years of games but it’s always a joy to return to Kamurocho - to see how it changes and how it stays the same.

Oh, and also you can smash a bicycle over people’s heads and stuff. It’s great. Yakuza 0 is available on Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox.

Kerbal Space Program - 2015

Minecraft proved that some players love to build stuff. Kerbal Space Program shows what fun can be had when you throw physics into the mix.

This game is all about building rockets, with the hope of launching them into space - without everything blowing up or spinning around like a mad pinwheel. There are plenty of games about creating detailed, simulated mechanisms - but few with such a clear and obvious goal as "get this thing to this very high point". And fewer still that are as funny as Kerbal.

Because physics are a tricky thing to wrangle in games. Designers typically want to have a lot of control over how their games work, and physics are - by their nature - unpredictable and fickle. But physics are almost always funny and so while Kerbal is definitely serious and grounded and praised by NASA technicians for its realism - its also just endlessly hilarious to see your incredible creation, which took hours to painstakingly build, immediately fall apart and blow up.

Kerbal Space Program is available on Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox.

Super Mario Maker - 2015

While playing games will certainly teach you a lot about game design, you'll learn even more by jumping in and making games for yourself. However, I know full well that starting from scratch can be quite intimidating, so perhaps it's best to start by playing around in someone else's playground.

Super Mario Maker lets you do just that.

This lets you make your own levels using the tools, rules and visuals of the Super Mario platformers, and so you can see for yourself what it's like to construct a level from scratch.

You'll soon realise that it's not easy to make something that's actually fun to play, and so as you improve your skills, try other people's levels and hunt down hints and tips, you'll soon realise that you're making your first stab at level design.

Sadly, Mario Maker's Wii U servers are now shut down, so it's impossible to share your user-made levels. So feel free to go straight to the sequel on Switch if you prefer.

DOOM - 2016

Whenever I need an example of a game where every design decision points in the same direction. Where every choice was made to elevate the central fantasy. I go for Doom - the 2016 follow-up to that pioneering FPS of the 1990s.

This game wants you to feel like a brutal demon-slaying badass, and does this with every fibre of its being: from the movement speed, to the weapon designs, to way the protagonist ends Zoom calls in the way we’d all like to: by smashing the computer to bits.

But my absolute favourite idea is the glory kill. Basically: Doom is not a game with regenerating health bars. You do not lick your wounds by cowering behind a box or a knee-high wall. Instead, the best way to get health is to shoot demons until they are staggered - and then run up close and trigger a gory execution animation - a move which showers you with health pick-ups.

It’s a move thats guaranteed to make you feel like a ruthless predator. You have to run directly towards enemies, in a genre that typically favours retreat. And because it’s tied to such an essential resource, id Software makes you do it again and again and again. And it feels amazing every time.

Doom is all on major platforms.

Factorio - 2016

Okay, so in Factorio, you’ve crash landed on this barren alien planet. And you’ve got one goal in mind: build a new spaceship. But mining all the resources by hand, and forging all the components one by one… that’s going to be a lot of work.

So this is where Factorio’s gift to gaming comes in: the joy of automation. The ultimate goal is to build a self-sustaining factory that can harvest, smelt, and forge new suff all by itself. To create a planet-wide network of production chains, all linked up by trains and drones.

It’s a bit like Spacechem, but bigger, more open ended, and even more maddening. You can lose hundreds of hours to this game as you fall into a rabbit hole of problem solving and productivity growth. I mean, if I completely redesign my entire factory I’ll get two more copper plates per minute. Worth it, right?

The game is on Steam and Nintendo Switch.

Persona 5 - 2016

Persona 5 is very much a game of two halves.

On the one hand, it’s a life simulator about a bunch of kids at high school. You’ll go to class, hang out in the cafeteria, do after-school jobs and chores, go to the movie theatre, buy clothes, and go on dates.

But on the other hand, it’s a dungeon-crawling RPG where you waltz through palaces, do battle with demons, collect monster allies, and loot treasure. Then it’s back to school again.

Having the player jump between genres can be great for pacing. As soon as you’re getting bored of endless RPG battles, the game sends you back to the real world for conversations and character growth. And when that starts to drag, it’s back to the action.

But this can be troublesome: if the player only likes one aspect of the game, or spends too long on one half of the experience, jumping back to the other style of gameplay can feel jarring or frustrating. But that’s rarely the case in Persona - and that's because everything revolves around a singular core of friendship. Joker’s pals are his friends in the social simulator and his party members in the RPG, and so no matter what you’re doing, those friendships are being explored and evolved.

Persona 5 Royal is available on all platforms.

Hitman - 2016

Hitman is a game about mastery and repetition.

The game puts you in the shoes of Agent 47 - who is tasked with visiting some exotic locale and assassinating some very naughty person.

Now, Agent 47 is depicted as the ultimate assassin - a person so perfect, that he makes murder seem effortless. But, despite this, you’re actually not expected to do very well on your first attempt at one of these missions.

Things will inevitably go wrong. You’ll be spotted trespassing by a guard, you’ll leave evidence behind, or perhaps you’ll have to kill an innocent civilian before they have a chance to raise the alarm. You first go will likely see you reach the goal in the most messy way imaginable.

But that’s okay: because you can go again. Hitman’s levels operate on a predictable clockwork choreography - events repeat at the exact same time, targets walk on the same looping routes, and objects show up in the same locations over and over again. So you can use your ever-expanding knowledge of the level to do better.

With each repetition, you move closer and closer to becoming Agent 47 - to the point you can assassinate your target without ever being spotted, or even changing out of your suit. Where many games expect you to blow through content once, and never see it again, Hitman proves the value of letting a player soak a level in. ‘Repetitive’ isn’t necessarily a dirty word if it leads to a feeling of truly mastery.

Hitman is available everywhere except Switch, as part of the World of Assassination trilogy.

Overcooked! - 2016

Overcooked is a game that can end friendships and relationships, just as quickly as it can make them.

The game puts you and up to three friends in charge of a bustling restaurant kitchen and you must work together to create the meals that are requested by customers. This is done through things like getting ingredients, chopping them, cooking them in an oven, and delivering them to front of house.

And so it seems sensible for each player to take on a single role, focus on their task, and quietly repeat until the level is done. But that’s not what happens - and it’s usually because of dirty plates.

No one wants to be the plate washer. And, anyway, they come in at such an odd frequency that it would be a waste for someone to focus entirely on that. And so as soon as you run out of plates your perfect plan falls apart. You shout at each other, you switch jobs, you get in each other’s way, and if you’re not careful you’ll fail the task.

So Overcooked is a cooperative game that forces you to actually cooperate. To communicate, plan things out together, and to give each other a heads up when things change. It’s manic, loud, and lots of fun. And a great example of how to do co-op right. Overcooked! is available everywhere.

Furi - 2016

Furi is the game that made me better at Dark Souls. Maybe a strange claim about a game where you dodge in and out of waves of neon-coloured bullets… but it’s true.

That’s because this boss rush adventure teaches you to focus on defending against incoming attacks, as you patiently wait for an opening in your opponent’s attack pattern. Then, when they’re vulnerable, you can rush in and do a little damage… before noping out and waiting for another turn.

Furi simply will not let you play this game like a button mashing maniac - which, I admit, I have been guilty of in the past. You can’t win by simply hitting the sword button as quickly as possible. That will just leave you bruised, beaten, and fed up.

So through its simple, but elegantly designed combat system, Furi will teach you patience and observation. Each boss battle is like a long, slow, painful lesson in how to be better at fighting this one exact dude, and you won’t move on until you get an A grade.

Furi is available on all major platforms.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 2017

The Zelda franchise changed a lot after the first game. While the NES original allowed for freeform exploration of a large world map, later Zelda games were more linear and restrictive. Dungeons had to be done in a specific order, and the games were structured around hitting specific story beats.

But with Breath of the Wild, Zelda finally went back to a game where player freedom is king. After a brief tutorial section, the game drops you into a post-apocalyptic Hyrule and lets you go off and explore. Characters can give you quests and guidance, but you can also ignore that stuff entirely and wander off in a completely different direction.

To make this whole thing work, the game has a very simple structure. The final boss - Calamity Ganon - can be approached at any time after the tutorial. But you’ll almost certainly fail. His castle is locked up tight, filled with environmental hazards and high-level enemies.

So you explore elsewhere - finding new items, weapons, powers, and skills. Each dungeon you finish will weaken the final boss. And each quest-line you complete will potentially give you an item that will help you assault Ganon’s fortress.

This turns the whole game into a player-directed quest to prepare for the final showdown. A Rocky-esque training montage where everything you do is for that ultimate goal of vanquishing Ganon. And this allows for a game about adventure, exploration, mystery, and surprise - in a way we haven’t really seen since the very first Zelda game.

Breath of the Wild is available on the Switch eShop.

Fortnite - 2017

Fortnite is a cheeky game. It was supposed to be about building fortifications to protect your team from zombies. But when Epic saw PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds - an addictive Battle Royale showdown between 100 players - they were like, actually, yeah, let’s do that instead.

Like I say: it’s cheeky. But this is also Fortnite’s strength. The developers have always been willing to rethink key aspects of the game. Major mechanics have changed. The infamous building gameplay is now optional. And with every season, which lasts a few months, the game introduces radical new changes like fresh weapons, vehicles, movement mechanics, and characters.

Plus, the all-important world map has been destroyed and remade several times over. Basically: if you don’t play Fortnite for a while, it’s like trying a whole new game when you play it next.

Fortnite’s frequent reinvention is probably not sustainable for most studios - in fact, it doesn’t sound like it’s sustainable for Epic - but it’s an incredible example of how constantly changing content can keep a game feel fresh and exciting. Fortnite is available everywhere.

Getting Over It, with Bennett Foddy - 2017

Bennett Foddy has built a career on pissing off players, with punishing games built around absurd control schemes. Like QWOP - a game where you independently control an olympic sprinter’s thighs and calves with four keyboard keys.

His magnum opus, though, is Getting Over It - a game about a bald bloke in a cauldron who uses a sledgehammer as a sort of climber’s pick to ascend an impossibly-high mountain. You have to use an awkward set of unconventional mouse movements to grab, push, and pull your way higher.

And if you fall… you fall. The mountain is a single, continuous level, and there no checkpoints or save rooms. So you can be almost at the summit and then fall all the way down to the very bottom. This feels, somehow, even worse than dying in an old NES game and being sent back to level one.

The game is a loving throwback to those old games. From a time where failures were punished, and successes felt truly earned. After years of games with smooth edges and ample handholding, the only help you’ll get in Getting Over It is Bennett Foddy’s encouragement via a philosophical voice over. The game’s on Steam. Play it if you dare.

Middle-Earth: Shadow of War - 2017

Monolith’s Middle-Earth games remain as some of the most ambitious entries in the world of big budget gaming. Because Shadow of War might look like yet another open world romp with stealth, skill trees, and flashy combat - but soon enough, you’ll realise that there’s more going on under the hood.

Basically: among the cannon fodder enemies you’ll find orc captains. Each one has a name, a voice, a set of skills, and - most importantly - a memory of the player. So if you run away from battle, they might pop up half an hour later and call you a coward. And if you burn them to death, they might miraculously show up next play session with a sack on their head and a score to settle.

This so-called nemesis system creates truly memorable stories with multiple different orcs. Maybe there’s the guy who just won’t die, the dude who always refuses to finish you off when you fail, or the annoying dude who can’t stop singing throughout battle.

Crucially, these stories are completely unique to each player - entirely based on which orcs are randomly generated, and how they respond to your gameplay. This sort of emergent storytelling is usually the stuff of experimental indie games - but it’s here, in a triple A console game with a Hollywood IP. You don’t see them like this very often. Shadow of War is on Steam, Xbox, and PlayStation.

Among Us - 2018

Among Us is the perfect example of a social deduction game. A game where one or more players are secretly trying to sabotage the mission - and the other players have to weed them out.

So most of the players in an Among Us game are trying to keep a spaceship running by doing little mini-games and other such tasks. But a select few are imposters and are trying to secretly murder their friends. At any point, a player can trigger a meeting and accuse someone of being an imposter.

So Among Us becomes a game about deceit and deception. About evidence, collaboration, and voting. If you all decide to vote someone off of the spaceship you’ll immediately see if they were a dastardly imposter… or a fellow crew-mate. Whoops!

Among Us - and the card games that inspired it - encourage all sorts of wild social dynamics that you don’t normally get to use in the real world. And because the game is more about the people you play with, than the game itself, it’s almost infinitely enjoyable. Among Us is available on all platforms.

Celeste - 2018

Celeste is a game about overcoming anxiety and cutting yourself some slack. So it’s perhaps no surprise that this challenging platformer is a poster child for being kind to the player.

To start, it comes via the controls themselves. Madeline’s massive movement script is packed with little tweaks that are designed to subtly help the player. For instance - coyote time means that you can jump, even if you’ve already run off the edge of a platform, to ensure that players don’t need pixel perfect precision when inputting commands.

All of these little grace mechanics are there to permit the player’s intention - if not their exact inputs. And it leads to a game that just feels fluid and responsive - and never punitive. Though, that certainly doesn’t make for an easy game - Celeste is a ruthlessly punishing platformer that takes delight in counting the number of times you died.

But help is available if you can’t do it. The game comes with an assist mode that’s packed with useful accessibility options - and outright cheat codes - to make the game easier.

Celeste came out at the height of a debate around whether it was suitable for intentionally hard games to include easy modes and accessibility options. Celeste’s galaxy brain solution: just tell the player what the game is about and why these features exist. Funnily enough: most players get it and don’t need to turn on assist mode unless they really need it. Celeste is available on every platform.

Rimworld - 2018

Rimworld is a story generator. I mean, it’s also a survival game about trying to manage a colony of people. But the point of the game is to generate an interesting, emergent, and often chaotic narrative.

It partly does this through a mishmash of loads of different systems, which can all smush up next to each other and create interesting - and unexpected - effects. The usual sort of emergent storytelling we might see in highly systematic games.

But the game also takes a more direct approach, with an "AI storyteller" that keeps track of the colony’s current situation, and then picks events based on what would be most interesting.

This makes for a game full of truly unique and personal storytelling moments - making it an essential play for anyone interested in the way games can generate and curate narratives. Rimworld is on Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox.

Florence - 2018

Florence tells the tale of a young woman and her first true love, through a montage of tiny mini games. These range from brushing your teeth to eating meals to shaking polaroid pictures. And they’re achieved through really simple controls, like taps and tickles of the touchscreen.

But there’s a deeper level here, as developer Mountain uses your interaction with these minigames as a metaphor, to express the feeling of performing these actions.

Like, when Florence’s new boyfriend Kish reveals his dreams, you scrape away at the surface with your finger to reveal the image underneath. And when Florence pushes Kish to follow that dream, you physically push him from one side of the screen to the other.

The best example, though, has to be the conversation system, where speech bubbles are created from puzzle pieces. The way you put those words together tells you everything you need to know about how well Florence and Kish are communicating.

Lead designer Ken Wong said "For a level to work, it needs to have an interesting interaction that evokes a feeling or tells a story. The feeling or story has to come from the interactions, not from the images". Florence is available on mobile, Steam, and Switch.

Into the Breach - 2018

It seems perfectly natural that you shouldn’t know what your enemies are thinking. And so we’ve had decades of strategy games built around the idea of preparing for whatever your opponent might do next. But what would happen if the enemies actually telegraphed their exact intentions?

That’s the idea at the heart of Into the Breach: a tightly-designed tactics game where you know what your foes will do on their next turn, and can plan around it.

So not only can you kill an enemy before they destroy some vital infrastructure, or dodge out of the way of an incoming attack, but you can actually push one enemy into the path of another enemy’s attack. This turns the game into an elegant puzzle game where you can figure out the optimum way to turn your enemies against themselves.

Randomness and information are two things that game designers have to think about carefully. And Into the Breach is an excellent example of what happens when almost nothing is left up to chance, and almost everything is shown to the player. It’s on Steam, consoles, and mobile if you’ve got a Netflix account.

Slay the Spire - 2019

So Slay the Spire is definitely not the first game to hit on the idea of synergies - they’ve been part of games, and especially card games, for decades. But few titles have done the idea with such elegance and success.

The game is a deck-building dungeon battler where you slowly add more and more cards to your deck. And it doesn’t take long to realise that certain cards can work in tandem with each other. Perhaps one card poisons your enemy, and another card deals extra damage to a poisoned enemy.

Suddenly, strategies start to emerge. Ideas, plans, and tactics. You start to sculpt your deck - buying cards and passive buffs called relics - to make this strategy happen. And when it pays off - when you’ve built a deck that can do crazy combinatorial damage numbers to every enemy you see, it feels amazing. Like you’ve broken the game and ripped apart the code.

In other genres, such game-breaking strategies would be patched out as soon as the instructions hit Reddit. But they work fine in a roguelike: the game is so random that you can never guarantee that you’ll find a certain card or relic. Slay the Spire is available on all major platforms.

Disco Elysium - 2019

"How much do my choices really matter?" It’s a question that’s often asked of games with decisions, dialogue trees, and branching paths. Are my choices going to cause huge waves that irrevocably shift the narrative - or tiny ripples?

It’s a fair question. But games like Disco Elysium prove that even small choices can be impactful and memorable when done right.

In this game - a sprawling, novelistic, combat-free RPG -  all players will end up following largely the same story. There are no big branching paths or multiple endings. But despite this, the game is constantly keeping track of what you do - and then referencing your choices and decisions.

If you run everywhere, your partner will comment on that. If you’re an arsehole to certain characters, they’ll remember that. If you walk around in your underwear, characters will have something to say. And my favourite part of the game happens near the end, where some of the main characters come together to discuss your journey, and make note of your actions, and decisions.

ZA/UM writer Justin Keenan calls this micro-reactivity and says when it works, "it's probably the closest an RPG can come to replicating the tabletop experience of having a very good dungeon master sitting across from you listening to you and responding to your most idiosyncratic choices as a player".

Disco Elysium is available on all platforms as The Final Cut.

Outer Wilds - 2019

A little while back, I described Her Story as an information game: a type of game where everything is available to you - but you can only decipher it by asking the right questions and following the correct leads. Outer Wilds is like that but instead of a PC database, it takes place in an entire simulated solar system.

This time loop adventure asks you to figure out why the sun will explode after 22 minutes. And so you’ll need to hop between planets - like a watery giant and a pair of sand-swapping hourglass planets - to figure out the secret.

Again: your progress is not halted by combat or unlockable abilities, but simply your understanding of the world. Each planet hides clues that will help you to uncover new areas on the other celestial bodies. By following these leads, and zig-zagging across the solar system, you’ll slowly uncover the truth. And hopefully put a stop to that whole annoying supernova thing.

Designer Alex Beachum says he wanted to "create a world that constantly makes references to things players can actually go out and discover", which leads to a satisfying loop of exploring and learning. Outer Wilds is available on all major platforms.

Half-Life: Alyx - 2020

Here’s a hot take - the most interesting thing about virtual reality is not the headset.

Seeing a world in 360 degrees is certainly amazing, but in my opinion, there’s more excitement to be found in the controllers. These things let you reach out into full 3D space, and they track the exact movement of your hands - and even your fingers.

So take… any firefight in Half-Life: Alyx. The set-up is the same as any other shooter - but the controls lead to emergent gameplay that I’ve never had in a classic FPS. Like… being able to crack open a door a few inches, and poke my gun through, to blast at head crabs from relative safely. Or fumbling to reload a gun, and dropping the bullets all over the floor, in the middle of a frantic firefight. Or reflexively grabbing an object and holding it up to bat away a lunging enemy.

These aren’t game mechanics, in the traditional sense - these are just natural outcomes of having a world that allows for completely freeform interaction. It sometimes feels like VR is going to crack open a whole new paradigm for how we interact with games - and we’re truly only at the beginning. Half-Life: Alyx is available on Steam, but naturally requires some kind of VR headset.

Inscryption - 2021

Inscryption is more than just a good deck-building card battler. It’s a whole experience - a game where you think you’ve reached the end, only to realise that you’ve merely scratched the surface.

Inscryption - much like the other games designed by Daniel Mullins - is a meta-textual horror game that keeps unfolding in different and surprising ways. The game mixes genres, art styles, and storytelling methods and jumps between the game itself, and a whole fictional world that surrounds the game. It’s game within a game, within a game. And there’s even more to find in the real world as the deepest lore can only be found in an ARG experience outside of the game.

If this all sounds maddeningly vague, it’s because I don’t want to spoil the game’s greatest delights. So play Inscryption to learn more about how games can revel in mystery, surprise, and keeping the player guessing. It’s available on all four platforms.

Vampire Survivors - 2021

Much earlier, I talked about the joys of levelling up in Diablo II. You kill monsters, unlock more powerful skills, and then kill more monsters. It’s a wonderfully addictive loop.

But what if we simplify it? Boil it down to its purest essence. Well then we get… Vampire Survivors. In this game, the character automatically attacks and so all you have to do is navigate near to enemies and wait for them to die. Killing enemies nets experience points which can be spent on new, or more powerful attacks. Some attacks can also power each other up, creating synergistic combos that do more damage.

And that’s… kinda it. You just wiggle around and watch enemies die. And yet, it’s hard to put down. Like, really hard. So by taking the most potent bits from Diablo, Geometry Wars, Cookie Clicker, and Slay the Spire, we get a game that can hold players in a powerful, vice-like grip.

Is that good? That’s up to you. But Vampire Survivors holds lots of lessons about how to keep players engaged. The game is available on all four platforms.

Tunic - 2022

Tunic has some of the most satisfying secrets in all of gaming. They are oftentimes esoteric and cryptic - but you’re also subtly pushed into solving them for yourself, rather than reading up about them on a subreddit.

Most of the secrets come down to a simple idea: everything is right in front of your eyes. The things you need to solve Tunic’s riddles are right there in the world - but you just don’t realise it yet. You don’t understand their meaning, or how to use or activate them.

It’s only later - usually when you stumble upon one of the game’s instruction manual pages - that you get it. And you get that rush of excitement and realisation as you now get how to open that door, reach that treasure chest, or read that cryptic language.

Mind you: Tunic never forces this onto players. It’s entirely possible to ignore all of these secrets, treat it like a cute action game, and finish the whole thing without really engaging your brain. But it’s almost impossible to not take the bait, follow a thread, and get wrapped up in the game’s mysteries.

Tunic is available on all platforms.

Shadows of Doubt - 2023

And so we come to our final game, which brings us bang up to date - or, more accurately, into the future as this game is technically not fully released. Shadows of Doubt is a detective simulator that’s still in early access, but well worth playing to show you what can be achieved with procedural generation.

Because this game takes place in a small city block filled with hundreds of citizens who are all randomly generated. They have random jobs, homes, partners, blood types, fingerprints, and so on. They have daily schedules, bespoke motivations, and - most importantly, for the game’s fantasy - a sudden desire to go off and murder a fellow citizen.

What follows next is a brilliant detective game of looking for clues, following leads, and putting all your notes on a crazy corkboard, complete with pins and red thread.

But the procedural generation is what I think you should focus on, because its this crazy complex system that allows for an infinite number of murders and missions, with stories that feel completely personal to each budding detective.

Games certainly don’t have to be filled with complex systems - in fact, some of the titles on this list are fantastic because they focus on sheer simplicity and elegance. But Shadows of Doubt shows what you can make when you let the algorithm take over. It’s on Steam, in early access.

So. There we have it.

Over the last 100 games, we've gone from the arcades to virtual reality. We've gone from generating simple dungeons to generating entire city blocks. We've seen genres being born, and we've seen trends emerge, change, and die off.

And even with 100 games, this is still a tiny, weenie slice of the pie. I could happily pick another 100 games and I still wouldn't be done. And this is just video games, after all. There's just as much to be learned from card games, and board games, and tabletop roleplaying games.

And when you're done with all of that, play even more games. Play game jam games, and experimental games, and art games, and serious games, and educational games. And every time you play a new game, think about how it worked, and how you can apply those lessons to the games you make going forward.

And who knows, maybe I'll be back in another 10 years with another 100 games. We'll see! Until then, thank you so much for reading.