10. Dark Souls 2 The most controversial of the Souls, and yes, likely the weakest - but my favorite of the mainline. I loved how it felt experimental; it felt like they were trying so many things, and many of them were ehh, but that game had so much heart. Souls 2 walked so Elden Ring could run.
Hey all! I'm DynamicDonut. I've been designing games for years, 4 of those creating puzzles for the game Two Dots. I also have a huge passion for game design teaching! I'm always willing to chat about any new indie releases and you can see my personal work over at bwgamedesign.com!
9. SUPER. HOT. SUPER. HOT. SUPER - you get the point the only VR game I'll count among my all-time favorites, even if I played Pistol Whip and Beat Saber more. Superhot proved the use-case to me; the feeling of immersion and of solving these puzzles in slow-mo and executing the solution is great.
8. The Beginner's Guide. While Davey Wreden's other work gets more recognition, Stanley Parable hit me nowhere near as hard, nor as close to home, as The Beginner's Guide did. It is, in my opinion, one of the best "games for other game devs." I can't say anything more without spoiling it.
7. Monster Hunter Tri / Ultimate. Tri is silly and has the most reviled mechanic in the franchise, and i adore everything about it. Tri has an immense amount of charm, the best new monsters (Barioth! Barroth! Deviljho!) and music in the series (Loc Lac City!!) and the bosses are peak. <3 Tri.
The second (and not last) Terry Cavanagh game on this list: 6. VVVVVV. VVVVVV taught me the elegance of designing to the natural limit of what a mechanic needs to be, and no further. V is short, sweet, and each screen is memorable, because there's no wasted screens. All-time favorite platformer!
5. Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance Pure, campy fun. I adore games that don't aspire to be more than that; Revengeance is a straightforward and masterfully executed action game. There's few games where setpiece gameplay actually makes me smile for the joy they had making this. Fun to speedrun, too.
4. Persona 4 Arena. The fighting game that made me finally sit down and get good at a fighting game remains my favorite to the day. The era of 2011-2014 was my favorite time for that genre. P4A has long stuck with me as my favorite, but MvC3, Skullgirls, BBCS, and then USF4 were all so good.
3. Trackmania 2020. www.trackmania.com?lang=en Trackmania's been a relax-game for me for two and a half years now. It's scratched an itch for competitive games for me, as I only have to compete against myself and the goals I set. It's a great "easy to understand, impossible to master" game.
I don't want to repeatedly ping people on a long threads so I'm going to do the rest of these in qrt's instead lol been a while since i've done this whole thing
