RUN AN EMPIRE

Pokemon Go was a revelation and paved the way for games to come, but very few games have ventured into this area since. Another game did go even further into getting people out of their homes and arcades for a unique gaming experience - Run an Empire does not only expand on what a strategy game could be, but it also makes the running application meaningful for those who are not diehards needing no external stimuli apart from the Sun and the track or the road..
Using a real map, players go for catching hexagonal tiles , and  running through an area marked by a hex more times than others enable the player to claim the area and build structures ,encampments objects etc. Now, I know lots of people cringe at the very thought of gamification and think games should be games and not means to achieving short-term real-life goals, but I believe Run an Empire  shows us one of the many possible ways of introducing new concepts into the stale world of gaming and dealing with the mundane in real life. At least we can now do away with boring running track routines and stops -we can look at them as checkpoints.
I wish someone else in my area played it, would love to have some competition,

PUSH ME PULL YOU

Been waiting for ages to see this gem come out. I  remember seeing people play the beta version  somewhere on Youtube and thinking how great it was to invent new sports. And while at it,  why not alter players to the point of their physical appearance defining the very game? CatDog finally got their own sport and it works beautifully- it is fun, weird, and the controls are easy to learn but impossible to master as the awkwardness of physical movement  is a substantial part of this game and it's charm.  You keep coming back to it, satiating  your sick desire to  see and  be two human bodies seamed at the waist  claiming the ball and owning  their half of  the playground. With different modes and a possiblility to move both heads with a single controller, or share controls with a friend on a single controller, PUSH ME PULL YOU becomes an even more exciting ride. It  will surely become a timeless co-op family multiplayer  classic that everyone will still love revisiting 20-30 years from now.

KATAMARI DAMACY

You're on a mission from your father, the mighty King of All Cosmos, to rebuilt the stars that he accidentally destroyed for no known reason., and you do so by using adhesive balls called katamaris, sticking many objects trolling the katamari over them until there's enough material for a  new star amassed. Naturally one has to make sure the overall shape of your "creation" stays  as "rollable" as possible in order to complete the task more successfully. Sometimes it's about a time limitation to do a task and other times it's about about specific materials used for particular stars.

With engaging soundtrack of various styles, odd and funny cutscenes, easy-to-master controls, blocky graphics that allow you to appreciate the concept and attention to details even more, its high replay value , and its absolutely magical  child-like quality, Katamari Damacy quickly proves to be a fun and unique experience for anyone who tries it. With  characters like  Kings and Princes of the Cosmos one would think a  fantasy world  would be the only obvious choice as a setting of choice, but making the Princes whereabouts mundane and common only makes the contrast suit the story even better. The fact that the game is about "mass consumption" (Takahashi) might make you look at events in the game with a new set of eyes, but this information does not tae away from your play sessions.

HOCUS

A 3d puzzle game based on impossible perspective and objects? Yes, please! Although Monument Valley  pioneered the concept of using impossible perspective in a game, it also sugar-coated it  and made it more about construction and the combination of pieces, the lovely designs and the music phrases that accompany movements across moving platforms, while Hocus focuses on the undilluted experience of enjoying the unsettleing and alluring  objects/drawings in the style of Duchamp, Escher, Penrose and McDonald. It's about consciously observing the geometry of each object while trying to find a way out for your red cube. The design is simple and effective , the controls are basic and levels progress with grace, each offering you the same exhilaration you felt when observing Escher's staircase drawing for the first time.

CARMAGEDDON

A relatively open world you can explore and demolish while driving in your car, racing against others or disregarding the track was a huge revelation for us back then. Sure , its elements were already present or implied in other racing and non-racing games, but it is the sum of these ideas and the presentation that made CARMAGEDDON a legendary game. It is gory, funny, replete with out-of-this-world characters and pimped vehicles with crazy add-ons that help you score destruction bonuses, Carmaggedon was a bold mainstream venture into the unknown that defied the racing genre and its narrow confines where  racing track was god. Finishing the race meant either clean racing , or destroying cars and property or killing all people in the streets.Sure, its outdated graphics might belittle its importance, but its pioneering  concept inspired hundreds of games in and outside racing genres, most important being the original GTA. Loads of fun , even today
Oh, and featuring Fear Factory's music in the game was the most natural thing to do at that time :) 

PASSAGE

A genuine piece of art, this game excells at unravelling the entirety of human existence and eliciting a strong emotional response in a player in just 5 minutes of its running time. During these 5 minutes the main character gets to live his life, find his significant other (or not) , attend to his livelihood (or not), witness the passage of time and die. Different lifestyle choices yield different results  and affect aging, physical and emotional decay, though naturally, the end result is uniform and unavoidable. Looking at its rudimentary graphics and controls one has to acknowledge the skill in the game designer  to make a bold statement from such a finite gaming experience. It's free to download, it questions the preconceptions in gaming and leaves you thinking. It's among the first 14 games  included in MoMA's permanent collection for its artistic statement. Try it.

DEUS EX MACHINA

Speaking of brave games that defy categorization, this title from the 1984 shows the programmer's innovative mind. In order to create a unique multisensory, multimedia experience on an 8bit computer, Mel Croucher realised he needed a different approach, Abandoning the (cid) chip sounds altogether for this game, he introduced an accompanying cassette the player runs synchonous with the action on the computer screen. When I was a kid, one of my friends taped this game for me and I played it on the c64 , but without the accompanying cassette for my audio deck the resulting experience was lacking to say the least. Years later I finally got a hold of the audio recording and played it as it was intended. Yes, it is confusing, and self-indulgent , and artsy, but the very idea that the game skillfully combined a collection of audio art, spoken word and forward thinking electropop music from an external audio source with the limiting graphics of 1984 that lend themselves beautifully to the paranoia shown in this game is pure genius. In a series of mini games you try to preserve the life of a being, a failed lab experiment, while acknowledging the absurd ,the comical and creepy, the futilty of action ("creeping, crawling, occasionally floating") and coming to terms with "second childishness and mere oblivion". Ian Dury, John Pertwee and Frankie Howard all made sure their contributions  entertain, confuse the player and leave them with some troubling thoughts. Even if we perceive this game as an interactive video work rather than a game, it is still a brave and singular cornerstone in gaming.

CULTIST SIMULATOR

Somebody said the best way to earn a million was to start a cult, and this game allows you to do exactly that. Being your sole source of income, the cult must thrive and grow in numbers and strength which is somewhat easier in an era where even high intellectuals would gather around ludicrous clubs such as "The Ghost Club". People are more conducive to the acceptance of such ideas, but the cult leader in you has to act, interact, learn, build a following and be dedicated, passionate and sane throughout all business operations. Time and resources management paired with experimentation is what the game is about. The devil's playground is a card table so everything you do is a card game simulation that requires some wit on your part. Many wrote off this game as a fad , but the way it is devised and structured make CULTIST SIMULATOR another unique page in gaming history.And I find it disorientingly fun.

EVERY DAY THE SAME DREAM

Ever since I've read Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" every game that resembled a life parable and had metaphysical and philosophical considerations at its core turned into a unique gaming experience for me, and each title seemed to approach it from a different angle.The name, the simplistic, but stylized and highly effective black-and-white graphics with sparse coloured details and depressing instrumental indie/lofi pop, sounds and noises  pretty much reveal  what you'll be doing throughout - fighting or giving in to your sense of alienation and your 9-to-5 job.With different choices come different outcomes of a single boring work day that you just can't seem to wake up from. Each attempt  seems to slightly affect the next iteration of your "groundhog day".The 5 persons you interact with bring you closer to finishing the game and to your final release.

Whether  you consider this title to be a game or not, or whether it qualifies as a game by modern gaming standards, EVERY DAY THE SAME DREAM is a unique point in gaming history  and another great effort on the part of indie game makers to make real adult games that open new horizons for games, indie and otherwise.

HOMO MACHINA

Not realising this was a game tribute to the work of a certain Fritz Kahn, I played Homo Machina and thought "Wow, somebody made Osmosis Jones into a game with an early 20th century industrial feel, how come nobody thought of that?". The entire game is based on Kahn's illustrations that appeared in his "Das Leben Des Menchen" book series almost a hundred years ago. The series and the game transport us to technical and societal advancements of the Weimar Republic. By depicting the processes of a human body as  machines, his intention was to introduce the inside of a  human body in a way that would be more appealing and easy to grasp to a common man. Aided by a group of graphic designers and architects , he would depict ears as cars, sight and speech as a mental movie projector, the human body as an industrial company with a number of departments and facilities with a firm power structure, the internal organs as landscapes where scientist shrunk to microscopic proportios study blood and glandular cells (sounds familiar?). The game is organised around these clunky designs and bygone industries , and  patience and precision with puzzles gets you through Chapters, each dealing with a different bodily function.
Now, people can say the game is too short and lacking more features, and that the original designs were wrong , but I applaud the effort of the game designers in trying to essentially make a gaming tribute to some man's work. I hope this catches on and that somebody made a game tribute to Alan Turing.

Art Style: ORBIENT / ORBITAL

I found out about this game only well after I played Everything for the first time, and though it has a much narrower focus  it must have been a huge influence on it. Orbient / Orbital is a brilliant puzzle /life simulation /God simulation  that sucks you into its world straightaway. Controlling (or being) a white star with its solar system consuming or making other stars and planets into their satellites for the sake of self-preservation while orbiting red stars to be able to travel  and using your gravitational and anti-gravitational pull to attract or repel celestial bodies etc is made super entertaining and playable here. The visual identity of the game is excellent - you can easily appreciate its  minimalist, elegant design and it doesn't stand in the way of your playing sessions. The controls are easy to master and the music progresses and becomes more complex as your sustem enlarges.

Misdirection or not, this game and the entire Art Style series is another great example of how big gaming companies can still  introduce novelties in gaming. A true work of art, period.

FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY'S

You're a night watch monitoring the animatronics via surveillance cameras and trying to keep them from running  out of Freddy's.The animatronics get homicidal at night and your job is solely to look at cameras and avoid contact with them while occasionally securing the doors and putting on  the lights in the halls (not covered by cameras) to your left and right.And all this for a meagre $120 a day.The phone calls from the previous watch include all kinds of scary details and events involving animatronics and it builds beautifully into the scenery your experiencing with cameras buzzing, poor lightning, ominous illbient sounds, radio sounds and your own scatting sounds aimed at mustering courage. Your job is to get through all seven days until you're fired for not doing your job properly.

This game was probably the most played title among my 7-9-year olds pupils. When I asked them what it was about the game they liked so much that still played it after 3 years or so they said things like this: " Pizza places scare me...old music playing is scary, but camera sounds make me calm...you can hear yourself think...it's scary and funny...it's cute and scary...there are lots of stories about me...you get to look trough cameras...it's easy to play and bears are real". So everything that a good survival horror has minus the need to cater to older audiences, aiming at the very essence of what was scary about our childhood- loneliness and darkness. Very few games went there and did it the right way.

BOONG-GA BOONG-GA / SPANK 'EM

No, I haven't actually played it. Serbia was unfortunately done with arcades around '98-'99 and it's a real shame we didn't get to play any that came out since.

I don't see anything extreme about this game. Each nation has its own set of stupid rules they go by. Here in Serbia we go about kissing other people's rears just like the Japanese do, and so it was only natural they did something about it without putting their careers and families in jeopardy. There's a universal, unisex rear dressed in jeans sticking out of the arcade you physically hit and inflict some humiliating pain on the characters in the game. Facial expressions of the characters being spanked are ludicrous, and I guess it feels good to let go of the frustration thinking one spanking might inflict some serious damage to those you hate. Con artists, child molesters, gangsters, mother-in-laws, gold diggers of both sexes should all be paying for your sweat equity not rising, though  they could have done without featuring prostitutes and ex-girlfriends (ex-boyfriends  and male prostitutes should have been there as well). Spank 'Em is revolutionary in a sense that it bringsall the insecurities and frustrations and anger (and sick drives) into the open and allows you to vent it, transforming it into  something else. When I was a kid I was advised to picture people I was scared of as babies pooping their nappies. This game performs a similar function, and I applaud the creators of the game for realising how groundbreaking it was .

THE NOVELIST

Never have I found a game that explored family struggles so vehemently as much as THE NOVELIST did , nor a story-based game I bought into more whole-heartedly. A struggling novelist fighting his writer's block that's taken a toll on his family comes to a summer house with them in hopes of getting back in the zone creatively while hoping to become a better dad and husband. You play an ectoplasmic entity monitoring their interactions, entering their thoughts and memories and trying to make them reconnect and solve their problems by inobtrusive interventions.

The minimal settings, the sollid, mellow background music, the repetitive movements and locations all allow the player to focus more on the story and feel its grasp more intimately, as it's honest and relatable (despite the fact that some dialogues and thoughts may seem forced at times)

Each time I played it I experienced a different sequence of events, and I didn't find the rndings as limiting and abruptly stupid in comparison to the subtleness of the story that unfolded as other people seemed to have had. Are we really in control of our own decisions, even with benevolent voyeur ghosts by our side?

GRIM FANDANGO

Legendary games need no introduction. Especially when a point-and-click adventure's mythic status gets cemented by the fact that it can't be played on new machines. Whatever impression the new generations are left with after playing the remastered version, they will recognise the unique look and feel to this game.GRIM FANDANGO is one of those games that  managed to concoct the wacky narrative with folk traditions, modern life, visual art, 50s movies satire, film noir cliches, observations on the absurdities of both life and death and cultural diversity. It gets artistic, but not obtrusively so, and only after you've stopped playing and gone daydreaming about it do you realise how visually impressive it is. You'll praise the game for its characters, screenplay, exceptional dialogues (even when some of their elements border on cliched). A seller of travel arrangements for the passing over of his clients into the netherworld tries to deliver with a client after having performed poorly with his previous clients. The story unravels into one of the best ones ever seen in a video game.

Remastered version is as great, looks a tad more polished and has its phenopmenal jazzy OST re-recorded for the occasion.

PC BUILDING SIMULATOR

A game with an original idea that stays in  0.x early access  only because some features are copyrighted by some greedy corporations. It does what it says on the tin, and  truly delivers, but any feature having to do with software or hardware giants that won't give pemission for their products (ex. Microsoft and running bios or diagnostics on your simulation) is unavailable.

You can either  play in free mode, combining available  components in building a dream machine of your own (using components and software by companies that allowed the use of their designs here) or career mode , juggling services and prices proposed by the clients. This game is doing a tremendous service to all of us with no previous experience in making a PC that works and shines light on the once thriving enthusiast computing culture of the Xers that is now coming into focus again with micro computers and open software. I understand the need of those in charge to keep the majority of the population mere consumers instead of inspiring them to become builders, but sometimes copyright and intellectual property claims are downright ridiculous.

The creator of this game might have made greater use of  for a more interesting background music from a wealth of  CreativeCommons-licenced tracks out there, and putting a $20 price tag on this title is a tad excessive. Still, PC BULDING SIMULATOR remains a true  gaming breakthrough bringing another successful blend of gaming and life.

PAPERS, PLEASE

Being brought up in a country that was neither truly communist nor capitalist, a country that would let everybody in and then keep track of their activities, had goulags and rock'n roll festivals, aimed high and died in a conflict between its petty tribes, I just had to fall in love with this game.In fact I have a love-hate relationship with this title, same as with Bully and GTA, and  especially after years of living under sanctions in the 90s and the 00s.

Being a third-rate god stamping passports and deciding on people's fates, you're spotting smugglers, bombers, idlers and regular people  as they try to cross the Kolecha border and enter the  the promised land of Arstotzka. You are not just checking names, dates, passes, visa details, but are also dealing with bribes, moral issues, personal and family histories and tragedies, and your own humanity in the process. You are a good peson doing reproachable things, even though you appear to have been given an illusion of choice, and you do everything in your power to allow your country to thrive.

Up until 19th century there were no borders as such and our predecessors had greater freedom of movement than we do now. It would be wild if somebody made a game about a 19th century person crossing imaginary borders, doing so in a wold where national states were still just a vague concept.

LEVEL UP LIFE

A number of applications attempting to gamify a certain area of life have appeared in the past decade or so, mostly in areas like fitness or work or organisation , and mostly in isolation. I've always admired the fact that applications came dangerously close to being games at times, while still managing to persuade the "serious" users they were running an application en route to self-betterment,. But what if we actually wanted to gamify any and all aspects or tasks of everyday life and  have them presented as itemised characteristics? The textual adventure, the role-play ,the pixelated graphic design of LEVEL UP LIFE all appeal to the intended age group - a struggling 30-to-40 year olds , slackers by design. And its not just about the cute exterior- the game will help you with your goals just as any self-help book or time management course would. You choose 13 areas building your culture, talent, power talent, charisma through daily, weekly, monthly or unique tasks.

If you appreciate blurring the lines between an application and a game  LEVEL UP LIFE might just  be the right title for you.

SEAMAN

With my senior year of high school came the NATO bombing and a somewhat late fad for those pocket-sized pet sim clones every girl had attached to their wallet chain. Absolutely convinced  that no pet sim could ever be put to good use I came to one of my rich friend's Belgrade apartments two or three months afterwards and realised that Sega proved me wrong. Rearing a fish-like creature through its philogeny/ontogeny until a fully formed surly young man-fish starts conversing with you and making you feel like a failed father was confusing and wonderful at the same time. For a pre 00s game to have controls that primarily consist of talking into a special microphone, a life-like facial expressiveness of the main character, the impression you're left with that your character gains experience and wisdom as you talk to him on a number of serious and ludicrous topics (don't know what algorithms they used , but they did a great job here), and being able to hear some Leonard Nimoy on top of it all was a huge breakthrough for a simple game. And I still often think about the underlying themes or viewpoints the author might have wanted to express- why the fish, why the face, whether it has to do with Christianity, conformity, Creationism vs Evolutionism, a failed deiurge  or if it's just about the absurdity of family life and the distorted view that different generations might have of one another.

I wish other titles followed suit and explored  it more, maybe even develop a genre in its own right. This way we're left with AI assistants who are simly boring, and tell on you.

PAPERBOY

They don't make them like they used to. Ok, not true, but still - 80s and 90s are replete with oddities that made your usual genre of preference a unique gaming experience. Paperboy does exactly what it says on the tin, and not only will it cater to those Generation Xers who knew exactly what it meant to flip a burger or deliver newspapers to "learn to appreciate the value of money" and afford a new 8bit or 16bit gaming system, but it will also appeal to Millenials, and not just to those Millenials who  search for gaming document of days gone by.

The premise is simple- a paperboy has to deliver his round and throw papers to as many houses of subscribers without being bit by dogs, or hit by a myriad of moving objects, cars, carts, raving neigbours, breakdancers, toys  etc. With some time needed to get acquainted with controls and the scrolling, it plays well and you slowly grow to like evading death traps while trying to keep Daily Sun's readers happy. Even if you do get fired , you get fired to an awesome soundtrack playing in the back.

One can easily of a counterpart from the 90s it inspired. Less death and less guns , though.

And, uhm, don't play the Commodore 64 version , it's really bad.

ELITE

Elite needs no introduction. It was the title that introduced the space-sim genre and cemented it in the minds of eager players worldwide. Like many other classics from the 80s, it was a college project that ran on pure imagination , limited only by the hardware limitations of the day.This space-faring , space-trading marvel that also introduced an open-world concept outside a text-adventure  was a bit too much for a 6-year old with a poor command of English trying to make sense of what he saw on the screen playing it on his C64. 14 years and two sequels later, I revisited the original Elite game  and realised how incredibly important it was. Ships travelling at sublight speeds, alien pirates, space trading, following or disregarding missions altogether, finding trade runs in various star systems and trading -just so many things that were introduced in a single pioneering game.Granted that the layouts do get repetitive, with just a tiny bit of imagination you can explore an open world that takes up less than 400kb. This is a feat in itself, and not even a poor plot or some clunkiness in controlling you spaceship can take away from what the game represents. Oh, did I mention it's really addictive?

PARADROID

Though it was later ported to several systems and its life was prolonged well into the early naughties, this gaming phenomenon is largely associated with the good-ole c64. It is still regarded by many as the greatest c64 exclusive ever  to have graced the screens of our TV sets.

Hostile service robots have "gone mad" and taken over a spaceship killing its entire human crew. Your robot is beamed aboard  with a mission to sweep the ship clean deck by deck, removing the unruly robots and investigating everything before pressing the ship's self-destruct button. Unlike many c64 multidirectional shooters, Paradroid doesn't overdo it on desperately trying to make  the best possible shooting experience for a player ,and  makes up for graphic limitations with suspense and nervous anticipation instead, as other units become visible only after you've entered a room. The in-game puzzle of invading other robots CPUs and busting their circuits is a great complement to the shooter and makes this one of the most intriguing gaming experiences of old. Body snatching and destruction  never had a level of sophisticated presentation that high in a game up to that point. The beeping sounds adding to the nervous anticipation and the cold hollowness of an abandoned ship  and the conscious decision to not include in-game music  further highlight  the masterful presentation and enrich the gaming experience.

Paradroid remains a ground-breaking classic and it's easy to realise its value once you've tried it.

THRUST

Does what it says on the tin.It's neither about its minimal design and simple graphics, nor about the unnervingly monotonous sounds of an engine thruster.The plot doesn't affect the gaming experience at all. It was done by one man from start to finish. But it's about physics and inertia and breaking a sweat while grapling the controls of your spacecraft, avoiding cave walls and thinking about your movements before you moved. It's graceful and addictive. it's timeless and unique.The cold design of the world traversed gives the player a common feel of a dystopian world without the usual   landscape and machinery visuals.It's truly an inspiration to hundreds of games that came afterwards. A game that could do with more in-game sounds and music, but hey- Rob Hubbard's title theme for the c64 version still rocks hard enough to make you ignore the above mentioned thruster sounds.

METAL SLUG

Does humour belong in music and games? It certainly does as it distorts and makes fun of a canon developed around an approach. Metal Slug is no exception - instead of coming up with an entirely different concept of a side-scrolling shoot 'em up, the game makes fun of our  herd-mentality understanding of wars that others fight somewhere in some developing countries. The comedy is implied in derision, in the awkward movements of the characters, their fear of losing lives in a battlefield that gets masked by their love for carnage and war toys, the thin storyline that cartoonish bodycount scenes try to make up for, the background that resembles a HOPA game that supports the bodycount approach - it's all hillarious and works incredibly well. The gameplay itself is addictive, the controls are just smooth enough to keep you glued to your seat while being sluggish enough to irk you. It is also one of those games that become even more interesting in a 2-player session as you  can now both recreate your childhood dominated by cultural heroes of cheap animations and movies (wrestlers,MOTUs,Cover Ups, Rambos, Commandos and all those other moments in popular history of the 80s that other games had immortalized as well). Every bromance naturally has to  include jumping on boats, wearing machines and wreaking havoc upon a made-up world. Another few thousand coins and your muscle memory reclaimed and you're there.