FLOOR KIDS

 Game music pioneers made some poor games big by making incredible tunes for them. In order to make this game great, developers had to find a music maker that could give real substance to a breakdance game. Kid Koala was no doubt a perfect pick for the soundtrack, paying homage to both the craft and the culture behind it, and the developers were both such great music fans and were so extremely musical themselves to be able to integrate the music with movements and programming of the characters. Lots of love and sweat was put into Floor Kids.
The game isn't about nostalgia and the roots of a famed urban culture that flourished in the 80s, but about celebrating a global and embracing cultural phenomenon that has beaten time in its own right. Everything about the mechanics and the dancing is superfun: the rhythm-based sections, tapping as fast as you can at some beaks, the freezes , the combos, the five  features essential to excelling at breakdancing (funk, flavour, flow, fire, flyness)... It's playable, fun, unique and has great replay value . Akthough more seasoned generations could say they performed all these stunts in the streets and that nothing beat the real thing, this game might just be an excellent introduction to a future breakdancer and DJ.

HUMAN RESOURCE MACHINE

Finally - a game dealing with the most hated and the most excruciatingly painful  position in the global workforce! Not only did they do a splendid job at making you feel like a puppet master toying with destinies of the employees at the company, but you also get to do it total-surveillance style and program people by means of basic algorithmic thinking. So not only do you get to control everything and everyone making a system that would automate things. but you also  get to boost your own self-esteem in the process.Even a complete ignoramus like myself won't get scared of the algorithmic nature of a limited number of commands at your disposal. Run your programmes and revel in success.

PARAPPA THE RAPPER

This lively game with care-free animation and simple mechanics was a total game-changer that cemented its position of a true gaming classic introducing an entire genre of games to come. Besides being  one of the first rhythm-based games , PARAPPA THE RAPPER went way beyond that, helping disseminate hip hop  culture among young (and especially non-English-speaking) populations across the world. Sure, one could argue against diluting and approapriation of a culture and its essence, and the characters might be interpreted as racial stereotypes to a certain extent by some, but this game is about something else - it's about growing up, righting the wrongs, helping others, building empathy, and looking cute while doing it. The on-screen prompts the gameplay is largely consisted of  help you with your learning as you rap through your life lessons. As far as the language of the raps go, it's invaluable for any ESL learner hoping to come closer to understanding the flow and accentuation of English utterances. But again, you can still have fun with this awesome game even if  English be your mother tongue - it's fun, easy to play, it won't take too much of your time and you'll enjoy playing it.

MINI METRO

The other day I watched an episode of The Orville  which dealt with discovering a 2-dimensional civilization and thought the colourful lines of movements of its beings and objects  were remindful of old metro scheme designs and vehicle pathways of Tron and that it would great if such designs were used more frequently in gaming. Minutes into my on-line quasi-research and I come upon Mini Metro.What a great example of an exciting real-life job simulation carved into a slick game! Subway and train outlines have been part of gaming since its infancy, but this title gives you an actual opportunity to see the results of your construction engineering efforts seconds after you've built, reinvented, upgraded or altered the lines. The city (one in 10 actual cities you can pick) and its population gets bigger and so does the number of stations  you need to connect with subway lines and thus keep make things run as smoothly as possible,

Mini Metro is visually pleasing and fun and easy to play and has a decent replay value and cute music. It also has that Je ne sais quoi  quality about it that makes it both charming and ground-breaking at the same time. Could it be the compelling nature of fighting entropy on any scale and within any given system the thing that makes Mini Metro a great game? Or is it simply the combination of casual gameplay and deep tactics? Try this instant classic, you won't be disappointed.

EVERYTHING

When I was 9 I thought it would be great if someone made a game in which you could be a platform, a sprite, a boulder,a trap, a contraption, the hero's arch enemy or anything else but the hero. Someone beat me to it (Tim Winsky http://indianastone.twinskygames.com/ ) and the result is wonderful. I recently realised , though, that there are people who went way further than what I thought leaving the confines of your average video game concept could mean. What if you could play everything within a game and be a microorganism, a plant, an animal, a boulder, an island, a natural phenomenon, a celestial body, a galaxy and so forth, all within a single game? Add some metaphysical humour and unease ,beautiful music and passages of recorded narration by the inimitable Alan Watts and you got EVERYTHING the game. It rewards reflection and patience, and as you ascend or descend by experiencing the interconnectedness of forms in the pool of  universal consciousness you realise you can listen to its thoughts, receive and sing its vibrations, and become a vibrating sequence yourself. Entering and leaving forms (even those such as oil rigs, boots and snowmen) as you gain knowledge through experience of being leaves you asking "What am I supposed to want here?" (Alan Watts again). Playing it over and over again, I suppose.

This is the best game I've ever played. Period. Nothing comes even close.

ANOTHER LOST PHONE : LAURA'S STORY

Feeling ill at ease with passages of deeply personal reminiscences found in  artists' autobiographies?Feeling as if you're encroaching upon their privacy while catering to their self-gratification? Then this game is not for you.

We've all grown into wonderful underachievers turning to other people's woes and failures for comfort and we can't help it. If you found somebody's phone in the street, would you explore it  before returning it? Would you bother looking for wifi passwords, data, e-mail and social media content, calenders and business communication to find out what happened to the owner of the phone? By exploring and testing Laura's phone to pick up the pieces  you test yourself on how far you can go.

Looking at another person's smartphone through your own phone adds to the creepy Big Brother feel to the game and the concept itself is original, simple and elegant. marinating in juices of an intriguing story that unravels in a surprising way.

CUPHEAD

There's been a lot of nitpicking about this game. It's nothing more than a collection of bosses, the Cuphead character lacks character, we've all waited too long for this and it doesn't live up to the hype etc.Forget that.

From an era of animation that produced hundreds of cartoons that are now banned for their social,racial,chauvinist undertones  comes a game celebrating the years of uncertainty and fear dressed in cuteness and duelling with the devil.The distorted world Cuphead's living in is a map, a menu for the voracious and lost,  depicted with faded colours. Characters are monomaniacal and blind to anything around them.The authors have they even toned down  the racial  and chauvinist stereotyping of  some of  Max Fleischer and Tex Avery's cartoons  (Mexicans, East-Europeans, Italians).They softened it down but still retained the characteristic physical features for characters and bosses. The fact that the devil is also entitled to the souls of the bosses you fight with to free your soul of smelling your own flesh roast till there's no tomorrow only goes to show you how thorough the game makers were in outlining the story. Why go there? Why not?An era that had dance marathons  deserves to be presented in the form of a game as it is eerily similar to contemporary experience.There's almost an educational value to this game.

But there is so much more to this than making a threnody for the Roaring 20s and the frightening 30s - it's a fun and highly addictive game  requiring skill and alertness acquired through trial and error, just like the favourties from the 80s and 90s we loved as kids. If nothing else , Cuphead should be praised for all the love, painstaking exploration and creativity put into it.