OK/NORMAL

Finally -a soundtrack to your typical vaporwave album cover !This early 90s-inspired third-person 3d delight is everything that a sinister vaporwave genre might evoke. I do not see OK/NORMAL as a visualisation of a traumatised psyche , but a world your normal, everyday, consumer-self might conjure  while connecting the "wrong" dots. If you seek a unique combo of grievances about your gaming self and games of today in a single title OK/NORMAL might just be what you've been looking for.

FELIX THE REAPER

An elegant, overweight harbinger of death named Felix (what a clever name choice!) hopelessly in love with life and dancing and a certain Betty is instructed by the Ministry of Death to terminate people. Playing a full-blown psychopath with eerily whimsical dance moves cavorting in the shadows of a series of cleverly devised puzzle sets / dance floors while being guided by an instructor voiced by Sir Patrick Stewart? If this isn't a recipe for a classic I don't know what is. People can whine all they want about the unsavoury punchlines or slapstick gags or particular unjust deaths or the basic polygonal graphics or the uninspiring ending scene, it is a one-of-a-kind gaming experience for the open-minded.

WHAT THE GOLF

The fans that prefer their games absurd and funny and packaged in a single bundle of joy should look no more. This is probably the best golf game ever made and it's not necessarily even about golf or sports. It might have to do with sporting life, or making sense of the world in accepting and celebrating all of its absurdities, or the fickleness in us. Cats, houses, poles, office chairs, sofas, TV sets - anything can replace a golf ball. Movement becomes golf. The game makes fun of it, makes fun of us, and makes fun of a number of  indie genres and casual gaming tropes and the gaming world itself.
Another instant must-have classic.

PROGRESS QUEST

I've only recently found out about the "idle game" genre and it only proves to me that people need to enjoy or come up with new approaches and genres. Made as a parody of a famous role-playing game, the PROGRESS QUEST sets a blueprint  for the entire genre by allowing the player to set up their character at the beginning of a session and then see the game play itself out without their further  input.Truth be told, all the character's statistics and equipment play almost no role in how the action unfolds anyway. What is magical about this gem is that the "auto-attack" combat system and item acquisitions were parodied into a whole new genre. It spawned a host of games that play themselves out in real time with or without the player actually playing them...or even without their computers turned on. Fun is fun.

DREAMS

A one-of-a-kind game-making game where possibilities are virtually endless- you can play the games others have made using Dreams, or make your own game, or improve the games others have made, and even make   clones of A and indie  titles (the Superhot clone looks fabulous!). A perfect combo where a gamer is given free rein to make a game without being a game designer, the ultimate wet dream.

AI DUNGEON

In the early-to-mid 80s textual adventures were almost as equally popular as arcade titles as they allowed for the imagination spread its wings. The players would easily transport themselves into some imaginary world and didn’t even require the accompanying images that some late 80s titles had. There was one thing that kind of spoiled the fun - you were extremely limited in your variety of answers and actions and syntax and the content that the author of the adventure intended for you. We would nevertheless have a go at writing obscenities or absurd instructions in hope of triggering an intelligent response. Enter AI Dungeon.
This game allows you to make any appropriate or inappropriate comment, action, detour, and anything you type gets immediately recognized and responded to by AI. There are virtually no limits as to what you could write on the screen. As a result, the main story frame, if there be any, can be cut short as many times as you like with as many bizarre things as you like. I sense this game could even be a great creative writing exercise on how many new narrative episodes or subplots to add without completely destroying the main plot.

This is exactly what we;ve always wanted from a textual adventure. A genuine breakthrough.

KIDS

The second interactive animation by Michael Frei and Mario von Rickenbach presents another compelling meditation on the human condition. This time it has to do with crowd mentality and the clean slate mind of a child. Growth implies conformity and willing to fall over the precipice if others do so. Even if they reject to follow others they will eventually be misled by somebody else. The dark chasms kids fall into is dark and milky and resembles intestines, and digestion is painful. It is invigorating to participate in a massive flapping of hands or singing in unison or swimming through dark waters of life in company, but do our attempts at establishing connection with others really bring us any closer to understanding our own life? Or could this game be about something else entirely?