I'm a sucker for a stupid trend, especially one where I get to talk about my interests. I made this chart using Figma, but unless you're crazy like me, you can make your own with Topsters.
Without further ado, here are 25 of my most influential games.
The Game Maker Era
The first thing you have to understand about my choices is that I grew up house-poor. We lived in a lovely house, but my parents could only afford the basics beyond that. As a result, I never had any gaming consoles growing up, and I played games on the computer I scrounged together from parts I literally found alongside the road. (Growing up poor in the Netherlands is a dizzying array of contrasts.)
I started making games with Game Maker in 2002 and was very active on the various community forums. Only after 7 PM, of course, because that's when dialing into The Internet was cheaper. Because I was a teenager, I had loads of free time, and games made with Game Maker were perfect for my potato PC. I was gaming on a Pentium II 333 MHz processor with 256 MB RAM and 32 MB of dedicated (!) VRAM and ran Windows ME with a sick-as-fuck Bionicle desktop background.
I played so many of these proto-indie games, and most have sadly blinked out of existence.
Seiklus (PC, 2003)
You can't talk about Game Maker without mentioning Seiklus. This puzzle platformer was hugely influential in that it was one of the first games where people said, "It's a really good game," without adding a caveat like "For something made in Game Maker."
What it is, then, is an entirely wordless exploration through an alien landscape. The pixel art is crisp, the music is boppin', and you can still have a good time with the game. If you can still find a copy, which is going to be a theme moving forward.
Raging Skies (PC, 2004)
A top-down shooter in which you control a little ship and shoot down enemy craft. I remember being mesmerized by the graphics and the storytelling through cutscenes. Does it hold up? Well, here's what the author had to say about it:
Take on the role of young Cliffton Spoon as he makes his mark as a bounty hunter in the skies of a war torn future Earth. Immerse yourself in a fun fast paced shoot em up match against the Talon Lords and their countless squadrons. Laugh like a little girl as you send your enemies screaming to an explosive death.
Ore no Ryomi 2 (PC, 2004)
A restaurant simulator where you try to get as many orders correct as possible. The catch is that you have to do every action yourself, from layering the lasagna, topping the pizza, and cleaning the toilets. It was an amazing rhythm-action game, and the creator later went on to make Cook, Serve, Delicious! Which is the same game, but better. But I'm that hipster who played this series when it was called "Ore no Ryomi", and it looked like ass (but we loved it anyway).
Jumper Two (PC, 2004)
Before Celeste, before Super Meat Boy even, there was Jumper. And Jumper Two, and Dim, and probably some other spin-offs I forgot. In Jumper, you are a tiny square man-thing that wants to go left to right. You have a double jump and a wall jump, and this game is so fucking hard. Basically, because I cut my teeth on the Jumper series, I never got into Celeste because that looked like more of the same masochistic gameplay to me.
Jetz Rampage 4 (PC, 2008)
Jetz Rampage 4 is a pretty good jetpack shooter where you fly around a city solving problems for people, usually by shooting them. It's very "edgelord" in theming and humor, which makes sense considering a literal teenager made it. I loved him for that. Tragically, the creator took his own life shortly after releasing this game. It's hard not to dwell on how he would have improved his craft even more by now. Rest in peace, Shawn64, gone but not forgotten.
Hyperfixations
Besides making games, I also loved playing them. But because of my potato of a PC, and general lack of funds, I often had to resort to playing older titles until they were completely worn out. Luckily, playing the same games over and over again happened to align perfectly with my freshly diagnosed ADHD with a dash of autism.
Diablo II (PC, 2000)
What's there to say about Diablo II at this point? Either you've never heard of it, or "rush 2 andi" is etched into some dark corner of your brain. I found it so difficult to tear myself away from this game that I quickly realized that my addictive personality should never be allowed near an actual MMO. And I'm proud to say I've still never played one.
Diablo II is also notable for being one of the few games I played with actual friends in high school! Until that petered out, of course.
Command & Conquer: Red Alert (PC, 1996)
I tried playing the original Command & Conquer with my dad, but he was already old (late thirties) and couldn't keep up with it at all. I was at summer camp a while later when some older kids had set up a LAN party and played C&C: Red Alert with each other. That looked so cool. Years later, I got the game from a bargain bin, and then played the absolute shit out of it. I joined a modding community online and would endlessly tinker with the game data.
I think I played the game against friends exactly once. They didn't care much for it.
Soldat (PC, 2002)
Soldat is a Polish 2D platforming shooter with game modes like (Team) Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, and King of the Hill. When I was 14, this game was all the rage in the IRC channels I used to hang out. Since these were game-making communities, people would make mods for the game, like new maps, bots, and entirely new game modes.
I was never any good at the game, and the maps I created were never very popular.
Re-Volt (PC, 1999)
In elementary school, good boys and girls would sometimes be allowed on The Computer, and one of two games they would be allowed to play was called Re-Volt. It's a super fun racer in which everything is shrunken down to RC cars and you collect power-ups to throw water balloons, shoot fireworks, or just zap your opponents. There are a ridiculous amount of levels and cars to unlock and it even has a freaking UFO which is one of the best cars in the game.
But my hyperfixation started much later. As a teenager, I found a huge modding community keeping the game alive with new cars, tracks, and more. Seeing that other people enjoyed the game just as much as I did felt like wrapping myself in a huge comfy blanket.
Mount & Blade: Warband (PC, 2010)
I was in college when this game came out and was endlessly fascinated by it. The graphics never looked good, but the gameplay more than made up for it. After playing "normally" for around 30 hours, I became interested in the underlying economics. Could I profit from the game's various resources by buying low and selling high? Indeed, I could, and I spent my next thirty hours with the game creating elaborate spreadsheets, trying to figure out the relationships between the traded goods.
Warband would spawn an idea for a post-apocalyptic trading game that never saw the light of day.
Played More Hours Than Strictly Necessary
You might ask, "How is this different from the hyperfixations category?" It's different because I have actual estimated figures for time spent on these games, and also, shut up, it's my list, and I can do what I want.
The Binding of Isaac (80 hours)
You're a little boy, and you shoot tears out of your eyes at your siblings. A game series you can point at and say: Yes, that is an excellent usage of the Decorator Pattern.
Receiver (106 hours)
Receiver is a game series about literally shooting yourself in the foot. You are spawned in a room with a random gun and have to fight turrets to collect audio cassettes. The catch is you don't just point-and-shoot. Oh no. If you have a revolver, you need to press E to open the chamber, V to push out spent rounds, G to collect good rounds from the floor, and Z to push in new rounds one by one. Next, you click the chamber back with E and (optionally) pull back the hammer with F. Pulling back the hammer is optional because if you try to holster your weapon with it cocked, you will shoot yourself and bleed out on the floor. Dumbass.
Receiver 1 was made in a week-and-change for the 7-Day FPS challenge. It looks like ass, it's fucking genius, and I've played it for checks notes 46 hours. If that sounds like your cup of tea, play Receiver 2 instead, which I've played for another 60 hours!
Red Faction: Guerilla (134 hours)
Did you know you can swing your hammer at anything in this game, and it will likely break apart in a fun and satisfying way? Anyway, just a fun fact for ya.
Just Cause (250 hours)
I'm driving a car! Now I'm on the roof! Now I'm flying through the air with my parachute! Haha, look, my car blew up! Now let's 100% this map.
Just Cause 3 is when this series peaked. Play it!
Rocket League (~550 hours)
It's impossible to measure how much time I spent with this game accurately. I played this on Steam, and with coworkers every lunch break, and on PlayStation, and at other people's homes. It's an incredible game and I'm shockingly good at it. I can't do aerial shots, but I compensate by creating opportunities for my mates and falling back when necessary. I was ranked Gold when I played ranked matches religiously.
Physical Media
These games are special to me specifically because I have them on disc. And even then, I usually got them when they were already discounted.
Kirby's Adventure (NES, 1993)
I lied before when I said I grew up without console games. We had exactly one console when I was growing up: a second-hand Nintendo Entertainment System, a birthday gift from when I turned six. It came with a substantial collection of games like Super Mario Bros. (1, 2, and 3), Gremlins II, and Shadow Warrior, but my favorite game was Kirby's Adventure. The colors! The enemy design! The minigames!! It was always my dream to make a game like this someday. When my mother got a dog, she named him Sparky per my suggestion, which was one of the enemies in the game.
Halo: Combat Evolved (PC, 2001)
When you are thirteen years old, Halo is the best goddamn game ever made. I loved this game for its pulpy science-fiction story, the awe-inspiring sight of the titular Halo, and that twist in the middle of the story that turns the whole thing upside down. A huge inspiration for me that showed me games deserve to be taken seriously as a medium. (Again, I was thirteen.)
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (PC, 2002)
The best GTA that Rockstar ever made, from when they weren't afraid to throw some wacky fun in their super-serious crime simulators. A fun and engaging story, an amazing setting, and that soundtrack! Vice City gave me nostalgia for a time period I was only technically alive to witness. (I was born in '89) What I loved most about the game was buying safehouses and businesses. You don't really see that mechanic in open-world games anymore! (Because it fucks up the economy.)
Fallout 3 (PC, 2009)
This game is special to me because I paid full price for it with my own money. I had recently decided to start paying for games instead of pirating them and created a budget to do so. I played Oblivion (pirated) to warm myself up to the idea of a Bethesda RPG, and this game felt like a huge step up. I loved the setting and the huge open world. Yes, Fallout: New Vegas is better in every way, but there's something special about your first Bethesda-em-up.
Thief (2013)
The first game I worked on professionally. It's extremely mid, and the development process was a complete disaster. Still, it's cool to see your name in the credits and to be able to point at the map screen you helped port to PC. The company paid for special editions for everyone when the game was released, so I have it for PC and PS4, and the box came with a really cool and thick art book. I've never actually "played" the game unless you count the dozens of hours I spent on tweaking the button prompts in the tutorial level.
Lewd
You might be surprised to learn I was always a Horny Little Guy. When I wasn't downloading games from KaZaA, I was downloading porn from KaZaA. Imagine my surprise when I learned that over in Japan, they had been combining my two main interests for decades.
Artificial Girl 3 (PC, 2007)
Illusion games are mostly the same, so the first one you play sticks out most in your mind. In this one, you walk around tiny areas trying to find one of three girls, and woohoo them until you have penetrative sex. It doesn't look great, and the gameplay isn't all that deep, but it's just hugely interesting as a concept.
Breeding Season (PC, 2016)
There was some huge Patreon drama surrounding this game, which is a crying shame. The artist basically bailed on the project and started working on their own game. But the mechanics of Breeding Season are super, super interesting. The idea is that you farm monsters for products like Dickwolf Cum and Cowgirl Milk that you sell for money. You can also breed your monsters, and the offspring will inherit traits from both parents. Combine this with a quest system where you need to deliver a monster with specific traits, and you have an interesting lewd puzzle game where the fail condition is creating a circular family tree.
Seed of the Dead (PC, 2021)
This game is just hilarious to me. It's a zombie shooter where you can boink your teammates. It's all played completely straight, and it makes no sense at all. It's not a good shooter, but it's an interesting way to weave in sexy mechanics.
Evenicle (PC, 2018)
I've been playing AliceSoft games for a long, long time, but this was the first one with an official English translation. I actually played this game in Japanese first and got quite far without understanding what the hell was going on. That's because I don't speak a lick of Japanese, but the mechanics were understandable enough for me to progress. But then you play the English translation and you realize that the bonkers story is actually one of the best parts of this game!
Ladykiller in a Bind (PC, 2016)
Ladykiller in a Bind is perhaps the first game that made me realize that horny games could also be art. It's a deeply moving story about a twin who pretends to be their brother on a cruise full of their brother's friends and lovers. This was the only lewd game I played together with my wife. She thought it was pretty good.
Afterthoughts
Alright, this took a lot more time to write than I anticipated! If you don't want to spend the same effort, let me know your favorite Game Maker game instead. š
