For me, Tunic. Well, it’s a bit more complicated. I was burnt out on soulslikes and wanted a break. Saw what I thought was a nice little Zelda clone, as in I was scrolling the Steam store home page and did a double take when I saw the one and only piece of promotional art for the game. That character design looked like it was one floppy green hat away from a lawsuit from Nintendo. Instantly downloaded it upon learning that the instruction manual played a big part in the gameplay.
I have fond memories of game manuals when I was a kid, coming home from not-yet-gamestop with a new game looking at all the concept art, or having my parents read to me from the super mario 3 manual when I was little. Anyway, long story short the game was another soulslike. Set in the ruins of a fallen civilization? Check. Spend currency to level up? Check. Opening up shortcuts to previously visited areas as you progress? Check. Difficult bosses? Check.
Oh, but what’s this? The whole game is in this indecipherable script that you have to decode? Oh baby! I spent way, way way too much time trying to decipher it. I got so obsessed that it was effecting my sleep and I had to uninstall the game for a few weeks. Never ended up solving it.
spoiler
I knew it was an English cipher from the beginning. Nobody ever goes full conlang, as much as I would love that. I got as far as deducing it was phonemic, as the same glyphs kept appearing before cleartext words, which I assumed were “a/an” and “the”, and the way “the” was written made me think it was two glyphs, one for the <th> and one for <e>. The last thing I got before giving up and looking it up online was one of hte ghosts standing next to the well in the village and repeating the same word three times. Of course he’s saying “well well well”.
Anyway, overall the experience was a roller coaster of mild interest to acute dislike shifting to all consuming curiosity and finally to exasperation. I don’t think a game has evoked that many varied reactions from me. The music is also amazing.
The Walking Dead (Telltale’s version). I expected zombies, and a bit of action and tension from trying to escape them and survive. What I didn’t expect was the emotional rollercoaster, and the genuine emotional reaction it got from me. One of the most powerful gaming experiences I’ve had.
I liked it the first time I played it, but then I decided to play it again to choose different things and realized the horrible truth that it’s all magicians choice. Who do you save A or B? You choose A then A survives and B dies and A is angry that you let B died, you choose B then you fail to save them but A saves themselves so A survives and B dies and A is angry that you tried to save B instead of them. It doesn’t matter much what you choose, the game will do the same.
That’s ok. I knew it wouldn’t hit the same the second time around, even if the choices were meaningful, so I never went back to it. It remains perfect in my memory
Similarly, The Wolf Among US was a pretty fun story. Could have gone without the quick time events though, but I really enjoyed the Fairy Tale characters on the big city environment.
One of the quick time events in Wolf Among Us is my favorite gaming moment.
Tap for spoiler
Beast attacks you thinking Belle is cheating on him, doesn’t listen to reason. Quick time events to defend yourself turn into quick time events to kick his ass. The game keeps going “Press A! Hell yeah, punched him in the head. Tap X for a flurry of blows!” That’s your only guidance, no paragon or renegade binary choice how to handle it.
If you nail all of the quick time prompts, you beat him nearly to death and Belle is horrified. Or, if you are thinking critically, you can opt to purposefully fail the prompts and stop as soon as the fight leaves him. You would think you’re failing based off of the prompts and noises, but he’s not a puddle of blood and you didn’t lose your sanity, and as far as I’m concerned it’s a much better outcome.