Thief: The Dark Project
My brother had acquired a pirated copy for me. But the videos and dialogues had been stripped out to save space. He was gushing about how your footsteps would make different sounds on different floor types, but I already knew that from Jedi Knight. So I really didn’t get what the fuzz was about.
Don’t know how much time later I got a full copy and completely fell in love. It’s one of my all time favourite games. The atmosphere is the best. And the different footstep sounds actually serve a gameplay purpose.
Dwarf fortress I was always into it conceptually and think that all the under the hood simulation stuff is rad as hell and its fascinating how emergent narrative arises from such complexity.
Also love kruggsmash’s videos, the bastards a legend. He’s what got me into it.
But pre steam release I just could not get into actually playing it. Even with tile sets and such. I tried, I really did. But the horrid UI and high amounts of game ending bugs were just too much.
The steam release was the only game I’ve truly been hyped for in my adult life. I was giddy like a kid and got it the SECOND it released, and finally fell in love with PLAYING the game and not just hearing about it. Its so fun building up a fortress and getting invested in your little dwarves well being, hidden surprises they put in to spice things up. Every month there’s an update, even if is just a small peacemeal to let us know things are happening and adventure mode is coming along.
After playing for a while and learning enough to know how much you dont know, you can feel the limitless passion and raw intelligence that is the foundation for the insanely rich systems you work with. It feels like a living world in your computer. The closet thing to true technological magic I’ve ever had the pleasure of interacting with.
Witcher 3
Was overwhelmed with most of the game mechanics.
The binding of Isaac. I played about 10 hours of the flash version. 10 years later my friend gifted me afterbirth and repentance and I’ve played almost 1000 hours
Mount & Blade
There’s a cheat that puts the game into slowmo, and it was the first game that pretty much let you dive into an army of soldiers and take them all down with melee combat. It was glorious.
Plus there was a cheat that would let you teleport, so sometimes your enemies would go rally an army against you, and you could literally teleport behind them and take them on the hills.
Glorious game.