I am a hobbyist who builds game prototypes in my spare time (I’m a web developer for my day job). The types of projects that most interest me are unique twists on established genres, and games that trust (and encourage) the player to find inventive solutions to the problems they encounter. I’m pretty new to this, so I’m still finding my specialties.
Until then, you can get a feel for my tastes from my top games list!
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - This game captures my sense of exploration in a really unique way. It strikes a perfect balance between letting me - and encouraging me to - do my own thing, and always having a clear and acheivable goal.
- Mass Effect 2 - The squadmates in ME2 are some of my favorite characters in all of gaming. It’s more of a third-person shooter with dialogue choices than the first Mass Effect’s ambitious and clunky (but still excellent) RPG gameplay, but everything that remained was polished and perfected.
- Outer Wilds - A game about exploring the solar system and discovering the secrets of an extinct alien civilization. It never holds your hand or tells you where you must go next. It’s about following leads and putting together clues, and dying in the most embarassing ways over and over.
- Ori and the Blind Forest - Fantastic platforming controls, Metroid-style progression, and a really clever mechanic where you can place a checkpoint anywhere at the cost of an in-game resource.
And some honorable mentions:
- Portal 2 - Clever puzzles and hilarious writing.
- Heat Signature - This is a game about putting together a perfect plan, watching it fall apart into pure chaos, scrambling to salvage your objective, and then jumping out of a window into the void.
- Supreme Commander 2 - An RTS that’s just casual enough that I can pretend that I’m good at it without being so casual that it’s just tedious. It’s especially fun with friends.