Video Game Art

I don’t know is Spec Ops: The Line falls into this category or not. As you progress through the game and your characters mental state deteriorates, most of the voice lines change from professional to aggressive and the loading screen tips break the fourth wall.

Braid is probably the first game I saw do this in a masterful way.

Right now I would suggest Helldivers 2. You are a young soldier fresh out of boot camp. Frozen and thawed out to carry out a suicide mission. The game constantly praises you and mentions how you are the best of the best. You are actually incredibly expendable and likely to die in less than two minutes. There is no "respawn," you are replaced by another Helldiver just like you.

Outer Wilds.

Anything I can say about this game is potentially a spoiler. Just play it. The expansion Echoes of the Eye is well worth the extra pennies as well.

Nier Automata It has brilliant blending between story, game play, combat, and even the music.

Buy Brothers, buy Brothers, buy Brothers

• TotalBiscuit

Subnatica. Every element of this game just fits together perfectly to create an atmosphere of isolated desperate survival.

Darkest Dungeon is seemingly only winnable if you can learn to treat your heroes as disposable, in your unhinged quest for occult power. The friends you made along the way become burned out husks that you discard. You monster.

Besiege makes you feel like some kind of goblin engineer whose mad genius will destroy the world.

Rain World uses clunky mechanics and dynamic AI interactions to make you feel like a vulnerable morsel in a hostile ecosystem of lively beasts.

Undertale's combat system artfully turns every fight into a metaphor for your relationship with the enemy.

journey does this in a cool way.

it has some replay value, but its sadly too short

Little Nightmares is one game which I adore for the way it marries gameplay, music, narrative and aesthetic.

Everything works together to build a sense of desperation and unease, which eventually through a twist gives way to a cathartic sort of dread as you realise there's no innocence to be found anywhere in the game.

Only monsters.

I would say Hollow Knight. Every new ability you get is from the environment, which changes the environment after you get it. One great example is that the room where you get the double jump is gusty, which disappears once you get the double jump. Those gusts then affect a different area, and any more would be semi-spoilers. Regardless, the whole game is wonderful, especially if you love Metroidvanias.

Gonna buck the trend of beautifully produced games with serious stories here and say MAGICKA. Magicka is a multiplayer PvE game where you can craft spells however you like on the fly, and friendly fire is enabled. This results in utter chaos. Players constantly kill each other, both accidentally and on purpose, the battlefield is full of absolutely random spell effects from everyone's spells, messed up spells result half the time in accidental suicide and the other half of the time in new absolutely devastating combos, and nobody is entirely sure what's going on in the story.

This is ludonarrative synchronicity, of course, because Magicka's story is a comedy about a bunch of underprepared incompetent wizards exploring a universe of mediaeval fantasy satire and slapstick. It's great!

Ixion - a by the numbers resource management game which uses narrative and music to become something very special, especially the way the decision making of the narrative feeds back into the mechanics.

Really surprised that nobody has said Dark Souls yet.

I finally started playing Tears of the Kingdom. The way learning new mechanics is woven into story is a lost art.

Tchia was that for me. There was no point in the game where I felt pushed to do anything I felt was out of character for her, and gameplay and storyline harmonized beautifully.

Runner-up would be Horizon Forbidden West.

Super Meat Boy is the first that popped into my mind. Not for the story, but the aesthetic and gameplay go hand in hand. Your character is rushing around the screen, dodging (or attempting to) all sorts of metal blades and spikes to reach the exit. As you move and jump off of walls your meaty body leaves a trail of red everywhere you go, and if you hit a blade you shower the area with it. If you win you see the path you left through the level in a very cool way, and the sound effects you make when leaving the meat trail sell the squishiness of your body.

The cartoonish and over the top gameplay goes hand in hand with the cartoonish and over the top graphics and sound.

That reply is the most AI sounding response I've ever gotten.

I'm not sure which of us that reflects most on 🤔