Addictive arcade rhythm game which, while simple on the surface, demands speed and precision once you move from easy/normal difficulties to hard/oni. The standalone package is solid at 74 songs available + a decent online mode + a bunch of rhythm heaven-style multiplayer minigames, but there's about $200 worth of DLC with all manner of songs, from anime music, to remixed classical pieces, to touhou music, to songs from the taiko series' past on offer, and many more (although be aware there's a number of songs only available in the Japanese version).

Everyone's favorite Japanese goblin enters a drinking competition against Gensokyo's finest alcoholics in a simple 1-button & arrow keys PVP game with banger art. The mugs they use last unreasonably long, I just hope Suika bought Pedialyte....

2019

NAIR : Platform Fighters :: Divekick/Footsies : 2D Fighting Games
While the game's only move is a neutral air attack (which the game comically includes a hitbox viewer for), there's a surprising amount of nuance to the movement, including fastfalls, dashdancing, wall jumps and wavedashing. The way the game handles health is also really cool; for each hit you make, you move your own healthbar into the opponents side, allowing for the pace of the match to literally go back and forth.

P.S. it's the price of a coffee and it's got rollback

A first person point-and-click hidden-object adventure game based on the children's book series, containing 3 different fantasy scenarios with pre-rendered CGI maps and puzzles that emulate the toy-diorama style of the books. There's the medieval sandcastle, where you need to save the princess from a dragon by collecting the keys you find from completing the hidden object puzzles, a Martian space colony where you need to find the energy spheres from the puzzles in order to fuel your rocket back home, and a mermaid ocean theme that I forgot everything about since I played this one way less than the other two as a kid (there's also 3 different difficulties for each scenario, choosing even more well-hidden objects for you to find in each of the puzzles once you've completed them).

A puzzle game where it's on the player to figure out the rules. I think a lot of indie devs could take inspiration from this one, as Linelith manages to stay fresh and engaging for its entire runtime.

A silly game where you become God, watching over an island populated with your miis go about their daily lives and influencing them in as benevolent or hostile way as you prefer. It's fun seeing the interpersonal struggles the miis undergo (or making them sing swears in the song editor mode), but the game suffers from "once you've seen all of the cutscenes and events once, you don't really have incentive to keep playing" syndrome and also "I can watch somebody play it on Youtube and pretty much get the whole experience" syndrome (shout outs to Vinny Vinesauce btw).

One of the most suck-ass 3D platformers ever made. Although, it's also incredibly entertaining in a so-bad-it's-good kind of way.

Gamble for your favorite fire emblem character pngs to play through a shallow story mode, or test your mettle in one of the horribly unbalanced PVP modes against one guy with a +10 copy of the new horribly unbalanced character they added 2 weeks ago. It was when I was grinding Hero Feathers in the middle of a church sermon when I realized that this game, like all gacha, is more chore than fun.

Build you demon-girl harem by completing deceptively devilish puzzles on a move limit, then woo the girls by responding to them as a suave Satan-stealing sigma male would. Helltaker's got stellar art/music/aesthetics to compliment its not-so-serious story, thunk-provoking puzzles (that you can skip if you're a weenie), some nice shake-ups to the gameplay that keep its short campaign exciting, and best of all, it's free!

Extremely simple, creative and charming two-button rhythm game who's 50+ songs are short vignettes that only have a couple of different patterns to memorize (favorites being Air Rally, Cheer Readers, Karate Man, Fork Lifters and Ringside). These songs culminate in the end-of-set "Remixes" use the cues from these rhythm games in an original song, sometimes with cheesy yet memorable vocals; absolutely worth a playthrough, you'll know pretty quickly if you want to chase all superbs, perfects, and cheeky bonuses jam-packed in this soulful-ass game.

A Subway Surfer clone with more interesting environments and power-ups than the original. The only time I ever did an in app purchase was to get a stupid minion costume that wasn't even good, and I've regretted wasting that $5.99 to this day.

A short prequel/demo game to "Kero Blaster," which features a unique scenario starring everyone's favorite pink secretary. Worth your 15 minutes if you're a fan of Pixel or the run-n-gun gameplay of KB.

The Super Mario Bros. of the Leapster L-Max. Proof that all good edutainment focuses on the "-tainment" before the "edu-".

2016

A cute RPG Maker trilogy about a charlatan and a lie-eating dragon loli solving mysteries in a unique fantasy setting, with some great character- and world-building. The artstyle, CGs, and animations are great, but the RPG side is pretty shallow and there's no option to read previous text; LiEat is short short, so get it on sale, and if you like the first one, you'll like the others.

Simple tower defense flash game where you build + upgrade monkey and monkey-adjacent "towers" to stop the bloon invasion. This was the go-to on CoolMathGames for playing during elementary school computer class, where I learned in many a 20-25 minute run that the Super Monkey was busted and the tack shooter is a worthless garbage investment.