As I don't have anywhere else to talk at length about these titles (aside from steam reviews), I figure that I might as well share some of my love around

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Yume Nikki & Fangames~ Magical. I don't have much more to say (because it's impossible to express). GO PLAY IT. If you already finished it, go watch this video by NOMOIDA . Oh yeah, these games are great with friends, or with randos in the internet! (not sponsored by ynoproject, but i wish i was~). In order of favorite to least favorite, the fangames i've played are Re:in, Muma Rope, Yuque, Collective Unconscious, 2kki, Yume Tagai, Braingirl, Uneven Dream, Oversomnia, Lcd Dem, Amilusion, and some others i forgot about.

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Voices of the Void (version 0.5) ~ (WARNING: contains a rant!) A long while ago I tuned into one of Vargskelethor Joel's streams because I was pretty depressed and his videos were really uplifting for me. The game he was playing was Signal Simulator and I fell in love with that game. In the stream I watched happened one of the "bigger" moments that is now part of the edited video in his channel. Sadly, signal simulator hasn't really gone anywhere since, so a different developer made a game inspired by Signal Simulator but better in nearly every way, Voices of the Void.
I also found this game through Joel, and let me say...
playing it
was one of the BEST
gaming experiences
I've ever had.
Just, absolutely irreplicable.
The vibes are just so absorbing. The struggle is immense, the tasks are exhausting but pleasant, like climbing a mountain. And the game is not just self aware of that, it pokes fun of itself, all while throwing in a stupid amount of creepy/unsettling events (it managed to scare me the MOST out of any horror game. It was the picnic event. When I approached, I heard something running towards me incredibly fast. I felt like I was in REAL danger at that moment. ). It's just the perfect blend of silly, engrossing, and horrifying. I was excited to play more of it every single day. It felt like I lived there, maintaining my facility while whatever the ♥♥♥♥ there is outside is toying with me, not being able to do much while I'm not working except for buying some stupid crap, messing with the anomalies, and doing some funny game physics shenanigans. Also, the protagonist's ""placeholder model"" was just such a cutie, just a perfect vessel for the crap going on... and to me was a nonbinary icon as well. I REFUSE to ever change my steam profile picture again which portrays the cutie ^w^
Then version 0.6 came out and...
I don't know, I already felt like the devs were... on the incompetent side... due to patterns in the game's development and how they interacted in the discord (will elaborate)
Suddenly all of the charm I described was just gone. Yeah there were a lot of gameplay improvements, things I genuinely wished for, like the power generator, but none of that mattered, the game was dead to me.
The model was replaced... and yeah, a doll was added that portrayed the placeholder model... and if it were just that I wouldn't care. I'd get over it... a lot of other models changed too.
What REALLY got me was how the game felt like it was being built... to be streamed. And streamed by one person only, Joel. It got oversaturated with stupid memes, and content was being blindly removed as well. This just disgusts me. VotV was a really important game to me and for some reason none of that matters. It's barely a game anymore, the actual content is in Joel's channel.
My faith in these devs was already broken, and then I saw how they acted in the discord. Tldr: mentioning @everyone several times to get the game on r/place is not the type of behavior I expected from the developers of one of my all-time favorites.
And that's why one of my favorite games ever exists only in one version. I have a lot of good memories, but I will only return when the full version comes out.

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TreatRPG

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Rain World

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Pathologic 2

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Omori (before the stupid ass twist) ~ No joke the twist turned this game from a 10/10 to a 3/10 for me.

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Celeste ~ The more I get into this game the more I fall in love with it. I would write more about it, but the things I have to say change after every stage I beat. Perfect platformer. EVERYONE should play it.

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vivid/stasis

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Factorio

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The Void Rains Upon Her Heart ~ I found The Void Rains upon Her Heart just when I had given up completely on roguelikes as a genre. It rebirthed the entire genre, for me (after, funnily enough, The Binding of Isaac broke my heart and Voidigo tore it apart). It also happened to be a time when I gave up on shmups, as I find that they often take way too much effort to improve in. Having these two genres meet at all, is a match made in heaven for me. the MOMENT I opened the game and listened to the tutorial boss' music, while she moved around and the beautiful purplish background scrolled by... I... just, wow. I immediately stopped to give the game a positive review. It was just the most awe-struck I've felt in a game since I was a child, like if my deepest dreams for that "perfect game" were suddenly realised. I had such a wide grin, and I kept that for the next 10 hours of this game that I played. This game looks so good. Sounds so good. Plays so good. The themes and story it portrays are sincere in a way that I wish was more common. Fun fact, when I played this game, I related so much to the femininity portrayed, that when I found out that the developer is male, as silly as it is, I entered denial for one day straight XD. I had never felt so validated by any piece of media, ever. This game also happens to be HUGE for some reason, it's all just breathtaking. This is an incredibly fun and meaningful game that really deserves all of the support in the world. I wish more people got to know about it.

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Minecraft

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Rhythm Heaven Fever ~ At the start of 2024 I chose to buy a Nintendo Wii to play games like Mario Kart Wii, Wii Sports, and a few others with my sister. What caught me by surprise, was that the one game that made this purchase really worth it was RH Fever. I've always been obsessed with watching Youtube videos of this game, and I had completely forgotten about it until i went searching for what games I should get for my console, so it was a really pleasant surprise. I never considered myself a "rhythm game fan" for multiple reasons, but I consider myself changed. The overwhelming charm, good sound design, satisfying controls, and replayability of this game are all just... astonishing. I've managed to get an OK on Remix 10, around 30 medals, and about 5 perfects at the time of writing, and I don't plan to stop anytime soon. Also: I am obsessed with playing Ringside. I've done that minigame perfectly at least a dozen times already... I just wish there was a Ringside 2 (but playing the multiplayer version with two hands works well enough x3)

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Len'en ~ Len'en is a series that I keep coming back to. I would say that, objectively, it sucks, but it's the most endearing set of games I've ever played. The character art has some kind of dirty shading and the backgrounds have some really intricate patterns... I don't know why I'm fond of this amateurish artwork, I guess it's gritty, weird, and cute in just the right way. The music has awful mixing and wack-ass harmony, but has an unreasonable amount of detail put into it, all while being simple and catchy, perfect for a replayable game such as a shmup. And the game just feels good to play, all of the controls just feel right, and the flashbomb gauge is a really fun addition. The writing and whole vibe of the series is just funny, but also captivating... it's nearly dystopic, but the characters are way too stupid to care about it. Len'en is simply put, a perfect blend of many opposing sides. Only in my wildest dreams I feel that I could find some other game like this, or recreate the magic myself (it's a major inspiration for me in nearly every way, so maybe it could happen?). Of course, not all of the mechanics are perfectly tuned, the level designs suck, and the series still copies many of Touhou's tropes, but I like it regardless.

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Kerbal Space Program ~ While KSP has many flaws... it's a magical game. There's so much caution needed for the entire process... the rocket needs to be built perfectly, maneuvered perfectly, landed perfectly, all of that. If anything goes awry in any step, it's all over, and whatever you send into orbit is all you've got, that scrap of metal is the only thing that matters at that point. The sheer scale, unrelenting nature, and genuinely tiresome, formidable gameplay, it all adds up to make it feel just so much more wonderful when you see an unique little sphere coming closer to your view, ready for you to conquer, with the little left you have. Journeys like these are what legends are made of.

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100% Orange Juice ~ Chaotic fun with friends ^^ the game can be taken as casually or as seriously as you want, and even after playing on and off for three years, this game manages to be just as fun as it was in the very start~ I'm not a fan of the shop system in the game, but I'm willing to overlook that.