I’ve never been too fond of video games. As a child, I remember playing a fair amount of Pharaoh (which was torture), The Sims (which was fun, but only the architect part) and Pokémon Crystal (which was too long) and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4 (which I just couldn’t keep up with) at my friends’ places, but I don’t think I was ever interested enough to ever ask my parents for a console or even a CD ROMs for my birthday. Being surrounded by fellow nerds in my adult life (primarily my former partner, who undeniably had good taste in games), however, I have inevitably tried a bunch and liked a few. This is a list of games I actually enjoy(ed) to the point of playing them on my own.

True delights

Tetris (1985)

Everyone knows Tetris and that is because it must be the best and most addictive game ever made. The first implementation I was exposed to was a (probably terrible) Flash game called Ivan Tirapacchi. A few years later I re-discovered the game on my cousins’ Game Boy (much better). Many years later I implemented my own version in Haskell (even worse). The best version I’ve ever tried, though, is probably the SNES one, which comprises a very fun 2-player mode that I sporadically still play on my Raspberry Pi.

Mother 3 (2006)

Mother 3 is and will probably remain the only RPG in this list. I had wanted to try it for a long time because I had been told multiple times that it’s the best that there is for the only gaming console I have ever had some interest for, the Game Boy Advance (SP). When I finally did that (unfortunately not on the original hardware, which i do not have, but at least on a nice free/libre emulator), I liked it well enough that, to my own surprise, I actually slowly played it through. It seems to me that Mother 3 is everything Pokémon games could be and decided not to be: the characters, humor (with occasional breaking of the fourth wall!) and attention to detail make it a joy to explore its little world, although then of course there are endless stupid battles that get in the way.

Papers, please (2013)

Another one of the very few games I ever finished and by far the most stressful: the player takes the role of an immigration officer of a dystopian state and face the consequence of every mistake and every choice. The soundtrack is a very short loop but it adds so much atmosphere that I think I never played without.

Mini Metro (2015)

Mini Metro is the only game I enjoy playing as much as Tetris, if not more. It is as satisfying simple yet hard to master and, on top of that, it is a masterpiece of sound design. I would argue that this is a touch screen game, and it makes me wish I had a tablet.

Hidden folks (2017)

Hidden folks is Where’s Wally in black and white on your computer (would not recommend playing on a smaller screen). If that does not sound compelling enough, let me add that every time you click on something it makes a sound, and each sound is a recording of a developers voicing that sound. My favorite part of the game are actually the recordings themselves (which are for sale separately), which have become my system sounds.

Baba is you (2019)

Baba is you is the most ingenious puzzle game I have ever come across, although I must admit I have not had the patience and/or sharpness to complete it yet. Levels are solved my manipulating the rules of the game itself, which are movable word tiles. The soundtrack is annoying but unneeded. Overall truly brilliant.

Tessel (2025)

An open source game at last! I would call this a meditative one: it has the geometric delightfulness of Tetris and the aesthetic appeal of Mini Metro, without the stress.

Honorable mentions

Daily word puzzles

Although I consider them digital crosswords rather than actual video games, I try every “daily word puzzle” kind of thing I come across and have a couple favorites:

  • Tiled words (very carefully crafted puzzles and also open source)
  • Ordlig (the Swedish version of Wordle).

Chants of Sennaar (2023)

A honorable mention goes to Chants of Sennaar. I absolutely love the basic idea behind it (field linguistics as a game!), but:

  • I would never play it alone because I suck at 3D games (in case you have not noticed, all other games in this list are rigorously two-dimensional). In fact, I mostly watched one of my best friends play it as we solved the puzzles together
  • after playing a few hours, we agreed that it was too easy (or rather, it did not seem it was going to become as challenging as we would have liked).