Crash and Cortex forced to work together across one continuous world, with an a cappella soundtrack sung by the composers.
The first Crash after Naughty Dog left, on the PlayStation 2: the same five-element structure, longer loading screens.
The party game of the run: twenty-eight minigames, the only Crash the original studio had no hand in.
Civilization rebuilt for a console pad and a two-hour game, without losing the one-more-turn pull.
Golden and dark ages, loyalty that can flip a city to a neighbour, and governors to hold it.
Trade routes, world congress and a culture victory you win with tourism; the expansion that finished Civ V.
Religion and espionage return, and combat is rebuilt around the hex map the base game shipped with.
A standalone remake of the 1994 game on the Civ IV engine: build a colony, then win a war of independence against the king who sent you.
Corporations, espionage, random events and the Advanced Start - widely held to be the best expansion the series has had.
Great Generals, vassal states and six warlike scenarios; the first of the two expansions Civ IV is now sold with.
Nine scenarios from the Peloponnesian War to the Pacific, and the rules changes that made Civ III worth returning to.
Bounce a character up a tower that has no top, chaining multi-floor combos while the floors scroll faster; Swedish freeware from 2001 that lived on school computers.
Thirty-two hills and a World Cup, the whole flight steered with one mouse gesture; the DOS game every Polish computer ran through Malyszomania.
Fifty-four levels of a motorbike on rubber suspension, collecting apples and touching the flower without landing on your head; one Hungarian programmer, and a time-attack scene still going.
The prequel a year before Shadow of Chernobyl: a mercenary called Scar, a faction war over the Zone you can fight on any side of, and emissions to find cover from.
A doctor searching the Moscow tunnels for his missing wife in 2028; Glukhovsky's own prequel, written as the origin story of Khan and played entirely in VR.
Learn one game well enough to route it, then submit a run with the timer visible - any%, glitchless, whatever the leaderboard runs.
A cabinet with real buttons and a real stick, whether it holds an original board or a small computer running MAME.
Take an app, a plugin or a piece of open source and localise it properly - the strings, the dates, the plurals - then send the translation upstream.
Fan localisation: pull the strings, translate them, fit them in a text box that was never designed for your language, and ship the patch.
Score a game, or write one chiptune track under the constraints of a real sound chip - three channels and a noise generator.
Put something finished in front of strangers, with a page, a price of your choosing and a download counter that is honest.
Build a whole game in a weekend to somebody else’s theme: Ludum Dare, the GMTK jam, or a jam in a room with other people.
A 3D model, a sprite sheet, an animation or a sound effect, made to the size and format a real engine wants and dropped into one.
One map, start to finish - blockout, lighting, playtesting - in a level editor or a game that ships one, from Doom to Mario Maker.
Change somebody else’s game: a balance patch, a total conversion, a Skyrim follower who talks back. Half-Life became Counter-Strike this way.
One murder, a grid of suspects, weapons and locations, and just enough clues to eliminate everything but the answer. There are hundreds, in books and one a day online.
The same idea drawn rather than written - panels connected by tubes and arrows that send you across the page or back three pages. Jason Shiga’s Meanwhile is the one everybody means.
A book you play: numbered paragraphs, a choice at the end of each, a pencil for your inventory and dice if it has them. Start with The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, Lone Wolf or any Choose Your Own Adventure.
A Russian primary-school teacher films his own classroom as the war turns it into a recruiting office.
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