Sometimes you'll be playing a game and you'll come across a revelation that completely changes the way you look at the world and the story it's trying to tell.

Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass has FOUR of those. (Granted some more impactful than others but still.) It's beautiful and brilliant and funny and terrifying and tragic and haunting and BOLD in its storytelling choices.

It's a JRPG with such an elegant central gameplay mechanic that feeds into its themes in such a poignant way.

It's the kind of experience that makes you question if anything actually matters only to realize that actually EVERYTHING matters.

But most importantly... IT HAS A BUTTON THAT LETS YOU SKIP COMBAT IF YOU'RE AT LEVEL FOR AN AREA.

Play it. Play it. Play it. Play it. I got it for pennies as part of a massive itch.io bundle with thousands of games. It was bar none my favorite.

Play This is a place for me to tell you about games or game demos that I love and want everyone to play! Right. Now.

Year 3XXX, you discover an old computer, an antique, in some ruins. Surprisingly, it still powers up when you press its buttons. Wonder what you found within its files?

Play the game for yourself!

Y'all, this is a special game. Originally published in French, DOL-OS won Best Game of Concours de Fiction Interactive Frachophone. Luckily for me, @manonamora-if recently released a remastered and translated version of her game in English.

The narrative and story of the game are excellent, but I've gotta talk first about the UI and the loading screen because....dang. Just, mind-bogglingly good. I'm not particularly knowledgable/experienced/good when it comes to the combo move of css, html and javascript that is Twine and clicking Run Game for the first time--you know in Fallout 3 when the vault door rolls away and you're like wooooooah? It was like that. It's so impressive and neat and I've reloaded the game many times now just to watch it start. This game belongs in an art gallery for IF.

Once I picked my jaw up off the floor and started playing, another delight was in store for me. The game sparked the same kind of excitement and interest as Her Story. You are presented with a computer desktop and free to do with it what you will. It invites the player to explore (to snoop! I love snooping) and once you find what's there you can make of it what you will. There's no explicit instruction or implication in what kinds of opinions or thoughts you should form. Explore and think freely. And wonder, are you the player part of this narrative?

And solve puzzles! I love puzzles. I got so excited about the first one that I think I missed a lot of other world-building. Oops!

The more you play the more you learn about the history of this computer, of the world it came from and the influence it's had. Complex moral questions are raised again with no clear directive from the game. You'll have to decide for yourself how you feel about this machine...and what you do about those feelings.

There are so many great moments in this game. [SLIGHT SPOILERS] Though my favorite: while playing the game I enjoyed the ever-present sound effect of the gentle whir of a cooling fan--a nostalgic noise from my youth. Well into the game, a principal character starts suffering deleterious effects from something he refers to as "the Humming Machine" and I'm like !!! Wait, is that a gentle fan blade sound or am I hearing the Humming Machine, too?! It was so creeeeeeepy! Loved it! [/SPOILERS]

Also, there are minigames. Come on, people! Minigames!