"Inklewriter" is also a nice, free and easy tool for writing interactive fiction of the CYOA variety. I think most of their games are made with the tool, even though they obviously look deep under the hood to work in more complex systems like those they use in 80 Days.

*clenches his windows tablet, runs sobbing to his room, closes the door*

Do you know the How Long To Beat-website?

I read Gene Wolfe's "Book of The New Sun" for the first time last year, and it really blew my mind — it's so rich, and inventive, that it really makes me wonder why I didn't find out about it earlier. Virtually every encounter with a new creature in the book is at the same time deeply strange, intriguing and…

I only played it two years ago, and loved it. The fan patch is a must, unfortunately, and there are two sections in the game that are notoriously bad and unbalanced — the sewers somewhere in the middle of the game and basically the whole end section. Trust me when I say that it's perfectly acceptable to use console…

Well, easy: Kentucky Route Zero did make a stealth-announcement again and just released their new interlude, Here and There Along The Echo. As usual, I don't have any idea what it is about, but it has none other than Will Oldham (!) as narrator.

Ok, I can get behind that!

I wouldn't be that negative, but it certainly is one game that I would have loved to love, but simply couldn't.

Honest question: can you tell me why so many people do recommend watching that Let's Play instead of, you know, playing the game?

If I remember correctly, really-not-that-bad indie-horror movie The Signal (2007) did a Did Dug and showed us that yes, a bycicle pump is indeed a viable tool for blowing up people's heads.

Great choices, all around!

There actually are some indie horror games trying this. I mentioned one above, It Moves, but that might be too minimalistic for some.

Wait, what? I played through Mario 64, but I have no memories whatsoever of that piano. In hindsight, I wonder though: is that a subtle Hausu reference?

I have a blown-up panel taken from David Boring, where one of the characters says to another: "Remember what they say: Every story has been told, so if you have to tell one, tell it well." I had it signed by Daniel Clowes, framed it and put it up above my desk, as a reminder to not be lazy. (It doesn't work, but…

What most people pointed out already: atmosphere (whatever that means, and it really is not a trivial question — sound, lightning, but there's more to it, I guess), a sense of being vulnerable: I would also add: a game that is conscious of what it can and can't do. That also means that it should not overstay its…

Kill Screen recently had a series of articles called

That's interesting. I always favoured Inaba by a fair margin. That might simply be because I played P4 before P3, but I think there is more to it:

Daaaw… that is really cute.
And it makes me all the more sad to think that we will maybe never see another Mother game, considering that we are at a point where games with visuals straight out of an animated movie are quite doable…

That's true — going for timelessness by being hard to pin down, in a way, a creative strategy that is incredibly hard to pull off, but can work wonders to make your work not look dated.

Edit: cut a lengthy section on why I, much like @southern_discomfort, can see the appeal of Let's Plays in theory, but not in practice.