Stuff To Play

This is adapted from an older list I made a long while ago, and I haven't really done a full update of it yet. This'll keep you busy for awhile if you're a newcomer, though.

Links are to the relevant Baf's Guide entry.

• Intrigue! Varicella and Spider and Web are astonishing pieces of work. I can't recommend them strongly enough. Lock and Key had me laughing like a supervillain for weeks. Janitor, which fits the mystery into a long-running Generic Adventure parody.
• Wordplay! Or, more generally, messed up language puzzles. Ad Verbum is a fiendishly clever hack of a game, based on alliteration and word choice. For a Change has a very unusual writing style, and is simultaneously completely incomprehensible while still making perfect sense. (The game's prologue is: The sun is gone. It must be brought. You have a rock.) If For a Change is too comprehensible for you, and you want something that actually requires deciphering a language, try The Gostak.
• Short and silly games! 9:05, with the highest WTF/move factor of any game I've played. Enlightenment, which features the best light puzzle ever. Pick up the Phone Booth and Aisle, an extended in-joke, yes, but one that's pretty immediately accessible (and packed with wackiness even if you don't catch the references). Zork: A Troll's Eye View, which is only one joke, but one that's well-executed. Be sure to check out the online ABOUT messages.
  Then there's Shade and Photopia, which are short and evil.
• Classic games! Well, not classic, but classic-style. The Meteor, the Stone, and a Long Glass of Sherbet feels Zorkish, and gets a lot of the general feel right. Savoir-Faire comes highly recommended, for an amazingly complex magic system. The Earth and Sky series is a fun superhero romp. ASCII and the Argonauts goes out of its way to look like a game from the bad old days of the 80s (think 16K of RAM and tape storage), but it conceals some extremely fiendish puzzles within its humble trappings. The Erudition Chamber is a puzzle-game set-piece, but each puzzle has four solutions. You get ranked based on which style of approach you prefer.