I've been shaped by so many games. I wanted to make something like a "Top 5 Games that meant something to me" post, but I quickly realized that it was hard to boil things down that much. Instead, I wanted to do something more casual, something brisker, and just chat about some of the games that stuck with me over the years. Every game I've played has left me with something, no matter how small, but these are the games that captured me, games that connected with me, even for just a fleeting moment.
Civilization II: the Vast Unknown
I have a long history with the Civilization series, and it all goes back to the day that I was in a Staples store and found the CD case with "Civilization II" on the cover, amidst drawings of inventions and landmarks from human history. I didn't know what it was, but I knew that I wanted to give it a try. When I installed the game, the main menu music drew me into another world, an ancient world. When I started the game, seeing a lone settler alone in the middle of an unexplored dark void was the moment that left an impression on me. The mystery of that unrevealed space, the way that it spoke of discovery and let me explore, slowly uncovering a massive world--not just spatially, but technologically.
There's a lot to unpack about this series: it's built on myths of colonialism and exploitation, and it erases large parts of history--especially back in the early days of the franchise. It continues to carry a complicated relationship with me because of that, especially because even my initial awe and wonder at an "empty, simple world" at the dawn of human civilization is tangled up with those ideas. But I can't deny that specific narrative alchemy, that feeling that the game created. Civilization II gave me a sense of mystique, and that is an experience I'll keep with me.
Dune, the Board Game: the Weight of Adaptation
A lot of my college days have faded in my memory, but moments still stick out. One of those moments was the day that I and several fellow students went to our economics professor's house, to the basement where he kept a portion of his colossal boardgame collection, to play Avalon Hill's Dune: the Board Game. It was his original copy, straight from the 1980s. The layout, the text, the artwork all spoke to an older time of vintage science fiction, draping the game in old-school production design, and I could already feel the connection sinking in. Then, the game explanation began.
I quickly realized that the game was liberally doused in loving nods to the book, from rules like destroying the shield wall on Arrakis, or the special rule for using lasguns against shields in a battle, to the flow of the game, where the semi-predictable spice blows deposit valuable spice on the planet, ripe for harvesting. Most striking was the asymmetry of the game, where each faction not only had a unique setup, but also powers that evoked their position in the story. Harkonnen got to have their hands on a whole passel of traitors. The Fremen got to ride sandworms. The Bene Gesserit had a rule that let them foretell the winner of the game--and then supplant the victor if they predicted correctly.
It impressed on me the ways that games could use both atmospheric and mechanical elements to build the feel of a richly-detailed world. It was a truly lavish game, and in that regard I saw very little that surpassed it, at least until War of the Ring, but that will have to wait for another day.
Monsterhearts: the Tragedy of Feral Hearts
I've played a lot of roleplaying games at this point. Even at the time that I encountered Monsterhearts (which was many years ago at this point), I'd at least had some experience with games in different genres, games that mixed up the rules from your traditional form. I started tabletop RPGs with a campaign of "so it's Hunter: the Vigil, but pick whatever kind of supernatural being sounds cool, and we'll just staple it all together". Monsterhearts shocked me, it rattled me, and it showed me a visceral side that RPGs could possess.
I still remember the session. I was playing a Chosen, a type of character inspired by monster-hunters and monster-killing heroes. Along with several young monsters, I was working to unravel the secret of a murderous monster at our boarding school. Along the way, I got emotionally entangled with my vampire ally, something that my character was too confused to act on but too aware of to dismiss. We made it to the finale of our one-shot adventure, and faced off against the Big Bad.
And then, in the midst of the fight, as my Chosen landed the final blow, things went a little wrong and something snapped. She fell into something that Monsterhearts calls the "Darkest Self", a reflection of a character's worst impulses that compels and pushes them to do terrible things. And a Chosen? Their Darkest Self is to seek the most dangerous fights, the biggest enemies in the room. Now that the Big Bad was dead, that biggest threat was the vampire in the room. And the Chosen did as heroes do--she hunted the vampire. It was tragic, it was dramatic, it was horrifically messy and brilliant. It left me with an understanding that games could show you what happens when imperfect people try to use flawed tools to solve their problems. That you could witness what it meant to make the most out of a really bad situation, in visceral form.
Mystery, Awe, Heartbreak
At the core of it, these three games showed me moments that drew me into their world in different ways. In Civilization II, I was captivated by the mystique of exploration and development that it presented. In Dune, I was spellbound by the way that it created a sense of loving appreciation and reverence for a fictional world, through careful details. In Monsterhearts, I could get carried away by the dramatic flow of one mechanic snowballing into another and causing grave consequences.
What are games that stuck with you, games that drew you into their worlds? I'll be back with more.
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