Curated playlist

LGBTQ-related video games

Hades IIHades II arrived without warning on the 5th of May 2024, and a rival studio rearranged its calendar because of it. Evil Empire had planned to release The Rogue Prince of Persia on the 14th of May. It pushed the launch to later that month…
The Last of Us (video game)The Last of Us, a 2013 action-adventure game from Naughty Dog, ends with a man swearing to a girl that his story is true. It is not. Joel gives the oath because Ellie insists on it. Everything before that moment is a long walk toward it.…
The Last of Us Part IIThe Last of Us Part II is a 2020 action-adventure game developed by Naughty Dog and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. It unfolds in a post-apocalyptic United States, four years after the studio's The Last of Us of 2013. Two…
Life Is Strange (video game)Life Is Strange opens in October 2013, as an 18-year-old photography student named Max Caulfield returns to Arcadia Bay, Oregon, to attend Blackwell Academy. During class she has a vivid vision of a tornado destroying a lighthouse and…
Fallout: New VegasFallout: New Vegas, a 2010 action role-playing game from Obsidian Entertainment, was built on a schedule that journalists called remarkably short for a major release. Publisher Bethesda Softworks allowed the studio 18 months. The game…
Assassin's Creed OdysseyAssassin's Creed Odyssey, a 2018 action role-playing game from Ubisoft Quebec, begins its family tragedy on the slopes of Mount Taygetos. A Spartan elder is about to throw an infant off the mountain. The Pythia has declared that the child,…
Dragon Age: OriginsDragon Age: Origins got its title before it had any dragons. A random name generator produced the name first.
Final Fantasy XVIIn Final Fantasy XVI, the hero hunts a fire monster that turns out to be him.
Stardew ValleyStardew Valley had sold more than 50 million copies by February 2026, and one person made it. That person is Eric Barone, who works under the name ConcernedApe. After college he could not find a job in the games industry and ended up…
UndertaleUndertale began as a request for US$5,000. When the crowdfunding campaign for the role-playing game closed on the 25th of July 2013, 2,398 backers had pledged US$51,124, more than ten times the goal. Behind the page stood Toby Fox, an…
Directive 8020Directive 8020 is a 2026 survival horror game from Supermassive Games, and it opens with a murder. In the prologue, sleep technician Pari Simms kills her colleague Tomas Carter aboard the colony ship Cassiopeia. The two are the only people…
Death StrandingDeath Stranding is a 2019 video game in which a courier named Sam Porter Bridges crosses a wrecked United States on foot, carrying a premature baby in a pod. The baby is not cargo. It is a tool, a companion and, as the story unfolds,…
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake EaterMetal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater sends the player up an extremely tall ladder for roughly three minutes, with a vocal theme song as the only company. Fans and critics singled out the climb as one of the series' most memorable moments. Some…
Hades (video game)Hades is a 2020 action game from Supergiant Games in which the hero dies again and again, and that failure is the point. Its hero, Zagreus, is the son of the ruler of the Underworld, and he badly wants to leave home. Every attempt turns…
Baldur's Gate 3Wizards of the Coast first turned down Larian Studios' bid to make Baldur's Gate 3 in 2014.
Final Fight (video game)Final Fight, Capcom's arcade brawler, began as Street Fighter '89. Operators said the name was misleading.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance IIKingdom Come: Deliverance II has a script of 2.2 million words, according to its lead developer, Daniel Vávra. That tops the previous record holder, Baldur's Gate 3, whose script runs to around two million words according to Guinness World…
Star Wars: Knights of the Old RepublicStar Wars: Knights of the Old Republic begins with a character waking aboard a doomed Republic capital ship, with no memory of who they are. The setting lies four thousand years before the Star Wars films. This one amnesiac premise…
Persona 4Persona 4 is a 2008 role-playing game from the Japanese developer Atlus, and it opens on a puzzle that sounds like a ghost story. In a small rural town, bodies are found dangling from television antennas, and no one can say what killed…
The Outer WorldsThe Outer Worlds is a 2019 action role-playing game from Obsidian Entertainment, and it begins with a history that never happened. In the game's timeline, U.S. President William McKinley was never assassinated in 1901. Theodore Roosevelt…
Cyberpunk 2077Cyberpunk 2077 broke a record within hours of its midnight GMT launch on the 10th of December 2020. More than one million people played it at once on Steam, and one million viewers watched live on Twitch. Together, the figures doubled the…
Granblue FantasyA live-streamed 700,000 yen spending spree forced Granblue Fantasy to apologize.
Assassin's Creed ValhallaAssassin's Creed Valhalla nearly had a female-only Viking hero. Senior Ubisoft executives disagreed with the team.
Starfield (video game)Starfield is a 2023 action role-playing game from Bethesda Game Studios, and it lets the player land on more than 1,000 planets. That scale raises a few questions. Why did a studio tied to Skyrim and Fallout 4 turn its attention to space?…
Horizon Forbidden WestHorizon Forbidden West cost around 212 million US dollars to make, which places it among the most expensive video games ever developed. At the peak of production, more than 300 full-time employees at Guerrilla Games were working on it.…
Disco ElysiumA man wakes in a trashed hostel room in the district of Martinaise, with a savage hangover and no memory of who he is. He does not know his name, his profession, or anything about the world beyond the door. This is how Disco Elysium…
Assassin's Creed ShadowsAssassin's Creed Shadows is the fourteenth major game in Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed series, released in 2025 as the follow-up to Assassin's Creed Mirage. It sends players to 16th-century Japan, near the end of the Sengoku period, and hands…