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Curated playlist

Video game spiritual successors

  • Assassin's CreedAssassin's Creed began as a Prince of Persia sequel with the prince cut out.
  • Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred HeroesEiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes passed $500,000 on Kickstarter in just three to four hours.
  • BioShockBioShock, a first-person shooter released in 2007, hides its sharpest trick inside a polite request: "Would you kindly." The phrase sounds harmless. In the game it carries a hidden weight, and it changes what the player believes about…
  • The Elder Scrolls V: SkyrimA modder made Falskaar for Skyrim as a job application to Bethesda. Bungie hired him instead.
  • Fallout (video game)Fallout, the 1997 role-playing game from Interplay Productions, opens with a narrator voiced by the actor Ron Perlman. In 2026 he recalled that the job paid "40 dollars and a sandwich." It is a modest origin for a game that players and…
  • Dragon Age: OriginsDragon Age: Origins got its title before it had any dragons. A random name generator produced the name first.
  • 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…
  • Honkai: Star RailHonkai: Star Rail, a free-to-play role-playing game from the Shanghai studio miHoYo, had 22.98 million people in mainland China pre-register before it opened its doors. Another 10 million signed up from outside the mainland. That is an…
  • Fatal FuryIn fan surveys, Fatal Fury's villain Geese Howard beat its hero Terry Bogard. SNK was surprised by his popularity.
  • Prey (2017 video game)Prey, the 2017 first-person shooter made by Arkane Austin and published by Bethesda Softworks, opens by lying to the player about where they are. You wake up as Morgan Yu in an apartment in 2035, and within minutes you learn the apartment…
  • Demon's SoulsDemon's Souls, a role-playing game for the PlayStation 3 made by FromSoftware, was announced in early October 2008 and put in front of the public at the Tokyo Game Show the following week. Sony producer Takeshi Kajii later described the…
  • Sleeping Dogs (video game)Sleeping Dogs, a 2012 action game set in contemporary Hong Kong, almost never reached a single player. On the 9th of February 2011, the publisher Activision announced that it was cancelling the project, which at that point carried the…
  • Shadow of the ColossusIn Shadow of the Colossus, a young man named Wander lifts his sword into the sunlight, and the blade throws beams of light across the land. The beams converge when the sword points toward the next giant. Sony Computer Entertainment…

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