Curated playlist

Video games featuring female protagonists

Star Wars (1991 video game)In the 1991 Star Wars NES game, Darth Vader appears only on the Game Over screen. Han and Leia get one life each.
Silent Hill HD CollectionKonami had not kept the final source code for Silent Hill 2 and 3. That left the remaster team fixing old bugs again.
Silent Hill: The ArcadeSilent Hill: The Arcade turns the horror series into a light-gun shooter. Players blast through the fog on a fixed rail.
Dissidia Final FantasyDissidia Final Fantasy began as a game about Disney characters fighting.
Dissidia 012 Final FantasyDissidia 012 Final Fantasy is both a prequel and a remake of the game before it. It launched on PSP in March 2011.
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred HeroesEiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes passed $500,000 on Kickstarter in just three to four hours.
X-Men vs. Street FighterX-Men vs. Street Fighter gave each player two fighters instead of one. Capcom's 1996 arcade game used a tag system.
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…
Silent Hill 3In Silent Hill 3, a roller coaster kills 17-year-old Heather Mason, who then wakes in a mall.
Final Fantasy XIIIFinal Fantasy XIII's heroes learn their mission is to destroy their own world.
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.…
Tomb Raider (2013 video game)In November 2010, Square Enix filed a trademark for a slogan, "A Survivor is Born," to promote a new Tomb Raider game. That game arrived in 2013 from the developer Crystal Dynamics, and it did not simply continue Lara Croft's story. It…
Resident Evil RequiemResident Evil Requiem sold five million copies in its first five days, which made it the fastest-selling game in the long-running Resident Evil series. Capcom released it on the 27th of February 2026, and critics greeted it warmly. It is…
The Walking Dead (video game)The Walking Dead, a 2012 episodic graphic adventure from Telltale Games, begins with a convicted criminal named Lee Everett in the back of a police car. On the first day of an outbreak, the car strikes a walker and crashes. Dave Fennoy…
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019 video game)Call of Duty: Modern Warfare earned more than 600 million dollars in its first three days on sale. Infinity Ward developed the first-person shooter and Activision published it. It reached PlayStation 4, Windows and Xbox One on the 25th of…
Resident Evil – Code: VeronicaIn December 1998, three months after she escaped Raccoon City, Claire Redfield raids an Umbrella Corporation facility in Paris. She is searching for her brother Chris, and she is caught. That capture opens Resident Evil Code: Veronica, a…
Tomb RaiderTomb Raider is a video game franchise that began in 1994 at Core Design, a British studio, and had sold more than 100 million units worldwide by 2024. Its pull was felt almost at once. In late 1996 and early 1997 the band the Prodigy…
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…
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…
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…
Alan Wake 2Alan Wake 2 cost a reported 70 million euros, which makes it one of the most expensive cultural products in the history of Finland. Remedy Entertainment developed the 2023 survival horror game, and Epic Games Publishing released it. Its…
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,…
Resident Evil 5In May 2026, Capcom's financial release reported that Resident Evil 5 had sold 19.01 million copies. That figure made this 2009 third-person shooter the best-selling game in the Resident Evil series. Capcom developed and published it, and…
Final Fantasy XIII-2In Final Fantasy XIII-2, Serah and Noel jump between eras to repair paradoxes in time.
Silent Hill: Shattered MemoriesThe 2009 horror game Silent Hill: Shattered Memories has no combat at all. Harry can only run, hide and use flares.
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight PrincessThe Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, a 2006 action-adventure game from Nintendo, owes part of its identity to a strange dream. Its director, Eiji Aonuma, dreamed during an overseas business trip that he was a wolf locked inside a cage.…
Final Fantasy X-2Final Fantasy X-2 built its costume-changing battles from magical girl anime and Charlie's Angels.
Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIIIIn Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, Lightning has thirteen days to save the world.
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…
Persona 3Persona 3 asks its player to press a gun-shaped device against their own head and fire. The device is called an Evoker, and the shot summons a Persona, a physical form of the shooter's psyche. Atlus developed this role-playing game, which…
Resident Evil (1996 video game)Resident Evil, the 1996 survival horror game from Capcom for the PlayStation, was never expected to become a hit. Its producer, Tokuro Fujiwara, said it was aimed at a core audience, and he thought it would sell only around 200,000 copies.…
Resident Evil 2Resident Evil 2 is a 1998 survival horror game made and published by Capcom for the PlayStation. Across every platform it reached, it sold more than 6 million copies. That success came from a second attempt. The sequel players bought was…
Horizon Zero DawnIn Horizon Zero Dawn, a 2017 game from Guerrilla Games and Sony, an infant is found before a sealed door inside a sacred mountain. She grows up as Aloy, an outcast of the Nora tribe, raised by a fellow outcast named Rost. Her world is a…
Portal (video game)Portal, a 2007 puzzle-platform game from Valve, begins with an artificial intelligence promising a silent woman named Chell a reward of cake. The reward is for surviving a long run of laboratory tests. Players soon learn to distrust that…
Puella Magi Madoka MagicaPuella Magi Madoka Magica hid its dark story behind cute, pastel marketing on purpose.
Final Fantasy IIFinal Fantasy II replaced experience points with stats that grow by use. Its designer felt it went too far.
Project X ZoneProject X Zone sold more than ten times what its publisher expected in the West.
Cardcaptor SakuraCardcaptor Sakura begins when ten-year-old Sakura Kinomoto accidentally opens a book in her basement. The book was made by a sorcerer named Clow Reed, and it holds a set of magical cards that now scatter into the world. Unless she gathers…
It Takes Two (video game)It Takes Two, a 2021 adventure from Hazelight Studios, is a video game that nobody can finish alone. It has no single-player option. Every player needs a partner, either sitting nearby or connected online, and the story simply will not…
Alien: IsolationAlien: Isolation is a 2014 survival horror game in which the monster hunting the player cannot be killed. Creative Assembly developed it and Sega published it. No weapon in the game ends the threat. The player can only hide, listen and…
Ghost of YōteiGhost of Yōtei, a 2025 action-adventure game from Sucker Punch Productions, begins with its heroine as a girl pinned against a burning ginkgo tree by her own father's katana. Her family has been slaughtered. Her home has been destroyed.…
Persona (series)In Persona 3, released in 2006, the heroes of the Persona video game series raise a gun-like device to their own heads and pull the trigger. The device is called an Evoker. Firing it is meant to overcome the user's cowardice, and what…
Hollow Knight: SilksongHollow Knight: Silksong, a 2025 Metroidvania from the Australian independent studio Team Cherry, spent years as a game people talked about more than played. On the 16th of January 2021, a YouTube fan channel called Daily Silksong News…
The Witcher 3: Wild HuntWhen The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt launched in 2015, Poland's prime minister, Ewa Kopacz, and its president, Bronisław Komorowski, visited the studio behind it. That studio was CD Projekt Red, and the game was an open-world action role-playing…
MetroidMetroid is a Nintendo science fiction series that owes one of its best-known twists to a casual question. Halfway through development of the first game, a staff member asked his colleagues, "Hey, wouldn't that be kind of cool if it turned…
Final Fantasy VIFinal Fantasy VI lets its hero fail to save the world. The story's second half is called the World of Ruin.
Silent Hill fSilent Hill f's first ending reveals the town's horrors were induced by red capsules.
Star Wars Battlefront II (2017 video game)A Hawaii lawmaker called Star Wars Battlefront II an online casino designed to trap little kids.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33In Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, a being called the Paintress paints a number on an enormous rock formation known as the Monolith. Every person at that age or older then vanishes. The event is called the Gommage. It happens once a year, and…
Control (video game)Control is a 2019 action-adventure game from Remedy Entertainment, and nearly all of it takes place inside a single building in New York City. From the street, the Oldest House looks like a featureless concrete skyscraper. Inside, it is…