Yume Nikki; Yume Nikki is a ~8 hour explorative RPGMaker game created by Kikiyama.
Yume Nikki is about traversing the dreamscape of Madotsuki. It has an ending.
Yume Nikki now has an official English translation, and has been published on Steam by Playism 14 years after the original release.
Try to play blind; I might write a spoiler-free guide for collecting the effects at some point (EDIT: Past me is a liar), but it's still best to try to do it yourself.
Also, when you've finished, check out Dreamstuck! It's an mspaventure made by Shadok123 (very cool dude) and it's very good.
Kingdom Hearts 2 Final Mix HD; since it's a long-ass name, KH2FMHD is (a remaster of a previously Japan-exclusive expansion of) a ~40 hour action-RPG, directed by Tetsuya Nomura.
KH2FMHD is about the protagonist, Roxas, and exclusively, only, Roxas, going about the day seven days of his summer vacation.
The reason why it's on this list is because of how good the Final Mix-exclusive Critical Mode is. I explain my reasoning behind this over here, far too long to put in this page.
KH2FMHD can only be played if you own a PS3 (KHII.5 HD ReMIX) or a PS4, (KHI.5+II.5 HD ReMIX) although I significantly recommend playing on a PS4 over a PS3 due to bugs and slowdowns that can unfairly turn fights against you if you aren't aware of ways to counteract them.
The disc versions of both can be found for fairly low prices, I don't recommend buying it at full price digitally.
While I like Kingdom Hearts a lot, you don't need to play the first two games in order to get a good enough grasp of what's going on.
Worm; Worm is a 1.7mil word web-serial written by author Wildbow.
Worm is about a young parahuman with the power to control bugs. On her first night out as a superhero, Taylor Hebert takes down a notorious supervillian, and causes an unintentional power vacuum.
The dominos fall where they may.
Worm is an extremely lengthy read. The writing is bumpy, the pacing is a mess, and half of the story was added in forum posts after the fact - but it's a fun, exciting, and creative romp, and one that's well worth the overwhelming 1,680,000 wordcount.
It does take, like, a month to read though.
High Quality Literature
The Nonary Games; Nonary Games is a ~50 hour bundle of the first two games in puzzle game/visual novel series Zero Escape, 999 and VLR, both written by Kotaro Uchikoshi.
Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors is about nine individuals trapped in a large ship by an unknown person known as Zero. They have nine hours to find the number nine door and escape, before the ship sinks.
Virtue's Last Reward is about nine individuals trapped in a large facility by an unknown person known as Zero. They are forced to participate in the Ambidex Game, in which the players are forced to Ally or Betray.
There is a third and final installment, Zero Time Dilemma, available separately.
Oceanfalls; Oceanfalls is a currently updating self-hosted webcomic written and drawn by Nights.
Oceanfalls is a story about a human waking up in the monster world and journeying onwards, making friends along the way.
Oceanfalls is a really fun webcomic that I've been following since 2016, and I very much recommend checking it out!
A Beginner's Guide to the End of the Universe; AGBttEotU is a 780-page mspaventure made by Crippledvulture.
A Beginner's Guide to the End of the Universe is about Everyman and his growing entourage of allies treking through the endless white void that surrounds them to find answers and/or a way to survive.
There's also a sequel (Chairman Jack: Emerge) but it's pretty confusing, the images are dead, and it has also been on indefinite hiatus since March 2012.
High Quality Video Games
Wandersong; Wandersong is a ~10 hour side-scroller puzzle musical game, with Paper Mario-esque graphics, developed by Greg Labanov.
Wandersong is a musical adventure game where you play as a bard and you use singing to save the world, help people and solve their problems.
It's an absolutely fantastic game, with an incredible OST by A Shell in the Pit, that fits alongside the emotional experience that is Wandersong perfectly. Please, play Wandersong. It's worth your time.
Wandersong can be played on either PC, Nintendo Switch, or PS4, but if you choose to play on PC or PS4, be aware of some bugs you may encounter and how to get around them. Remember to install the latest patches.
Tower of Heaven; Tower of Heaven is a ~30 minute free browser platforming game developed by Askiisoft.
Tower of Heaven is about reaching for the heavens.
It's a short and satisfying flash-based game. The soundtrack is available here.
Cave Story; Cave Story is a ~8 hour metroidvania game developed entirely by Pixel, one guy, from 1999 to 2004.
Cave Story is about a scrappy amnesiac waking up in a cave, finding a gun, and saving a race of rabbit people, with the extension of shooting a lot of things. It's really good.
The path for the true ending is stupidly complicated; backup a save from the beginning of Labyrinth (if you can), and read this guide after you've gotten the normal ending. (DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN'T)
Also, Cave Story has a metric fuckton of ports, in addition to the original (free) version.
There's the Steam remake, and ports for the Wii, DSi, two versions for the3DS, and a remake for the Switch.
Mother 3; Mother 3 is a ~26 hour JRPG written by Shigesato Itoi.
Mother 3 is about Lucas trying to stop the Pigmask army's policing of the Nowhere Islands, and getting wrapped up in a plot to stop the end of the world.
Of course, Mother 3 has never been released outside of Japan to this day, limiting the only way to play it for non-Japanese people to patching a ROM, gotten from dumping an overpriced GBA cart where the developers get a 0% cut, or downloading a ROM where the developers get a 0% cut.
Check the linked website to download the English fan translation. Look online for fan translations to other languages. (i.e: the french fan translation)
Beglitched; Beglitched is a ~10 hour puzzle game made by Hexecutable.
Beglitched is about you discovering the mysterious Glitch Witch's (manipulates the fabric of the modern world to her will. kind of a big deal) laptop, and running her errands.
Fun fact: I am (as of writing this) one of only 3824 people who own this game. That's not even accounting for how many have even finished it.
As such, there are no guides. Anywhere. Just you and Beglitched's cyberpink minesweeping. Have fun! EDIT: While I greatly enjoyed my time with Beglitched, there's a specific segment of the game that is infuriatingly dependent on your RNG. I got lucky, chances are, you won't. There's great stuff in Beglitched, but know this before going into it.
High Quality Miscellaneous
The Adventure Zone: Balance Arc; The Adventure Zone: Balance Arc is the first 69 episodes of a podcast, surrounding a Dungeons and Dragons session played by the McElroy family.
The Balance Arc of the show is the first part of the show, about mercenaries Magnus, Taako and Merle going on adventures cooked up by 30 Under 30 Media Luminary Griffin McElroy.
The Adventure Zone was initially a one-time special episode of MBMBaM, a different podcast by 3/4 of the McElroys, before it became it's own podcast. Because of this, the initial episodes are of significantly lower quality than later quests of the show, with it getting progressively better over time, to the point Griffin McElroy began producing his own music for the show during and after the third quest. It's a long show, (80 hours long!) but is absolutely worth the investment.
The Adventure Zone is available in two main ways; you can stream the episodes on Spotify, or you can download the episodes directly from MaximumFun.
There's also an incredible official trailer for it, if you aren't sold. It does show off some story beats out of context, so if you want to go in fully blind you might not want to watch it.
If focusing on podcasts is an issue for you, (like it was for me) the incredible TAZScripts fanproject transcribes all the TAZ episodes as they come out! This was a very helpful tool for me as I was going through episodes, although there are a few small hiccups in the transcript from time to time.
