Well, nice to see some nice things happening in the world fron time to time. Thanks for generosity, but not in.

As gaming suggestions?! Get Remember Me in a sale or Life is Strange. Short, but good (Life is Strange can be probably finished in a day). Both games have good stories, both can be completed relatively fast. For the lulz you can grab Tales of Borderlands (Telltale job, so as usual the story is more than decent).

You've got yourself quite a number of festivities tightly packed up.

First things first, happy birthday and the marvelous decade to follow (remind me to renew that in time)!

Then, say hi to your sister (no, not in that way, I know how to behave) and send her the warmest wishes for a fruitful and fortunate marriage!

As your GOG account also joins the party, let it feel welcome and may it never be hacked!

There is one game you don't seem to own, but I have to recommend it anyway. A novelist having a writer's block and a very definite deadline for his new book. Relationship with his wife is on a steady decline, while she is also at a turning point in her career and life. And their little boy is having trouble at school, both with friends and learning. And he needs his parents' help. So the family decides to rent a beautiful ocean-side house for the summer. Little do they know that the cottage bears a little secret of its own. Namely, for decades an unlikely inhabitant has hovered inside its walls. A discarnated spirit still lingers at the threshold between two worlds, desirious of helping the ones who cross its path. Your path actually. Yes, you're that ghost, with a role of exploring your latest "roommates'" hopes and wishes while being granted with ability to peek at their thoughts and memories, in order to help them make wise future decisions that will shape their as well as lifes of those around them. As in any situation dealing with human feelings and expectations, reaching a compromise may prove to be a challenging task. You (this time Babark, not the ghost) may also learn something about house's own past story as you unwind the plot behind The Novelist.

The average playtime should be around 5 hours, assuming you like to experience the tale fully, as anything else wouldn't make much sense for a story-rich game with emphasis on emotions. As it revolves around choices, it is multiply replayable with different outcomes or various ways to reach one.

Many excellent titles you have listed here, but one stands out to me at the moment, so I appreciate if even considered for The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition.

Good luck in becoming the very first corsair with academic degree!

I'll recommend Invisible Inc, a turn-based tactical game, where you take a team of special agents through a series of corporate espionage/heist missions in a cyberpunk dystopian world. I would classify it as a stealth-tactics roguelike with RPG elements. I consider it one of the most fun and challenging games of recent years.

The game is relatively short, with a standard campaign around 6-7 missions, and each mission taking about an hour depending on the difficulty and your playstyle. But it has incredible replayability (procedural generated missions) and can sink hundreds of hours in just the base game alone. Every campaign, success or failure, gives you progress towards unlocking new agents that offer new playstyles and strategies.

As for the story, its pretty good as a cyberpunk story, but as a roguelike, its really more about the story you the player create for yourself. In one campaign, you might have to sacrifice your best agent to distract the guards so the rest of the team can escape, and then decide if its worth the risk taking the team back to rescue the agent in a daring prison break, or move onto the next target without him. Every mission is high stakes and calculated risk, since the longer you stay, the more you can steal, but the more likely your agents will get caught.

Entering for:
Baldur's Gate 2 Complete
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
Sam & Max Hit the Road

Thanks for the chance!

Other than Christmas, I don't like December that much so I can't enter with a clear conscience.

You're not into 4x, so I'm not your type of gamer and can't recommend you a game with a clear conscience.


Not in, but +1 and all that.

Not in but thanks for the giveaway! +1

A great short game to play is Samorost and it's sequel, Samorost 2. And if you have a little more time, i highly recommend playing Machinarium too, a great game with a very sweet story which is told in a funny way. Also, Botanicula is a.... *OK, i'm stopping now*.

ps. No, i don't get paid by Amanita Design to promote their games.. I just like them! :P

My congratulations on all the happy December dates you have.
I'll endorse the Vythonaut's advice. And did you play Wadjet Eye's games? Those are great oldschool-ish adventures. (I'd suggest Gemini Rue or Technobabylon.) And you could always try Planescape: Torment (I know, I know, it's waaay too long, but the story!..) And what about The Longest Journey?
So may I ask for Loom or Syberia?
And: congratulations one more time!

Not in but I endorse the message above. Especially the offerings of Wadjet Eye like Primordia and Gemini Rue.

I guess I did phrase it badly! 4th decade...wow that makes me sound old :D.

The only 4x game I've ever liked (and not sure it comes under 4x really, but I load it up every year still for a marathon session) was Colonization, and that might just be nostalgia speaking because I got the game as a gift in a time when you couldn't ignore any video game you got :D. But while I wouldn't actively seek out the strategy section in a video game store, if I found myself playing a 4x game through some circumstances, I wouldn't flinch and grimace and quit...I've played Warcraft 1 and 2, some of the C&Cs, the Civs from 2 to 5, and still have 5 installed on my home PC for when friends want an online game....so if you have a suggestion from my list that you think is criminally overlooked and an incredible game I should try out at once, please do tell!

Also, still some awesome suggestions coming in, even from people who say they are not entering. Enter, people, not even all the gog games have been asked for yet!

Finally, a reminder, although by luck currently some suggestions (such as the Novelist, thanks for the heads up about that, v3, I had initially just looked at the ratings and dismissed it) seem to be games I already own, the games I'd want to play next would be ones I already own and have not yet played, as listed in the links in my original post!

Congratulations for 5 years on Gog, and good luck with your game... err.... I mean your thesis!!

I suggest for you "S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat". HowLongToBeat says it's 24h, even though it took me way longer because I was collecting useless items. (I like collections, e.g. all the game weapons in my backpack. See image).
The game is wonderful, vast open areas, freedom to choose your alignment, many side-quests, many weapons, interesting opponents but my favourite is the devastated and weird world of The Zone you get to wonder in. Those Russians really know how to draw a post-apocalyptic world.
Also, all the game weapons are based on real life weapons (with a great deal of details)

I'm in for "Zero Gear". Thank you very much!

Not in, thank you very much for your generosity, +1.

If you looking for fast fun entertaining game, looking at your list i would suggest Painkiller.

If you are a fan of Doom im pretty sure you gonna sunk your head in this one.

Running around with over-powered awesome weapon, grinding through hordes of monsters,
pretty hilarious havok physics ragdoll effect.
Reasonable difficulty curve, great graphic for its era (not butt-ugly 3d tho)
Its pretty much a run and gun shooter but with loads of weapons variety. Great music too if you are into heavy metal.

You need to kill Satan. Thats what Santa helpers trying to do during Christmas! Help them out!

Cheers!!

edit : Congrats on leveling up to 3rd decade. New challenge/challengers awaits!
edit again : im in for Baldur's Gate 2 Complete , Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis , Loom .

I wish you a happy birthday! My sister's birthday is also in this month, so double festivity! :-)

If you want a very, very short but interesting game (that is related to the current events), try Passage. It is free, also. You have no excuse not to try it.

Now, looking at the games you own... wow! OK. I prefer the longer, heavier games, but from the games you have not played at all and I recognize in your list, I would go with the Thief series, personally. It has a story, it has levels that you can complete at your own pace, and it does not force you to find the "perfect" solution. You have lots of freedom to play the game your own way, and that helps you to "flesh out" the story your own way. However, the story is not too strong, and the graphics may not be to your liking.

I also saw several games of the XCom family (including Xenonauts). Many of those are 2D, you also have some agency in story telling, but not much — we all know how it all turns out. And it may be a bit long to finish.

You seem to be describing a Graphical Adventure Game. While I do love that type of games, I'll have to admit that the last one I played (and finished) was Broken Sword 2. :-( I'll have to defer to other users in that regard.

I'm in for The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition, Sam & Max Hit the Road or Afterlife.

Not in, but I have two games to suggest (outside of your list sadly):

Bastion
A hack’n’slash with a strong emphasis on aesthetics and narration, quite short but easy to learn and open to multiple replays. Its soundtrack is quite a piece of true art too.

Shadowrun Returns
A turn-based RPG in a cyberpunk setting, once again with a strong focus on narration and a relatively short time to play through (15~25h). This one too has a really good soundtrack.

-----

Oh, and I’ll try my luck at giving you a chance to like a 4X again:

Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri
While it uses the classic Civilization mechanics, this game has this "little something" than turns it into much more than it looks like. Its story (yes, there is a story) and universe are deeper than in a lot of RPG, its characters (yes, there is real characters too) are more believable and overall better written than in most adventure games and got better voice acting than in a lot of so-called "AAA" games, its units design workshop (yes, you design your own units) is easier to use and with more possibilities than what most RTS propose (or fail to propose in most cases)…

This game is for me The Master Of All Games, The One That Makes All The Others Forgettable! My all time favourite game, the one I’ve spent the most hours in, the one I’ve been playing for as long as I’ve been playing video games (well, almost)… Even just hearing the music from the menu screen is enough to have me quit this universe and take a direct flight for Chiron, on orbit around Alpha Centauri.

There’s only one slight downside to this game, but it should be no problem for you: since I played Alpha Centauri for the first time, I’ve not been able to appreciate any other 4X game.

As Commissioner Pravin Lal himself (nearly) wrote in "A Social History of 4X":
« Once a man has changed the relationship between himself and 4X games, he cannot return to the blissful ignorance he left. Playing Alpha Centauri, of necessity, involves a change in perspective. »

Thank you again for all your suggestions and wishes! I'm going to have a lot of games to go through once this is done :D
They are outside my list only because I've played them both already, and I absolutely agree with you on them!
I'll keep Alpha Centauri in mind as well :D.

I didn't see Dust: An Elysian Tale on your list, but reading your description of what you were looking for that would have been my suggestion. Looks great, great characters, fun (if a bit cliche) story and super fun gameplay.

Driftmoon was nice, though I think I had overly high expectations going in. Didn't blow my mind, but yes, the story was nice.

Your Steam list is bleepin' humongous, so I'm sure I missed most of it. Of the games it doesn't look like you have any play time in, two that stood out to me as games I really enjoyed:

Orcs Must Die
Mass Effect 2

Dark messiah is fun too, though if you make a mistake in assigning skill points (you chose X when your build really needs Y) and don't realize it for several levels, you may end up having to restart when your character hits the wall.