Painstation
This is not what I imagined when it was first brought up but it honestly makes a lot of sense. What better way to establish stakes for the game than putting your body on the line. People generally care about winning trivial games just for bragging rights so having a negative consequence for losing is a natural next step to engage people. You can be sure that anyone participating with this game is giving it their full attention.
Getting Over It
I have seen many people play this although I never ventured to try it myself (I’ve only played Mario Maker levels that are derivative of it). My understanding is that the controls are frustrating to pick up and it is easy to lose all of your progress and go back to the start. Because it is so difficult and annoying to progress in this game, the developer has made a final reward that is prefaced with a warning saying that people who are streaming shouldn’t show and spoil it for people who didn’t earn it themselves. Although I’m sure it is possible to find what is behind this wall somewhere online, I have always held off in case I do eventually decide to play it. I also remember that there is an unlockable golden pot for beating the game 100 times which sounds like an impossible amount considering that most people probably never even beat the game once. It is worth noting, however, that this game, like many others, quickly developed a community of people who like to speedrun it. This is especially impressive given the difficulty of the controls but obviously some people find it rewarding to play.
Calvin Ball
I grew up reading Calvin and Hobbes but I had never even considered trying to play it in real life before. I think that we as a class struggled with this because we are used to having clear rules set out for us. People had a natural inclination to want to fall into patterns of repeating what they were doing. It is admittedly difficult to rewire your brain to not do something twice.
Cow Clicker
This struck me as being pretty clever. The twist of irony that people came to play the parody game of the whole clicker genre is such a good narrative. I also think that the art for some of the cows is pretty creative. I won’t say that I am above playing a clicker game ever in my life, although I do think that after you’ve been invested in one, it is hard to want to play another. If Cow Clicker was the first one that I had ever stumbled upon, I can definitely see the appeal.
The Graveyard
I was previously familiar with this game because it had some popularity with some content creators when I was probably in high school. I think that by virtue of being something sold on Steam and that has semi realistic graphics, people have certain expectations of what the experience will be like. This made for some good gag videos of people who would go into the experience blind and be surprised that it is pretty limited in terms of what you can do in the game world. I do think that this still falls into the category of games because there is still player input and I honestly don’t think I knew that there were different endings that you could achieve.
Townscaper
I am surprised that I had never heard of this one before because it seems right up my alley. The animation of adding new things and having the existing structure adapt to it is so satisfying to watch. I could easily see myself spending a long time playing with this even though there isn’t a specific goal that you have to work towards.