Knytt Underground

Nifflas' personal meditation on ambiguity, multiplicity, and faith and also turning into a super-speed bouncing ball. A triumph of world and level design, from the subtle and moody soundtrack to the semi-metaphorical photo backgrounds, all textured with platforming challenges, secret passages, and one-way paths that collectively form a language of traversal and wanderlust across the massive world. This is no Metroidvania—once you pass the intro chapters you can go anywhere as long as you have the skills and habits the game requires. The low-key realism of the dialogue is great, too—it turns out you can say a lot if you unburden yourself of the need to Say Something. There's no especially stirring lyricism or ecstatic prose, but there doesn't need to be. Other highlights: Utopioca and how it's laid out in the normal grid of the world instead of being “off the map”; the “pointless” but often interwoven sidequests; all the mechanically purposeless dead ends that provide something a little beautiful or haunting or sad or even just a sense of achievement for having made it that far.