Thread by @DominicTarason

At my keyboard, so I can do this justice now:

373 games (195 for Windows, plus tabletop stuff) for a minimum of $8, raising money for the Palestine Children's Relief Fund.

It's running for just over a week. Spread the word. In this thread, I'll highlight some of the best games

ZeroRanger - Legit one of the best shmups ever made, full of surprises and twists. The tiny two-person studio has since gone on to make Void Stranger, one of the best puzzle games ever made, too.

Don't worry about trying to 1cc this. Continues are part of the experience.

ReBop Blasters - One of the wildest local multiplayer games around. Not deep or complex, but mad fun if you've got friends and controllers around.

Dragonball style high-power battles accompanied by a dynamic free jazz soundscape synched to the chaos.

Brush Burial - A crunchy, twichy, low-fi immersive sim. Imagine playing Thief as the Alien from Aliens vs Predator.

You are a horrible, gem-hoarding, many-eyed swamp devil with a hooked prehensile tail. Explore your potential for larceny and laceration.

Kandria - Celeste meets Nier Automata. An open-world post-apocalyptic platformer about sad androids. Interestingly, there's almost no 'hard' gating or movement powers to unlock. You're free to explore wherever you like if you understand the movement tech.

Lucah: Born Of A Dream - Looks like a pencil scribble fever-dream. Plays like Dark Souls and Bayonetta's baby. Reads like Shin Megami Tensei with queer religious trauma.

A damn good game. Fast, challenging, heavy. Recently got an excellent sequel, Death of A Wish

A Short Hike - Peak Cozy gaming, with the emphasis on peak. A short exploration adventure about a silly cartoon crow that wants to climb a hill, and meets some charming, goofy folks along the way.

The videogame equivalent of a mug of hot chocolate with cream and marshmallows.

EXTREME MEATPUNKS FOREVER: BOUND BY ASH - The opposite of cozy. Anti-fash queer road-trip visual novel with mech battles. And the mechs are made out of flesh and bone. All the fun of Cronenberg and twice as gay as Clive Barker

This is part 2. You really should play part 1 first.

Teocida - Platform puzzling wrapped in fleshy nightmare eroticism, gnosticism, mysticism and lots of ARG-adjacent brainteasing. Completing the main stretch of levels is only half the game. Dare to dig deeper and you'll find a lot.

Part of a series, including Tamashii & Estigma

A Monster's Expedition - Another cozy charmer. A gentle (but mentally demanding) puzzle game about a weird monster looking for mundane treasures. Some funny writing and a relaxing aesthetic wrapped around some great brainteasers.

Fatum Betula - A weird, dreamlike PSX-styled 'walking sim' with equally balanced whimsy and spookiness. Frequently funny, often unsettling, always strange. Lots of endings, most of them... bad???

Underhero - A silly comedy platformer RPG inspired by the Mario RPG series, although a little bit darker. You're a minor minion for a dark lord. You managed to bumble into killing the hero.

Now you've got a sassy talking magic sword of legend, and a crappy boss.

Wandersong - Before the excellent Chicory, there was this. A platform adventure about a bard trying to avert the apocalypse by singing at it, much to the annoyance of most of the people they meet.

Funny, smart, heartfelt and not afraid to get extremely Too Real at times.

Bleed 2 - Much less edgy than the name suggests! Kinda silly, in fact. A great twin-stick platform shooter. Very Gunstar Heroes inspired, but with quad-jumping, bullet-parrying and slow-mo dodging.

Best played after Bleed 1 - they kinda feel like two halves of one game.

Anodyne - Recently remastered and still great. A dreamlike, surreal Zelda-ish adventure that frays at the edges the further you push. Once you start getting out of bounds, all bets are off.

The 3D, N64-esque sequel is fantastic too. Check that out.

Hill Agency: Purity/Decay - A cyberpunk murder-mystery adventure with noir aesthetics and a big focus on indigenous culture. Some really striking aesthetics here.

BOSSGAME - A clever RPG-themed arcade boss rush for both PC and Android. Great story about a pair of lesbian devil-hunters. Much angst, and some great narrative represented in the mechanics.

I'll probably add more to this thread later, but you really should just go diving into that bundle. There's a lot of cool stuff in there that I've almost certainly never played. Itch is just jam-packed with clever little games and ideas that get absolutely no coverage.

More picks!

Fortune 499 - A rock-paper-scissors RPG that'll probably be catnip for the Balatro crowd. As a fortune-teller, manipulate probability and your deck to become unbeatable in a game of luck, and don't get ground down by corporate awfulness.

Horizon Vanguard - One of my favorite VR arcade games, although you can play it with mouse-and-keyboard too.

It's like if Virtua-era SEGA made VR games. A fusion of shmup and lightgun game. Dodge and blast enemies in front using your hoverbike, and your pistol to shoot fliers.

Elephantasy: Flipside - Surreal isometric exploration platformer that reminds me of the games of my childhood - Dizzy, Head Over Heels, etc. Feels authentically retro.

I've only played a little so far, but I've heard this one's massive and surprisingly deep.

Coffee Talk - A non-alcoholic alternative to VA11HallA, with an urban fantasy twist. Serve up drinks for late-night city-dwelling orcs, elves and hipsters, learn what their deal is, and maybe even help with their problems.

There's a sequel out now, too.

They Bleed Pixels - Excellent precision platformer with some Devil May Cry-inspired juggle combo combat. Death comes easy, but you can make checkpoints so long as you've spilled enough blood. That and fun scoring encourage you stay to fight stuff.

Frick Inc. - Offbeat little vehicular puzzle game. Complete objectives on floating roads, but without direct driving inputs. Instead, each vehicle (and you're controlling several) has a separate control panel of levers, buttons and dials to manipulate with your mouse.

Arctico - Cozy but chilly. Run an arctic research facility solo, building, gardening, kayaking and dog-sledding your way around a vast cold expanse.

Cycle Chaser H-5 - Were it not for the sharp vector art, this could pass for an authentic Mega Drive/Genesis shmup, old-school (less 'bullet hell'-ish) design, chunky bosses and authentic FM synth music and all. Short and solid.

Hyper Gunsport - Like a fusion of Windjammers and Lethal League. Kinda like arcade volleyball but with guns. Twitchy arcade future sport, playable co-op or 2v2, plus a story mode.

The developers are now working on the RPG Demonschool, which looks excellent.

There are SO many more games in this bundle I've yet to play but look cool. I want to try Spring Falls, Bad Faith, Beglitched, An Outcry, Shutter Stroll, RUN, Imperishable Memories, Diamond in The Grave, Be Not Afraid, Project Malice, Blank Relish, Rituals In The Dark [Continued]

Maia, Beep's Escape, Ancient Observer, GB Rober, Drop It!, Endure The Swarm, Building 847, The Blocks Shoot At You, Pill Baby, After A While, Solas 128, Control: Override, Telelocation: Gemini and plenty more.

There's something for everyone here. Share, and donate what you can.

And here's a non-Twitter version of the thread if you want to share it elsewhere!

threadreaderapp.com/thread/1781661…

By the way, the Palestinian Aid bundle on Itch has been extended! It's running for 9 more days, at the time of writing. Go check it out, along with my shortlist of 25 personal picks from it.

$8 minimum buy-in, but give what you can. Lives depend on it.