My Personal Canon
fims books and games that have shaped how I think about design, storytelling, and the medium. the sort order is not authoritative, but higher in the list is more important and lower is less. the specific positions change from day to day, but the overall collection is stable.
300 items
Seven Samurai
1954
The template for every ensemble action film. Kurosawa invented the blockbuster.
Neuromancer
William Gibson
1984
Invented cyberpunk. The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
Escape From Tarkov
2017
Extraction mechanics as the future of gaming. The tension of risking everything you've earned creates stories no scripted narrative can match.
Stalker
1979
The Zone and its miracles. You read Roadside Picnic—this is its transfiguration.
Blood Meridian
Cormac McCarthy
1985
The Judge watches. McCarthy's most extreme and beautiful violence.
The Legend of Zelda
1986
The first time secrets felt everywhere. Every screen could hide something.
Blade Runner
1982
Scott's rain-soaked future. Vangelis and replicant tears.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Susanna Clarke
2004
The definitive modern fantasy. Clarke built an entire magical England with footnotes.
Street Fighter II
1991
The first time I owned a noob. The competitive bug bit hard and never let go.
Rashomon
1950
Truth as subjective experience. Kurosawa made unreliable narration cinematic.
Snow Crash
Neal Stephenson
1992
Stephenson's breakout. The Metaverse named before Facebook tried to steal it.
Super Mario Bros.
1985
The first time I saw smooth scrolling. A technical revelation that changed everything.
Pulp Fiction
1994
Tarantino rewrote the rules. Non-linear cool that changed everything.
The Peripheral
William Gibson
2014
Jackpot future. Gibson's return to sci-fi proper.
Tetris
1984
The perfect game. Will outlive us all.
Chungking Express
1994
Hong Kong romantic melancholy in two movements. California Dreamin'.
I Am A Strange Loop
Douglas Hofstadter
2007
Consciousness explained through self-reference. Changed how I think about thinking.
Doom
1993
Expanded on Wolfenstein's 3D promise. Genuinely scary at my age then.
Mars Express
2023
French animated cyberpunk noir. Proof that adult animation can still surprise.
Agency
William Gibson
2020
Alternate timelines. The Peripheral sequel expands.
Metroid
1986
The first time I really backtracked to accomplish a goal somewhere else. Spatial reasoning as gameplay.
8½
1963
Fellini's creative crisis as surrealist autobiography. The director directing himself.
The Name of the Wind
Patrick Rothfuss
2007
Kvothe's unreliable narration. Still waiting for book three.
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
1998
The first cozy 3D world. Soft, fantastic, dreamy. Still the benchmark for how a game world should feel.
The Seventh Seal
1957
Chess with Death. Bergman asking the big questions with unforgettable imagery.
Pattern Recognition
William Gibson
2003
Coolhunters and 9/11. Gibson in the present tense.
Metal Gear Solid
1998
A revelation of what story told through games could be. Kojima showed us the medium's potential.
Alien
1979
Haunted house in space. The perfect organism.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
Gabrielle Zevin
2022
Friendship and game development across decades. Finally, someone got it.
Phantasy Star Online
2000
The first global action MMO that hooked me. Playing through crude translators with people worldwide.
Solaris
1972
Tarkovsky's response to Kubrick. The ocean remembers what we can't forget.
Cryptonomicon
Neal Stephenson
1999
WWII and crypto intertwined. Stephenson's first doorstop.
Half-Life
1998
A great campaign, but it gave me Counter-Strike. The mod that ate years of my life.
Tokyo Story
1953
Ozu's quiet devastation. Family disappointment as universal tragedy.
The Expanse (Series)
James S. A. Corey
2011
All nine books consumed. The best space opera of its generation.
Minecraft
2011
Oh, games can be sandboxes? Let me throw nearly a thousand hours at making castles.
The Zone of Interest
2023
The Holocaust from the garden next door. Glazer's refusal to show what we expect makes the horror unbearable.
Dune
Frank Herbert
1965
The spice must flow. Political ecology as epic.
Portal
2007
Valve's perfect puzzle box. GLaDOS proved comedy could drive you through impossibility.
In the Mood for Love
2000
Wong Kar-wai's study of desire unfulfilled. The dress, the music, what almost happened.
The Story of Civilization (Series)
Will Durant
1935
Our Oriental Heritage through The Age of Napoleon. Eleven volumes of synthesis.
Counter-Strike
1999
The mod that ate the world. Dust2 is a cultural artifact.
Mulholland Drive
2001
Hollywood as dream logic. The key fits, then doesn't.
Perdido Street Station
China Miéville
2000
New Crobuzon's grimy baroque. Weird fiction arrives.
Rust
2013
All the panic of your first Minecraft night, stretched to two-week sessions. Paranoia while sleeping in real life.
Reservoir Dogs
1992
Where Tarantino started. Stuck in the middle with you.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
John le Carré
1974
The mole hunt. Cold War espionage at its best.
Wolfenstein 3D
1992
The first time I thought in 3D space in the back of my mind.
Three Colors: Blue
1993
Grief as the absence of color. Kieslowski's trilogy begins.
Piranesi
Susanna Clarke
2020
The House with infinite halls. Clarke's return was perfect.
Quake
1996
Oh man, we can aim up and down! True 3D combat finally arrived.
eXistenZ
1999
Organic game pods and reality levels. Cronenberg predicted VR's weirdness.
SPQR
Mary Beard
2015
Rome revisited. Modern classics scholarship at its best.
GoldenEye 007
1997
The first real local multiplayer addiction. Proximity mines in the facility.
Videodrome
1983
Cronenberg's media prophecy. Long live the new flesh.
The City & The City
China Miéville
2009
Two cities, one space. Genre-defying detective fiction.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
2017
Open world reinvented. Physics as puzzle solution.
Jackie Brown
1997
Tarantino's most mature film. Pam Grier deserved this.
Spook Country
William Gibson
2007
Locative art and espionage. The Blue Ant trilogy continues.
Diablo II
2000
The loot loop perfected. Baal runs at 2 AM defined an era.
The Brutalist
2024
Three and a half hours of American promise and betrayal. Corbet's immigrant epic through architecture.
Byzantium
Judith Herrin
2007
The forgotten empire. A thousand years of survival.
Halo: Combat Evolved
2001
The first serious competitive game. Friendships made and lost at Xbox LANs.
A Clockwork Orange
1971
Ultra-violence and free will. Kubrick's most controversial.
These Truths
Jill Lepore
2018
American history reconsidered. The full story attempted.
Shadow of the Colossus
2005
Boss fights as melancholy poetry. Fumito Ueda's minimalist masterpiece.
Parasite
2019
Bong's class warfare masterpiece. The stairs, the smell, the flood.
Anathem
Neal Stephenson
2008
Monastic mathematicians. Stephenson goes full worldbuilding.
Half-Life 2
2004
Gravity gun. Ravenholm. Dog. Gaming's greatest sequel.
Roma
2018
Cuarón's memory rendered in black and white. Cleo and the waves.
Foundation
Isaac Asimov
1951
Psychohistory and the fall of empires. The genre's foundation.
Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty
1992
The first RTS I ever saw. Herzog Zwei notwithstanding, this defined the genre.
Yojimbo
1961
Mifune as the nameless ronin. Kurosawa invented the Western's antihero.
The Three-Body Problem
Cixin Liu
2008
Chinese sci-fi arrives. The universe is a dark forest.
Red Dead Redemption 2
2018
Arthur Morgan's slow ride into sunset. Rockstar's magnum opus of melancholy.
Spirited Away
2001
Miyazaki's bathhouse. Animation as pure imagination.
Mona Lisa Overdrive
William Gibson
1988
Sprawl trilogy conclusion. The aleph in the box.
Super Mario 64
1996
3D platforming invented. Bob-omb Battlefield still feels like home.
Three Colors: Red
1994
Connection across generations. Kieslowski's final film and farewell.
The Quantum Thief
Hannu Rajaniemi
2010
Post-human heist. Finnish sci-fi at its densest.
Final Fantasy VII
1997
The moment gaming grew up for millions of players.
2001: A Space Odyssey
1968
Kubrick's monolith. HAL's red eye. The stargate.
Zero History
William Gibson
2010
Secret brands and military contractors. Gibson's fashion phase.
StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty
2010
More ranked ladder madness. Hit my personal best of Platinum as a Zerg main.
Eraserhead
1977
Lynch's nightmare of fatherhood and industrial anxiety. The baby.
Station Eleven
Emily St. John Mandel
2014
Pandemic as poetry. Survival is insufficient.
PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds
2017
Battle Royale creates highly shareable gameplay stories. Every match a new narrative.
Akira
1988
Neo-Tokyo explodes. Anime's arrival on the world stage.
Press Reset
Jason Schreier
2021
The human cost of game development. Industry journalism.
The Last of Us
2013
Joel's choice. Naughty Dog's masterwork of moral ambiguity.
Fight Club
1999
First rule. Fincher and Palahniuk diagnose masculinity.
Slow Horses (Series)
Mick Herron
2010
Jackson Lamb and the failures of MI5. All eight books consumed.
Journey
2012
Anonymous co-op that created genuine connection. The mountain awaits.
Princess Mononoke
1997
Environmental epic with no easy villains. Miyazaki's most violent.
Seveneves
Neal Stephenson
2015
Moon explodes, humanity survives. Hard sci-fi apocalypse.
Spelunky
2008
Procedural death labyrinth perfected. Derek Yu's masterpiece of emergent chaos.
Ghost in the Shell
1995
What defines humanity in the network? Oshii's cyberpunk philosophy.
The Art of Failure
Jesper Juul
2013
Why we play games we know we'll lose. Academic rigor meets fun.
Mass Effect 2
2010
The suicide mission. Every choice matters when lives are on the line.
Lost Highway
1997
Lynch's Möbius strip of identity. Dick Laurent is dead.
Einstein
Walter Isaacson
2007
Relativity explained through life. Isaacson's best.
Thief: The Dark Project
1998
The immersive sim that made you feel truly sneaky. Sound design as gameplay.
The Favourite
2018
Lanthimos in the palace. Three women, seventeen rabbits.
Embassytown
China Miéville
2011
Language as alien technology. Miéville's sci-fi turn.
Destiny
2014
PSO but with Halo guns. Great fun over a decade with the right fireteam.
Naked Lunch
1991
Cronenberg adapts the unadaptable. Typewriters and exterminators.
A Gentleman in Moscow
Amor Towles
2016
House arrest elegance. The Count abides.
BioShock
2007
Would you kindly? The twist that proved games could do literary narrative.
Cold War
2018
Pawlikowski's doomed romance across the Iron Curtain. Black and white, 4:3, perfect.
The MANIAC
Benjamin Labatut
2023
Von Neumann biography as fever dream. When We Cease to Understand doubled the fascination.
Outer Wilds
2019
The solar system in 22 minutes. Discovery as the only progression mechanic.
The Godfather
1972
Coppola's operatic crime family. The offer you can't refuse.
Swann's Way
Marcel Proust
1913
The madeleine. Memory's architecture.
Hollow Knight
2017
Metroidvania perfection. Hallownest's depths keep revealing secrets.
Close-Up
1990
Kiarostami's documentary about a man pretending to be a filmmaker. Meta before meta.
Southern Reach Trilogy
Jeff VanderMeer
2014
Weird fiction's modern peak. Annihilation and beyond.
Apex Legends
2019
Movement shooter perfected. Respawn's take on battle royale actually innovated.
Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
2019
You read the novelization. Tarantino's love letter to a lost industry.
The Island at the Center of the World
Russell Shorto
2004
Dutch Manhattan. New York's forgotten origin.
Slay the Spire
2019
Deckbuilding plus roguelike. Simple formula, infinite depth.
Poor Things
2023
You read the book. Lanthimos and Alasdair Gray's Frankenstein feminist.
Thinking In Systems
Donella H. Meadows
2008
Systems theory primer. How the world actually works.
Portal 2
2011
Valve's comedy sequel. Cave Johnson demands your attention.
Hereditary
2018
Aster's family nightmare. The click. That scene.
The Message
Ta-Nehisi Coates
2024
Continued reckoning. Coates travels and reflects.
Fallout: New Vegas
2010
Obsidian showed Bethesda how it's done. The Strip at sunset.
Holy Mountain
1973
Jodorowsky's spiritual assault. Alchemical insanity.
The Tainted Cup
Robert Jackson Bennett
2024
Murder mystery with magic. Bennett's mystery turn.
Dark Souls
2011
Taught a generation that difficulty is a design choice, not a flaw. The interconnected world design is masterful.
No Country for Old Men
2007
Coens adapt McCarthy. The coin flip.
This Census-Taker
China Miéville
2016
Fairy tale unreliability. Miéville at his most cryptic.
The Witness
2016
Line puzzles and enlightenment. The island teaches if you're willing to learn.
Millennium Actress
2001
Satoshi Kon's love letter to cinema. Memory and film collapse.
Roadside Picnic
Arkady & Boris Strugatsky
1972
Soviet sci-fi at its finest. The Zone and its artifacts haunt.
FTL: Faster Than Light
2012
Roguelike strategy distilled to its essence. Every run a new disaster story.
Blue Velvet
1986
Small-town America's underbelly. Heineken and Dennis Hopper.
Handmade Pixels
Jesper Juul
2019
Indie games and authenticity. The aesthetic of craft.
Deus Ex
2000
The immersive sim's peak. Every problem has multiple solutions, and the game respects them all.
Late Spring
1949
Ozu's father-daughter heartbreak. The vase shot.
The Plantagenets
Dan Jones
2012
Medieval England's bloodiest dynasty. Jones makes history vivid.
Sid Meier's Civilization
1991
One more turn. The game that invented a phrase and devoured entire weekends.
Perfect Blue
1997
Satoshi Kon's identity nightmare. The film that haunted Aronofsky.
Ulysses
James Joyce
1922
The mountain climbed. Dublin in a day, forever.
Undertale
2015
You don't have to kill anyone. Toby Fox's subversion of RPG violence.
Adaptation
2002
Writing about writing about writing. Kaufman's meta spiral.
Superintelligence
Nick Bostrom
2014
AI risk foundations. The paperclip maximizer.
Bloodborne
2015
Cosmic horror Souls. The night of the hunt.
Crimes of the Future
2022
Cronenberg returns to body horror. Surgery as the new sex.
1493
Charles C. Mann
2011
Columbian exchange. How the world became global.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
2015
Bloody Baron. Side quests that put main quests to shame.
Your Name.
2016
Shinkai's body-swap romance. The string of fate.
The Order of Time
Carlo Rovelli
2017
Physics made poetry. Time dissolves.
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
2019
Posture over health. FromSoftware's swordfighting thesis.
Arrival
2016
First contact as linguistics. Non-linear time as grief.
Sid Meier's Memoir!
Sid Meier
2020
The man behind Civilization reflects. One more chapter.
Papers, Please
2013
Glory to Arstotzka. Bureaucracy as moral horror.
Midsommar
2019
Daylight horror. Swedish grief cult as breakup movie.
Powers and Thrones
Dan Jones
2021
Medieval survey. Broad strokes, engaging prose.
Elden Ring
2022
FromSoftware goes open world. The Lands Between demand exploration.
Shoplifters
2018
Kore-eda's found family. What makes a family real?
The Last Days of New Paris
China Miéville
2016
Surrealism weaponized. Short, strange, perfect.
Celeste
2018
Precision platforming as mental health metaphor. The mountain is you.
The Godfather Part II
1974
The rare sequel that expands everything. De Niro's Vito.
The Singularity Is Near
Ray Kurzweil
2005
Exponential optimism. 2045 approaches.
Hades
2020
Supergiant's roguelike with a heart. Zagreus escaping hell, repeatedly.
M
1931
Lang's child killer hunt. Expressionism meets procedural.
Foundryside
Robert Jackson Bennett
2018
Industrial magic. The Founders series begins.
Dead Cells
2018
Roguelike Metroidvania. The perfect genre fusion.
Ex Machina
2014
Turing test thriller. Ava is always watching.
The Magicians
Lev Grossman
2009
Cynical Narnia. Magic school for adults.
Inside
2016
Playdead's silent nightmare. That ending.
Burning
2018
Lee Chang-dong's slow burn. Murakami adapted into Korean anxiety.
Lonesome Dove
Larry McMurtry
1985
The Western as American epic. Gus and Call ride on.
Dwarf Fortress
2006
Losing is fun. The game that simulates everything and expects you to embrace the chaos.
The Lighthouse
2019
Eggers' two-man madness. Pattinson and Dafoe, salt and spite.
Anna Karenina
Leo Tolstoy
1877
Happy families, unhappy trains. Russian literature's peak.
Limbo
2010
Silhouette horror. The spider still haunts.
Being John Malkovich
1999
Portal to an actor's head. Kaufman arrives fully formed.
Red Rising
Pierce Brown
2014
Color-coded dystopia. YA that doesn't feel YA.
Bruce Lee
1984
The first time I felt expressive fighting. Commodore 64 poetry in motion.
Black Narcissus
1947
Repression and desire in the Himalayas. Those eyes.
Leave the World Behind
Rumaan Alam
2020
Collapse anxiety rendered. The flamingos.
Total War: Shogun 2
2011
The series' peak. Sengoku Japan in perfect balance.
Oldboy
2003
Park Chan-wook's revenge opera. The corridor fight. The twist you can't unsee.
How We Got to Now
Steven Johnson
2014
Innovation history. Six technologies that made the modern world.
Disco Elysium
2019
The detective RPG that's really about being broken. Dialogue systems pushed to the limit.
Heat
1995
Mann's LA crime epic. The diner scene. The shootout.
A Memory Called Empire
Arkady Martine
2019
Space opera meets linguistics. Teixcalaan beckons.
Dark Castle
1986
First time I used a mouse to aim. Loved the precision it added.
Unforgiven
1992
Eastwood deconstructs his own myth. Deserve's got nothing to do with it.
Good Game, No Rematch
Mike Drucker
2023
Comedy writer on competitive gaming. Lighter side of esports.
XCOM: Enemy Unknown
2012
That's XCOM, baby. 95% hit chance means heartbreak.
Dune: Part One
2021
You read Herbert. Villeneuve's desert vision finally arrives.
Black Site (Series)
Dalton Fury
2012
Delta Force fiction. All five books finished.
Braid
2008
Time manipulation as metaphor. Blow's first statement on games as art.
Se7en
1995
What's in the box? Fincher's darkness establishes itself.
John Adams
David McCullough
2001
Biography as art. The essential founder.
Kentucky Route Zero
2013
Magical realist adventure gaming. The Márquez of the medium.
Crash
1996
Ballard's car-crash sexuality. Cronenberg at his coldest.
Band of Brothers
Stephen E. Ambrose
1992
Easy Company. WWII as band of brothers.
StarCraft
1998
My first ranked ladder. The competitive fire that would define decades of gaming started here.
Certified Copy
2010
Kiarostami in Tuscany. What's real in a relationship?
Midnight in Chernobyl
Adam Higginbotham
2019
Disaster journalism. The reactor's story.
League of Legends
2009
Even MORE ranked madness. Never got above Gold 1. I suspect I'm aging out of physically being able to compete.
The Tale of the Princess Kaguya
2013
Takahata's final film. Watercolor heartbreak.
Life 3.0
Max Tegmark
2017
AI futures mapped. Scenarios for the singularity.
Warframe
2013
Free-to-play done right. Space ninja grind that respects your time.
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me
1992
Laura Palmer's final days. Lynch gives the victim her tragedy back.
Control Freak
Cliff Bleszinski
2022
CliffyB's story. Unreal to retirement.
Ultima Online
1997
The wild west of MMOs. Before anyone knew what rules should exist.
The Thing
1982
Carpenter's Antarctic paranoia. Who goes there?
Brave New World
Aldous Huxley
1932
Soma and comfort. The dystopia we got.
Chrono Trigger
1995
Time travel done right. The JRPG gold standard.
Her
2013
Falling for an OS. Jonze's lonely near-future.
The Terminal List
Jack Carr
2018
Vengeance thriller. Military action done right.
Valorant
2020
Tactical shooter meets hero abilities. CS:GO for a new generation.
Ichi the Killer
2001
Miike's yakuza ultraviolence. Style over sanity.
The River of Consciousness
Oliver Sacks
2017
Final essays. Sacks on perception and identity.
DayZ
2013
The survival genre's progenitor. Broken, beautiful, terrifying.
The Night of the Hunter
1955
Laughton's only film as director. LOVE and HATE on the knuckles.
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
William L. Shirer
1960
The Nazi era documented. Comprehensive and terrifying.
EVE Online
2003
Player-driven economics and politics. The only game where spreadsheets create real drama.
Mother
2009
Bong's maternal obsession. How far would you go to protect your son?
The Bright Sword
Lev Grossman
2024
Arthur's aftermath. Knights after the king.
Team Fortress 2
2007
Valve's class-based comedy. Still running after all these years.
Fantastic Planet
1973
Laloux's alien surrealism. French animation at its strangest.
Every Man for Himself and God Against All
Werner Herzog
2024
Herzog's memoir. Madness and filmmaking.
Civilization VI
2016
One more turn, again. Districts changed everything.
Goodfellas
1990
Scorsese's mob epic. As far back as I can remember.
All Systems Red (Murderbot Series)
Martha Wells
2017
Antisocial robot saves humans. Murderbot would rather watch TV.
XCOM 2
2016
The aliens won. Guerrilla tactics against impossible odds.
Synecdoche New York
2008
Kaufman directs his own despair. Life-sized replica of a life-sized replica.
Deep Utopia
Nick Bostrom
2024
Post-scarcity philosophy. What do we want?
What Remains of Edith Finch
2017
Walking sim apotheosis. The bathtub. The fish cannery. The swing.
The Social Network
2010
Sorkin dialogue as weapon. Fincher's Facebook.
Disrupting the Game
Reggie Fils-Aimé
2022
Nintendo of America's president. The business of play.
God of War
2018
Boy. Kratos learns to be a father.
Only Yesterday
1991
Takahata's quiet nostalgia. Memory as present tense.
The Wager
David Grann
2023
Shipwreck and survival. True story as thriller.
World of Warcraft
2004
The MMO that broke into the mainstream. Countless nights in Molten Core.
Annihilation
2018
VanderMeer's shimmer refracted. Garland's body horror sci-fi.
The Lincoln Highway
Amor Towles
2021
1950s road trip. Towles' most ambitious.
The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
2002
Alien, unwelcoming, utterly unique. Modern Bethesda wishes it could be this strange again.
El Topo
1970
Jodorowsky's acid western. Midnight movie apotheosis.
The Dispossessed
Ursula K. Le Guin
1974
Anarchist utopia examined. Le Guin's political sci-fi.
Monster Hunter: World
2018
Boss fights as ecosystem. Hunting with friends across continents.
World on a Wire
1973
Fassbinder's proto-Matrix. Simulated reality decades early.
Meet Me in the Bathroom
Lizzy Goodman
2017
NYC rock 2001-2011. Oral history of a scene.
Resident Evil 4
2005
Over-the-shoulder reinvention. The attache case was perfect.
House
1977
Obayashi's haunted house fever dream. Japanese pop horror.
Burning Chrome
William Gibson
1986
Short stories where it started. Johnny Mnemonic born here.
Return of the Obra Dinn
2018
Lucas Pope's insurance nightmare. Deduction as art form.
John Wick
2014
Reeves' revenge ballet. World-building through action.
A Deadly Education
Naomi Novik
2020
Dark magic school. Scholomance subverts Hogwarts.
Fallout
1997
Post-apocalyptic choice and consequence. The vault dweller's journey into the wasteland.
Irréversible
2002
Noé's reverse-chronology assault. Time destroys everything.
The Gamer's Brain
Celia Hodent
2017
UX psychology applied to games. How players actually think.
Into the Breach
2018
Chess with giant robots. Subset Games' perfect puzzle box.
12 Angry Men
1957
One room, twelve men, reasonable doubt. Theatrical filmmaking perfected.
Exhalation
Ted Chiang
2019
Short stories as philosophy. Each one perfect.
Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn
2000
The gold standard for CRPG storytelling. Irenicus remains gaming's greatest villain.
Visitor Q
2001
Miike's family dysfunction taken to extremes. Unwatchable, unforgettable.
Titus Groan
Mervyn Peake
1946
Gormenghast begins. Gothic fantasy before fantasy.
Silent Hill 2
2001
Psychological horror perfected. James in the fog.
Possession
1981
Zulawski's divorce as body horror. Adjani in the subway tunnel.
Between the World and Me
Ta-Nehisi Coates
2015
Letter to a son. American racism's weight.
Crusader Kings II
2012
Medieval dynasty simulator. Your own family is the enemy.
Paris, Texas
1984
Wenders' American loneliness. Ry Cooder guitar and Nastassja Kinski behind glass.
The Satanic Verses
Salman Rushdie
1988
Controversial for a reason. Magical realism with stakes.
Rainbow Six Siege
2015
Destructible environments as tactics. Every wall is a question.
The Third Man
1949
Vienna in ruins, Welles in the shadows, that zither score.
Homo Deus
Yuval Noah Harari
2015
History of the future. Where Sapiens leads.
Overwatch
2016
Hero shooter that briefly united everyone. Pre-toxicity era was magical.
Yi Yi
2000
Edward Yang's Taipei family epic. Three hours that feel like life.
The Divine Cities Trilogy
Robert Jackson Bennett
2014
City of Stairs through City of Miracles. Gods and their corpses.
Hunt: Showdown
2019
Extraction before extraction was cool. Louisiana bayou horror.
Under the Skin
2013
Johansson as alien predator. Glasgow as hunting ground.
The Dead
James Joyce
1914
The snow falling. Dubliners' perfect ending.
Factorio
2020
The factory must grow. Automation addiction incarnate.
Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom
1975
Pasolini's final, unforgivable film. Fascism as atrocity.
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
V.E. Schwab
2020
Immortality's cost. Three hundred years forgotten.
Stellaris
2016
4X in space with Paradox depth. Endgame crises terrify.
High Life
2019
Denis in space. Bodily fluids and black holes.
Cinema Speculation
Quentin Tarantino
2022
Tarantino on Tarantino's favorites. Film criticism as memoir.
Planescape: Torment
1999
What can change the nature of a man? Gaming's most philosophical question.
Zodiac
2007
Obsession and unsolved mystery. The basement. Fincher's procedural.
Demon Copperhead
Barbara Kingsolver
2022
David Copperfield in Appalachian opioid crisis. Dickens updated.
The Cycle: Frontier
2022
Tarkov-lite that proved the extraction formula has legs.
The Rules of the Game
1939
Renoir's comedy of French society on the eve of destruction.
Waking Up
Sam Harris
2014
Spirituality without religion. Meditation defended.
RimWorld
2018
Colony sim as storytelling engine. War crimes: the game.
Mad God
2021
Tippett's stop-motion nightmare, thirty years in the making.
A Theory of Fun for Game Design
Raph Koster
2004
Why games work. Required reading for the profession.
System Shock 2
1999
SHODAN's whisper. The template for narrative horror that Dead Space and BioShock would follow.
American Fiction
2023
The absurdity of performing Blackness for white consumption. Sharp satire that earned every laugh.
Say Nothing
Patrick Radden Keefe
2018
The Troubles as investigative narrative. True crime that matters.
The Smurfs: Rescue in Gargamel's Castle
1982
The first time I made a character jump on screen. Where it all began.
Farewell My Concubine
1993
Chinese opera across fifty years of revolution. Chen Kaige's masterpiece of performance and survival.
Blindsight
Peter Watts
2006
First contact horror. Consciousness as bug, not feature.
Europa Universalis IV
2013
Paint the map your color. Grand strategy distilled.