games expressing unified design (worth playing)

Certain games have expressed something to me more distinctly than others. The expression isn't as narrow as a single emotion, but it feels more introspective and intentional than the broad assortment of procedural rhetoric necessary to make an action game coherent. I feel that these games manage to make a few elements amplify the meanings of each other, and successfully leave distracting additions and unrelated details behind. They seemed to be designed conservatively by starting with a concept and then building off of it's inherent logic. 

List items

• 

  1. Knytt Stories

  Very much worth playing, Knytt Stories have a tendency to surprise the player by accenting a minimalism of clarity (created by tightly pathed platforms) with archetypal settings and their ambient inhabitants. The stories begin and end with narrative, but the real story seems to be the flow of moods between symbolic environments. There is little use of words, and so when you finish a level, you find yourself wondering what elements of the game are effecting you so strongly yet subtly.

• 

  2. Chime

  Compared to both Tetris and Lumines recklessly, Chime only sticks out once you have played it long enough to let the rules emerge through disciplined and expressive design. At first the game seems too easy, but days in it becomes impossible. Figuring out the scoring system is the first narrative of the game as you experiment with the few signals it provides you; then the story becomes an excruciating understanding of the paradox which is risk/reward. Once the player has learned the significance of every form of feedback in the game, nothing seems unnecessary; and this sense of utility provides the game with an inherent weight where all the elements hold each other close in a collective gravity.

• 

  3. Portal

  Show me a man who doesn't think Portal is art and I'll show Roger Ebert. Portal is a gamer's art game and an artist's game. The narrative seems to have a recursive aspect between it and it's medium as the terms "player" and "test-subject" become synonymous. The setting, relationships and mechanics are ripe for interpretation ranging from the involuntary and stifling dominance of a virtual-world on a player to Portal establishing itself as a feminist masterpiece. Expectations are expertly crafted and then exploded in such a way that the player feels that their experience in unique. The game isolates you, and still you continue. Games rarely focus on emotions so pungent and inarguable. This one makes it fun. The challenges of the test sequence grow an independence in the player that can only result in an escape from the womb or a invalid stasis.