7. The Binding Of Isaac
Alternate title: Mommy Issues: The Game.
Meet Isaac. His relationship with his mother could be described as less than ideal. She is a fan of a nondescript brand of dogmatic christianity (but it's probably Catholicism), and not much of a fan of anything else, including Isaac. One day, she decides that her god has commanded her to kill Isaac, so he runs into the basement to escape from her, and that's where your game begins.
This was the first roguelike I ever played. If you're unfamiliar with that term, it derives from the early-'80s ASCII-character terminal game Rogue (which you can play for free here), a game that uses procedural generation rather than static level design to introduce a random element into the game and - though it almost certainly wasn't the developer's intention - up its replay value.
This means that Isaac's levels are different with each play (or "run"), so memorizing layouts is not really a required skill. Instead, you must fire Isaac's tears in twin-stick shooter fashion at swaths of gross enemies as you battle through each level of the cellar and the Earth below it, facing bosses of increasing strength and grotesqueness with each further descent.
Yes, that is a blob monster made of blood, nondescript organs, and shit.
Your final stop (at first, anyway) is, of course, a showdown with mom, who appears only as a stomping cellulitic leg with varicose veins.
If you're a fan of the 2D top-down entries in the Zelda series, you'll feel mostly at home with the physics and general grammar here, even if you aren't hunting for specific treasures and the shooting is straight out of Robotron 2084.
There is also Greed Mode, which is a boss-rush style version that tosses increasingly tough swarms of enemies your way while occasionally giving you time to breathe and purchase upgrades.
I loved this game enough to buy it on three different platforms, so I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys roguelikes and can stomach all the blech.
