I got a $20 eShop gift card for Christmas. I've already spent most of it, but I have a little over $5 left. Now usually, that won't go very far, but right now a lot of games are on sale, and a lot of them are under $5. I don't want to add any money to my account right now, and I don't really need to, so I'm specifically looking at games priced $4.99 and under. I already own many of the most-frequently recommended titles (Mutant Mudds, Gunman Clive, Mighty Switch Force, Liberation Maiden, etc, etc, etc), so no need to suggest those. :)

If I had a week or even a few days to make this choice, I would just look into and give a fair amount of thought to each game, but many of these sales end in less than 24 hours, and almost all of them will be over within 48. Thus, I turn to you, my friends in the VGChartz community, to help me make this life-changing decision!

And this might just turn into a fun discussion about some of the more obscure games on the eShop that can be gotten for about $5 or less right now.

So, these are the games I don't have that I'm currently considering:

VVVVVV (Nicalis, $4.99)
NightSky (Nicalis, $4.99)
Ikachan (Nicalis, $2.99)
Crimson Shroud (Level-5, $4.99)
Attack of the Friday Monsters: A Tokyo Tale (Level-5, $4.99)
The Starship Damrey (Level-5, $4.99)
Bugs vs Tanks! (Level-5, $4.99)
Mighty Switch Force! 2 (WayForward, $4.49)

I left out some games I'm not really interested in, but if you know of any under $5 that you really like (excluding the 4 named in the first paragraph), don't be afraid to recommend them anyway! :)

Of course, I have my own preferences and preconceptions among those listed games, but I don't want to involve those in the conversation. I want to know which of these games you guys would buy if you could only buy one. I want you to tell me which games you enjoyed the most and why, not guess which game I would like the most!

Thanks for the recommendations, have fun! :)

The two games I bought with the first ~$15 were Cave Story and SteamWorld Dig.

Will put my vote on VVVVV, awesome game and for 5$ it's a steal.
It's a niche game, superb music and sometimes frustratingly hard.. but rewarding when you finally beat the soab. ;)

I played Attack of the Friday Monsters: A Tokyo Tale. It is a fantastic game if you are into relaxing games. Its basically slight exploration mixed with card games like Yu-Gi-Oh/Magic but much more simplified... It has a nice little story and I would say it is one of the best, if not the best, Indie game on 3ds if you are into card playing/exploration games that is. Also it is very slow too (for better or for worse)

I highly recommend getting it if you are into games like that. Also, if you do get it, play it every Friday in real life time and you will be in for a special treat!

I might pick up one of those games before the discount is over.

I recommend Mighty Switch Force 2, I really enjoyed it.

I love VVVVVV...

I put $20 on my Wii U account and then couldn't find anything worth buying that I didn't already own. I've been saving it for a rainy day.

Well, it happens to be raining and Nintendo let us link our Wii U and 3DS recently. I think I'll follow your lead and use that $20 on the eShop after work.

The only one of those games I've even heard of is Mighty Switch Force 2 (which I also own) and VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV. Are the rest good?

Thanks for the responses, guys.

I think I must have played a VVVVVV demo at some point, because I remember playing a bit of it. As far as I can recall, I enjoyed the challenge. Great music goes a long way, too.

One of my friends picked up Attack of the Friday Monsters day 1. He liked it a lot, but he loves old tokusatsu films (with which I don't have much experience), so I'm not sure I'll appreciate it the same way. Still, I've only heard great things about it, and I do want to play it.

I enjoyed Mighty Switch Force, though I never managed par on every stage. The sequel has always been on my radar, though never quite made it into my "must buy" list.

Crimson Shroud curiously has the most votes, but no supporters in the comments. I've basically had my eye on every one of these games since launch, so I don't think there's a "wrong" choice among them -- each of them has appealed to me to some extent when I researched them.

I'm pretty sure they're all decent, but potentially very niche. The game I pick of these is my "and one" after buying Cave Story and SteamWorld Dig, something to play on the side in between bites of the main courses. If you're willing to part with up to $20, you could probably find something that would interest you more for a slightly higher price than the games in the poll -- maybe $7-8.

VVVVVV is a super-challenging platformer not unlike Super Meat Boy.
Friday Monsters is a slice-of-life card battling adventure game... sort of thing. It's weird but seems to be highly recommended.
Crimson Shroud plays like a tabletop RPG, and even looks like one -- characters don't really move, but wobble back and forth like gameboard pieces.
I don't remember anything about NightSky, but I remember having a passing interest in it. Ikachan is a bit like Metroid, but you're a squid. Starship Damrey has the spirit of a point-and-click adventure game. Bugs vs Tanks is a top-down shooter made by Keiji Inafune, the creator of Mega Man.

VVVVV is freaking amazing...I have spent over 100 hours perfecting and speedrunning that game...It's by far my favorite indie game...it's perfection incarnated.

So I say pick VVVVVV, this is coming from an unbiased person.