I opened the page at exactly the right time, haha.

Next set of hints so I can stay ahead of the curve.

#20

-You can eat a fish to end things early

#19

-In something of a rare case, this game has an unreliable narrator as the main character

#18

-Shards of the primordial man became queens of the kingdoms

#17

-Moving the statues out of alignment changes the world

#16

-All life on earth was extinguished around a thousand years ago

Looking over my list, it is clear that I am a fan of strategy/tactic games (among others). Jagged Alliance is pretty old, but it still is unmatched in some qualities.

The game had you as an organizer of mercenary services and your client was a scientist who developed a cure from some mutation some trees on the island of Metavira were showing. But a former partner of him had sabotaged his work, stolen stuff and had gained control over the island besides a small corner left. So he hires you to get things back on track. And you go on a satellite phone app (or something) to hire mercenaries from an organization that offers people that are willing to shoot first and ask questions later.

And with that interface to A.I.M. (Association of International Mercenaries) the game starts showing it's uniqueness that I haven't seen in this combination in any other game I know. The mercenaries are all different, have all theirunique abilities but also quirks. And most just aren't working for an unknown client, you have first to successfully finish a few missions, before they are willign to join your team. But that is not all. Some mercenaries hate other and will only work for you if you fire the other first. Or let him die in the field. But too many deaths or too much hire-and-fire is also a reason they don't want to work for you.

In the field they are also showing their personality. Some might be more than willing to shoot the other guy they hate in the back. They have their unique way on commenting about the missions and what is happening. And sometimes they do what they want and aren't follow you command. Say someone is in a shooting duel with an enemy and you want to order him to a better position, they might stay were and keep shooting. This is happening not often, but it happens. More professional mercenaries abstain form such behaviour, but they ask for a much, much higher salary too.

So you start taking over the map sector by sector, managing the income of harvesting the trees, guarding sectors you have taken over from enemy attacks and slowly advance towards the enemy headquarters. But things can go wrong fast. Your mission might go well, but then suddenly something goes wrong. Your guy doesn't disarm the bomb and it goes off. One or two enemies are seemingly bullet-proof and just keep hitting your guys. Learn to save often.

Gog and Steam both offer this great game. So it is easy to try out. It works well in DosBox. Or you can play for free in the browser at archive.org.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W52AJktdt2g

So nobody got Jagged Alliance, what a pity. But at least one chance for my #22 left:

#22: Guessed by coolbeans: Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Befriend the companies pilot Faridah Malik.
Although being the third game in the series it is actually a prequel to the first game.
It is about the future of humanity and how humans can improve.

#21: Guessed by UnderwaterFunktown: Return to Zork

#20: Father and daughter have an epic fight using the same weapon.
A lot more children of your allies will join your ranks over time.
But first the parents have to fall in love.

#19: This game has a tumultous start with a living airship stealing people, getting attacked by dragonriders and switching dimensions, invluding a hellish one involving demons in the battle.

_{ranking in the guessing game, list so far}

Yes! I thought I'd be a bit more vague but nope there you are. You've now guessed 11 of my games.

Guessed by Veknoid_Outcast

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is one of the biggest monuments of my gaming life, if not the biggest. I took a while for this franchise, easily my favourite of all franchises, to finally appear on this list and even though this game is not my favourite game anymore overal nor was it the first game I ever played or anything, I cannot deny that I wouldn't have been here if it weren't for this. This made me a Nintendo fan, a Zelda fan, and a gamer. This game can also be credited with creating the template for probably the most critically acclaimed series ever for the next three decades at least and you can't really fault it in any way. For all intents and purposes it is a perfect game, so on second thought, why actually is A Link to the Past not my #1?

Guessed by Veknoid_Outcast

The magnum opus of Sony's best developer, even if I'm not a fan of where they went in the past decade, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves impressed me greatly when it first came out on PlayStation 3. The game's predecessor was cool and I had a lot of fun with it, especially due to the terrible Dutch language dub, but otherwise not truly special or worthy of ending up in a list such as this. This sequel however blew everything contemporary out of the water with its presentation, its set pieces and its gameplay polished to a T, with an engaging story and relatable characters to boot. Successor 'Drake's Deception' almost matches the greatness of this game, and some years I have it included in the list usually in the 40s, but not quite. I guess that collapsing building sequence really got to me.

Guessed by UnderwaterFunktown

When people were laughing about how bad Wii games looked versus the "HD-Twins", Nintendo came with Super Mario Galaxy as their answer. Needless to say, this is one of the prettiest games of that generation, regardless of the lower resolution, cleverly using the Wii's weakness as a strength by only focussing on tiny planetoids at a time. Nintendo's inspiration knew no bounds when they created this masterpiece, still one of the greatest platformers ever made. Its originality sets it apart from all the rest and the soundtrack is stellar. The sequel is pretty much just as great, they really did have too many good ideas to put into one game. However the sequel lacks the Observatory hub-world, which looked beautiful on its own and featured the secret but not so secret backstory as read by Rosalina, who was a great newcomer in the Mario Universe on her own. I really get a whimsical, fluffy uplifting feeling just thinking about this game.

Guessed by Veknoid_Outcast

How can one follow up a wildly acclaimed predecessor other than with The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask? Instead of trying to one-up their own earlier game they rightfully decided that they should just make something completely different. For me, this game also is the subject of something different. My aunt had a friend that worked at Nintendo (really, this time), and because my cousin couldn't wait to play the new Zelda, this friend somehow smuggled an early copy home to give to him on his birthday a couple months before release and naturally I came over to witness this. So we started the game and the cutscene showed the Ocarina of Time being stolen by the Skullkid, as you all know, but then when gameplay started we had an inventory full of Ocarinas! Pretty strange we thought. Then, when we grabbed a heart to refill life, Link would instantly die. Turned out this cartridge was glitched, and probably why the family friend could so easily smuggle it home. On the other hand, having this haunted cartridge, really fit the theme of the game.

That's the one!

20) Nier: Automata. Death by fish is clearly the true ending.

22 - Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Lets get in some more;

21 - I guess they couldn't really model his... thing, and couldn't really program a... stream, so the guy's just standing there. Guessed by Veknoid_Outcast - GoldenEye 007

20 - Some Magic Potion here, some Magic Potion there.
Hint 2: And then the AI adds some legions here, and some legions there.

19 - This game features a couple recorders that are originally from another game.

18 - As is rare for this series, the epic decisively dictates the end of the series antagonist, at least for one timeline. Guessed by Veknoid_Outcast - Twilight Princess (with a wrong hint)