‘My Favourite Games’ is a regular MossRanking feature which gives us a chance to get to know our fellow Spelunkers a little better. In each edition, we put the spotlight on one member of the community, as they pick three of their most treasured video games ever and give their reasons why. Featured members are allowed to pick whatever games they want... except for Spelunky. In the sixth entry, we go to Konato_K -- Reddit moderator, boss of the Spelunky Wiki, and all-around expert on the mechanics of the game. He also has some hugely impressive runs to his name. Here are Konato's three games: Final Fantasy VII (PlayStation 1, 1997) Final Fantasy VII has drawn plaudits from around the world in large part due to its ambitious storytelling, but Konato had a rather different perspective. On his first playthrough, his English wasn’t strong enough to understand the dialogue. “Can you think of playing and completing a whole game that is very story-driven in a different language you can’t understand? Then years later go back to it and be able to get the story and the whole plot, and everything starts to make sense?” Nevertheless, Konato had a blast with his first playthrough. “From what I could understand, you followed a group of people trying to save a world,” he says. “That’s good enough for a kid, isn’t it?” Konato was also complimentary about the turn-based combat, adding that his enjoyment from it lead him to try other games in the long-running role-playing game series. When Konato revisited the game with a considerably stronger grasp of the English language much later, what he experienced was a narrative which grabbed him from start to finish. “The story also has some ‘hidden’ things that you can only find by visiting certain places with specific characters or by doing specific actions,” he adds. “Those things made part of the story and explained other things that just aren’t explained otherwise. That kind of happens in a lot of games, but it somehow felt special in this one for me.” The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons (Game Boy Color, 2001) The Legend of Zelda is one of the most revered gaming franchises, and Konato actually lists the underrated Oracle of Seasons for the Game Boy Color as one of his favourites. “I never owned this game,” he says. “It was a cartridge that our cousin lent us for a while, and I played it so many times. It was the most polished 2D game that I played at the time.” Oracle of Seasons was released alongside Oracle of Ages. Seasons was more combat-oriented, while Ages had a greater focus on puzzles -- and Konato says it was Seasons’ approach to the action that truly elevated his experience with the game. “The combat was very interesting in the boss fights,” he explains. “It wasn’t just mashing buttons. You had to make use of the tools you found in the dungeons to be able to hurt the bosses. You can obviously find this in other games, but I felt like the way it was done with the 2D restrictions was pretty good.” Another aspect of Oracle of Seasons that stands out (shared with Ages) are the three animal companions Link can encounter during his adventure. Each one comes with unique abilities -- for example, Ricky the kangaroo can climb up cliffs while Dimitri, a reptilian, helps Link travel on water -- but they also cause the landscapes of certain areas to change. “The section of the map basically changed a lot depending on which one you had,” Konato comments. “Ricky had mostly cliffs and small holes, while Dimitri had pretty much everything surrounded in water. But they were not only useful here. They were other parts of the map where you could make use of them, or even just use them as combat companions if you wanted to.” Blockwick 2 (PC, 2015) Konato’s final pick is a neat puzzler which many people may not have heard of. Blockwick 2 is a simple yet colourful block-pushing game which asks the player to connect the colours. “It starts simple,” Konato says. “You just got to slide blocks and put ones of the same colour together.” Blockwick 2 has a huge 300 puzzles and took Konato 22 hours to 100%, but where it truly succeeds is keeping the gameplay fresh throughout the campaign with smart implementation of new types of blocks. “The difficulty increases with new types of blocks that make you see puzzles in different ways -- for example, blocks that make others ‘sleep’, sticky blocks that you can’t move directly, and caterpillar blocks that move like a train rather than a solid box,” Konato explains. “It never feels like you’re doing the same puzzle over and over again.” Konato is complimentary about the different levels of difficulty as well. In Blockwick 2, there are multiple ways to approach each puzzle, depending on how much of a challenge you’re looking for. “If you find a ‘hidden’ moon pearl, you can skip to the next level. It’s good for whenever you’re stuck with a puzzle,” Konato says. “You can complete puzzles the easy or the hard way. The easy way is to just put together the blocks of the same colour and that’s it. The hard way is to have the blocks placed in a way that they cover certain glyphs on the ground. I think the difficulty is just right, and it only gets to be a real challenge if you want to complete it the hard way.” -- Want to be featured? Contact me on the Spelunky Discord. Previous 'My Favourite Games' entries: ShinGraywords (#5) Meowmixmix (#4) MikeIsMyIke (#3) Twiggle (#2) Kinnijup (#1)