I have a pretty damn big library, or at least I think so. I've got some 165 games on Steam, plus another 40 or so from GoG. It's enough that firstly, I likely won't ever work my way through it, and secondly, I've accumulated some strange little oddities nestled among the Dooms and Total Wars and Civilizations. I have a terrible/awesome habit of buying blind, especially when something is on sale, perhaps in a manifestation of my desire to recreate the feeling of going to Funcoland and buying the game with the coolest box art from the bargain bin, only in a digital age.

So I got to thinking that some of these obscurities might be fun to discuss. At the very least, it will give us a chance to hear about games we otherwise may not have, except by a chance browse through GoG or something.

I've had one on my "shelf" for a while that I got because I had briefly played it when I was a kid and thought it was fun. I'm talking about Creatures. The first two games are available as Creatures: The Albian Years on GoG for $5.99, and they're somewhat well known, but it's a series I'm sure most younger gamers have never heard of at least. These are very, very weird games. At first glance, they seem very childish, but that only lasts until you start the game. The interface is one of the clunkiest I've worked with in a game. It runs in a window and is designed to resemble a web browser from the mid-90s. Yeah. But once you figure everything out, it'll eventually become as simple as, well, it's never simple.

This one is kind of the Sims turned up to 11. You get your cute little alien as soon as he/she is hatched, and after that you have to raise it. It starts out speaking in gibberish and more interested in a ball that's lying around than any plans you might have for it. Eventually, you can teach it to speak English, scavenge, and so on, ultimately breeding and creating a whole bunch of little Creatures.. Unlike the Sims, where you control most aspects of your Sim's life, you act more as a guide in Creatures. You don't control them, you raise them. You teach them to fend for themselves. The product is one of the most complex AI toys I've seen in a long, long time, and the game has tons of charm if you can get past the somewhat clunky interface.

So there's one from me. What do you have hidden away in the back of the closet?

Wow talk about blow some cobwebs out of my memories, I remember getting that game not long after it came out simply because of the AI. I had to just google it to make sure that I remembered what they were called "Norns". Don't know why I didn't play much of it? I guess it's floating around on a 3 1/2 disk somewhere, I just can't remember?