Achievement Unlocked

Achievement Unlocked from 2008 took the freshly popular game achievements of the time and turned them into a joke - the whole platformer existed solely so the player could collect as many absurd trophies as possible, from jumping in place through dying in a specific way to completely pointless and tedious tasks that no one would think to complete in any other game. Finishing the level itself was secondary - the real goal was to collect all the unlockable achievements scattered across the simply drawn map.

With this, John Cooney aptly parodied the trend that spread in the latter half of the 2000s thanks to consoles like the Xbox 360, where collecting achievement points became just as important to many players as completing the game itself. Achievement Unlocked indirectly criticized this phenomenon by taking it to complete absurdity - rewarding players for activities that make no sense in a regular game, and that was precisely where the whole concept's main joke lay.

The game received several sequels that expanded the principle with new maps and further incredibly petty achievements, but the basic recipe stayed the same throughout the whole series. Achievement Unlocked today serves mainly as a reminder of a specific moment in gaming culture, when collecting virtual badges and points could motivate players just as strongly as the content of the game itself.

Why play it: Entertaining for players with a sense of self-deprecating humor about the gaming industry, who will appreciate the achievement parody more than a classic platforming challenge.