It's the time of year when everyone's talking a lot about gratitude. But games seem to rarely come up in these conversations, despite their significant personal and cultural impact. So, in the spirit of the season, eight of us at Polygon got together to create a list of the games we're grateful to have played. It's not an exhaustive list, of course — we'd be here all day if that were the case. Instead, we each picked one game that we feel lucky to have experienced.

Some titles introduced a brand-new game mechanic, some changed the entire industry forever, and some simply generated fond memories. But all of them have earned a special place in our hearts, and are definitely worth taking for a spin if you've yet to experience them yourself!

These are the games we're thankful for.

I’m thankful for Kingdom Hearts on such a level that I think about how grateful I am for this game on a weekly basis. My best friend’s older brother — the one who first got both of us into JRPGs — was the one who told us about it. My friend got the game first and immediately demanded I follow suit. I’d heard the legends of Sephiroth and Kefka but had never actually played a Final Fantasy game, and of course, I grew up on Disney movies. The second that iconic intro hit — the PlanitB “Simple and Clean” remix, Riku in the ocean with a massive wave behind him, Sora falling into darkness — I was a fan for life.

It’s the first way I actually fought Sephiroth, and that moment went on to dictate my exploration into the Final Fantasy series, a franchise I now hold very dear. It taught me the value of friendship and how to be a better person. It taught me, as an adult, to protect my light because it is one of the things that make me uniquely special. It’s a source of strength. The first game is brilliant in its simplicity, leaning on broad, universal themes, much like Star Wars with its light and dark sides, before the series later became delightfully tangled in its own lore.

I was 12 when I first played the game in 2002, and I am now 35; a closeted Disney Adult who makes fun of Disney Adults, with more than two Kingdom Hearts tattoos and another on the way. Bless you, Justin and Jared, and yes, even you, Tetsuya Nomura. —Isaac Rouse

I knew And Roger was about a dementia patient before I started, but I didn't expect it to be quite so knowing. In the first five minutes, it creates the uncanny sensation of being adrift in a reality you vaguely recognize, but can't understand, just by asking you a set of simple questions you can't answer. You're forced to pursue irrational lines of thought and do things that don't make sense as frustration mounts and panic rises before everything shatters and you........

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