Spoilers ahead: for the puzzle and the movies/games
This page reveals all categories and answers for this puzzle. It also discusses plot details, story endings, and other spoilers for some of the movies/games shown.
easy
Classic 2D platformers
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All four are side-scrolling platformers released on cartridge hardware during the genre's formative decade, and each one introduced or solidified a mechanic the genre absorbed. Super Mario Bros. 3 brought the item-inventory system and world-map structure. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 introduced the spin dash and the first true co-op mode in the series. Donkey Kong Country demonstrated what pre-rendered 3D sprites could do on 16-bit hardware and built the animal-companion mechanic around them. Mega Man 2 established the selectable-boss-order format and the weapon-acquisition loop that defined the franchise.
medium
Games based on a film or TV property
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hard
Young protagonists in a world not built for them
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Each game makes a child or young adolescent the player character in a world where the dangers operate on adult or supernatural terms. Little Nightmares puts Six, a small girl in a yellow raincoat, inside an underwater vessel run by monstrous oversized adults who serve and consume. Limbo moves a boy through a world without colour or explanation where the only rules are physical and unforgiving. Omori traps its protagonist between a dreamscape he controls and a real world he cannot face, using a JRPG combat framework to model the way a child builds an internal fortress against grief. Detention locks two students inside a 1960s Taiwanese school occupied by spirits from indigenous mythology, with the horror of the White Terror period running underneath.
tricky
Real-time strategy games with memorable campaigns
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All four are real-time strategy games where the competitive multiplayer exists alongside a campaign that most players remember as a narrative experience first. StarCraft's three faction storylines ran as linked fiction told through mission briefings and in-engine cutscenes. Warcraft III built the fall of Arthas Menethil across its campaign in a way that made World of Warcraft's backstory feel earned before the MMO launched. Age of Mythology ran a mythology-spanning adventure borrowing from Greek, Norse, and Egyptian traditions, treating each set as a distinct culture rather than interchangeable flavouring. Company of Heroes depicted the Normandy campaign from the perspective of individual soldiers rather than strategic abstraction, which was unusual for the genre.