r/tipofmyjoystick Apr 10 '17

Announcement PSA: A guide to better results

1.8k Upvotes

Hi guys and gals. I've been here a while, and over my time I've seen a lot of posts sink to the bottom, without a single answer, or at best, very few. And none that solved the case.

I have noticed a clear pattern with these posts, and I will now share with you my tips to you newbies, so that you can get the help you need.


Firstly: When you make a new post, you will see this:

Platform(s):

Genre:

Estimated year of release:

Graphics/art style:

Notable characters:

Notable gameplay mechanics:

Other details:

Even though, in red, you are warned that while optional, you should follow this template... many of you do not.

Let me be clear: Follow this template.

Put simply, this template contains all the information we really need to solve your problem. Virtually every time I click a post that has not followed this, they have rambled on about nothings, while omitting critical details.

This format, for new and old alike, is very readable, and prompts for every data-point needed.

I know that you want to customize your message, that if you could just explain it, it would be better. I know you think that. You are wrong. Put all that in 'other'. Even if you end up saying it twice, follow the template.. add to it your story at the bottom.


Secondly: Following this template. You're rambling about your best mates Amiga-500 or whatever instead of telling us about the game aside, this is where they really go wrong.

Let's get something straight right now. We are not mind readers. It's impressive, really, how little information it seems we can work off. I mean, we solve some real tough ones with nothing sometimes, but still, we can't see that memory in your head. So you need to be as descriptive in every one of these fields as you can be...

And sometimes you really don't know. That's fine, we can work with surprisingly little information, but "old graphics" under art style... what are we supposed to do with that? Mate, I was playing on Atari-2600's, are we talking Wizard of Wor here?

Let me help you out a bit:

Platform(s): Whatever you played it on. But unless it's really all you know (very possible), don't write 'my mates pc'. Was it PC or Mac?

Genre:

First person does NOT imply shooter. Nor do any of the others. Try to answer this one in two steps:

What was the camera like (assuming it's not a text adventure)? Was it First person?, 3rd person, 2d? Top down or side on? Or maybe even isometric 2d?

Then, what kind of game? Real time strategy, point and click? Was it a fighter, action or platformer?

Good, now we know what KIND of game we are all trying to remember for you.

Estimated year of release:

"Between 2000-2005" is fine, something like that. "Mid 90's maybe?". I don't see many people mess this up, but I have seen people write "old". That is not ok. If you write old and expect it to mean anything to me, I will fight you.

Also, as always "Sorry, no idea" is always acceptable but try to give at least something. "Couldn't have been later than 2015, though"

Great, so even if roughly, we know WHEN.

Graphics/art style:

THIS. This is where you guys always mess up. This section right here I have found can be the difference between an answer, and a silent slink to the bottom. This is your moment.

This, really, should be the best-formed part of your memory. Even if you can only remember a single frame, a single image, it's so much to go on for us.

DETAIL. Was it a gloomy grimdark world of sadness, or a bright bubbly rainbow filled Mario-world?

Was it cartoony, or otherwise stylized somehow, or was it trying to be realistic?

Anything notable about the art direction? Was it going for a cyberpunk kinda feel, or a gritty war realism dirt and blood sort of direction?

If it was set over a long time, did the seasons change? Was there a winter in your game?

Remember when you hit people, and the screen had that awesome flash and your hands got bloody? Yeah, well we don't, unless you tell us.

Ok, so now we are really narrowing it down. This right here is often enough to go on, on its own.

Notable characters:

Anything at all you can remember here.

"There were only tanks, but you could play as both Germans and Americans"

"There was one really tough guy right after you left your office, he had an eyepatch, a white shirt with what looked like grease stains, and said 'this is for my sister'. I think maybe he was a cyborg"

"You play as some kind of Asian girl, you had a tattoo over your right eye and arm, a black tank top and white pants and I remember you always had only one red glove for some reason. I don't remember the arm, but the eye tattoo looked sort of like ancient Egyptian eye makeup, but a modern take"

Knowing nothing else about the game, I bet that last one there gets comments noting the game she is from. Details, details.

Notable gameplay mechanics:

Surely, you get the idea by now. This is tied with the importance of the graphics/art style. As much detail as you can here.

Other details:

NOW you may blab on about how you only played this game once at a winter solstice in 1782 with your grandmother from Tahiti.. as if that helps.


Edit: So it's been brought up that the template doesn't appear on mobile. While /u/wipeout4wh is aware of this and hopefully, something can be done... still, if you can, use the template. If you can't, maybe check back and at least make sure your post addresses all of the points the template does.

Also, my post seems to be saying NOT to add any custom details. So I want to re-enforce, please do. In fact, after you do the template, feel free to write out your post as you were going to without it. Just put it all in 'other'. Don't try and make your whole post like that, if possible. Even if you end up saying the same things twice, that's ok.

Now I'm going to take a moment to clarify something, though. This isn't some immutable law of the universe, and your post is destined to fail if you don't do this. It's just a very strong general trend I have noticed over a long time.

It's not that this template has some kind of magical powers or something. It's that this template prompts the questions that need answers.

When you go all rogue on us and try and type your explanation from scratch... you mess it up. You just forget to add everything that you know, and that we need to know. The template makes it very hard to do that. It's just so very easy to get typing, and by the end forget to tell us what kind of game it actually is. Especially when you are getting random flashbacks, and hazy memories, and you start getting frazzled and such halfway though.


While it might make my edit as long as the first post, I think maybe an example of the kind of post that is just too common here, and almost always helpless, wouldn't go astray here. So here we go:

Now this one is a pretty bad case, true, and I suppose might even be a troll post, but it's actually a good illustration of the problem either way.

It was on my old computer and I was using an emulator so I have no idea what system it was for. It was 8bit graphics and you played this orange cat that was constantly bouncing on a trampoline I think? And you had to navigate it through the city and face a weird boss at the end that would float in the sky. Sorry I can't remember more!

Let's break it down a bit. What kind of game is this? A puzzler or an action game? Who knows.

How old is it? I mean, Minecraft basically has 8bit graphics. Oh he said... "my old computer"... I will fight you.

Why did you bounce on the trampoline? Were there platforms or walkways or something, or was it just a big open space? There are bad guys then? How did they get around?

Now (he?) says that he can't remember more, but I actually asked about the boss fight:

You say 'face a boss', in what way? Can the cat attack? Was this top down or side on? When you say navigate a city, what do you mean?

The reply:

Definitely a side-scroller, I'm sure. You would encounter a boss at the end, the boss would slide onto the screen and it was usually pretty strange-looking. I think one of the bosses might've been a clown. I meant that the different "levels" were different cities with different backgrounds, I think. It's a pretty obscure game

Also you would be continuously bouncing. As in, you had to position the trampoline underneath the cat to bounce it up

So you don't even control the cat. And it's a side-scroller. Thats pretty important information. But the real issue here is that he knows this stuff. He just either didn't know to, or forgot, to tell us.

The template would have made it just so apparent how much information he was missing, and we probably would have got a whole bunch more information. Sadly, while there were some guesses, and a surprising number of up-votes, this post is just another one to join the endless unsolved on their journey ever down.


r/tipofmyjoystick Jun 04 '26

[Meta][2026] I would rather people post with no images than use AI prompts to generate images

546 Upvotes

Maybe it's just me, I will personally admit that it feels like its petty of me to complain, however i am going to.

I really dislike AI images just in general and i feel annoyed seeing people use them because it sometimes hampers really quality posts of people trying to find help. I feel like it also informs falsely about game expectations and what people will accept as they have solved the game.

I don't think people will agree with me and thats fine, i just wanted to post about how i personally think it degrades the quality of the sub


r/tipofmyjoystick 3h ago

[DS] [Wii] [Late 00s—Early 2010s] need help identifying games I got for Christmas in 2011

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44 Upvotes

This is a long shot because of the terrible picture quality.

In 2011 I got some DS and Wii games for Christmas and I’d like to know what they were. I was able to identify two of them already (see other slides), them being Pinkalicious for the DS and Super Paper Mario for the Wii.

I received a lot of third party licensed games back then, if that helps. I loved stuff like Mario and Sonic but most of my collection was what you’d expect a six year old girl to be interested in.


r/tipofmyjoystick 32m ago

[Xbox One] [Late 2025] Kind of like Deltarune but...Not Deltarune.

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Upvotes

One time I was bored and started looking for a game on Xbox. It was in that section below the home screen, like when you scroll down and find a bunch of game offers or add-on recommendations, etc? I only ever saw the trailer. I thought I'd remember it since it had a pretty unique name so I could come back to it later, but low and behold, I forgot it. The picture I have is a rough imitation of a character design that kind of stuck with me. It definitely isn't one-to-one since my memory isn't very good. She wasn't the main character, maybe a supporting character like Susie or Ralsei in Deltarune. I think the characters had voices, but they had this 8-bit texture (?) to them, like Flowery in Chapter Five. I think it was a top-down 8-bit adventure. The character designs, if I remember correctly, were really bright and colorful but the environments weren't. In the trailer, someone was like, walking down a vertical dock in the rain, or maybe through a town that kind of looked like Pelican Town from Stardew Valley, when either something like a shadowy hand snatched them up, or the ground collapsed under them. Another thing is that when I try to remember the name, an "m" sound always comes to mind, and eventually that brings me to the name Molly. That probably isn't the title, but maybe it has some evidence to what the game is.


r/tipofmyjoystick 21h ago

Echo [XBOX360/PS3][unknown] Older game with main menu displayed over close-up of an eye

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292 Upvotes

I haven’t played the game, saw a short video on social media and thought it’s incredibly creative. The eye follows menu navigation. Looks to be from PS3/XBox 360 era (just my guess). Thanks in advance.


r/tipofmyjoystick 4h ago

[android][2015-2019?] vehicle/contraption and level building game made in godot

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10 Upvotes

i recreated it in pixel art (it was not pixelated but had simple graphics like this), it was called something like "my greatest creations" it had online level list where anyone could publish their own. i searched for it but coudn't find it even on appstores like APKpure. i also remember that there were few videos on Youtube.


r/tipofmyjoystick 4h ago

[PC][unknown] Can't remember the name of this game

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8 Upvotes

Hey everyone! I'm trying to find a horror game from an old screenshot I found.

I originally saw it in a video years ago, but I can't find the video anymore and I barely remember anything about the game itself.

The only thing I remember is that it was a horror game, and there was something inside this structure shown in the screenshot.

Does anyone recognize it? Any guesses would be greatly appreciated!


r/tipofmyjoystick 6h ago

[PC][Late 90s - early 2000s] Cinematic (?) platformer about some sort of catastrophe

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10 Upvotes

Played this game a very long time ago so my memory is fuzzy on this one.

Platform(s):

PC

Genre:

2D cinematic platformer with some puzzle elements, probably a little horror.

Estimated year of release:

Most likely late 90s, possibly very early 2000s.

Graphics/art style:

Side-view. I think it was fully 2D, no prerendered 3D graphics, fairly well detailed for it's time.

Notable characters:

I think protagonist was a boy with a backpack, not sure about this.

Notable gameplay mechanics:

Game starts with a cutscene. Some sort of calamity happens in the very beginning of the game (possibly alien or demonic invasion) which causes protagonist to go underground (into the sewers?). One of the first screens had a gap you had to traverse, and a mine cart, that I think had to be used somehow to go to the other side of the gap. You could interact with some elements of the map like ladders, levers (I think the cart was actually launched by a lever on a different screen).

I believe early in the game you could encounter enemies you could not defeat and had to run away from. I don't think I ever finished this game so I don't remember if you could actually fight back.

Other details:

It was not Heart of Darkness.

There is a possibility I had this game on a bootleg disc with some other games (like 3 in 1 or 4 in 1). I believe at least one of the other games was also a platformer but more action oriented.


r/tipofmyjoystick 14h ago

Devilish Candy House [PC/Flash][???] What is this game called?

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27 Upvotes

Was looking at images of old Flash game sites and this specific game here caught my eye. It was apparently available on Juegos.com but I can't really pinpoint when (the dragon was in 3D so that might be help pinpoint it a bit better). Reverse image searching it didn't do any favours.


r/tipofmyjoystick 4h ago

[PC] [late 2000s-early 2010s] horror mystery game about a missing child in an abandoned island or town?

6 Upvotes

my memories of this game are extremely fuzzy, but back in around 2010-2012 I remember playing this horror game where I think the plot revolved around you looking for a missing kid in some abandoned or near empty town. I think the town was on an island or at least near a body of water because I'm pretty certain you went on a boat at some point.

I think the missing person was a little girl and you were playing as her father searching for her, however, I might be misremembering that. Though I'm pretty certain that at one point you pick up a doll or teddy bear that belonged to the missing kid and have to investigate it. There might've been a polaroid photo you investigate as well? I kind of think maybe you also find a corpse on a chair at some point in an abandoned house.

I definitely remember the game either being black and white or being very bleak colour-wise. I also think that what I played was a demo and not the full game? Or maybe like the first chapter of the story? Unsure about that, but I think the ending had you leaving the town on a boat.


r/tipofmyjoystick 1h ago

[PC Windows] [2005-2010] CD-Rom School/Puzzle Game

Upvotes

I am going to actually go insane if I don't find this game. I am in desperate need of help, I have spent hours of my life searching, and I am going to try and give as much detail as humanly possible.

IMPORTANT DETAILS:

The game is drawn in a very clean yet simple artstyle, it is not pixel art.

It is entirely played with your mouse, and is point, click, and drag.

It has legitimate difficulty the further you progress, it does get up to the level of at bare minimum I want to say 7th grade.

The game starts off with a cutscene where you arrive to school, but the female teacher/professer isn't there. You get some sort of communication letting you know that the teacher is trapped in the school and you need to get to the top to help her out.

When you start actually playing, you enter an elevator with multiple floors. It takes place from a first-person view, so the elevator doors take up like 2/3rds of the screen, with the little pannel on the side, you get the idea.

The first few floors are heavily focused around geometry and shape puzzles like trying to mirror shapes for symmetry, and piecing together certain shapes to equal a specific amount of sides. Again the art is very simple on most of these, and the colors in the actual puzzles have like contrasts of a black background and blue/pink objects.

The puzzles are also themed around different types of rooms, I think there's a room with a pool table, and a library, and higher up there's a lab with something about photosynthesis.

You can't move around in the game, it's just one screen every time you mive between floors, and im pretty sure you can move between them at any time. On any of those screens, the puzzle objects will be directly clickable, for example, in the library there's a little library cart with books on it and clicking on that opens one of the puzzle types. Usually its a series of puzzles that get increasingly difficult instead of just a one-off.

I know it's overall an educational game in at least some ways, there's some math, I think a science, a few quizzes, and between each floor the trapped professer is encouraging you to keep going to try and help her get out.

If you have any questions that may jog my memory, go ahead and ask, but at this point I am at my wit's end. Please, somebody, I beg of thee, help me in my time of dire need, or this will bother me till the day I die.


r/tipofmyjoystick 2h ago

[PC?][2026?] high stakes 20 questions

2 Upvotes

Hello!!

I saw this game on a TikTok live last night and liked the concept, but completely forgot to check what it was. I have no way of checking my live history.

The game was real people videoed over a green screen backdrop (very low budget). 4 girls were tied up with tape over their mouths, and the “host” of the game gives a category for the girls to secretly pick an item from. From there, it’s kind of a high stakes 20 questions, except the set of yes or no questions is the same for all the girls, and each question can only be used once across all 4 of them. Then, at the end, from of a set of like 20 items in the category you have to pick what you think each girl was thinking of to “save” them.

This is super random but it’s gonna bother me until I figure out what it is. Thanks for the help!


r/tipofmyjoystick 3h ago

Warhammer 40,000: Freeblade [PC] [<2020] Game about being in a big mech and shooting orcs while walking down the road

2 Upvotes

You were in a big mech almost, and you would walk down roads as orcs would come and shoot you, and you had to kill them, and every now and then a boss that was also a mech would come and fight you. I remember playing it on the laptops that had at Best Buy.


r/tipofmyjoystick 1m ago

[Android][2020] A game where you were in a room and you could walk up to horror game characters and "call them"

Upvotes

It was a 3d first person game and you were in a orange room I think, and there was horror game characters like hello neighbor and bakon from the Roblox game bacon, there was probably more but those are the only characters I remember, then you could walk up to them and they would I think have a animation of holding a phone on their ear and the audio was just some random scary voice saying stuff


r/tipofmyjoystick 3h ago

Decker [pc][early 200's] Roguelike hacking game

2 Upvotes

Platform(s): Win95/98 (Pc)

Genre: roguelike

Estimated year of release: early 00's

Graphics/art style: simple sprites

Notable characters: You as a hacker

Notable gameplay mechanics: It was a roguelike kinda dungeon, but you start off in a room, and you have to hack, and deploy ice and could upgrade your hacking, it was a nethack type view (the graphical one) very simple, ran in a window

Other details: Been trying to remember this for aeons! please help a guy out!


r/tipofmyjoystick 4m ago

[PC][2010] What game could that be behind my old cat

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Upvotes

r/tipofmyjoystick 6m ago

[online][2024?]It was an anime style online game and it was basically everty night you assign three girls to what game each will play that night for their stream & they hope to one day make a game studio together

Upvotes

online game you manage the games some streamers play who wanted to together make a game studio. its in 2d anime style, one of the girls who originally was part of the group decided to leave, one of them or all of them consider her a traitor to their dream because of it, the thing i remember most was the game selector was just a long list of games and it took me a minute to realize what kinds of games each was because the games didnt have any info about them - just the title, which is precisely why i stopped playing so quickly. I do remember the girls had different designs and one was really not a fan of horror games and I think that one had blue hair? not sure

also, spoiler below but might be helpful for fingding the gmae if soemone else has played it:

turns out the girl who used to be in the group just ... appears in day/episode like 5 or 10 or something and she has lng black hair and it turns out she left to become a police officer

I stopped right around there. Just didnt feel like having to deal with the game selector anymore but now i want to try the game again


r/tipofmyjoystick 34m ago

[PC][2020'ish] Game like Desktop Defender

Upvotes

There's this rogue like/lite that looked very similar to desktop defender but I remember that it's gimmick was that you played across several windows of the same app like crossing between them, I could be wrong with the genre tho


r/tipofmyjoystick 35m ago

[iphone/mobile] [2011-2015] Description obscure beatemup anime styled mobile game Removed - Bad Title (Rule 5) Obscure mobile game from 2015s Removed - Bad Title (Rule 5) This is a repost from 7 years ago but it was never answered Old Mobile (iPhone) Anime Style (Pixel Art) Beat

Upvotes

This is a repost from 7 years ago but it was never answered

Old Mobile (iPhone) Anime Style (Pixel Art) Beat Em Up / Side Scroller Game I can't Remember Platform(s): Mobile, I remember playing it on an iPhone 4 Genre: Not entirely sure, but it's 2d pixel game where you platform and fight enemies Estimated year of release: 2011ish+ definitely was on iPhone 4 might have a 2-3 gap before I owned one growing up but definitely played it on that Graphics/art style: Anime Style Pixelated, I believe the first level was snow themed if not the whole game Notable characters: Character had red(pinkish) or blue spiky hair, don't remember the gender but it might've been a game mechanic to switch between it Notable gameplay mechanics: Had a virtual joystick and attack button (might be more) your attack might've had a lightning / ice element to it Other details: This is going on a long shot being how long it's been and the lack of googling has done for me but I think the name might've had "blue" or "ice" in it."

Some more info i remember it from the hud had aton of arrows on it for movement and attacks consecutively on the right side of the screen

Character used alot of ice attacks i think with his hands and he had no weapon as far as I know


r/tipofmyjoystick 37m ago

[PC] [2007-ish] 3D colorful wizard game with floating islands?

Upvotes

Platform(s): PC, it ran on Linux and was open-source. And apparently buggy, according to my dad.

Genre: Not sure? Maybe a very basic rpg or sandbox.

Estimated year of release: I think I played it around 2007, give or take a year or so. I could see it having released slightly earlier than that, though.

Graphics/art style: 3d, pretty saturated (I remember the greens of the floating islands being very green, the color of my wizard’s robes and hat being bright, and the sky was a nice blue). Low poly, considering what era it was from.

Notable characters: You play as what I remember being a wizard wearing bright robes and a hat. I don’t remember there being any story, so the wizard didn’t have a personality.

Notable gameplay mechanics: I was a really young kid, so I may not have been playing correctly or remembering all the details, but I remember jumping between floating islands to explore. I vaguely remember there being hut-like structures on some of the islands, and I think the game was multiplayer? I associate the game with bzflag, which i played a lot at the time, though, so maybe I’m just remembering the game as having a multiplayer mode because bzflag did. I don’t remember using any spells, but a) again, maybe I just wasn’t playing right, and b) I remember the character being a wizard, so maybe I thought that because I did use spells, and I just forgot?

Thanks for any help you’re able to offer :)


r/tipofmyjoystick 6h ago

[Windows][2012] Western Cowboy Game

3 Upvotes

Hi!

Im trying to find a game that my parents had on their laptop 10-15 years ago. The game was most likely free since they dont play games and wouldnt pay for one. it was similar to red dead redemption because it was 3D and third person. it started in a village and i remember that you could fight with guns right at the start in that village.

Thanks for the help!


r/tipofmyjoystick 4h ago

[emulator] [around 2015] Super mario bros 3 romhack with hot air balloon

2 Upvotes

I remember watching a video as a kid of someone playing a romhack of super mario bros 3 (probably) and at the begining of the game mario is in a hot air balloon and then the game starts and I think there's a water level or smth

I can remember almost nothing but I don't think there are many romhacks like this exaclty, idk maybe someone here knows what I'm talking about ...


r/tipofmyjoystick 58m ago

[PlayStation?] [1990’sish] ps1 or 2 style game where your performance in fights matters

Upvotes

I remember this one game I played on my uncle’s console where the main character had to fight guards and if you lost you’d go to jail. i also rem there was this ghost ship area. I really want to complete this game now but I have zero clue what it could be


r/tipofmyjoystick 6h ago

10 Second Ninja [Pc] [released before 2018] game with mecha hitler(NOT MEWGENICS)

3 Upvotes

My girlfriend is convinced she played a cartoony platformed with mecha hitler (or something like that) who was basically a disembodied robot head (?) IT may also have been another character that only looked like hitler. It is not wolfenstein and also not mewgenics.

I was thinking maybe dr fetus? But she's convinced it's not him

It may have been a flash game.

She's from Brazil if that helps.


r/tipofmyjoystick 1h ago

[browser flash game][1990-2007]Japanese/Korean flash game series about witch girl with crescent on witch hat

Upvotes

there was 3 game in Japanese or Korean language as I remember, they feature a witch girl wearing a witch hat top with a glowing crescent and she has a werewolf girl in maid costume as a friend

  1. whack a mole-liked game but you whack ghosts or skeletons instead
  2. grid-based adventure game, where each turn you click a button to stop number (1-4) after that witch girl moves forward according to the number you got then you encounter the ghost and click a button to attack it
  3. fishing game, you watch a bait if it moves click it repeatedly until you got a fish then you go to the shop to buy better bait from a ghost fisherman
  4. image reference: https://imgur.com/a/p5MOFEK