Here, let me explain: Saccharine is an artificial sweetener. It is obvious when something has been "enhanced" in this way, and not in a good way. In this topic, this relates to games whose atmospheres are overtly sweet, cloying, or downright insulting to emotional states other than bliss.

Yoshi's Story is what I'd say is primarily emblematic of a saccharine game, especially as a followup to the oft atmospheric Yoshi's Island. There's practically no challenge, the goal is to eat 30 fruit (the levels will loop forever until you do), between each level there is what I would state as an "obnoxiously cute" story beat (7:58) that involves the Yoshi's spontaneously breaking into song.

I've never played Yoshi's Story, but the simple fact of the matter is, this game is beyond infamous for forced cuteness.



Personally, I think the most sweetened game I've played is Hamtaro: Rainbow Rescue, where your goal is to rebuild a rainbow. There's also Ham-Ham Heartbreak, where your goal is to fix broken hearts so love day (or something) goes off without a hitch.

Explain your replies, not everyone has the 10,000+ games ProtonJon has on Backloggery.

I dunno, I started using artificial sweetener on my wheat-bix lately and can barely taste the different between it and regular sugar.

(Offtopic as that may be), we've come a long way since the days of aspartame and other such garbage sugar substitutes.

Shooty Skies (iOS) - The games has things like an all cat level where cat faces appear at the bottom of the screen and the nyan cat song plays non-stop. There was the cute cuddle chaos update. If you unlock Sparkles the unicorn, Sparkles flies a plane that spews out rainbows. This game vomits cute constantly even though everything is trying to murder you.

Try Ys 8. Finished it a few days back. Combat is good, location varied an interesting. Story, characters, and dialog is incredibly cringe worthy and nicey nicey. Unfortunately you can’t impale on stakes and leave them for the Saurians. Missed opportunity.

As a kid I put one Hermesetas pill into my mouth. God it tasted awful, nothing like sugar. I had to spit it out.

I have no idea if "Hermesetas" has changed over time, and whether its ingredients today are totally different than in my childhood. For all I know, the old Hermesetas probably caused testicular cancer.

EDIT: I tried to google for it and somewhere in Wikipedia it was mentioned that Hermesetas is one brand using (or having used) sodium cyclamate, whatever that is.

I would like to say "Croc: Legend of the Gobbos"... but I found it genuinely sweet and touching, not just artificially. I almost cried every time I saw the intro. Almost. So cute and sad, at the same time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InV9iMcd4ok

Probably Robot Unicorn Attack.

Must've repressed the memory of it, because I can't think of something, yet I'm sure I've encountered it. Perhaps some sort of romance attempted in an RTS setting with ingame cutscenes.

Overlord II where my first reaction was aaaaaaaaaaaaaw soooooooooooo cute, baby seals! Only to be followed by my browns: The hunt begins! Show 'em who is boss of the food chain! Overlord I had similar cute scenarios with overly sweet and beautiful landscapes and buildings but the seals easily beats them.

A more recent example is the Remake of The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening this one is almost entirely Saccharine overdose. From characters to monsters.

Same with くまたんち Kumatanchi To sweet to be true.

There is nothing adorable. The characters/dialog is sickening. It’s so happy, positive, 12 year old girl, drivel. It’s a shame because the island is big and varied, varied enemies, bosses can prove a challenge and thinking about. So it’s worth a 7 out of 10 as a game. Now measure that against ys 9, which doesn’t have the island, has very little variation in enemies, bosses are just button mashes, and it’s has 100x more of the awful dialog/story which you can’t skip. Really having a very hard time struggling through it. So yes, as “adorable” as Gonorrhoea.

Sugar molecules are handed, they have a twist. They can be produced with the opposite twist, and apparently it's exactly like sugar, but does not cause sugar related disease (diabetes for example). Brilliant, so why not sell it in supermarkets? Because it's bloody expensive :(

-EDIT- Never mind, misread the intention.

I'm not familiar with Meme Run, but I can say that Shooty Skies was made by someone competent as it was made by at least one of the people involved with Crossy Road. Unless they made changes, Shooty Skies also isn't a total cash grab like CR is. I actually love out sickeningly cute it is considering that everything is trying to kill you and the game has no shame about what it is.