Ever played Super Mario World so much you could do it blindfolded? Vanilla Failure is a romhack that flips the script—suddenly, all those muscle memory jumps and power-up habits don't work anymore. The first level looks familiar, but pits don't have invisible blocks to save you, and some pipes just straight-up murder you. Took me three tries just to get past the first Goomba because I kept reflexively running right into a hidden spike.

It's brutal in that way old-school hacks are—no hand-holding, just trial and error while you unlearn everything. The demo's short, but the changes are clever (and mean). You'll either love the challenge or rage-quit before the first checkpoint. I did both.