Chulip
I found this Interview with Yoshirou Kimura, the developer of Chulip, to be informative. I especially like what he said about fighting games and game violence, which generally reflect my personal feelings on the matter:
I'm not criticizing fighting games. I myself love to play fighting games, so. But when I see so many violent games out there, I can't help reveling against them. The world should consist of different kinds of people, don't you think? So do the games.
I couldn't remember the html for paragraph quotes, so you have to deal with the italics.
What is also interesting about the interview is the rather rough English. This kind of parallels the roughness of Chulip, which is brilliant and witty, even if it is sloppy and unwieldy to actually play. I cannot really conceive of playing that game without the manual, which is a sparse but mostly complete walk-through. That's right, it pretty much requires a walk-through, at least for me, and somehow it works. It is not as obnoxious as it should be, and still manages to be charming. Weird.