Games made up of stolen pieces from recognizable works that recontextualize those pieces into new and beautiful things, often playing off of their pre-existing meanings and contexts. Transcending shitpost games into legitimately meaningful art. This is not a comprehensive list, or a strict definition. It's vaguely ordered to prioritize the games that were personally most seminal in my understanding of the movement, regardless of any historical accuracy.
Update: I am not going to continue keeping it ordered as I add new games, but if you want my "what is plundercore" shortlist, play Titanic 2, Terminal 64, St Wiggler In The Desert, and 2001: Someone tell Luigi. Then, if you want something big and dense to chew on, buy Oikospeil.
Games that aren't on itch.io that fit:
-A collection of "plunderludics", a similar, somewhat overlapping term but more focused on literally directly using gameplay or entire other games in your game, rather than just assets and aesthetics: https://plunderludics.github.io/other-plunderludics/
- Ben Esposito / Arcane Kids's old games i feel like really set the blueprint, tho they differ a little bit from most of my modern itch examples. But, to quote Rebecca Sugar, of all people: "I love Bubsy 3D. You play as Bubsy, and you visit the James Turrell exhibit at the LACMA, and you look at art. And to me, it's incredible and my favorite thing ever, because it's using this ridiculous pop culture nostalgia to force someone to experience art."
-https://gamejolt.com/games/super-plumber-bros/27754
-https://www.retrosabotage.com
I think this one is technically plunderludics, because it actually uses the mario 64 controller literally running its logic thru the rom still (shh)
Made to be an inversion of Red, it is compact where red is sprawling, violent where red is serene, abstract where red is didactic, etc.
Is this even Plundercore? It's a question I ask in the game itself and I'm not totally sure of the answer, but also it's my itch.io collection so I'm putting it here and you can't stop me.
It's actually maybe closer to a mod of Anodyne 2, who's source code was recently released to the public. It's like one of those SMW romhacks that adds Kirby as a bossfight. Are those plundercore? while, idk, I think Tone is still an important factor, and I was definitely going for the classic plundercore tone as I understand it here. A little silly, a little existential, making grandiose and harrowing what was once pleasant nostalgia. Anyway I thought it was an interesting to think about a character model as terrain, bodies as landscapes, etc.
I made another plundercore game, this time in 3 hours! I'll write more about it later its 4 am.Ok yeah let me talk about this. I've been thinking about fascism a lot lately. Watching history repeat itself daily on twitter had me wanting to make something putrid about this undead ideology, soulless yet recurring. Ganondorf always coming back as a recurring evil to fight seemed like a fitting allegory. I think part of fascism's illogical appeal is in it's mythologizing and we would do well to mythologize right back.
The main plunders are of course:
1. The scattered iterations of ganon models, meant to be strung up like Mussolini. The two pieces of text near the central Ganon statue are his famous speech at the end of windwaker, one of the only attempts in the series to sympathize with ganon, and the other is a wikipedia description of the theft of Mussolini's corpse.
2. The cityscape which is from the Fourside stage in melee. The dreamy nostalgic city being overtaken by swarms of flies...Definitely the most Rotten game I've ever made. It's even possible to eat pieces of the city instead of a ganon, though it doesn't work too well. Civilians swallowed up in the eternal conflict? Idk
I also plundered my own character controller from the end of Future Cat Sailor for this, and the idea of playing as a swarm from Puzzsoft's Cooleidoscope.
Including this because its the closest thing ive made, but im not so confident in the "meaningful art" part about this one
Another one by me! This one was much more consciously made in the spirit of the plundercore movement, tho it still feels a little removed to me since theres so much original stuff thats sort of stealing focus from the plundered stuff. This one is sort of like, long ago there was old videogames that you recognize, but they're all underwater now.
