Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons

Brothers puts one brother on each analog stick, so the controller tells the story. The player controls two characters at once, one on each analog stick, so the input itself says something about siblings. The interface and the emotional point are the same thing.

Moving the game to iOS with touchscreen virtual joysticks loses that effect. Mark Brown credits the game with telling "a genuinely impactful story about siblings entirely through the controller". He also lists it among games such as Skate, Grow Home, Fight Night and Katamari Damacy that reinvent how a standard pad is used, as proof that ignoring convention can produce great games.

Brothers tells its story of two siblings almost entirely through gameplay. Mark Brown cites it as an example of a game that speaks through mechanics rather than cutscenes or dialogue. He puts it next to Undertale, where the cast is revealed through how they fight, and Papers, Please, where poking at a system reveals a message about bureaucracy and corruption.