When I was little, we had a CD-ROM that was bought at a dollar store called "The Day The World Broke" (among others that were less weird). It was published by Houghton Mifflin Interactive and must have been meant to be educational in some way? It fascinated me as a child, but when we upgraded to Windows XP, suddenly I wasn't able to get it working well anymore. It would freeze and glitch out. In late 2019/early 2020, I finally sat down with my computer skills and set up a DOS Box emulation of Windows 3.1, and to my surprise it worked! I finally played it all the way through and got closure for the game I never completed as a kid.
It's one of the weirdest story games I've played, and to some extent, I credit it for my early fascination with anthropomorphic animals. The jist of it is that the world is built entirely on machinery and there are walking, talking, half-animal half-machines blocking the valves that run the world. There's a lot of lore associated with it via in-game video and writings, and documentation is scarce at best (last I checked, may be different now). Since I played it through, I've been finding more resources, mainly just playthroughs, but genuine fixes for some of the glitches on Windows 98 and XP with fast processors as well.
As far as appreciation goes, that game literally defined my childhood. No one understood my obsession with it, and no one I talk to knows the game. It was just a weird cheap little game, but it holds a place in my heart evermore.
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