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One that I remembered recently is the late 80s to early 90s had a period of time where "caveman" or general "pre-history" games were suddenly a thing for a good while. Joe and Mac, Adventure Island, Prehistorik 1 and 2, the Chuck Rock series, Adventures of Dino Riki, Big Nose the Caveman, the Bonk series, The Flintstones saw a good handful of games during this period, and hell if I may stretch things the JRPGs Chrono Trigger and Live A Live both had pre-history settings with cavemen characters.

While a surge in "dinosaur" games could be easily attributed to the popularity of Jurassic Park in the 90s, that doesn't explain why all of a sudden in the late 80s a bunch of game studios suddenly decided "you know what? Lets make a game about cavemen" and said trend lasted until the 16-bit era ended.

Everything had to be brown to feel grim and gritty and grown-up during the 2000s, that was why people were mad at Zelda Wind Waker when it came out.

Point-and-Click games having weird-ass puzzles, remember the Cat Hair Moustache puzzle from Gabriel Knight 3? I'm glad at least Telltale Games stopped using such puzzles

Co-op games in the late 2000's no matter how beneficial or detrimental it was to the experience. Think Army of Two, RE5, and Dead Space 3. Maybe the industry was trying to ride off the success of l4d?

Speaking of zombies, I know its still a fairly popular genre now, but it absolutely dominated this era.

"Walking simulator" trend in the mid-2010s like Gone Home

There was a massive quantity of sports games that had the names of certain players, celebrities, coaches, etc. in their titles. The only series I can think of that still retains the name is Madden.

Early 2000s had some kind of thing with water, especially Nintendo. Mario Sunshine, Wind Waker, Pokemon RSE, the Gamecube's development name being Dolphin, and non-tendo, there's Sonic Adventure 1 and Final Fantasy X.

Endless amountd of QTEs, "Quicktime events".

I have seen recently the trend among indie games to be "pixel-art zelda metroidvania" clones

crafting mechanics

remember when we were flooded with early-access titles that all wanted to be the next Minecraft? DayZ didn't even turn out to be good

oh, and motion controls

the wii, playstation move, xbox kinect. Everything suddenly had to have motion control

I wonder if the current "everything must be open-world" thing (started by BOTW, I presume) will be one of these, or if it'll be a lasting thing.

The dark and gritty remake of old games from the 80s. Like Bomber Man, Bionic Commando, etc. and they somehow have this grimderp story behind why the game is like it is.

The mobile game craze of copying mobile games titans like Angry Birds, Flappy Bird, Pokemon Go, FarmVille, Candy Crush, etc.

Companies weird obsession with openly branding their games as the (insert famous title here) killer. Like Haze, the remake of Medal of Honor, countless cartoon class shooters and other games. Seriously Haze was the biggest perpetrator of this since the game kept touting itself as the Halo killer.

Around gen 6, a bunch of 3D platforming games like Sonic adventure, Sly Cooper, Ratchet & Clank, Psyconaught and so-on implement rail grinding. It was sort of like the ‘grappling hooks’ of the 2000’s since it’s a prevalent, yet cool way to travel around areas.

Nowadays, you don’t see as much rail grinding, only in a few games like Splatoon 2…And weirdly enough, in XenoBlade 2 at the highest spot of Mor Ardian, at least that mechanic will be fleshed out in 3.

People whining about indie games about depression haven't seen the true trend that is going through the indie scene nowadays: cardgames

They are EVERYWHERE now, you can't turn your head or you stumble onto another cardgame gimmick. The Slay The Spire clones are endless!

TBH you have to check out Trials of Fire, it's way better than Slay the Spire

Best guess: they're made by millennials who always wanted to make their own take on Magic: The Gathering or Yu-Gi-Oh. Much like how a decent number of indie 3D platformers are made by people who grew up playing Mario 64/Sunshine, Banjo-Kazooie, and Spyro.

The weird obsession with certain indie rpgs being based off of games like Earthbound/Mother. That and just the weird obsession with indie game JRPG inspired games. One that comes to mind and is guilty of both is YIIK, from the attempt at trying to be a western take on a JRPG and trying to do too much in regards to being a weird borderline obsessive mix of Earthbound and Persona/Shin Megami Tensai.

I personally have the idea of a quirky Drawn Together inspired RPG about the Dimensional Merge.

Other than that, I'd like to mention how we had an era of handheld games that claimed to be a console game that were actually different games altogether.

the 2000s had a whole lot of "doppelganger" scenarios for main characters. Especially early 2000s.
Shadow Mario and Doopliss Mario, SA-X and Dark Samus, Advance Wars Andy Clone, Four Swords Links, The Mirror Kirby and Meta Knight. The list goes on.

World-ending scenarios were pretty common then too. Nowadays, games focus more on personal struggles. Not that it's a bad thing, but I miss having the fate of the world rest on my hands sometimes.

Purposely janky "Joke Simulator" games I.e. Surgeon Simulator and Goat Simulator seemed to be a popular genre 5-10 years ago.

So did "youtuber bait" jumpscare horror games trying to ride the coattails of Slender, Amnesia, and FNAF.

As I mentioned in a thread some years ago, there was a trend of Japanese action and/or horror games set in an almost parodic caricature of America (or American character archetypes) through a Hollywoodian B movie lens back in the late 90s until around the mid 2000s. It was pioneered and spearheaded by titles like Resident Evil, Time Crisis, The House of the Dead and Metal Gear Solid.

These days, Japanese games set in the US tend to be much more faithful to the real-world counterpart, but I find the recent fixation to realism to lack the distinct campy charm of the Japanese gamer's vision of America some 15-25 years ago.

I kinda see trending among indie dev those retro looking FPS shooter that reminisce like Quake/quake2 or similar old school shooters from the 90's

I remember World War II shooters being especially prevalent during the 00's.

After the success of the first Mortal Kombat game there were some games that copied their style with gore, fatalities and even the types of sprites they used. Many notoriously bad games were made as a result.