Category: Video Games

The Video Games I Fell in Love With in 2024

2024 in video games was…interesting. it felt like it was beginning to be a downturn. The AAA games are just not there and don’t interest me, and I feel like folks are waiting for Grand Theft Auto 6 and the Nintendo Switch 2, so much so this year hasn’t been quite as big as previous years.

With that said, there have been a lot of good games taking advantage of the gap that AAA developers have left. I’ve played a lot of games this year, I’ve also made a couple too. The majority of the games I’ve enjoyed this year have been smaller teams and indie games. I haven’t yet upgraded from the last generation of consoles, as outside of the Switch I haven’t played many modern games.

Here are my favourites for 2024 and these games are well worth your time. Same rules for last year: it must have been released in 2024.

Games I Enjoyed Playing in 2024

As always, this post highlights the games released in 2024. However there are a bunch more games that I first seriously played in 2024 Here are games from previous years I played this year.

  • Pac Man: Championship Edition (NES) is a fun little demake of the Championship Edition version of the classic pill munching game. A high score attack where you have to compete for 5 minutes to get the highest score you can. A great demake with a thumping 8 bit soundtrack and tense gameplay with slightly less assault of the senses than the arcade game, this is great fun.
  • I wish I enjoyed Castlevania: Symphony of the Night* (PSX) more. Oddly, despite the “Metroid” part of “Metroidvania” being one of my favourite games of all time, the “Vania” part I never explored and – I just struggled towards the end. I didn’t hate it, but I missed half the game because the amount of work to get it done was too long. If I played it a few years after Super Metroid it probably would have been one of my favourite games ever, but I just couldn’t get on board with it.
  • Spoiler alert, I have two games of the year this year. This is one of them. Lucy Dreaming (PC) – is a wonderful game. A point and click adventure where you have to find the cause of Lucy’s nightmares, this is a wonderfully British game with lovely nods to a lot of classic games, 80’s culture and Northern Britain. There is quite possibly the best subtle joke I’ve ever done experienced in a video game. I’ve contributed to the Kickstarter for the next game: Heir of the Dog. I played the demo at Play Expo and it’s more of the same. I cannot wait.
  • I finally got to play Street Fighter 6 (PC) and I did enjoy it. Sadly my PC was slightly too weak to handle the game, so it ran pretty slow. Nevertheless I enjoyed what I played of it. When I finally get a PlayStation 5 I’m going to play this game more.
  • Another classic game that I finally managed to play and complete was the excellent Final Fantasy 6 (SNES*). Whilst 7 is one of my favourite games ever I never played the prequel. Wonder no more as I dedicated some time in the summer to play it. This was excellent. A wonderful story that had me crying at the end, this is well worth playing. You can see that the kinks in the game were ironed out in 7.
  • This was a joy. Aquaventure (Atari 2600) was a fun little game that wasn’t released in the lifetime of the Atari 2600, but it has since been found and put out into the wild. And it’s excellent. A game where you have to dive down and collect things from the seabed, this has great progression, a fun gameplay loop and pushes the limit of the 2600. Seriously, considering their issues in the early 1980s, the Atari of today knows their role and is an excellent publisher.
  • Although it contains a bunch of tropes I don’t like with 2D Zelda games, Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons (Game Boy Colour), was a good fun little game that I enjoyed playing through and completing. I think I prefer it to Link’s Awakening.
  • A Highland Song (PC) was an interesting story driven game, that kind of didn’t make much sense. Nevertheless it was a fun little game with a few teething problems that ticks along nicely with a great soundtrack and a beautiful look. Once you get the gameplay loop though it’s well worth checking out. You may have to complete this twice.
  • UFO – Swamp Odyssey (Pico-8) was a fun discovery! A fun micro Metroidvania that you can complete in an hour. Would highly recommend you play this game as it won’t take long. Far more atmospheric than it has any right to be.
  • Outer Wilds (Xbox) is the final game I played in 2024 and, it’s okay? I went from enjoying the gameplay loop to getting to the point where I resented it. It remains uncompleted. Will get around to finishing it soon.

Honorable Mentions

There are games that every year just miss out that I play. Here are some games that I enjoyed and played but aren’t in the top 3.

Probably the first game I completed in 2024 Mario vs Donkey Kong (Nintendo Switch*) was a remake of a sequel of a game I really enjoyed: Donkey Kong 94 for the Game Boy. This was more of the same, puzzles in a Donkey Kong style. It does have some extra levels where you have to rescue toys in a “a bit like Lemmings but not” gameplay loop. Fun enough. Pick it up for cheap if you can.

Nintendo World Championship: NES Edition (Nintendo Switch*) again another little game from Nintendo that feels like the Switch is at the end of the console’s life, Nintendo World Championship: NES Edition is a collection of mini games from the classic Nintendo games from the 80s. Fun short speedruns that can see you getting the sword in Zelda, through to completing the entire of Super Mario Bros. Appeals to crusty old fuddy duddies that watch speedruns on YouTube (AGDQ is in a few weeks!). Some baffling games missing though from this collection though: where is Punch-Out!?!

A surprising release was that Marvel vs Capcom Fighting Collection (Nintendo Switch*) came out. Some excellent fighting games from the mid 90’s to the early 00’s featuring characters from Marvel and Capcom franchises, it ended up in licensing hell with Marvel losing the X-Men. A series that formed the majority of the character roster. This meant weaker or less well known characters got featured, which affected the quality of the games. This is the classic games in one collection, and with rollback netcode, it became rather fun to play online for a bit. Furthermore, the etiquette surrounding online play was there. Not original, but a great way to own some fantastic games, as the original games cost a fortune now.

Finally, my most anticipated game of the year comes here. Thank Goodness You’re Here! (PC) was a fun romp through a Yorkshire town, and it is well worth playing as it has a Python-esque northern humour. Sadly, I played Lucy Dreaming before, whose humour landed more with me, and was a better game. This doesn’t really have much of a challenge, being a slightly more complex walking simulator. But it’s fun enough.

3. Animal Well (PC)

A dark and brooding Metroidvania. Animal Well is my third favourite game of the year. You play a character who has to get eventually home. How you do it is not immediately clear. Short-ish, but incredibly deep, this game is wonderful innovative, as in effect there are multiple levels of depths and you could end up missing loads. Playing it multiple times (and in one case with multiple players) could reveal so much. You get out as much as you put into it, but an average playthrough reveals a beautiful puzzle game. You won’t complete it 100% mind until haseverythinginanimalwellbeenfoundyet.com turns to “yes”, so not one for completionists.

Animel Well is available on Playstation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch and PC.

2. UFO 50 (PC)

Another wonderfully deep game (or games), UFO 50 was a late surge into my game of the year, and would be the one game I’d ask you to pick up to fill in the Crimbo Limbo, as it could be a great local multiplayer game with family. It takes the love and duty of care that “Atari 50 Anniversary” did a few years back and say “what if we did similar, but the company didn’t exist?”. Fifty games crafted with love by indie developers, UFO 50 has some of the most innovative games I’ve played in years. From “What if somebody crossed Bubble Bobble with football” Kick Club, to Mortal: an innovative platform puzzler game, some of these games alone could be game of the year. It’s part of a collection though, and whilst not all games land (just like Atari 50 Anniversary), UFO 50 will keep you busy for a very, very long time.

UFO 50 is only available on PC.

1. Balatro (Nintendo Switch)

Come March, there wasn’t a Game of the Year.

Balatro is a Rougelike deckbuilder that takes the hands of poker and throws them on their heads. Building a deck with jokers, tarot cards & planet cards, the goal is to beat 8 rounds of blinds. You do this by using your deck and building it to your advantage: soon you will be having two pairs scoring more than royal flushes, you need to use the jokers to your advantage to maximize the value of every hand. Over time, you’ll learn by sight on what each card does, but there’s a handy explainer and tutorial.

A super simple gameplay loop with the actual games taking about 20 minutes, it’s incredibly in depth: I’ve not unlocked everything yet and nowhere near. No other game has had me addicted for a while, and everybody I know is addicted. With a video poker machine graphics and a lounge style music, Balatro is a genuinely original game and has deserved all the plaudits it’s received. Well worth checking out.

Balatro is available for Playstation, Nintendo Switch, Xbox, PC, Apple Arcade, Android and iOS

What was your game of the year? Leave some games you enjoyed in the comments!

Previous Years: 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2022, 2023

Pico-8, Frosty the Snowman & handheld video games

Another blog post about a video game I made, entitled “Frosty’s Snowed Under!”. Should you wish to just play the game rather than read the story behind it please click here.

Recently, I got into making video games. A little hobby for something I wanted to take a bit seriously especially outside the cricket season. One such element I’ve enjoyed has been that game development, either because I’ve a 16 year development career behind me or there are tools out there that makes life a lot easier to put out games. The struggle I had with Blitz Basic at the turn of the millennium doesn’t seem to exist anymore, and I believe that anybody with some creative idea could put out something in one of these tools.

What you are greeted with when you open Pico-8. Note the 8192 in the bottom corner. That is your limit.

One such tool is the Pico 8. It is a fantasy console that imposes limitations on your coding (you can only have a certain number of “tokens” in each programme. For example: "if x==1 then print("Hello") end" counts as 8 tokens). But it includes a simple music player, graphics and map editor. This allows some pretty nifty games (of course somebody has ported Doom to it) and most games – from racing games to shooters – exist on the little console.

I was drawn to it after putting a few games on my Ambernic retro device, and after completing an excellent Metroidvania – UFO Swamp Odyssey – I wanted to have a go at making a game. I wanted to make a little game to play on my Anbernic – the thought of somebody curling up in the festive season with my game like a good book to while away the winter nights was rather romantic, and I thought that a little retro platformer may be perfect. With the time of the year it was, I began making a game from my childhood.

The original Frosty the Snowman game for the Commodore 64. A game that has had a bigger affect on my life than it had any right to be.

Frosty The Snowman

A game that had a special place for me in the Wynne household has been Frosty the Snowman. A festive game that usually came out of it’s sleeve in the festive season, Frosty the Snowman was on the covertape of the first edition of Commodore Power released in 1991. One of the staff writers – Richard Taylor – was an amateur game developer, and put it on the covertape. With a cracking remix of the Frosty the Snowman tune by Steve Barrett on the soundtrack, the game stuck with me for longer than it had any right to. I also have the original covertape still! There’s a bit more history to the game which you can read on the Retro Garden blog.

The Frosty the Snowman Covertape from Commodore Power. Please note: only Frosty is worth playing. The rest are utter crap.

For my first Pico-8 game, I thought of remixing Frosty. With the tracker, map editor and sprite editor, I felt I could knock something together that looked similar to the 1991 original. After MonoScale, I wanted something relatively easy with the graphics. Thankfully with the 128×128 screen and a 16×16 sprites even I couldn’t mess up something that resembled a snowman!

I was happy with how it turned out. I removed a bunch of the unfair deaths and made it accessible for a modern audience, kept the scoring and introduced a timer and multiplier system. I wanted it to introduce an end game: have a timer and require Frosty to take shelter towards the end of the game, to avoid the ending of the most traumatic Christmas experience (the ending of The Snowman). Time and effort made it not so, but I kept it a high score push.

My basic take on Frosty The Snowman for the C64, but for the Pico-8. Please note, the stopping snow indoors took forever.

So far the feedback has been positive. With folks commenting it has replayability. I’m not sure where I’d go to improve it. It’s by no means the best games, but was built over 6 weeks and I’m happy for how it looked. It also was the first game I live-developed on Twitch.

Pico-8 Advent Calendar

I intended to release Frosty a Friday before Christmas, however I heard about the Pico-8 Advent Calendar Game Jam. I joined it to share my game. No doubt it gets more eyes on the game. It’s also been fun seeing some games being developed and helping out with them in real time, taking on a more supportive and critiquing role.

Anyway, at the time of publication there are a few more games due to be released in the calendar. I’d love you to check out the rest of the advent calendar, but if you just want to check out Frosty’s Snowed Under, then you can do at the link here:-

There is a download link so you can play it on devices like an Anbernic or RetroArch, which I’ve done below. You may need to update the Pico-8 version on your Retroarch to do so mind.

A real sense of pride seeing this run on an Anbernic.

If you do like the game, please do share it or add it to your collection on itch.io.

50 before I’m 50 – Release a video game

Warning: This blog post is long, winding and probably doesn’t make sense, but explains the last few weeks. If you just want to play MonoScale, click here.

One of the 50 before I’m 50 that I have technically done before is release a video game. Using Blitz Basic in the early 2000’s, I made a bunch of games. You can read about them here. Though, sadly, the games are no longer available to download (I must have removed them at some point). Sadly lost to time.

I’m older, and a bit more experienced in programming, so embracing my new-found sobriety, as the nights draw in I thought to play around with game development and try to make a video game.

Not wanting to let it drag on forever and to give myself some sort of deadline, I entered a Game Jam. Game Jams are you’re given a limited length of time to release a game. And like the time I signed up for a 5k, I signed up for a game jam without really any sort of experience in game engines. I’d played around with Godot a bit, but I was not too experienced with it and regularly hitting walls. There’s a physics based joke in there.

Anyway, I found a Game Jam I was interested in the concept of – a 1-Bit Jam. As well as a theme where the limitations were to graphics, it also gave a couple of weeks development time. I’ve seen game jams that last for 48 hours and they just do not sound fun. So I signed up, joined the Discord server, and readied myself for making the game.

The Idea

Before the Jam started there was a vote for the theme. As well as the restrictions you had to make a game surrounding a theme. I can’t remember all the potential themes, but the two that I remember were “Silhouette” and “Tower”, purely because I had an idea for each of them. Silhouette may get made later down the line, as I really like the concept, but Tower won.

As for an idea? Well, sadly I went for the obvious. I was ravaged with COVID and was watching the Olympics at the time. I got really into the Speed Climbing. I was fascinated by the speed they were scaling the walls. A simple climbing game was what I thought, climb the outside of a tower incredibly quickly. Rather than climbing, I thought of a grappling hook system, where you’re against the clock to climb a tower quickly.

With an idea in my head (actually two), I hoped either Tower or Silhouette won. Tower won, so I begun development.

Development

Although I’d been playing around with development in other items, I felt using Godot was the best tool for my needs in terms of familiarity and features.

The difficulty going from WordPress to game development is that – even with the current state of the community and the irrationality of certain actors – I’m fairly confident WordPress is never going to introduce a physics engine. Even though Godot does a lot of the heavy physics engine work (things like “apply force to this object in this direction” are one commands), it can be tricky for somebody that focuses on PHP and MySQL to get their head round.

Godot development uses “Nodes”. These can be anything and everything. So for example, they can be players, enemies, power ups etc. You code every interaction needed for the game. In this game, I had a couple of base nodes – the climber, and hooks.

The climber can fire a grapple. This grapple would have a max length, and the player cannot fire a grapple if one is already active. If the grapple is attached to a hook, then the player is pulled towards the grapple. In reality, a force pushing the player towards the hook is applied. Once the player reaches the hook, it is released.

It sounds complex, but the force direction and application is two lines of code, so I don’t have to calculate anything!

These nodes were then put into another node, a Tower node. Which adds a background and detects the player position. The hook node was set to randomly generate and pushed out onto the wall.

At the moment it felt like a wall, so I want to make it feel like a tower. This was relatively easily to do, as I looked at games like Nebulus to see how that was done. A brickwork pattern was applied to the background, and when the player hit collision areas located in the left, right and top of the screen, the tower scrolled left, right and up.

Look at all the collision detection!

Hooks were interesting, as to maintain a look scrolling the hooks was needed. This again was looping through each hook and moving it left, right or down. Should the hook scroll off the bottom of the page it’s deleted from memory and a new hook is spawned at the top of the page. Oddly, even though there were approximately 100 hooks on a 1500 x 1500 pixel area, there was no real slow down, and although you could get parts where hooks are clustered together and other parts of the tower are barren, it worked pretty well.

Finally, I had to introduce a lose state (which is the player falling off the bottom of the screen) and a win state. The win state was a bit of fun, a simple ending animation should the player go off the top of the screen when the height climbed was over 100m, the time recorded and a return to the title screen. This is where game development gets difficult as nodes are in effect wrapped into one other. A main game node (containing the player, hooks, HUD and background), a title screen (containing information and the high score) and an ending scene. One advisory I saw about Game Jam entries was “make your game fairly easy”. Send the punter home happy, show a lot of your content early and often. I imagined most people would have played my game at maximum two times, so I set the height of the tower at 50m (I struggled to complete it at 100m) which should offer enough challenge, but not too difficult.

The game was actually built relatively quickly – I did use ChatGPT to format things I didn’t really understand but no AI was used in the art or music assets. I think in total about 10 hours to take the idea to completion.

Polish

Once the game was finished in it’s most simplest form I began thinking of ways to polish it. The first was improving the sprite work.

I found a tool – Aseprite – for the sprite work. I felt confident enough in my abilities to do some basic sprite work (soon to be misfounded). Sure enough, after about an hour and a bit I managed to get a basic tower built and graphics. It’s incredibly powerful, Aseprite, but not really had too much time to play with it.

One thing I did struggle with was the people, as I’m not great at drawing people. I used – oddly – the arcade version of Track and Field as a guide, and it didn’t turn out well. Poor Gwyn the Colourless was not looking well. In the end I left him looking a bit odd and weird in the game, as I did with Princess Blanc (the character you “rescue”). But we’ll leave it at that.

The evolution of the “falling” sprite for Gwyn the Colourless. I didn’t like the second draft, as he looked odd and too similar to the “going up” sprite.

One thing I am proud of is the tower effect. One thing I was worried about was the hooks and the fact they didn’t stand out on the tower. Thankfully with Aesprite it was easy enough to create a dithering effect, and the hooks were made a bit bigger and bolder so they stood out a bit more.

With the dithering, it also allowed me to put a round effect on the background. This was done with an overlay so it looked more like a tower that scrolled around the screen.

After the graphics was the music. I am not musically inclined so I approached the Discord asking if somebody would help me out. Thankfully somebody offered to help me out so that was fine. With the sound effects, I’d been playing around with Pico-8 recently and it has a snazzy sound effect editor. After a bit of time I had a game over, fire and connection sound effect ready to go.

Finally, I made a title screen, somewhat of an ending and cleaned it all up. The title screen I was most impressed with thanks to the starfield I created, that allowed me to drag and drop it into other scenes, set the width, height, offset and density, and put it elsewhere.

LOOK AT IT SPARKLE!

There were other ways to polish it. But I wanted to get it finished by the end of Wednesday 9th October, as I’ve two days before submitting it. Come the 9th, lateish in the day, I uploaded it and submitted in preparation for the game jam. The second suggestion was making your game playable online, rather than relying on people to download it. Thankfully in Godot you can compile your game to web so a quick upload to itch.io and the game was ready to play online. About 5 uploads in total for various reasons (the music wasn’t looping, “Fullscreen” would reveal my tower secrets, etc etc), but I got there in the end, and it was published on the 10th.

The polish work was the 20% of the 80/20 rule. Whilst the main game took me about 10 hours, polishing was around 15 hours.

Should you wish to play MonoScale you can do so at the link below. Let me know how you get on!

Post “Launch” Debug

There were things I wasn’t too happy with the game. I found it frustrating and it came up time and again in testing. I did think about reducing the height but I thought having an average time of 2 minutes to complete it is fine.

Nevertheless, it probably is too difficult. A new version would probably be slightly easier, with a bigger hitbox for the hooks.

Come Friday 11th October when the Game Jam was over the voting began. At this point you have a period of time to vote on other games. Here’s a bunch of feedback I received as well as the general comment of “It’s too difficult”.

An idea that was suggested on was camera work. I liked the end condition of throwing yourself off the top of the screen to win the game, so I wanted to keep that, but the scrolling up as you go up is a bit wonky. I’m not sure what to do here but one suggestion was maybe a zoom out if the height is under the 50m target height.

Quickfire ideas that I both a) like and b) take on board are the following:-

  • Sound levels are a bit off. SFX are a lot louder than the music (anybody who has watched me on Twitch will know that’s no real surprise).
  • A cylinder warp effect on the tower would definitely make it look more cylandrical.
  • Give the option to immediately retry the game, rather than push folk to the title screen.

One of the surprising bit of feedback was that Michael Klamerus featured it in his Indie Game Roundup on October 11th. I was not expecting any coverage outside the Game Jam itself. He praised the art (which is always a nice thing to hear as I feel like I can’t draw). Once again though I’ve heard the comment “I’m bad at this” which I’ve translated as “The game is too hard” for people who are incredibly polite 😊.

Also, checking the stats I’m somewhere on Indienova, but I don’t know where as a search has proved fruitless and Google Translate only goes so far.

Finally, the nicest feedback I received was that it would make a perfect mobile game.

All of those are suggestions for what I’m wanting to do when I have a bit of time.

The Game Jam & Results

During the voting phase, you’re encouraged to vote on other games. Here’s some games I really liked were:-

One of my favourite games was “The Skyscaper Plagiarism Agency“, which is a simple one bit game that requires you to build towers to match another tower. Really good fun and it showed – was in the top 10 of the most fun games out there (Gameplay it came 7th). Would be fascinating to see a full version of this without the 1 bit limits.

Bab.le was a Wordle clone I quite enjoyed. You have to build longer and longer words. Again, an original take on the tower concept (granted, the idea of “Tower of Babel” isn’t exactly unique, but the execution was great). This game also did well. In the top 50 for both originality and gameplay.

Witow Hero was a thunder god playing on a tower, so had a basic kind of guitar hero clone, but the graphics and the music really appealed to me, as it was a gameboy aesthetic.

Spire Bound was another great game: a fun little Metroidvania game that had a nice pacing and you were never really truly stuck. Gameplay it scored well (again another top 50 game).

Finally, Escape Tower was a fun escape tower with an amazing soundtrack. Did get lost, and it wasn’t truly 1 bit in my eyes (there were discussions on how games should deal with transparency, and it confused everybody, so I don’t really blame the author, however it’s something that affected a lot of games, and that was the game jam’s fault).

Anyway, how did I do? After the voting period was over I scored the following:-

CriteriaScoreRank (out of 340)
Gameplay3141
Theme454
Originality3.273157
Art3.091171
Music2.727178
Uses 1 Bit graphics4.545198
Overall3.439153

Overall, it was a fairly average game that scored slightly above half way. Happy with that overall. It wasn’t the most original of course and it had some limits but after the first week it did seem to drop off in terms of popularity. I knew art and music would be my weaker areas (there were some areas I didn’t like about the music), so not surprised about that.

I was a bit miffed with the “Uses 1 bit graphics”. I’m not sure what knocked me down a point or two? Maybe I missed some pixels and they were dark grey, as opposed to black, or the side dithering? I don’t know.

There were things I should have done better. If I enter it next year it is to change the colour scheme. MonoScale doesn’t stand out with all the black and white entries. Maybe go for a Game Boy palette?

You can see MonoScale, or not, as it doesn’t stand out…

Conclusion

Overall, I really enjoyed my first game jam. Even if it became a bit all consuming at the end of it. The last couple of days I was pretty much finishing work and doing 2 to 3 hours on MonoScale, but I wanted to get it done and over the finish line in a state that I am proud of it. And I am. It’s not GTA7, but it’s my little indie game.

There’s a base for a game – a MonoScale 2 or “Deluxe” version, using the feedback shared above, and adding a few bits I didn’t have time for.

Finally, I’ve also found a new hobby. I already have game #2 on the go, which I hope to release before the end of the year. There’s a bit less pressure on me for that one.

That however is being worked on with less time pressure. Will shout about it when it’s done here, or you can follow my itch.io page here.

The Video Games I Fell in Love With in 2023

2023 in video games was brilliant wasn’t it? Seems to have been a very strong year, with a load of franchises that have had stellar returns.

Like last year, I’ve decided to use a bit of a lull as most of us wind down for Christmas to look at the video games I played in 2023. Especially as the post Crimbo Limbo will have a bunch of sales. I think every one of these is worth a bit of your time. I’d also like to highlight last year’s list, especially as the game at number 2 and number 3 (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredders Revenge & Trombone Champ), I still play. Overwatch 2? I don’t touch.

Similar ground rules as last year – It must have been released in 2023. It can be a compilation or a collection or a remake, but it need to have had it’s first release within the year of 2023. Oddly the games I expected to feature didn’t, and some that I didn’t expect to see, including number one, came out of nowhere.

But let it be known, every game below here is worth your time. I occasionally list the negatives about them but often these are outweighed with the positives. I’ve played more, but those games didn’t really grab me (with the exception of one – Portal – that I finished this year but 95% completed it a while back). Here is a full comprehensive list of games I completed on my TwitchyRhys Twitter profile.

Games I Enjoyed Playing in 2023

As always, this post highlights the games released in 2023. However there are a bunch more games that I first seriously played in 2023. Here are games from previous years I played this year.

  • The first completed game for me was a gifted game from a friend of mine (Fee). Gris (PC*) was excellent. An arty platform game that with a story about loss and grief. Gris (pronounce gree) is nice and short and just beautifully animated.
  • I was intrigued with Brutal Legend (Xbox 360*), which promised the writing of Tim Schafer mixed with the comedic chops for Jack Black. A mix of action adventure and real time strategies. It starts really strongly, but gets lost half way through. A love letter to metal, the gameplay is solid but couldn’t decide as a game what it was, and the story is okay. Will make you smile though.
  • I played my first game from the Yakuza game this year. Yakuza Kiwami (Xbox One) was a cracking introduction. A great story that I got absorbed with, and Kiryu’s fighting style that felt very “Virtual Fighter” means that I’m not going to turn my nose up at this franchise anymore. Didn’t think I’d like this franchise. I was utterly wrong.
  • Maybe my game of the year, The Case of the Golden Idol (PC*) – along with the game of the year for me – scratched the “Obra Dinn” itch. A 1800’s murder mystery game where you have to piece together a story about a Golden Idol, it’s powers, and how each person who came into contact with it had their demise. Ignore the rudimentary art style, this is a fantastic deduction game. I’m already looking forward to the sequel being released next year, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s my Game of the year next year.
  • Another franchise I never dabbled in, I played Shining Force CD (Sega CD) on my fantastic little Ambernic device (seriously if you’re a retro head this is the best £150 I spent all year). And it’s brilliant. No real story but a fun turn based battle system that sees you play as the entire Shining Force. It was for a couple of months my “play for 20 minutes” game, and the Ambernic helped achieve this when travelling.
  • I’m going to talk about a game later that would have been potential Game of the Year but it didn’t nail the landing. Let’s talk about a game that really did nail the landing. I’ve never gotten on board with the 3D games of popular Nintendo Franchises however I played and completed Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Nintendo 64) for the first time ever. I found it occasionally a bit of a slog, but holy hell the last dungeon was brilliant. If a game is remembered by how you ended it, then I really enjoyed this. I don’t however have the nostalgia trigger for me to consider this the greatest game ever that many of my peers did. Good, excellent, and you can appreciate it, but may not be for me. It’s my Taylor Swift of video games.
  • A love letter to the early 80’s arcade games – Donut Dodo (PC) has been an inspiration for a potential project I’ve been coding on my downtime 👀. A fantastic Donkey Kong/Bomb Jack high score challenge, it’s just made with love and well worth picking up for cheap. If you do, please let me know how you get on. If you don’t, my god, listen to the soundtrack at least. It’ll get into your head.
  • FAR: Lone Sails (PC) was a interesting atmospheric platformer with driving elements. You have to pilot a steampunk train across a post apocalyptic landscape. Why? Nobody knows. Beautiful looking, though.

Honourable Mentions

There were a few games that didn’t quite make the top 3, but are well worth picking up. Here’s my honourable mentions for the list.

Like Zelda, I never really gravitated to the 3D Metroid game, but when Metroid Prime: Remastered (Nintendo Switch*) came out. I thought I’d give it a go. It was okay in all fairness. However, I felt there was far too much walking around lost, and I did end up very confused. It was okay, but not Super Metroid, nor Metroid Dread.

The Murder of Sonic The Hedgehog (PC) was a wonderful find! A free release from Sega on April Fools day, this gag turned out to be a fun, tongue in cheek visual novel featuring Sega’s most famous character. Just really good, with a solid murder mystery plot, and best of all – it’s free. A bog standard PC can run it and well worth playing through over the course of two hours.

En Garde! (PC*) was on my top games for 2023 for a long time, but ultimately lost out. A fun little reactive swordfighting game with a lot of interactive elements (think Batman: Arkham games for combat style), you play as Adalia de Volador, a swashbuckling hero with a tongue as sharp as her sword, as she takes down the odious Count-Duke and rids him from her town. The game has a fun style and a wonderful sense of humour. The problem? The difficulty level ramps up heavily on the last battle which left it a sour taste in my mouth. Shame, as it’s well worth exploring.

3. Super Mario Wonder (Nintendo Switch*)

This was a surprise.

I must admit, whilst I enjoy the Super Mario 2D franchise (again, another series I don’t really enjoy in 3D), the endless stream of “New” Super Mario games got a bit tiresome, without much in the way of innovation. It was always my least favourite franchise in the Mario Maker games. Over time however, friends who’s opinions I respect kept saying “you need to play Wonder! It’s the best 2D Mario game since Super Mario World” I wasn’t sold but eventually I relented.

3 levels in, I was smiling. It took familiar Mario tropes and with the Wonder Flower powerup, turn it on it’s head.

Guiding the plumber and his friends (yes including Peach & Daisy – no more damsels in distress here!) through 6 fairly open worlds to collect the Wonder Seeds and save the Flower Kingdom from Bowser, Super Mario Wonder is brave. It does innovative things time and again and then discards them never to be seen in the game. And the music? God it sticks with you. Classic Mario tunes.

My only complaint is that it’s probably slightly too easy for my liking, but you can go through the game and miss stages and paths, so there is a fair amount of replay value.

Also it must be commended in being the first Mario game that accurately depicts what happens when you eat random mushrooms (albeit with the “Wonder Flower”, which is probably cannabis).

2. F-Zero 99 (Nintendo Switch)

This was very nearly #1.

A game franchise I felt had been abandoned for too long, and I’m sure I uttered to myself “Wouldn’t it be cool if F-Zero had a battle royale racing game?”. Well Nintendo delivered with F-Zero 99.

I’ll be honest, I was hoping it would have been a new iteration of the franchise (or using F-Zero X instead), hence why it’s not my game of the year. However this has had some fun experiences. Connecting with streamers, playing in races, and just having carnage. On my Twitch channel I play a lot of Wreckfest and this is similar. A fun, pick up and play racer where you can race 5 races or 5 hours of racers. The best multiplayer racing experience on the Switch since Mario Kart 8, and come just at the end of the life of the console. It’s also a testament to the game that out of all the games here, this is the one I’m still playing.

It both respects your time and tempts you with one more go, the likes of which I haven’t felt for years. And it’s free. Please Nintendo, give us a new entry in the F-Zero franchise.

1. Chants of Sennaar (PC*)

I like games that make me feel intelligent.

I often call this my “Brits in Benidorm” simulator. Chants of Sennaar sees you play as a hooded protagonist thrust into a world full of simple puzzles. The only problem? You don’t speak a word of the language. Piecing together what is being said, eventually the language opens up to you. Only for you to then discover that the Devotees (the first race you encounter) are having a bitter dispute with the Warriors. And they have their own language, and are not speaking to each other.

As you begin to figure out each language you learn what’s important and what’s special to each race. There are differences, but there are also similarities, and eventually you become a walking Duolingo between all races which leads to a satisfying conclusion.

There are stealth mechanics (my least favourite mechanic in video games) but they are quite small and easily navigable. A beautiful game with a great soundtrack, this indie title is well worth picking up and playing through. My game of the year for 2023.

Previous Years: 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2022.

For the love of The Last of Us

And all other video games

One thing that has filled my heart with joy recently has been a lot of people enjoying the drama series The Last of Us. For full disclosure: I’ve never played the game, nor seen the TV show, but I live vicariously through tweets such as this one from Dan Walker, who doesn’t strike me as a gamer.

Video games, for me, is the only piece of media I regularly consume. I don’t read. I rarely watch movies (I watched Terminator 2 for the first time last Sunday – it was great). My TV viewing is comfort viewing of Red Dwarf & Phoenix Nights, along with sport and game/antique/cooking shows. That’s really it.

Video games and me

Video games however are my comfort art form, and I always feel like it gets a bad rap. They provoke emotions in me like no other art form. Be it the pangs of nostalgia from playing Tehkan’s Bomb Jack which takes me back to playing it in Rhos-on-Sea seafront arcade with my grandparents, to the endorphin rush of solving another three fates in Return of the Obra Dinn. It has been my comfort blanket for such a long time. Even during lockdown – when we couldn’t go anywhere – me and pals regularly met up in Sea of Thieves to consume (real and fictional) grog. It beat a Zoom call.

That’s just the games that don’t necessarily have the strongest narrative but evoke happy memories. Stories in games have really gotten better and better. The twisting narrative in The Detective for the Commodore 64, through to the RPGs of the Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger games, all the way to modern day classics like Mass Effect, Horizon: Zero Dawn. Stories can be told, with wonderful deep characters and meaning. I enjoy the interactivity, but I understand many don’t. Which is why you’re catered with the compelling stories in walking simulators, such as Firewatch and To the Moon.

I always take it a bit personally whenever it isn’t given the due I feel is deserves. At the time of writing I’ve 3 games on the go. A short blast in RC Pro-Am on the Nintendo, and two story driven games (Metal Gear Solid & Red Dead Redemption). If I said I had three books on the go, nobody would bat an eyelid. Or spending a weekend watching three shows? That’s fine. But I do feel at times occasionally I have to justify spending a weekend resting playing video games. Maybe it’s in my head a bit. It’s for kids, it’s violent and rots your brain, etc etc. Things like that. I’m reminded however of an OkCupid question of “how would you feel if your partner spent the weekend playing video games?”. I feel like no other art form would ask that question.

The main culprit I find is in mainstream media. Not in terms of attacks but, it doesn’t really penetrate into the public consciousness like other things. Take for example quiz shows. When was the last time you had a video game question of reasonable difficulty on The Chase or Pointless? However when was the last time you had a question on TV. Or a film. Or books. There’s probably a reason financially, but another reason could be the folks who are in the positions of power don’t really understand it, and haven’t grown up with it.

Video games in other media

Which is why I welcome TV shows like The Last of Us, as hopefully exposes more people to the art form. Like Marvel, that began it’s success with comic book fans watching their movies, I suspect HBO have made the decision to commission the compelling story because it would get fans of the show to watch first, causing a groundswell, and then get people into the story (the story – if it follows the games – is apparently excellent. You should listen to the Playthrough Podcast that deep dived into both games, and only really criticising the actual game).

With the success of The Last of Us, I hope some of the people who may not have been exposed to video games much, play the games, or indeed other games. I hope other franchises get converted into video games as there are so many stories to tell to new audiences. People missing out on the gripping finale of the reaper invasion in Mass Effect because “they don’t play video games”, I don’t know, just makes me a bit sad.

I’m sad as it’s people who willingly shut themselves off from an art because they don’t understand it or dismiss it for kids. Like people who don’t listen to Rammstein because they don’t speak German. I’m probably a massive hypocrite in this regard as I do the same with books, TV and movies.

But I don’t care. I’ll just get back to John Marsdon galloping around Blackwater in Red Dead Redemption. I’m getting to the the good bit.