#2024 in games

[ipsl0re]

2024 in 52 games

I maintain a list of every game I complete- get to the point where I see the end credits roll.

Partway through this year, I realised I’d surpassed my previous record for how many i can complete in one year (26), and decided, with the uncomfortable amounts of time I’ve had to fill this year, to go for an all-time max. That number reached 40 near the end of November, and a subsequent sprint brought me here: to a game a week, 52 completed.

Here’s the list, and below that, my top ten.

Bold- I recommend it.

Italics- I enjoyed it.

(honourable mention to all games in italics that didn’t make the list. It was close!)

Monster Roadtrip

Book Of Hours

Misericorde: Volume 1

Settlemoon

Cult of the Lamb

Fight Knight

Cureocity

Venba

Roboquest

Buckshot Roulette

Slay the Princess

Akin

The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood

Minami Lane

Bad End Theatre

Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley

Sheepy: A Short Adventure

Portal

Essays on Empathy

Kinitopet

Spiritfarer

Cobalt Core

In Stars And Time

Dicey Dungeons

Sifu

Pepper grinder

Mediterranea Inferno

Ender Lilies: quietus of the knights

Cassette Beasts

Borderlands: The Pre-sequel

Live A Live

Bloodless

Clickolding

Sunshine Heavy Industries

Artic Eggs

Bad North

Horizon Chase 2

I Am Your Beast

Midnight Ramen

Lookouts

Project Wingman

A Year Of Springs

Gravity Circuit

Disco Elysium

Gris

Children of the Sun

Awaria

Neo: The World Ends With You

Resonance of the Ocean

Ib

Serre

Detective Beebo: Night at the Mansion

Top 10:

These are not ranked- though I do have a favourite, as you’ll see.

1. Book of Hours

Only finally finished it at the start of the year after playing for four months- it can’t be accused of lacking in content! Hush House is vast and full of fascinating mysteries, both physical and historical. (It’s also very Cornish, which is fun.)

The gameplay cycle of reading, learning, classifying, and using the knowledge to read ever more complex tomes really immerses you into the life of an occult librarian. Once you’ve heard the secret histories: “well, there just doesn’t seem to be anything else worth hearing.”

2. Bloodless

There is little here that wasn’t meticulously designed. Genius combat that always keeps you on the back foot and insanely good art direction that works in tandem with the hyper-defensive combat to help tell a great story on the dynamics of violence. That makes it sound very grim and serious- and I can’t pretend that it’s not when it needs to be- but Tomoe is one of my favourite characters, the warrior idols plentiful side content, and the geography of Bakugawa just a delight to explore. There is so much here to love and it breaks my heart that so few people have played this.

Please give it a look.

3. Fight Knight

I didn’t think a game like this would be made- technologically (a 3D game in gamemaker? Are they mad?) or from a design perspective. It’s a collection of old school Zelda style puzzle dungeons, with grid based movement, a save system about pushing your luck, and combat that puts you into some kind of corridor fighting game? Also you punch people to talk. And… to do everything else, too.

Despite, or perhaps in some places because of all that, I’d also consider it the most epic game I played this year, with some really touching writing. Huh.

You won’t find anything else like it. On that note…

4. Artic Eggs

I thought a game like this would exist even less- a… Post? Pre? Apocalyptic setting where you fry eggs and all sorts of other things, for all sorts of people. And a dolphin. But I can’t say I’ve stopped thinking about it since frying my first egg: I mean, could you fry an egg on mount Everest?

5. Misericorde: volume 1

A visual novel, in monochrome, without a single decision, isn’t a great sales pitch. But when it’s a 10-hour tour de force of characterisation in a murder mystery set in a medieval yorkshire abbey- and with such stunning monochrome art & 104 tracks of incredible trip-hop… well, there are few games I can recommend more heartily.

6. Disco Elysium

Look, this game will (and has already begun to) shape the entire art of games. And for good reason! The twenty-seven voices in a certain double-yefreitor’s head (if i’m counting the ancient reptilian, limbic, and necktie right) have such incredible interplay, and would make interacting with the dullest characters and situations engaging. Not that such a crutch is ever used- every storyline and three-dimensional character involved in it is often painfully human.

Few games will get you thinking about so much in its world and ours.

Also, heads up: don’t pay for the game. The actual devs don’t get a penny from the sales any more.

7. Live A Live

If Disco Elysium is what happens when RPGs are focused into telling a very specific kind of story, Live A Live is what happens when one RPG somehow manages to tell multiple totally different ones. Every story brings something new, (except prehistory. Prehistory contributes nothing.) and by spreading its efforts across all these different narrative and gameplay conventions, Live A Live stands out as almost ten times the game of many of its contemporaries.

8. Ib

Ib doesn’t alternate between being cute and being a horror game. Somehow, it pulls off both at the same time. I don’t know how but I do know it makes for a very effective experience. Ib, Garry, and Mary have such wonderful interplay, and as you explore the galleries, solve the puzzles, and lay eyes upon the sheer variety of Guertena’s works, they all bring a lot of character that helps ground the frights and bring the humanity to the quiet moments.

I’ve already got four of the endings in this game, and no doubt i’ll be going back for the rest.

9. Slay the Princess

On the subject of many endings and paths (in the woods, at the end of that path…), a game that takes that to the extreme: in the form of another horror game, with just as much heart. With intricately branching paths, there’s so much to see and hear (Nichole Goodnight is stellar with everything from angry beasts to ascendant gods, and Jon Sims, well, he needs no introduction). It’s beautiful, it’s horrifying, it’s probably made me laugh the hardest of any game this year. It is a love story.

10. Detective Beebo: Night at the Mansion.

If you play anything from this year, let it be this. The best time loop game this year- and that’s even when stacked against Cobalt Core and fellow love story Slay The Princess. Private detective Oliver Beebo is a delight to see in action, whether he’s solving puzzles, reliving traumas, or being flirted with by a hot guy. It twists the established conventions of everything it touches in ways that are touching and new- a relationship that can be seen as five or as one, brief horror used to carefully set stakes, foreshadowing aplenty merged with a unique take on player and character knowledge, and utterly incredible characters that are allowed to unfold with unparalleled care- some more than once each!

Maybe it’s recency bias making me go this far- but gods, this is a high note to end the year on.

Try it! Give it one more chance.

[witchlinda]

Taisiia Onofriichuk from Ukraine performs her hoop routine to the sound of "Thriller" by Michael Jackson at the 2024 Paris Olympics Rhythmic Gymnastics Individual Qualifiers

[darthlexapro]

Both kinds of Bioware girls got a lot of rep at the 2024 VMAs

[tomatostyle]

Kim Ye-Ji 🇰🇷 vs Yusuf Dikeç 🇹🇷

[flyer9550]

[makanioverlord]

me: I wanna make angst and cool art like other artists in the fandom

also me: *draws this instead*

[ribose300]

only real mouthwashers remember this

[gravityqueen]

Okami Sequel - Project Teaser

[graegrape-art]

we can fix this

[200-word-rpgs]

200 Word RPGs 2024

Each November, some people try to write a novel. Others would prefer to do as little writing as possible. For those who wish to challenge their ability to not write, we offer this alternative: producing a complete, playable roleplaying game in two hundred words or fewer.

This is the submission thread for the 2024 event, running from November 1st, 2024 through November 30th, 2024. Submission guidelines can be found in this blog's pinned post, here.

[sccpmccabe]

all interactions between simone and rebeca became a thousand times funnier after rebeca revealed that she doesn't know how to speak english and understands very little of the language 😭😭😭 girlie always laughs and agrees but she doesn't understand anything

[queerstudiesnatural]

funny how celebrities will raise $26M for a fashion institute but can't be bothered to mobilise even a fraction of that energy and money to help the people being tortured and killed in an unapologetic genocide as we speak. love that for society. what a moment for The Culture.

[eurodynamic]

OKAMI SEQUEL Project Teaser Trailer The Game Awards 2024

[8ug8ear]

elden ring nightreign

[gallusneve]

There are no gods here... only monsters.