I got the itch to make a list, which happens biannually. Last year, I took maybe the most indiscriminate approach to spending time with video games. Now I’m going to twist things the other way.
Instead of basing it on the typical decade timeframe, I figured why not use myself as the subjective center of all experience? I made a top 12 of video games released from 2015-2024. Then I wondered, “what games could possibly dislodge these favorites?” and I added 12 wishful entries. When I look at the 12 I selected, I don’t know if it makes any sense. Some are so disparate from each other that I just have to say, whatever makes a game good can only be measured by how fondly I remember it. Also, wow 2019 was some year, huh?
Anywho, I think I’m going to use this thread to explore the prospective entries. If one of them edges off a previous fav, I guess I’ll move onto another ten years.
Make your own list if you want to, but only if you want. Here’s mine:
I really loved ringo ishikawa because it never tries to give the player feedback about their actions/choices. A lot of things in the game are just interesting to do and to watch for their own sake. You keep hanging off your balcony and smoking and occasionally don’t pay attention in class even though all you have to do is hold A, and wonder if you’re going to trigger some kind of event flag, but it never happens. And then there’s the punchline ending where nothing you did in the game mattered in the least bit. It doesn’t really have anything to do with the subject matter/inspiration of the game either it could have been about anything…it’s the game’s commitment to this idea. A lesser game would have had a bunch of bars filling up and multiple endings and secrets and quest logs and stuff. not that there’s not secrets and events in this game but they’re so subtle. There’s so many interesting parallels (and pseudo-/anti-parallels) between what the player will feel and expect, and what ringo is going through
I thought outer wilds was incredible but there’s not much to say really…
I just want to shout out Chicory, while not being my favoritest videogame, for being way better than say, a short hike. and tunic and minit, although those are both kind of different. But they’re still all pretty zeldesque. I’m also playing link between worlds for the first time right now and Chicory is definitely better than that. To bring it around to what I was saying before, there are a lot of things you can do in this game that don’t really matter, involving the whole drawing thing. Sometimes the game will do a check on what you drew, maybe based on color choices or number of strokes, and it will surprise you. It’s fun to imagine how the programmers did it. I need more game developers to play with the idea of doing stuff that doesn’t matter!!
That’s all I got, 3 games…there are some games from the past 9 years that are neither for xbox one nor switch which means I haven’t played them, but I really doubt any of them would change my life at this point.* Oh, I have dq11 and zelda totk, but I haven’t played them yet lol, those might be good. Oh what about that recent house of the dead game that blows air in your face?? that’s probably the definitive arcade game of this Raw Thrills-poisoned era right…for better or worse. I really need to check out more games from this thread.
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So my wishlist of unplayable (for me) games would be half life alyx, astro bot ps4, bloodborne, the last guardian, gravity rush 2, death stranding, and now dragon’s dogma 2…
i never finish games, and really haven’t played any current AAA games from the last ten years a substantial amount of time other than like, Prey (which i do like a lot about but haven’t finished). and a lot of the big Important ones like Outer Wilds i either haven’t played, haven’t played much of, or haven’t finished.
one game that i really immediately liked that i still don’t see other people talk about is Uurnog Uurnlimited. i have no idea why that passed by so many other people but it’s such an inventive/bizarre platformer that is not really like anything else i played, including other stuff by Nifflas. it feels half unfinished at times but in a way that feels also very intentional. it’s hard to describe what makes it work so well for me. just so many fun little ideas and strange things going on at once in a very low key inventive way. kinda feels like lightning in a bottle for me. really fulfills the original indie promise of aspiring to do Nintendo playfulness but in a much more off-beat/personal way.
as far as walking sims go, i never see anyone talk about Future Unfolding but that game really hit me in a particular way and that’s another one i see basically no one talk about. i think it captures something kind of interesting/profound about nature in a way that sounds corny to try to articulate. it’s something it feels like the Zelda games were always trying to implicitly capture - the sort of mystery/wonder of nature - but never did nearly as good of a job as this one did at that. i’d have to revisit to see if it still has the same effect now as it did then.
i low-key really liked AMID EVIL even if its combat can be uninspired. the vibe is just kind of unparalleled to me - no other retro FPS has matched it. i guess i need to play those new The Black Labyrinth levels at some point. DUSK has more clever design in spots but it’s also aggressively stupid at points in ways i find off-putting.
also Stephen’s Sausage Roll and Salad Fields are the best puzzle games i’ve played during that period, at least in the Sokoban mold.
Soul Axiom is not the best game by any stretch of the imagination (it is, in fact, quite bad in a number of ways) but it was a very memorable experience so it gets an honorable mention from me.
I could not get into Uurnog at all, and I’m someone who loved FiNCK, which was an earlier Nifflas game with a lot of the same ideas. But each room in FiNCK was its own isolated puzzle box that you knew was somehow solvable using only what was provided to you. Uurnog layers on resource management, taking items between rooms, dying and losing progress, all of which seem like the exact wrong things to add to that formula. I could not make any progress at all: just way too many factors to divide and conquer.
The way you are describing it sounds really compelling at a formal level though and I feel like I must be missing something. I want to learn how to enjoy this game but I suspect my enjoyment of FiNCK is working against my favour.
is Uurnog Uurnlimited different than Uurnog (the original version of the game that was made for Humble)? that’s always something that’s been confusing to me
exa punks is probably my favorite zachtronics game, closely followed by TIS-100 which it directly and ambitiously iterates on. they’re interesting to compare. exa punks feels more like you’re completing “missions” as a cyberpunk and moving a plot forward. TIS-100 is an ultra-minimal programming exam where the thrill is just in realizing what’s possible. but really you’re doing very similar stuff in both
Exapunks is one of the games on my list that I’ve played a bit but know I want to see the end of. It’s such a beautiful thing to think you can’t do a problem, sleep on it, fail again, come back to it a week later and finally achieve some insight.
yeah, the appeal of TIS to me is that it really hones in on this feeling by making your objectives “simple.” exa punks has you jumping through a bunch of hoops for the verisimilitude of the fantasy while a typical puzzle in TIS is like, “draw a rectangle. good luck.” if you finish exa and aren’t sick of it then definitely give TIS a try
Man, this was in two different giant itch charity bundles I purchased and it didn’t make my personal cut in either (literally hundreds of other games did). A 15 hour long exploration game through something randomly generated is just a very steep ask, either it needs to be shorter or it’s gotta be designed.
to each their own i guess, but i strongly disagree. i also don’t think it’s 15 hours? howlongtobeat says 7 hours for the main story and 10.5 for main + extra, whatever that means. i didn’t finish it but the 6 hours or so i played were some of my favorite experiences with a game.
I was basing the 15 on comments on the game’s Steam forum, although that also had someone saying it only took them 5. I assume that is the hazards(?) of randomization for ya.
I started playing Oikospiel and I love it. David Kanaga relentlessly juxtaposes opera, dogs, Zelda, Disney, and Tristram Shandy in order to tell a story about labor in the most playful manner possible. Sometimes the camera is locked on its vertical axis and I can’t see where I’m going. Sometimes I’m clipping through plundered assets, enveloped by a collage of jaunty sounds. I learned what salting is. So many choices are equally stupid and clever. “Opera” means “work,” opera means the Sydney Opera House, OPERAting system…the wordplay and conceptual linking goes on forever and ever. Play Oikospiel.
I’ve been playing in little chunks before driving to work and I wish I could just bask in the text and environments until my mind goes to the place between dreams and reality.
