So I played a lot of games this year. About 50 to be exact (I was using a different determinant on my social media), and I gotta say, 2024 sure was a great year for escapism in service of deflecting from the crippling anxieties of the world. I played some highly-regarded games for the first time, and some games that released on a platform of my choice for the first time. For clarity, my list will be split between these two delineations, because I did not play enough new 2024 releases to make a full list this year. That gives me the chance to talk about some great games that my readers might have missed, as well as that which is “hip” and “happening.”
Part 1: 2024 Releases
10. SteamWorld Heist II
Release Date: August 8 2024
Is bigger always better? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. What SteamWorld Heist offers is a bit more of the same with a few new bits and bobs as it fully realizes its strategic potential with dedicated level designs and a swashbuckling narrative. As has always been the case with Image and Form’s titles, the aesthetics are on-point, with Steam Powered Giraffe providing new and old music for the game’s saloons and victory themes and the evergreen 2D steampunk character designs and environments shining through.
Some variations on team composition and progression redefine the potential of particular crewmates, and sailing combat is a new, albeit simple distraction that allows the world to expand at a modest pace. Though the game overstays its welcome ever-so-slightly, it never stops introducing new environmental elements and enemy status modifiers throughout its substantial campaign. Though some of the game’s choices, such as limiting the use of crew members to one battle between rests, might grind your gears, it is in service of expanding the overall utility of your team. Though there are perhaps some more thoughtful ways of encouraging this sort of behavior, the SteamWorld franchise has yet another solid entry under its belt, even if it does feel more iterative than Dig 2.
9. Wild Bastards
Release Date: September 12, 2024
Developer Blue Manchu isn’t exactly treading new ground with their latest release, as their 2019 release Void Bastards uses science fiction and first-person roguelike gunplay with a signature striking art style. While Wild Bastards takes a lot of that DNA and rearranges it, the result is a much more consistently varied experience, with brief splashes of gunplay punctuating carefully organized tactical maps. The shooter arenas are much more diverse in elevation, terrain, and hazards, and the strategy navigation sections are never dulled thanks to multiple objectives, obstacles, and the constant pressure from roaming combatants and even more aggressive pursuers.
Even so, Wild Bastards is still as cost-intensive a roguelike experience as its predecessor, meaning all of these decisions will amount to a lengthy runtime. It is somewhat more interested in telling a full narrative with its expanding cast of diverse crewmen, however, and the addition of persistent unlocks means this is not as roguish as it might seem. The fully-voiced main cast and wild and crazy shenanigans of backwaters space cowboys are a welcome addition that further helps sell the vibe of the game, especially the exasperated cries of frustration and fear of your enemies as you overwhelm them. While it might not offer the adrenaline highs of the movement shooter genre and it might not be as snappy as some other rougelike progression loops, there’s enough charm, polish, and unique game design to warrant a spot on this list.
8. Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door Remaster
Release Date: May 23rd, 2024
I have already aired my opinion of this game many times over, and my love for it is undoubtedly clouded by a deep-seated nostalgia. This was all the more reason for me to re-evaluate my love for The Thousand Year Door with this new remaster, and my feelings remain largely unchanged. There are some slight quality of life improvements, such as better telegraphed objectives and effects, quick-selection for partners, and an improved fast-travel room. There are also some new and old design choices that reveal the nature of the game as inherently flawed: new shortcuts meant to reduce what was considered egregious padding in some places, while other treks remain tedious and unchanged. The modern Paper Mario aesthetic emphasizes the texture of its environments, but the choice to make most of Rogueport’s floors squeaky clean and laminated feels uninspired.
I know that the original is not a perfect game in the eyes of many, and this is a weird remaster for its own special reasons. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t fall in love with some of the updated instrumentation and lighting choices, which really does make an old dog look a bit newer.
7. Shogun Showdown
Nintendo Switch Release Date: September 5th, 2024
I won’t wax on this title too much, considering I also discussed it on my recent post about roguelike design. The value of a single turn is an economic thing, a monumental passage of time and number of actions unfolding after each selection. However, hitting a flow state where turns pass by instinctually and with confidence is a pretty magical thing, especially in a roguelike. What Shogun Showdown does better than many turn-based titles is reflective in its small scale: battlefields are two-dimensional and every unit takes up a full “square” of the playing field, condensing the grid-based strategic choices to a single plane, and giving even more value to the mere act of turning around.
And yet, flow state can be easily achieved thanks to the limited options. Through the process of performing (and failing, I make no claims about my own proficiency) multiple runs, you better understand the four to six input options you can perform and the way that your opponents will reliably move through and attack on the battlefield. This allows the language of the game- which is largely based on symbols and low numbers- to become easily recognizable and assessed. All of this is to say that learning about Shogun Showdown has been a joy, and also addictive. I do think that the run progression and meta-progression of the game negatively impacts the learning curve, but they also provide a tangible incentive. The item pool and pathing sometimes feels a bit rigid and unhelpful, which might make a player feel like they aren’t being rewarded for effective play, but one could hope for balance patches or a proper expansion in the future. Not everyone will love its close quarters, claustrophobic gameplay, and it’s hard to really label it a deck-building game, but it definitely secured a place on my list this year.
6. Beneath Oresa
Nintendo Switch Release Date: September 12, 2024
I’m sure you can probably tell by now that I’m a roguelike chump. But did you also know that I’m a deck-building roguelike chump? It’s true! I love wracking my brain over what cards to include in my deck, and I love learning about new games that will put me under this sort of mental duress. I was initially intimidated by Beneath Oresa due to its middling reviews on Steam and complex mechanics, but since only one of those things really seemed like a negative, I took the plunge and was pleasantly surprised. As is the case with the previous entry, your mileage may vary when it comes to this title, as many of the aspects of roguelike design are only further exacerbated when adding deck-building mechanics to the mix.
Pick a character archetype, plumb the depths of Oresa with a partner offering a companion bonus, and take on hordes of strange denizens that will threaten to end your expedition early. Its standard fare, but Oresa’s unique positioning mechanics, aesthetic charms, and diverse character mechanics offer more than enough flavor to grab your attention. The visual style of the game- bless the developers at Broken Spear Inc. for their dedication to 3D models and environments- does wonders to keep runs feeling frenetic even when you’re weighing your options from turn to turn. The staggering variety of team-building options present in the companion system means you can aim to emphasize a character archetype playstyle by doubling up on similar characters, or you can adapt to the strengths and weaknesses of your playable character by offering them potential boons found in other play styles. One thing is certain, however- with the way Beneath Oresa’s mechanics tend to snowball even over the course of a single turn, you’ll need to weigh your options carefully if you want to achieve success. This is roguelike design at its most punishing, but the results can be just as exhilarating when you’re on a roll.
5. Another Crab’s Treasure
Release Date: April 25th, 2024
It’s the second game from Aggro Crab Studios, and boy, is it deserving of that title. From humble roguelike beginnings about the way corporate startups and internships are actually pretty terrible, this studio has refined their craft with a tale about trash economies, corporate greed, and environmental degradation. And it’s a soulslike!
Though it loses a bit of steam towards its conclusion with a lack of enemy variety, there’s excellent environmental design and a staggering amount of movement and attack options for a little hermit crab with a fork. The boss battles are intense and crazy, and the setting and characters are authentic and heartfelt in ways people might expect from a developer of much higher caliber or budget. This little crab that could more than earns his spot on my list this year, and I’m kind of surprised that I don’t see it more elsewhere.
4. Master Key
Nintendo Switch Release Date: May 30th, 2024
To say that the indie scene is doing a great job of churning out esoteric sendups to classic top-down Zelda gameplay is massively underselling what it takes to make a good Zelda game. Titles like Death’s Door, Tunic, and UNSIGHTED existing and being great shouldn’t detract from the impressive accomplishments found in games like this year’s Castaway, which turns the Zelda experience into a bite-sized affair, or Master Key, which tasks players with learning a new language in the hopes of conquering an impressively-scaled overworld.
To elaborate, the language of Master Key is symbol-based, much in the same way as Shogun Showdown. It is perhaps why I gravitated towards both so strongly, though the former isn’t trying to obfuscate its puzzles or world with this language- rather, it simplifies the game and its learning in order to increase its accessibility. WIth only one or two exceptions will the player need to actually translate the cues that Master Key presents to them in order to obtain a valuable secret, and even then, it is more a matter of logic than anything.
Master Key isn’t really all that concerned with puzzling the player, and despite not really possessing as much of a Dark Souls DNA as other games on this list, it aims to challenge players with combat scenarios and enemy placement more often than any other kind of gameplay. The fact that it features on this list over an official Zelda 2024 release should say something about its overall quality, however. It is a charming, economic experience that clocks in around ten hours and jams its game world full of secrets, objectives, and fun. It serves as a reminder that even if Zelda has embraced a more systemic, open-ended formula, there is still a place for these more traditional top-down experiences, and that independent developers are just as capable of creating these experiences, and maybe doing them a bit better.
3. Tenderfoot Tactics
Nintendo Switch Release Date: February 21st, 2024
The joy- and curse, to some- of owning a popular console is getting the chance to experience some games for the first time long after their release. I have marveled at the design and aesthetics of games several years old in 2024, and Tenderfoot Tactics is the best possible example of this. Simply put, this open-world strategy title is unlike anything I have ever experienced, and I feel all the more blessed to have picked it up in 2024 so that I can remind you all of it today.
Tenderfoot Tactics is two beautiful halves that comprise a single, contemplative experience. You’ll take on the role of a band of roving goblins hoping to cleanse their world of a corrupting fog, wandering the surprisingly varied terrain and learning more about the world through bits and pieces of lore sprinkled across civilizations, ruins, and the occasional map, all of which must be read with care in order to ascertain their secrets. There is no universal map system, so determining your location must be done by cross-referencing what your character have seen in comparison with the maps you have collected. Pair this with the simply breathtaking visuals that will beguile you just as often as they offer tranquil reprieve, and you’re in for a surprisingly meditative experience.
All of this is mirrored by a dynamic turn- and grid-based combat system, which allows your warriors to transform the terrain around them in order to overwhelm your opponents. Words fail to describe the visceral pleasure that comes with your meteor spell actually creating a crater in the map, which can be filled with water that impedes movement. These spells go both ways, however, and you can accidentally knock a party member into an unfortunate scenario, or start a fire that spreads through the ranks of both sides. It’s similarly compelling and challenging stuff, especially as you expand your access to new classes and locations. All in all, the game offers two very different sides of the same coin, but it will forever cement itself in my memory for all of its bold design choices.
2. Crystal Project
Nintendo Switch Release Date: January 12, 2024
Listen, the top spot on this list is going to a standout written narrative and beautifully aesthetic title, but if we’re talking video-game-ass-video-gaming, Crystal Project is by far the most fun I’ve had this year. Frankly, I’m shocked at how a single developer River Running Games managed to pull off one of the most enjoyable RPG experiences I’ve played in years, but here we are.
The premise is simple: your party is dropped in a block-based open world in order to experience the joys of adventure, and you spend the entirety of your playtime learning jobs and slapping around all sorts of fantasy creatures. If that sounds like standard fare, here’s the twist: You can jump. I know that makes me sound like the most shallow-minded armchair game designer out there, but to experience the entirety of Crystal Project is to understand how a jump button can enhance just about anything- if executed correctly.
The joyful display of varied dungeon environments here is really what sells the idea. You have your standard, Zelda-like room-based dungeon set within a volcano, sure, but you also have a bottomless pit filled with bouncy mushrooms. You have a dank, underground literal dungeon filled with flooded cells and undead crawlies, but you also have an entire dungeon played from a 2D side scrolling perspective. You have an aqueduct dungeon inside a pyramid, and a dungeon taking place in the sewers of an abandoned village. You have a dungeon that has you climbing the inside of a hollowed-out tree! You have a dungeon where you ride a little fish through water-based mazes! All of these feature precise platforming sections that are mitigated by a generous respawn system, but most importantly, you get to freely run and risk your jumps without having to worry about fall damage or any sort of negative effect on your party when transitioning to battle.
And hey, it’s not like those battles are any slouch, either. They use an extremely transparent stat-based system that allows you to see how your turns are going to play out and whether or not you’ll be able to manipulate the combination of status effects, enemy attention, healing abilities, and raw damage to survive from one turn to the next. All of this is supported by a smart character-progression and job-building system that rewards subclassing and is also highly malleable, to the point where you can rebalance your entire team with relative ease as you attempt to tackle some of the game’s more insane late-game content.
What could be more perfect? What about a game that is infinitely replayable? New Game+ allows you to reconfigure the game’s difficulty, the materials you carry over, and even randomize the locations of jobs and treasure chest loot, meaning you could play endless variations of Crystal Project for the rest of your life. Will you want to do that? Well, I’m not sure. I think Crystal Project’s base game experience is just about perfect in its own right. If that isn’t worth a spot on an end of year list, I don’t know what is.
1. 1000xResist
Release Date: May 9th, 2024
As an English Teacher, I care about writing. It might be surprising that I also love the medium of video games, which doesn’t often possess a strong focus on storytelling (which is fine!) and pretty frequently exhibits juvenile to unpolished narratives (to which, in all fairness, every narrative medium is also a victim). So it’s pretty damn important to me to highlight games with truly strong narrative chops, but also to champion games that tell unique stories with the medium.
Enter 1000xResist, a post-apocalyptic, science-fiction experience that plays with perspective while offering a heartfelt and complex story about diaspora, parenthood, trauma, and more. This is a beautifully voice-acted game, with standout performances from a range of actors and actresses, though I’ll admit I’m particularly biased towards the vocals of Alex Mah. The amount of voiced dialogue is something to behold, but the combination of evocative writing and stunning visuals makes 1000xResist a feast for the eyes and ears. While its interactive elements are sometimes hit-and-miss, it does use the unique traits of the medium to empower the player to understand the entirety of the complex web it weaves, particularly with its command of chronology and perspective-shifting. It succeeds in this so deftly that, even presented with the first-ever timed segment in the game, your palms are sweating due to the narrative weight of your actions just as much as it being an instance of challenge.
There’s symbolism! Political commentary. A fully-realized science fiction world. Stakes! Boy, are there stakes. There’s an artistic vision so intensely focused and polished, you might forget that this is the first-ever release from developer Sunset Visitor. At its core, 1000xResist is a game that I cannot help but recommend to everyone and anyone looking for something truly unique in the medium.
Part 2: Games I Need to Mention Because I Played Them in 2024
(This is going to be much more truncated- maybe I’ll talk about them more in the future!)
Sephonie
Did you know video games can make you cry? Well, Melos Han-Tani is particularly effective at doing that, and in a narrative-based 3D platformer!
Under the Castle
Hey, the Playdate is a pretty neat console. This pocket-sized roguelike is also one of its most impressive releases. A 1-bit screen can stop this game from looking great, and its addictive size and loop are worth checking out.
Firewatch
Yeah, I know I missed the boat on this one. Firewatch is art, and the way it uses the act of interaction- or lack thereof- to spin an effective narrative about facing the hard truths is masterful.
Alba: A Wildlife Adventure
This adorable game will have you skipping with joy just like its eponymous protagonist as you photograph native Spanish wildlife. A game with a strong message that plays to the strengths of the medium and is widely accessible. Play it with your child!
Donut County
Newsflash- Donut County rips. If Neon White is a bit too early aughts anime for your taste, this preceding title from developer Ben Esposito is a snappy little package with tons of nonsensical humor and charm.
Paradise Killer
Hot damn am I glad I got around to playing this, but I’m kicking myself for not doing so earlier. Much like 1000xResist, this wildly unique occult sci-fi murder mystery whodunit is unlike anything else, and while its open-world exploration doesn’t always soar, it more than makes up for it with its beautiful aesthetics and razor-sharp writing.
Live A Live
Have you ever finally gotten around to a classic and wished with all your heart that you could have played it as a child so that it could dictate the entirety of your personhood? That’s what finally playing this title made me feel. Live A Live is a loving homage to so many different genres, but its also a thrilling subversion on the classic fantasy JRPG in all of the best ways.
Sayonara Wild Hearts
Uh, yeah. I finally played one of the most incredible rhythm games in existence. It was incredible. Stay tuned for my thoughts on Lorelei and the Laser Eyes during my 2025 list, I guess.
Oom
I had to close this little list out with yet another Playdate plug- seriously, if you are on the fence about this little device with a crank… I completely understand, because it’s a niche console with pretty stringent limitations and a small community. But that community supports this tiny yellow device with some incredible content, and Oom is the perfect representation of that idea. In using the crank for analogue control of its rhythm-based dungeon crawling, this game presents a smartly-paced adventure that never overstays its welcome and iterates upon itself multiple times with novel gameplay folds. As is the case with some of my favorite titles, the use of simple aesthetics allows the action to unfold organically and instinctually. It’s a gem.