here we go. and i don’t care what games came out this year, i’m gonna talk about what i played, roughly in the order of when i played them. this is mostly just for me, all of these are like really miscellaneous thoughts about each game that i had while playing them and never actually said anywhere

• Disco Elysium
  maybe cheating because i think i started it last december, but i played it IN january so i’m going to count it. one of the best games i’ve ever played in my life. absolutely phenomenal writing, real emotional depth and stakes, genuinely funny, and hot damn was it fascinating to argue with my mind. that’s all i’ll say cause my thoughts aren’t fresh in my mind, i’ll probably replay it sometime this upcoming year
• LISA
  everyone knows lisa. everyone knows it’s good. i kinda had a really easy run of it? and i save-scummed a bit, so i probably didn’t have the full experience, but i got the gist. it def isn’t really my aesthetic, and it wasn’t any sort of profound experience for me, but i can appreciate it & understand why it receives the acclaim it does
• Art Sqool
  a game where you roam around and draw using limited tools and palette. it was in the bundle for racial justice and inequality, so odds are you own it, and i’d recommend it! i think this game kinda kicked off me finally getting into art this year, cause i actually ended up making a few little drawings in it i was proud of, and that’s the first step
• A Short Hike
  a perfect compact experience. nice and comfortable, a good relaxing game that i can respect.
• Spiritfarer
  so this game got a lot of hype, and i think it’s cool, but i got bored by the gameplay loop. it’s a weird critique, but the game felt to “gamey” for me to really enjoy. cause it was the typical acquire resources –> make tools –> get better resources –> repeat kinda game despite its themes. i think a few years ago when that loop still worked on me i would’ve really loved this game but now this loop just felt like it was getting in the way of the story
• Animal Crossing: New Horizons
  eh. i say that after having played like 70 hours, but eh! animal crossing doesn’t really do it for me like i used to. maybe it’s because i already played new leaf for hundreds of hours, but after i more or less made my town all nice, i lost interest. also read some critique about how animal crossing kinda reflects colonialism and malicious materialistic gameplay loops & i kinda agreed. i mean really, AC is a game about relaxing by doing chores, and i guess i just no longer find those kinda gameplay chores that fun like i used to
• Oikospiel (the dog opera)
  top 5 games of all time for me, everyone, holy fucking shit. most bewildering experience of my life, idk how to talk about this game without just describing things that happen in it. it was a game that i was afraid to play cause i knew after the first 30 minutes it might be one of the best experiences of my life, and it took me around a month to ready myself for that. i’ve talked about this game a LOT elsewhere so i don’t feel like going into it but… it’s in the bundle for racial justice. you probably own it. please, PLEASE play it and tell me. no one’s played this game, but by god everyone should
• Don’t Starve Together
  played this a lot with one of my friends early in the summer, it’s a fun game but honestly roguelikes like this kinda put me in a sour mood & really i play them just to distract myself from responsibility. cause in this game there’s never a spare moment, i can binge it for hours and i’m CONSTANTLY doing stuff, cause of the day/night cycle. but the second i breathe, it’s like “is this fun?” and the answer is questionable.
• Spelunky 2
  AAHHHHHHH. i played SO much of this game, i never managed to beat hundun. i think it was great to have my skill steadily increase the whole time i was playing it (and beating the default game is like SUPER easy now) but i think i hit a wall where my skill wasn’t improving any further, and i was always dying due to dumb mistakes. i could do each part with 95% accuracy, but then doing them all in succession… anyway Spelunky was a game that I 100%ed back when i was obsessive about 100%ing games and i played it for 120 hours, way past the point i was having fun. and with spelunky 2 i played it for a pretty long time, probably around 50 hours (i’ve hidden it in my steam library to stop playing it so idk the exact number lol) and i think i engaged with it in a much healthier way? i’d do a run, lose, and then go do something else rather than binging it, which i think is a much better way. anyway as for an actual review of the game, it’s the perfect roguelike, etc. etc. whatever
• Twilight Imperium
  yeah this is a board game fucking sue me :3 anyway this game was SO MUCH FUN. the most actively i’d had real fun playing a game in a long time, it’s like a 12 hour board game, and i got SO into it. i thought beforehand i’d get bored of it, but it’s just so engaging
• Super Mario 3D All Stars
  bought this because i had watched a lot of simpleflips videos earlier in the year and thought playing through super mario 64 would give me closure to stop watching his videos, but then realized i hate super mario 64′s controls too much and played sunshine instead. but then i discovered that my nostalgia filter no longer blinds me from the fact that the game is an unfinished mess. i love the game, think it has the best controls outta any mario game still, but like half the levels aren’t even real levels. but yknow i can still appreciate how weird it is, and i still love it, but i now recognize that it’s, like… kinda bad… F
• The Crown of Leaves
  some visual novel i impulse bought on steam, was super short and felt more like a teaser than a full game, but had some of the best art and most interesting worldbuilding outta anything i’ve ever played. seriously, absolutely incredible character design and attention to detail
• Among Us
  this game is okay. it was fun for a few rounds and then me and my friends got bored. but one of my friends with another group has like 300 hours in this game. i don’t understand why this game is STILL so popular. it’s a good game, and i’m happy that a small indie game is one of the top games of the year. i just don’t see the appeal lmao
• Fall Guys
  played it for like 6ish hours until i won and then lost interest. it’s a fun game but i got bored of the minigames rather quickly. i might go back to it now that it’s in a different season
• Persona 5
  hoo boy that’s what i’ve been playing this past month or so. first time in a long while i’ve played a game with a really long campaign. i’ve been having fun! i like how kindness is a stat that you can level up and improve at, that feels poignant to me. nasty crimeboy is simultaneously a nerd and cool, what a weird personality, it’s great. think the characters are endearing, hate the fanservice, my dad watched me play some of it and kept saying “so it’s like a cartoon AND a game” and every time ryuji swore he was like “you can CURSE in video games now?!?” sometimes i think the game moves too slowly & i think the daily life vs. dungeon exploration parts could be broken up better, but all and all i think it’s a really great game
• Bugsnax
  thought the mechanics were kinda cool, always always love goofy characters dealing with serious emotional issues, though the plot resolution was maybe a bit rushed. i honestly expected all the characters to die at the end after failing to solve their problems, was surprised how things turned out. solving how to catch the bugsnax was occasionally frustrating but very rewarding when i figured something clever out. tbh though i think casting a conspiracy theorist character in a positive light is a lot harder to pull off nowadays, but i enjoyed the characters a lot nevertheless

games i started and then got bored of rather quickly and abandoned:

• Underhero
  probably charming, just couldn’t hook me. concept is neat, but the gameplay is a loop i’m so familiar with i no longer really have any interest in
• Ori and the Will of the Wisps
  same issue as underhero. i probably will play this eventually, but i just wasn’t feeling a metroidvania. i’ve played so many, i know EXACTLY how the game will play out mechanically, and once i recognized that, i kinda lost interest in it?
• Forager
  very addicting game, but had the same loop of get resources –> get equipment –> get more resources with absolutely no soul at the heart of it. played it nonstop for 3 hours, then stopped and thought for 5 minutes, and uninstalled it because this was a game that i could sink days into but not get anything meaningful out of
• Spongebob Squarepants: Battle for Bikini Bottom
  i played a friend’s copy of remaster a bit, i think it looks nicer maybe but the gamecube version is less buggy. there were definitely some major improvements to certain moves, but the slide controls were a mess, i think they made me ragequit and i never went back to it rip
• Drawn to Life: the Next Chapter
  i ordered this game for like $4 cause i never played it, loved the first one, and know there’s a new one coming out, but i couldn’t get into it. i think now that i’ve started doing real digital art, including some actual pixel art, doing the same sorta stuff on such a tiny and frustrating interface, no longer was any fun. in 2017 i replayed the OG and put in real effort into all the art, and i thought i’d do the same now, but i wasn’t feeling it
• Genshin Impact
  this is like breath of the wild but with all the parts i like about it removed

summary

• games i played the most: animal crossing: new horizons, spelunky 2, persona 5
• games i liked the most: oikospiel, disco elyusium, a short hike, persona 5

was this more games than usual? less? i don’t know. ¾ of this year was a pandemic, the other fourth i was studying abroad. main takeaway is i’m no longer a completionist, more willing to drop games if they don’t interest me right away, and probably a lot more critical. gameplay loops that involve grinding to get resources no longer interest me much at all. almost all of these were played during winter/summer breaks.