Roughly in chronological order of when I played them. Most of these games didn’t come out this year. Random comments presented with basically no context.

• OMORI
  I impulse bought this as soon as I learned it existed based only on visual presentation. Extremely fantastic. The core twist of it ripped out my heart and had me feeling something (SOMETHING) for weeks afterwards. I played it during a weirdly emotionally tumultuous point in my life; I was back on campus for my last semester ever and was in the process of getting back together with my ex. The world’s scary, isn’t it? And it’s nice to get lost in fantasy. This game got me yearning for childhood – though not even necessarily mine. When I was a kid, I didn’t want to ever grow up; I knew I had it good. And I was right.

  The art and vibes were cool, atmosphere was incredible, mechanics were decent (at least, RPGs usually make me bored, but I never got tired of this one– though I will say the last normal boss was way too easy, didn’t have a satisfying culminating fight) – though also I guess you were leaving the hikkomori lifestyle, so it makes sense that you were escaping the RPG-ness of the RPG parts? who knows…

  Anyway indie RPGs that have children with knives are almost always good in my experience.

• RingFit Adventure
  Aw yeah! This got me working out a bit after slacking for a whole year during early pandemic. But honestly it’s not a real replacement for going to the gym… honestly who knows how I managed to make that a routine for a whole semester. I go occasionally, but man, is it hard to form habits… I still play this very sporadically whenever I have some spare willpower. Honestly sometimes I wish I was a jock growing up. I feel so disconnected from physicality sometimes, I’m the weakest person ever, but damn working out actually can feel pretty great sometimes. I’ve thought about making a new year’s resolution to work out more but that seems so comically cliche… maybe I’ll make the resolution in february once most people have given up on their resolutions and the gym’s less crowded… Anyway yeah, ringfit, Dragaux is hot, sometimes easier exercises do more damage than harder ones and that’s frustrating.
• Pokemon New Snap
  Pictures. TBH this surpassed any expectations I had, I don’t expect anything from modern pokemon games anymore but this really recaptured some of the joy. I always really loved the first game, and they didn’t really have to add as much as they did, but they went all out and made this game have a lot of beans.
• The Forgotten City
  Ha, I saw an article that Jacob Geller wrote saying the game was good, and without even reading it I bought the game and played it with blind faith in his taste. Which worked out, because I thought the game was fantastic. I’ve always been a sucker for time-loop stories. Every empire falls eventually.
• Stephen’s Sausage Roll
  Very challenging sokoban puzzle game about rolling sausages. Game decided to have a story only in the last chapter, which was bizarre and unexpected. But it’s mostly about the puzzles. And as a bit of a not-so-humble brag, looking at the steam reviews, I apparently beat this game MUCH faster than most people, taking about 18 hours, while the average seems to be around 30. #swaggamermoments
• We Were Here
  This is a cooperative first-person puzzle game. Some of the puzzles were boring / bad, while others were very well done. Overall it was a good time. Very much enjoyed the realistic radio communications. My BF & I broke the game at the end – the twist is that only one of us can escape. But we glitched it up by mistake resulting in neither of us being able to escape. That was our secret ending. We were long distance for a few months this year and I think this was my favorite thing we did together during that period.
• ZERO ESCAPE: Zero Time Dilemma
  What a terrible end to the series. I didn’t even realize how much I disliked it until I talked to a friend about it, and kept being able to complain about it.
• Deltarune Chapter 2
  AHHHHHHH I WAS ABOUT TO POST THIS LIST WITHOUT INCLUDING DELTARUNE. Anyway YEAH OFC this is like, my game of the year, how could I forget. thank god there’s a fandom now so I can just read the wiki instead of having to make my own lmao. I don’t think I’ll ever be SO into it like I was with Undertale but TBH Deltarune is probably gonna be even better. Can’t wait until I’m, like, 30, and we finally get to know how it ends.
• Yoku’s Island Express
  Pretty fun, can’t go wrong with the bizarreness of a pinball metroidvania. The story and presentation was a bit odd though – occupied a space between being silly and kinda weirdly violent at times.
• ZooSim
  This was made by someone I kinda almost know. Part of the game was about wanting to be validated by the masses – this kinda relatable desire to make some good art that gets you famous, and focusing so much on hypothetical relationships that you neglect your actual relationships. At least that’s some of my interpretation, wherein I’m probably projecting a bit. It was about too religion, but all that went over my head. It’s one of those things where I feel that if you put strong feelings into art and just churn it out, that art isn’t necessarily going to be a clean and professional experience, but it’s going to be raw and vulnerable, and I think ZooSim was that. I think this game was made by someone in the same category of person as me, whatever that means.

I replayed a few games

• Terraria
  I sink maybe 40-80 hours into this game every two years or so. This time I played it with my BF a ton for a few months, I had a good time. Probably the most thoroughly I’ve played it.
• Animal Crossing: New Horizons The DLC update lured me back in unexpectedly. At some point the dopamine I got from playing AC was turned off, but I guess that’s been reversed, because I’m having fun doing all my daily tasks again. Maybe also because a bunch of my friends are playing it again too. When I bought the game, I assumed I’d be playing it every day for the next year, like I did for New Leaf, but I only played it for two months; I think because I got it during the pandemic, when nothing was happening, I over-played it and got burnt out much faster than I would have otherwise. Maybe I’ll stick with it longer this time.
• PuyoPuyo Tetris I finished the singleplayer campaign on a whim, now I’m pretty good at PuyoPuyo, and at least, like, conceptually understand t-spins (though LMAO if you think I can do them with any sort of consistency).
• Fallout
  New Vegas. Haven’t played this since I was 13. I’m older now, believe it or not. And I think a lot of the depth in this game went over my head. I re-watched hmbomberguy’s video about it & had the urge to play it again. And I’m having fun! Resisting falling into the trap of doing everything (like checking EVERY storage chamber at every location, omg I can’t believe I used to do that), and just having a fun, casual playthrough. I really wanna get to Old World Blues, as I don’t remember ANYTHING about its plot, but remember there was “STUFF” going on.
• deBlob
  I played like a third of the way through, during this awkward period after I moved into my new apartment but didn’t have the wifi set up yet for a few days. TBH it’s a bit ironic about how a game about creativity and freedom scratches my desire to be given a series of tasks and mindlessly complete them. It was still fun to revisit.
• Paper Mario: TTYD
  I’m watching my BF play this for the first time, which is fun! This is probably my favorite game ever, and has been for years. I think it has the kind of absurdist worldbuilding that’s an exemplar of what I like in fiction. But eh, I’ve gushed about this game before somewhere to someone at some point so I don’t feel like repeating myself here.
• Pokemon Ranger
  I replayed this for a few hours, and WOW it does not hold up at all. My god, the dialogue is so boring, how I never noticed as a kid who knows.

I also have been working through my steam backlog. Teenage me was a sucker for steam sales. I actually only have, like, 10 more games I need to try & determine whether to drop them forever or finish them, and then my backlog is over, after, like, 8 years of games lurking in my library unplayed.

• Octodad: Dadliest Catch
  I had watched a let’s play of this game maybe 7 years ago or so, and bought it myself, but ofc didn’t want to immediately play it again. Ergo I played it 7 years after purchase. It was good and fun! It knows what it wants to be (slapstick of an octopus pretending to be a man) and does it well.
• L.A. Noire
  This game presupposes I give a shit about cars. Most of the cases were kinda easy, and it was immersion breaking anytime there was an action segment and I was supposed to shoot like a dozen guys while solving a murder. I got tired of it fairly quickly, probably before the cases got very interesting. But I really didn’t like any of the characters at all, so there wasn’t that strong of an incentive to continue. Also, I have no self control, so I save-scummed a TON which made it less fun, which is on me ofc, but still.
• Grow Up
  I played the first game, Grow Home, 5 years ago, and bought this one right after, and never got around to it until now… it was good! Essentially just a bigger version of the first. Though I think the upgrades made a lot of the challenges of the game too easy too quickly. But it’s, y'know, a nice relaxing game.
• Mark of the Ninja
  This was very… 2012. Man, I’ve come to expect a lot more from games since then. Visually and gameplay wise it’s fine I guess, the game overall felt kinda orientalist, especially story-wise. Eh, in any case I got bored of it fairly quickly.

Favorites this year were OMORI, deltarune 2: electric boogaloo and the forgotten city. Otherwise this year’s games were decently fun but nothing that shifted a paradigm or whatever. Maybe I should practice writing better reviews/critiques/recommendations for things, this is kinda a mess but was fun to write.