Year's come to an end yet again. Most eventful year of my life, potentially. I only played indie games this year! That feels like a big success, haha.

• Balatro
  I would play this a TON while I was interviewing for my new job back in February, super anxious & excited about getting it as each round of interviews went well. Over 80 hours were sunk into this game; it took me WAY too long to realize you could increase the gameplay speed. This was the year of cards, for me. It started with my friends getting into Pokemon cards, then my TCG collection, Balatro, learning card tricks, recording unboxing videos w/ Jacob, collecting business cards... the kind of interest that snowballs.
• Lethal Company
  Tertiary and I started a new group chat of a couple college friends who I hadn't otherwise been in touch much with. (mostly my college pals that don't do larps, lol). A couple of us played Lethal Company a few times a week pretty consitently for a few months. It was extremely obvious over time that my friends were just playing to hang out, while I got SUPER into the game itself. The slapstick horror and emergent storytelling works extremely well, what a deeply silly and scary time.
• Animal Well
  I'm looking for them. The eggs. The animals tease me. A short, tight platformer becomes an sprawling puzzle game. I would've liked this game more had I not already played Tunic; both games are enjoyable for the same reasons, yet Tunic does it better. :P
• Anthology of the Killer
  People are making art, in this day and age. A truly remarkable feat this game accomplished is creating moments where I was genuinely scared, WHILE ALSO I was laughing at the expertly crafted comedic dialogue. This game parodies everything in its unique voice soaking with acerbic silliness. thecatamites is easily one of the best game developers out there.
• I was a Teenage Exocolonist
  I'm an adult now, aren't I? This game captured the experience of teenage angst with so much care and nuance, and really made me reflect on the distance between myself now and I as a teen. So much of the dialogue threw me back into that mindset, the messiness and yearning and confusion of growing up, that somehow, I had almost forgotten. And of course, it's doing all that on the backdrop of a super fun world of xenobiology and mystery. I was really gunning to date Cal on my first run, but then they had to airdrop in a slutty puppyboy, as if I wouldn't immediately drop everything and go for him.
• Higurashi When They Cry
  MUCH easier to solve than Umineko, or maybe I was just mentally primed for it. Huuuuge pet peeve in that every guy is a pervert and fanservice is constant. But the mysteries themselves were pretty fun to follow along, also in retrospect the first scenario is literally a comedy.
• Time Bandit
  A very unpolished game, and the Marxism was SO in your face that it was kinda silly, but I liked it! When I was younger, I was obsessively anxious about not spending time effectively, beating myself up for not optimizing my life properly, or slacking off browsing social media, etc. I'm still like this to some degree, but it isn't nearly as severe. Like, I no longer will watch an hour of youtube and then spiral about the fact that I've ruined my life and wasted my potential.
• UFO 50
  Fuck it, 50 games, play them all. Get your goddamn cherries, you pathetic gamer. Make the number go up. 50 whole games, you LOVE games, right?? All 50 of them. Dangnabbit, some evil resurgance of the completionist I thought I killed has come back, this game ressurected him. Gotta put him down. Put him in the dirt.

  Seriously, though, these games are mad elegant. A really hot friend of mine bought this for me, so like, I had to play it. And some of these games are actually super fun. But I fell back into a few bad habits of playing games past the point of them being fun.

• Mouthwashing
  A tightly crafted narrative horror game! Noooo idea why this game blew up to such a degree, it's a decent horror game, but for me wasn't anything special.
• Crow Country
  Same exact review as Mouthwashing :P
• Scarlet Hollow
  A good fun thriller/mystery, recommended by my roommate. Lotta weighty choices and super interesting character relationships. I adore Tabitha.

Top five: Anthology of the Killer, Lethal Company, Balatro, I was a Teenager Exocolonist, Higurashi When They Cry. I did not play NEARLY as many games this year as I have in recent years. That said, I spent a TON of time on both Balatro and Higurashi, so, maybe still the same amount of time.