It’s the end of the year! Kinda. It’s a few more weeks, but whatever. Now, I’ve done game of the year things for the past few years which was mainly me just asking for people to vote on things since I am just one guy and don’t have the full breadth of gaming under my belt. I haven’t done that for two years though and it’d be kinda weird to suddenly go back, so I decided to just write a sort of reflection on this year.

Partway through the year, I started using this bingo card system to kinda force myself to play games. And honestly, it’s been going great! I think I’ll add new things to it when I clear two lines, maybe three? I’ll cross that bridge when I reach it.

The only hiccups during it was that I replaced OTXO with something else and I couldn’t play Diorama Dungeoncrawl in an ideal way. In hindsight, my hands have coordination problems because of multiple sclerosis and that may have been an early sign of that. I could try to play things, but currently my body is getting beat by the cold climate – another possible effect of multiple sclerosis, actually.

But hey, instead of angsting about my health, let’s talk about games!

If I were to actually have a game of the year, an easy choice is localthunk’s Balatro. It’s the game that I want to sweep mainstream award shows to cause Gamer 9/11 because most gamers are boring with no imagination whatsoever. I played it for a third of a day the day it was released, and I was absorbed in it for a long time after. After 100 hours, after I passed the 50% completion mark, I forced myself to stop playing because quite frankly, it was getting unhealthy and I have other things to play.

My sister is a Northernlion fan like me and she watched him play Balatro, but wasn’t into it herself. With the Game Awards coming up and the discourse surrounding that, she decided to actually play the game for herself. And it’s hooked her. I hear her playing it on her phone at least once a day, and I can’t forget her playing it at the Thanksgiving table. She even inspired me to pick up the phone port too even though I vowed that I was off Balatro, and needless to say, I’m falling back into addiction.

If there was a game to challenge Balatro for indie game of the year for me, though, it’d definitely be UFO 50. This was a long awaited game by Mossmouth, and boy it does not disappoint. 50 games with a lot of variety, promising something for everyone. It’s ambitious, it’s great, it’d easily be my game of the year if I did not have a gambler’s heart. I’ve done a few writings on games that I got a prestigious cherry on, and I’ll probably keep that up next year.

Now, Party House is definitely my favorite game out of the pack. It’s easy to understand and pick up and play, and I’m definitely not alone in thinking that Party House is one of the best; I’ve seen multiple tier lists of UFO 50 games from people, and it’s rare to find one where Party House isn’t top tier stuff.

In second place for me though is Rail Heist, an enjoyable action platformer strategy game about robbery. I think it was actually my favorite thing to cherry because it asks you to explore playing the game in different ways. It was very fun to push through.

Third? Quibble Racing! You’ve seen me play Balatro and Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers this year – I fucking love gambling games, man. I vow to never gamble for real and I cut myself off from gacha games for that reason, but listen: Kaiji is a fucked up loser, but my heart beats with him.

All the other games I cherry’d were good, though. I have yet to cherry another UFO 50 game, but I have finished Attactics and Avianos. I’d like to write about them, but I’ll be real, they’re kicking my ass. Avianos? I love that. Attactics? Well, it’s okay.

Visual novels have had a strong showing on the site this year. Misericorde and Our Wonderland are games I still think about, and I have a good reason to! The second act of Misericorde is due to be done soon and it’s definitely going up on my next bingo card, and the artist of Our Wonderland’s looking to update the game so that the art in the earlier parts is more consistent with latter parts of the game. I probably won’t replay it, though Carrot’s been working on a western themed spin-off webcomic that’s been pretty cute.

Is it rude to call Tangle Tower a visual novel? Well, we could do discourse about visual novels and adventure games, but whatever, I liked it. Its use of voice acting certainly helps make it memorable. Maybe I should check out Crow Country, SFB Games’ work that was actually released this year, huh?

And of course, I’m currently playing through The House in Fata Morgana. I have no fucking idea where the story’s going from here. I’ll probably be able to get one more part out before the end of the year. I’m definitely enjoying it though and I vow to finish it.

But you know what? It was also a year of RPGs. As you all know, I like playing RPGs – and given my health problems, it’s a genre I can easily play. I played a bunch of Live-A-Live, but eh, that’s Patreon stuff, let’s talk indie stuff. Torch60 returned to this site with Soma Union and I think it’s the best game he’s made so far. I have another game of his on the bingo card, and he’s currently developing another game, so I love to have more of his stuff to dig into.

Copper Odyssey is a game I played around the same time. It’s stylistically a great game – it needed to spruce up gameplay some more, but compared to a lot of RPG Maker games that were stylish, it’s good. The creator is currently making a second game and I’m excited to check that out. Hopefully, it improves in the gameplay department.

And well, it was supposed to be released on New Year’s Eve so it’s technically a 2023 article. Like dang, New Year’s Eve is the birthday of one of the characters, but I failed there. But anyway, Fear & Hunger: Termina! Like the previous game, it actually ended up being my most read thing of the year. It’s a fine follow up, a delightful mix of RPG and horror. I love to look at fanart, and there’s so much of it. Love those other RPGs, but this was my 2nd favorite RPG of the year (Live-A-Live’s number one, but shh). The creator’s been slowly working on an update over the past year, but honestly, take your time man.

And speaking of horror and RPG, there’s the RPG Maker game Ib. I’ve been open about calling Fear & Hunger games true RPG horrors and things that are normally called RPG horrors just horror games made in RPG Maker, but man, Ib is still the best one of those. I actually still see fanart for that too, it’s a game still living on with a strong community. I still wonder if kouri will ever make another game…

And still speaking of horror, Anthology of a Killer! It feels like a culmination of thecatamites’ work, with familiar ramblings thrown into a bizarre 3D world. It’s a world of horror, but it has the sorta goofiness familiar to thecatamites’ other works. Space Funeral is only higher to me because that’s a game I kinda grew up with. I’d also like to recommend this blog of someone that makes daily fanart, it’s good. They used to be on Twitter but they kinda quit as it transformed into 4chan 2.

But, one last thing that stuck with me is Death of a Wish. Lucah: Born of a Dream was one of the best things I played in the early days of the site, so I was excited to play its sequel. Part of why it’s stuck with me though is that its themes and ideas are pretty resonant today. Hell, Death of a Wish is probably even more resonant than it was when I originally played it with the upcoming presidential administration and the world having somehow become more hostile to trans people since then.

Though, something else that’s resonant is the game’s feelings of violent anger toward anyone with power in the world. Hell, it was pretty relevant last week.

But yeah, that’s my 2024. It was certainly a year of interesting games, a year of horrible health angst, and a year ending with horrible anxiety for the future. I wish I could end things off with a better note, but quite frankly, I’m wishing that everything ends off on a better note for everyone.

…At the very least, I’m hoping for a Balatro sweep.

Good luck everybody.