Games I Played in 2024
Posted 12/27/2024
i don't usually play games the year they come out, reason being i tend to wait to play larger releases so that the hype can pass, so my "games of 2024" tend to just be "games that i played in 2024" so here's that list so i can talk about some standouts among them. this list is in no particular order.
Labyrinth City: Pierre the Maze Detective
i love hidden object games, and this game isn't really a hidden object game, but it also is one? instead its a maze game, where you have to direct Pierre throughout the various mazes to reach goal points in each map, which are vibrant and highly detailed illustrations with very fun little vinettes and characters abound. i highly recommend this game if you like hidden object games.
Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara
i have a friend i regularly play co-op games with, we beat Baldur's Gate 3 together, and i was looking for something else for us to play before we picked something else up. i had heard about Chronicles of Mystara before and it was on sale at the time i went to pick it up and convinced my friend to play it with me. Chronicles of Mystara is a side scrolling beat em up that somehow manages to translate the mechanics of DnD better than you would think into the game's format.
the steam version of the game includes two games, Tower of Doom and Shadow over Mystara, SoM is the sequel to ToD but they don't need to played in order, SoM just shows that they had a much better handle on how to make a DnD arcade game more. playing the game more also gives you currency that you can spend on unlocking concept art and other things for the game. also this game was developed by capcom. it slaps. go play it with up to 4 friends.
DREDGE
if you have not yet played DREDGE, i implore you to play DREDGE. DREDGE is a fishing game, you get a little boat, fish some fish, bring it back to town and get paid. except there's more to that. quickly this game reveals that there is much more to be explored amongst this weird archipelago, more weird fish to reel in, and more weird mysteries to solve.
the mechanical simplicity to the depth of narrative that the game presents is alluring and i put 14 hours into it, not even playing the DLC. this game manages to both convey the feelings of peace and stress in equal measure and its exciting to always see what you dredge up.
(the) Gnorp Apologue
do you like clicker games? do you like idle games? then you should play this game. i didn't know what this game was before i started it, but immediately it is in fact a clicker type game. the gnorps are attacking a rock to create shards, you spend the shards to hit the rock more which creates more shards, so you can go buy a cafe so there are specialized gnorps to collect shards better and faster, so you can buy more upgrades for your gnorps, so you can, well, hit the rock more, and so on and so on.
people love a "number go up" type game, i love it too, after finishing this game (you can beat it, technically) i started playing cookie clicker again (my current run of cookie clicker has been going for 290 days). i even sewed a few gnorps and my roommate put them in our christmas tree this year. i love (the) Gnorp Apologue.
Storyteller
Storyteller is… technically a puzzle game? in it, you have a story that needs to be told and are given the "components" of said story, such as…
you need to tell the story of "Seeing the Ghost of a Lover" and are given the components Love, Death, Eve, and Adam, and are given three panels to build that story. this one is easy, but alls subsequent stories can get a bit more complicated to resolve (like some characters behave differently than others put in the same scenario), and even have multiple solutions in order to resolve the goal of the story (you could manage to tell the story using 6 panels, but might be lucky enough to solve it in only 3!)
there's also extra goals to fulfill, some fun post game content that changes how you approach the stories you all solved, and a bunch of acheivements for even more secret solutions to stories to try to get. there's a lot of depth to this game!
The Darkside Detective and The Darkside Detective: A Fumble in the Dark
i'll probably do a write up of these games some other time, but i should note that i played them out of order, i played A Fumble in the Dark first, the sequel, and then played the first one. i think the first one is technically a better game, even if there's way more to do in Fumble in the Dark.
these games are point and click detective games, styled a lot after Twin Peaks and the like, with weird/supernatural occurrances happening about town but most people regarding them with little more than a weird annoyance than something to be horrified over. its kind of fun. these are comedy games, and they can be funny, but they are very evidently written by a european writing an american setting. not a bad thing, but it becomes really apparent really quickly.
i hate to use the word "quirky" but these are some quirky detective games and they're not worse for it, i had a good time with them.
Boneraiser Minions
Boneraiser Minions is a survivors-like, except you are not the one attacking. you have to raise an army of the undead to do away with the hordes of enemies coming at you. this game is flashy and fun in the same way that vampire survivors is, and discovering synergies between minions and relics and spells is very cool. there's a lot of stupid potty humor in this game but if you can live with it, here's a neat game to play when you have like 20-30 minutes to kill.
Fields of Mistria
much like every video game queer i picked up Fields of Mistria when it released and i hit the first content wall only after about 30 hours, which isn't bad! i haven't yet touched the new content yet because i have a mountain of other games to play, but Fields of Mistria feels like the realized version of a quality of life mod for a Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley. there are defo design decisions that were made about this game in relation to other farming sims which isn't bad, its much appreciated that they're looking at where they stand in the genre, but at the point that the game stands now, besides its great visual style, it is just another farming sim. i will be eager to keep up with its development and see where it goes because it has a lot of potential that i'm praying the devs capitalize upon.
Eastward
i haven't finished Eastward, but its on my list of things to try to finish soon. this game got buried under the release of a Deltarune chapter, which isn't its fault, its another very Mother/Earthbound inspired game, but this game isn't an RPG like the rest. it's an action RPG! You hit shit in real time!
the story centers around John and his adoptive daughter Sam. the two of them live in an underground town where John discovered Sam on one of his digs deep into the mine beneath their town. Sam claims to have seen the world above, clear of the miasma that sent everyone underground in the first place, with everyone claiming she's a liar. John and Sam try to travel to the surface and encounter a lot of weird things along the way.
there's a lot of heart in this game, the art is dripping with style and the compassion of the characters in the writing is clear. this game is special and i want more people to play it and understand it too. Earthbound went unrecognized in its time and i hope that Eastward wont fall into the same obscurity.
Balatro
it deserved game of the year from the game awards.
TOEM: A Photo Adventure
TOEM is really interesting, its named for a certain phenomenon that you're implored to seek out but not told what it is at all, just that you'll know it when you find it.
the only mode of interaction you have in the game is taking pictures and showing people pictures which leads to interesting puzzle design. you're able to see things through the lense of your camera that you can't when just looking around in the normal game world (the game is presented in an isometric(?) format and you can only rotate the view camera so much), so you're motivated to look at the world through your lens even more.
its a fun little game, i love the character designs and the style of the world you explore. its all very cute.
Loop Hero
the arguement for why in-lore this game is a roguelike is probably the best of any roguelike i've played (save for maybe rogue legacy).
in Loop Hero, the world is destroyed by a lich, but there are fragments of it that still remember what it once was, notably the Hero. the world only exists as a loop, and you put down tiles to add to the loop and the surrounding void as you remember more parts about it. once you lose a run, you forget what that world was like and are brought to an oasis occupied by other survivors trying to remember.
i've not yet beaten the final area of the game, it gets wicked hard as you progress, but it certainly keeps my attention and also the soundtrack is fucking awesome.
Psychorama
Psychorama is a game about Haze, a young person waking up in a house with no memory of who they are and how they got there. what becomes quickly evident is that they did not just arrive there, they've been there for a while, but all of that memory is suddenly gone.
Psychorama calls itself a game about "a cyberpunk haunted house" and that's the best description for it. this game is really incredible for the way it it explores memory both in the material sense and the digital one, and what does it mean for those lines to be blurred.
also all of the characters in the game are queer and that queerness does play a role in the plot and the development of the characters throughout the story. its great. i highly highly highly recommend this game.
Rise of the Golden Idol
i was foaming at the mouth for this game to release and im so glad to say i feel like it lived up to all my expectations and more. i love Case of the Golden Idol and Rise expands upon everything i loved and adds extra layers to all of it.
the most different thing between Rise and Case is that in Rise you do get a bunch of vignettes but are presented with a few per chapter that are linked together and you have to draw conclusions between all of them to fill out yet another of the mad-libs style form. i think the intelligence of the puzzle design is how the developers can "lead" you with how certain empty sentences are phrased which lead you to draw clearer conclusions about the situation, rather than just dropping all possible answers into a slot and hoping you get it.
i'm very eager to see what the DLC for this game will look like, i completed the base game in about 19 hours and im eager to throw even more time at it in the future.
Death of the Reprobate
Death of the Reprobate is the last of "The Immortal John Tryptch" by Joe Richardson. the entire game is made with hundreds of pieces of classical art from multiple eras making for a very funny game about trying to please your father on his deathbed.
i've played the other two games in the series and the writing and comedy of these games is off the charts. its crude but also derived from the real paintings and ways that people lived in the past.
what a way to end the series. a really funny game and a really funny time.
DELUGE
i haven't yet finished DELUGE, but its a game about being a skeleton raised from the dead by a necromancer who wants to terrorize a town. except, you're given a little bit more free will as the necromancer has a special purpose for you, except, that little bit of extra autonomy leads you to remember that you were once a villager in this town…
i'll not spoil anything further but this is a really impressive game made in RPGMaker. very cool game that i recommend you try to see what people are making with RPGMaker these days.
Thank Goodness You're Here!
its good. watch someone play this one if you haven't, i really enjoyed all my time with it.
Pseudoregalia
i haven't finished this one yet either, but that's because i have to take dramamine before i play it but by god this is a fantastic 3D platformer. Pseudoregalia is a 3D metroidvania where you explore a castle said to hold a Princess, that Sybil (the protagonist), is eagar to reach.
the thing i like a lot about this game is that you're constantly looking for new movement tech skills that are scattered throughout the castle, but by that reason there aren't that many enemies in the game. there are often just a lot of empty rooms but once you take a moment to pause, you understand that there is a platforming challenge being presented to you, usually based around the skill that you have unlocked in that area. i had a friend call this "your first unity game" just based on a quick glance and i feel like that is very unfair to it, there's so much depth of complexity of the design around movement and what that means for the design of areas to either compliment or challenge said movement.
it makes me wish i could play more 3D platformers longer than 15 minutes without wanting to throw up, and even with dramamine i have to limit how much i play but i want to get back to this game sooo bad.
Proverbs
do you know how to play minesweeper? great, you already know how to play this game. Proverbs is a "Mega Mosaic" puzzle, where there are light tiles and dark tiles. in each 3x3 square, the middle square tells you how many light tiles are in that 3x3, the rest will be dark tiles. the "Mega" part of Mega Mosaic comes into play when the entire puzzle is made up of 54,000+ pieces. you more easily solve it by solving certain areas of the puzzle at a time, each section is quartered off from the others so you can focus on it.
why is it called "Proverbs"? because the puzzle you're solving is a renition of Peter Bruegel the Elder's painting "Netherlandish Proverbs". each section of the painting depicts a certain proverb and when you solve that section you get told what is the proverb being depicted.
i really loved this game, it was fun to just pick up and turn my brain off for a few hours solving the sections. it took me about 33 hours to solve all of it, but the taste it left in my mouth left me eager to solve another. maybe this won't appeal to the grander audience, but it scratched my brain in way other tile-based puzzle games haven't.
Elden Ring
you know it, you love it. haven't yet beaten it because i have to metre out my time on top of taking dramamine, but playing it seamless co-op is a lot of fun. i've never been a soulslike person but this is making me consider going back and trying other games in the series now that i've wrapped my head around the gameplay a bit more. maybe. i can't be too eager to play 3D games because i physically can't play them because of motion sickness. but i'm willing to take medicine for Elden Ring, its just that good.
Dungeon Clawler
oughhh claw machine
i played the shit out of the demo for this and now that it released into early access i had to pick it up. i love claw machines, i love roguelikes, i love weird little rabbits.
the entire way this game works is you get your power ups and it fills up a claw machine and you gotta pick up them up to use it against enemies. each bunny has different powers and methods of play and there's A LOT of different characters already in early access.
a problem that can arise from rouge likes is when you realize you have a non-viable build for an area of the game you're in, but because everything in Dungeon Clawler is additive, you're not losing tried and true resources that got you here so your builds feel a little more balanced. i've beaten the game once with one character and i've gotten close with a few others, but the fact ive gotten close each time means that something was cooking,… even if i fucked up grabbing shit from my claw machine twice in a row resulting in me dying 2 turns into a boss fight. that one was on me.