After the last few years, packed with the likes of Elden Ring and Baldur’s Gate 3, critics went into 2024 thinking it would be a “quiet year.” How wrong we all were.
Granted, 2024 was definitely a tumultuous year for gaming. Right from the get-go, the amount of layoffs in January nearly met 2023’s massive tolls. Xbox shuttered a hit studio. Sony made a multimillion-dollar flop. Nintendo … is thriving and launched a music app.
Given how rocky things were for the big studios (except, you know, Nintendo), it’s maybe no surprise that 2024 was largely the year of the indie game. Several absolutely incredible indie games were out just by mid-year. In a year of tumult, these indie studios—as well as the likes of Astro Bot‘s Team Asobi—gave the industry a shining light to aspire towards.
With that in mind, here’s a tip of the hat to some honorable mentions: Another Crab’s Treasure, 1000 x Resist, Tactical Breach Wizards, Dragon’s Dogma 2, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, and Unicorn Overlord. And Elden Ring‘s Shadow of the Erdtree DLC. Which is a DLC. Not a game, Geoff.
10. Rise of the Golden Idol
The Case of the Golden Idol was hands-down one of the best games of 2022. Its sequel, The Rise of the Golden Idol, doesn’t feel as revolutionary because its formula isn’t new anymore. But it’s still an overall improvement on its predecessor, with an even better, even more tangled story. The Rise of the Golden Idol asks you to look at a scene and figure out what’s going on, and sometimes it’s quite difficult. It’s an incredible game to play with a partner or friends. It’s also, simply, an incredible game. (I’d encourage playing Case first, but it’s not wholly necessary.)
9. Helldivers 2
Look, socio-politics is pretty grim right now. It takes a very special game to turn a near-universal dread into something humorous. Fortunately for all of us, Helldivers 2 exists.
Helldivers 2 wears its absurdist humor on its sleeve. While lobbing bombs or shooting the sh*t out of aliens, soldiers shout battle cries like, “Say hello to DEMOCRACY!” and “How’d you like that taste of freedom?” But the soldiers themselves are dispensable pawns—you’ll probably play as several over the course of a single outing, when the soldier you were previously inhabiting dies in some mishap of friendly fire. It’s a critique of something, like America’s overzealous patriotism, its hypocrisy about what “freedom” means for who. It’s genuinely nice to laugh about it.
8. The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom
“Playable Zelda” has been the stuff of dreams for Legend of Zelda fans for years and years. With The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, those dreams finally came true. The result was a game which switched up a lot of the givens of the tried-and-tested Zelda formula. Gone are the days where your sword is your default attack. Now is the era of ordering monsters to do your bidding while you take a nice nap.
Echoes‘ largely passive combat is admittedly less satisfying than going around with Link’s trademark sword swing. But Echoes makes up for it with a splendid return to classic Zelda dungeons, featuring some of the best puzzles the series has had in ages.
7. Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth
Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth got buried a bit, both because it came out in January and had the misfortunate of being a sprawling open-world JPRG which released one month before Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. But Infinite Wealth‘s many treasures deserve their days in the Hawaiian sun. This is a game with a heart of gold. It’s funny, and it will make you smile. That doesn’t mean Infinite Wealth lives in a world devoid of hardship. From from it, in fact. But that makes the game’s sunny nature all the more vital.
Even if you’ve never played a Yakuza / Like a Dragon game before, hop on in. General consensus has it that this is the new best game in the long-running series.
6. Mouthwashing
Mouthwashing is not an easy play. And I don’t mean that it has some excruciatingly difficult battle system like Elden Ring. This psychological horror game presents you with such grim portraits of humanity, it’s difficult to swallow. “Brutal” and “devastating” are two adjectives often used to described Mouthwashing, alongside “masterpiece.”
As The Washington Post‘s Gene Park so brilliantly put it, it’s a tale of “greed, negligence, and men swaddled in narcissistic delusions.” Mouthwashing will only take you two or three hours to play, but it won’t leave your mind for weeks.
5. Animal Well
2024 was a huge year for solo developer indie games which were mindbogglingly genius. First up, Animal Well—the puzzle-platformer with so many secrets, and so many layers of secrets, that developer Billy Basso doesn’t think people will find them all. Sure, you can play Animal Well like a normal platformer. But this is the kind of game which hides a QR code in the environment for you to find. The game on your screen is 2D, but there’s multidimensionality to the puzzles which makes Animal Well unlike any game ever made.
4. Balatro
When Balatro launched for mobile, developer LocalThunk released a commercial on Twitter / X which jokingly depicted the stock market crashing. All the best jokes have an element of truth to them. Balatro is the most addictive game released in a long, long time.
Balatro‘s addictiveness is a testament to its brilliance. It’s roguelike deckbuilding poker—where the power of the Jokers break your deck. Seeing how thoroughly you can break the game is what keeps you coming back. You get hooked, keep coming back to more, round after round.
There’s just one song, on a loop. And it’s all genius. Balatro is a solo developer’s manifesto in relative simplicity.
3. Metaphor: ReFantazio
The timing of Metaphor: ReFantazio is impeccable. It’s an epic which ponders heavy questions like, “Can a free state exist in a nation with a powerful Church?,” “How are equality and equity achieved in a diverse society?,” “What should be the relationship between the rich and poor?,” and “Is true democracy achievable, or just a fantasy?”
Despite a certain game further down this list making me feel all kinds of emotions, Metaphor: ReFantazio is the one of the only games I’ve ever played which made me cry. And it didn’t even happen in the end game. It happened maybe a third of the way in, as a father related the incident which killed his son—an incident horrifyingly feasible at multiple points within America’s own racist, violent history.
Persona 5 was a cultural phenomenon within the anime and gaming communities. Thanks to a new job system which makes battles much more active-feeling, strategic, and dynamic, Metaphor excels over the Persona model. As a huge Persona 5 fan, believe me when I tell you that Metaphor: ReFantazio is the best game Atlus has ever made.
2. Astro Bot
If your 2024 was like the 2024 of literally everyone I know, it severely lack one critical component: joy. These days, pure, child-like joy feels in short supply, even in the media we go to for escape. All the more reason that Astro Bot is a true treasure.
It would be so easy for Astro Bot—in which you travel to planets and save bots, some of whom look like legacy Sony characters—to come off as a cynical, shallow advertisement for the PlayStation. That fact that it feels like anything shows you exactly how genuine it is. Astro Bot just wants you to have fun, made by developers who wanted to have fun themselves. Astro Bot simply feels good to play, from Astro’s little footsteps to his laser double-step. PlayStation finally has a platformer to rival Nintendo’s Mario.
Everything in Astro Bot sparks joy. In an early level, my Astro popped up from underground to a field of smiling flowers. Two moles flagged the goal, doing a sort of “you’re the man!” dance. For the first time in since Breath of the Wild, I felt the same kind of glee and wonder I felt playing games as a kid.
1. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
In my entire history of gaming, there is only one time I involuntarily, and with the utmost sincerity, screamed at a character outside of a fight. And that was during the final act of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.
Regardless of how you feel about the game’s controversial ending, it’s hard to deny the game doesn’t masterfully toy with the player’s emotions. The Final Fantasy VII remake project is wholly unique in that it’s actively in conversation with its legacy. It assumes most players know that [REDACTED] [REDACTED]s, and therefore strings you along for an incredibly intense emotional journey. Better / worse yet, Rebirth uses gaming’s uniqueness to a tee, making you feel responsible for the twists and turns of the journey. And it all works because, whether you’re a legacy player or not, the game prioritizes making sure you care about this band of weirdos.
Along the way, there’s a whole feast of glorious, self-referential humor—yes, even and especially from the many mini-games. That gives way to the dread, the foreboding, the unique combination of joy and heartache that can only occur when you know what’s supposed to happen … Final Fantasy VII Rebirth played me like a piano in a room full of my childhood cat’s kittens, making it one of the most memorable gaming experiences I’ve ever had.
Published: Dec 25, 2024 12:07 pm