quiet misdreavus microblog

games i played and enjoyed in 2024

2024-12-18

I feel like i’ve played quite a few more video games this year than in previous years, and i can probably thank the Steam Deck for that. I don’t have a Windows PC and i don’t really like playing games at a desk, so i was missing out on a lot of games that release primarily or exclusively on PC. Now, though, i have access to a wealth of indie games and niche releases, and a platform that can be bent to play most games under the sun.

So it all added up to spending a lot more time actually playing games than before. I’ve put my hands on a lot of games this year, and i felt like listing them all up in no particular order. Not all of these have had the same amount of play time or gained the same amount of love, but i feel like they’re all worth a look.

Myst and Riven

This year i bought the remasters of Myst and Riven. I’ve played through Myst a bunch of times, so running through that again was a lot of fun. On the other hand, it was the first time i played through Riven and actually stuck with it. I bought the strategy guide PDF alongside the game and referenced it heavily while playing. It was really fascinating to jump into the world of Myst and explore a much more story-focused game. I kinda hope they wind up doing a remake of the later games in the series.

Balatro

About a month after its launch, i got bit by Balatro pretty hard. I heard of it through a gaming-news YouTube channel i follow, who said it was one of the most played games on Steam Deck at the time. I have since gotten most of the achievements in the game, and if it were easier to pick up (and/or if it had cross-save functionality between Steam and iOS) i would probably go back and grind the really tedious ones.

Luck Be a Landlord and Bingle Bingle

After Balatro i wanted to see other games in the vein of “let’s take a casino game and turn it into a roguelike”. As far as i understand, Luck Be a Landlord is kind of an archetypal game that has created a few copycats in its success, and it’s easy to see why: There’s a simple but compelling flow of slowly building up your slate of slot-machine icons to create cascading combos. This was a fun one to just play without spending too much attention on it.

Bingle Bingle, by contrast, is an Early Access “roulette roguelike”, and it honestly was a lot of fun to play. It’s gotten a few updates over time that have given it some more content, which has been fun to see. Unfortunately, it’s kind of awkward to play on the Steam Deck (it’s a very mouse-heavy game), and the last time i tried to run it in CrossOver on my MacBook it crashed on launch. I would love to revisit this at some point, though!

Celeste

oh my gosh the trans woman is playing the trans woman game, how original 🙄

I actually didn’t realize i had a copy of Celeste until i was messing around with the Itch Bundle Browser and spotted it in a charity bundle i bought back in 2020. I wound up loading it up to give it a try.

A few dozen hours later i wound up beating the game, plus the postgame “Farewell” chapter. I have not reached 100% - 3C can eat my ass - but i was able to click with the game’s mechanics really well. I feel like the story is maybe a bit overbearing, but i like how it handles its subject matter and the way it portrays its themes. The game flow of having smaller rooms to retry and learn was a lot nicer than other iterations of “hard” games that tend to include a lot of backtracking for failure.

Boneraiser Minions

I loved Vampire Survivors last year. The game showed up at the right time as i was recovering from bottom surgery, and i had a really fun time unlocking everything. So naturally, i developed a strong interest in the “survivors-like” games that have cropped up in its wake.

Boneraiser Minions is one of these games, with a chunkier pixel-art look and a bit more crude humor in its flavor text. There’s a lot of content to chew through in here, though it does start to feel repetitive after a while. Still, the soundtrack and the variety in class design made it really fun to work through most of the achievements.

Dungeons and Degenerate Gamblers

I thought this would hook me more, but after a frustrating start (which i believe has been smoothed out in later patches) it kinda slid off. :/ I loved the idea and i love how it’s executed. Maybe i can pick it back up later on after its had a chance to reset in my brain.

Vampire Survivors: Ode to Castlevania

I make it a habit to get all the Vampire Survivors DLCs: they’re cheap and give me another excuse to come back to one of my favorite games from last year. Their last few have been crossover efforts, and this one is an enormous love letter to the series that inspired VS’s aesthetics.

UFO 50

UFO 50 fascinates me, as an indie game enthusiast and a retro game enthusiast. I feel like i could write an entire post about its conceit (and i probably should), but the idea of creating a fictional retro game company writing fictional retro games for a fictional retro console is fascinating to me. UFO 50 contains multitudes, and there are several total bangers in there, and many more games that will absolutely find their niche.

It’s just kind of a shame that the ordering of the collection puts the “oldest” games first, which are kind of the weakest. If you’re not completely sold, watch some videos about the later games in the collection, or try them out starting at number 20 or so.

Parking Garage Rally Circuit

Oh my god this game is silly fun. I haven’t played this one as extensively as some of the others on here, but my time with it has been a blast. It’s rare for a game to have me grinning and laughing as much as this game has done. The conceit of having a race through a converted parking structure, and letting you go Way Too Fast through the track, barely holding onto control of your racer, makes the destruction on failure feel silly instead of frustrating.

Astro’s Playroom and Astro Bot

I took advantage of Black Friday sales this year to upgrade my home console to a PS5. While waiting for the discs i ordered to arrive, i played the pack-in game, Astro’s Playroom. The best way to describe this game is “a tech demo masquerading as a collectathon 3D platformer, plus a celebration of PlayStation history”. There are many tricks that use all the features of the DualSense controller, and many nods to the PlayStation brand and the games that sold them. It’s a short but fun romp and a good introduction to the console.

Astro Bot is that idea taken into a full-length game. You are roaming through different worlds, finding your lost bot friends. The trick is that many of them are dressed like characters from historic PlayStation games. It’s fun to recognize references and go “oh hey it’s that guy!” I feel like the game would fall flat for anyone who has not followed this series of consoles as closely as i have, but for me it was a load of fun, even as someone who historically dislikes 3D platformers.

Final Fantasy XV

Since i had gotten the PS5, i took a look back through the stack of PS4 games i had that i hadn’t really played and decided that i finally wanted to give FF15 a try. For being a big Final Fantasy nerd, i kinda stopped following the numbered series after FF13. I had a brief tryst with FF14 in 2018, but i fell off that because the higher-level gameplay was starting to feel too intimidating to keep up with. When FF15 came out, i bought a copy relatively early on, but my taste for long-running games with a lot of ramp-up time had kinda soured with young-adult autistic burnout.

All that is to say, this was a game that i felt sad about not trying. While waiting for PS5 game discs to ship (i managed to pick up the console in-store, but the games i ordered had to be shipped), i threw in the disc for FF15 and started working through it. It feels weirdly slow-paced compared to the smaller titles i’ve grown used to, and the weird product placement kinda threw me off. But, it does feel like there’s a gem in here if i can be patient about it. I’m in Chapter 3 right now, but this game is somewhat backburnered because the next entry is currently in the disc drive instead.

Sonic Frontiers

I picked this up as a random grab on sale, but i’m having fun with it so far! I’ve never really gotten into the Sonic series so it was cool to be able to grab it and run around. I have a hard time playing “classic Sonic”-style games because it feels like it’s playing a tension between “going fast through the map” and “exploring the map to find the optimal route”. I’ve never played a “modern Sonic”-style game, so i dunno how those are supposed to feel, but the “cyber space” segments of Frontiers feel pretty fun to work through.

I know that the “open world” aspect of the game was a new thing for the franchise, but i actually like how it lets me explore at my own pace while still giving some little platforming challenges here and there. I’m not super far into the game right now, but so far i’m enjoying it.

honorable mentions

Other games that i played and appreciated, but didn’t have as much of a connection with: