2024 in review
my life:
moving countries was a destabilization that left me in months of burnout. however, it's been a leap in progress for my and my partner's lives. as the dust settles things are calmer and more well-rounded than before. i now have an office and the opportunity to create a routine to build on top of. i've also had the opportunity to analyze my priorities and refocus, quite welcome alongside my transition into my 30s. this has been a challenging year that marks a new chapter in my life which will serve as the foundation for years to come. that includes establishing this blog and my new label, Evergreen Games.
gaming:
as i have entered a new phase in my life, i've had an opportunity to think about the what's and why's behind my habits. i realized my relationship to gaming is, first and foremost, a stimming activity--a place where i can find order, stability and sensory harmony. this clarified my habits and the previous seeming contradiction between "games i admire artistically" and "games i'm actually spending my time playing".
it's clearer than ever to me now that gaming isn't a singular activity--it has different purposes for different people, and often different purposes within one's daily life. for me, i have my stimming games, my social games, and the games i play out of what i'll call artistic interest--to experience something unique, a height of craft, a well-told story, etc. (of course, none of these categories exclude one another)
this has also clarified for me that, alongside my more orthodox artistic ambitions, i want to make "stimming games" and offer others the same sensory reprieve that i myself need. it's almost cybernetic when a game becomes part of you, satisfying a need such that it becomes integrated into one's routine. it's a relationship i have long held commonly with shmups, card games, puzzle games, rpgs and certain action games.
i would surmise it's part coincidence and part not that older games tend to be such satisfying sensory experiences. one part forced minimalism, the other part the high rate of autistic individuals present in the early games industry.
with that said, here's some thoughts on games i played this year.
another crab's treasure
the story was fun and quite touching. i came in primed to like it, having enjoyed going under previously. i find their zany touch charming. junk becoming your shells is clever and brings so much of the game together. i am looking forward to where their improvisation-heavy action direction leads them next, it's an under-explored space i am personally interested in.
little kitty big city
this was one of my first experiences with an explicit "cozy game". the game embodied being a cat charmingly, with the full spectrum of "sweet baby" to "evil goblin." between this one and mika and the witch's mountain, i wonder if there is a sort of micro-genre emerging with games inspired by a short hike. it is certainly a lovely format! i enjoyed exploring the nooks and crannies of the small, dense space presented here.
dragon age: veilguard
it felt shockingly ps2 in much of its design language, and particularly reminiscent of kingdom hearts. it appears that as we exit the "games trying not to not look gamey" era and continue with soaring development costs in the AAA space, games will more and more unabashedly look to past formulas and structures for inspiration. simple gameplay is increasingly necessary with highly complex graphics, and the proven forms of play from the past are an obvious source to crib from.
mika and the witch's mountain
at first the controls were somewhat awkward to me, but once i grasped what they were doing, it fully captured me. the weighty floatiness both lends to its tone and gives you plenty to chew on in mechanical depth. they nailed embodying the "kiki's delivery service" narrative in game form, and i personally found how on the nose and unabashed it was about that refreshing.
warhammer 40k: rogue trader
i was enraptured by the world of warhammer 40k, though its complicated politics would eventually sour me. the tech-priests and the warp were particularly interesting, and i appreciated its overall ideas of pulp space catholicism. it appears to be quite a challenging, and often bumpy, task to transpose a ttrpg system to videogame play. originally the tactical battles were very interesting, but before long the game came apart at the seams under its own weight. i think for some this could be fascinating experience.
balatro
i can't help but think about how this game couldn't have been made without what came before it, the generations of roguelikes, roguelites and card games of various flavors. and that is a wonderful thing- game design is an evolving conversation between creator and audience. (and us creators are simultaneously audience as well, of course) some games come out and, even before playing them, you already know they're a classic. balatro is both singular yet so clearly and directly built upon what came before it, something i find beautiful.
penny's big breakaway
2024 seems to have been another year in the ongoing indie platformer renaissance. in the early years of indie, much of what it represented were puzzle and "masocore" platformers, building off the shoulders of early hits like limbo, fez, braid, super meat boy. this new movement seems focused around playful and technical platforming, likely kicked off by a hat in time and celeste. i adore this movement and look forward to seeing what else it produces. penny's is exemplary of it, so full of the essence of "joyful motion". it's made its way into my routine, a game i look towards to pick me up when i'm feeling down.
pizza tower
this game has a mesmerizing quality to it that makes the world around you melt away, achieved through an overwhelming yet harmonic sensory experience that totalizes you. in the ongoing indie trend of making "spiritual successors" to old franchises, i find this one of the most exemplary. it's one thing to replicate what the old achieved, and another to build upon it and take it to further levels. i'm always happy to see seeing long-abandoned designs receive evolutions in the indie space.
final fantasy 3
even though it was over 30 years after its release, i experienced the same thrill as i imagined so many others did, realizing the starting continent was only one part of a much larger world. it was magical. each step i took playing this game both made me understand why it was a classic and made me fall just as in love with it myself. the simplicity of it has power- one that lets you focus on exploring and interacting with the world rather than micromanaging character builds, which was for me a breath of fresh air compared to contemporary trends. the early years of console rpgs had so many triumphs, which i cannot help but see were just as much aided by hardware limitations as they were restricted by them. in our era of sky's-the-limit game development, we often lack the "environmental pressure"(so to speak) which forces us to be highly discerning in the inclusion of each element. despite their age and early days in the craft, these older games have a clarity in pacing and focus that many modern designers could learn from.
deep rock galactic
it is refreshing to play a game that, despite all its complex modern design conventions, retains a commitment to a simplistic fun more reminiscent of the ps2 era. i appreciate its exclusion of environmental normal maps as an artistic direction.
elden ring
this game is a victory lap in the school of design fromsoft has refined throughout their souls+ series. part way through playing, i realized it's a formula i've currently gotten all i need out of.
assault suits valken
giant robot games are a somewhat surprisingly little-explored area in videogames. for a brief time, this subgenre of giant robot platformers would develop, and unfortunately never made the transition much past the psx era. i value them not just for their robots, but the way such a different avatar lends to a different style of platformer. its strength is almost certainly its weakness, as capturing the dynamic of piloting a big, complicated robot tends to create more friction and a less accessible learning curve. there's only a moderate touch of that here, of deliberate weightyness and complex mechanisms, that makes the game feel unique, and even fresh when taken alongside the contemporary era of very simple, fast and responsive platformers.
touhou 6
i've been gradually revisiting my first touhou game. it's been a fantastic time. the atmosphere of touhou is so unique, and its dialogues in particular evoke an otherworldly quality that enraptures me and takes me somewhere i want to be, perhaps both despite and because of how unassuming they are.
cho ren sha 68k
you'll see a small trend here, in my revisiting classic shmups. this one has to be one of my favorites--its score and presentation are fantastic, even among the world of shmups which typically excel at that. i always come back to how fun it is to make the first boss destroy itself. this game demonstrates how simple, memorable touches can be all it takes to make a great game. the rush you get when you manage to get all 3 powerups at once demonstrates this as well.
sword and fairy 7
this was my first time with the series, and my first chinese rpg after wandering sword (a new favorite!). i enjoyed its excellent pacing, dialogue and high-quality cutscenes. its world was memorable and fun to explore.
cramped
i appreciated the coherence between videotome's presentation and its claustrophobic narrative.
pokemon tcg pocket
it is both smart and insidious, with its juicyness and presentational tricks that give an illusion of control when pulling cards. either way, it is a lush experience and the mobile tcg experience i've always wanted: straightforward, decently generous and well presented. its refines the pokemon tcg's rules to pare down high-variance aspects like energy cards and high deck sizes, a welcome design iteration on a type of game that rarely gets to reinvent itself.
brawl stars
this year saw me giving mobile games another look and i'm glad i did so. brawl stars has a clear commitment to simple, honest fun that i didn't expect from the mobile space. i have a lot of respect for its style of design- an approachable experience that nonetheless has real depth to it. it would certainly be a shame to ignore these spaces which cater to younger gamers of today and the design language they converse in.
once upon a galaxy
this game introduced me to the super auto pets-derived autobattler subgenre, and inspired me to make my etrian odyssey-inspired autobattler. it's really satisfying to form a cohesive team and improvise strategies as you go. i enjoy the element of adapting to what your opponents are building, since it essentially has you playing round robin games against cpu's based on other player's games. it's a cool idea.
soulframe
i felt the sense of place in this game strongly. it's serene and menacing at once, imbued with a sense of magic and the unknown that i do not experience often these days.
blue archive
the gacha format has cultivated a generation of heavily ensemble cast driven games. as time progresses we see the craft of this genre being honed further, and blue archive is one example. its setting is unassuming yet bizarre, a combination that compelled me--you have all these things that don't really "make sense", like schools that are functionally city states, the coexistence of scale 4 furries and haloed humans(?), high schoolers loading each other with bullets and being harmed textually only as though it was an inconvenience. from what i can tell as a still-newbie, some of these things are explained eventually, while others pointfully aren't. that's the charm of its setting: subtly surreal, down to earth, gorgeous and cosmopolitan. it is full of contrasts, being a relaxed daily life story one moment and a poignant story about debt traps and corporate warfare the next, just to name an early example. perhaps you could say that an apparent theme here is "synthesis" in and of itself. this is no coincidence to its format: the gacha genre aims to cast a wide net, giving a little something to everyone, or for every mood. such a formula is bound to create contradictions. this style, of what you might call a "buffet game", is a concept previously only explored extensively in the old f2p mmo space, which we can clearly track the lineage of gacha games to. in a more distant and coincidental sense, you could connect it to the old arcade-inspired console game format (ex. mario kart 64), which would try to go wider in their offerings by having a number of game modes you could play them in, with recontextualized mechanics to offer a variety of experiences.
afk arena
we know there is something we humans find satisfying watching numbers go up. but there can be much to the subtlety too in how you make those numbers go up. there is a craft to be appreciated in how these simple satisfactions are created. afk arena does this with a simple loop, at first - defeat waves of enemies, hit a road block, gather resources to power up, repeat. then as more game modes are introduced, the number of these loops essentially multiplies, and you are interacting in a clicker-esque fashion to advance these interlocking loops all at once, and even when you are not playing (hence the "afk"). this game raised two questions to me: why is it so bad to offer simple pleasure with games, isn't it a wonderful thing that games can do that? (it is!) and second: why not make the player feel rewarded for just picking up, or even thinking about your game? cynically we may call it 'psychological manipulation' or even 'addiction' and leave it at that, but clearly what is at play is just as much a need being met. we live in social conditions where we want to feel like even our smallest efforts mean something, build towards something. it's not fundamentally different than the satisfaction provided by a game like stardew valley or a traditional rpg, just with different modes and contexts. it is the fantasy of our place and time to have all our little endless tasks truly reward us and mean something. playing this game brought that into focus for me, and i believe all these things have been quite personally important to me to consider, both in terms of the function of game design and the state of society.
hell clock
it brings me joy to see such a well-conceptualized and produced game emerge from south america, telling a valuable story from its history no less. it gives me a sense of the changing times we live in, one that fills me with hope for a future that sees the global south thrive. i was drawn in by its excellent presentation and narrative pacing, tackling the generally very ambitious ARPG genre with an effective pared-down structure. it feels both tidy and lush all at once. i hope this game can both attain success for its creators and help spread this historical fantasy format more.
marvel rivals
it eschews the orthodox hero shooter paradigm by giving giving characters relatively extreme powers, a fit for its superhero subject matter. established superheroes seem to be an effective palette to draw from in making a game of this style, it's a natural fit that certainly aided their ambitious 33 character launch roster. the game is chaotic and messy, something that gives it character for me, and a natural consequence of them pushing the envelope in terms of character ability design. at first it surprised me that both this and marvel snap had fresh, inventive designs, but upon considering it i believe it is no coincidence. having the cast of marvel characters to draw on from the outset of your process gives you a wealth of verbs and actors to play with and contextualize as you please. they are just as much pieces of game language as "mario" or "link" are, even if they didn't necessarily originate as such. and so having them in your toolbox gives you lots to work with from the outset, a process i imagine must be handy and exciting for designers, particularly ones with a fondness for superheroes.
rivals of aether 2
this game brought me back into platform fighters, which seems to have grown into its own as a genre in the past 5 years since i was last invested. it strikes me to see a game so directly connected and conversant with its audience in the fgc (to the point the lead developer is often present during tournament streams!), a somewhat unique relationship that i look forward to watching unfold. especially in addition to its business structure which works closely with tournament organizers, it erodes the previously established distance between developer and community, and their at times conflicting interests. i like what aether studios seems to be doing with their growing canon, franchising it out to smaller projects and teams who all develop the setting and story together--it could be one of the first "indie franchises", particularly of its scale.
zenless zone zero
it has a powerful and unique aesthetic which really drew me in. for a while i had felt that simple, satisfying hack and slash action games were a lost art in the "soulslike" era of action games, but it turns out they have been alive and well with mihoyo titles. this game really feels like "the future" to me, with its powerful style, simple fun play and its immense accessibility to a worldwide audience.
infinity nikki
it makes me happy to see a fashion game seeing success, and one that has quite interesting presentation at that. my hope is that the success of this game will inspire more games that follow. i can't help but think back to early 2000s f2p mmo games like gaia online, maple story and mabinogi, which emphasized fashion and hanging out as much as anything else.
the use of life
its simple structure drew me in and inspired me, so much so that i've been thinking about aping its format for a small project of my own. it effectively transposes the pen and paper rpg experience to a videogame in a condensed and scope-conscious format.
echoes of wisdom
every time nintendo lets go its pretenses and tries something new it almost always results in something fresh and inspired. there is clearly an immense volume of design and engineering talent under nintendo's belt, and it's a shame to me they don't get to spread their wings more often. nonetheless, this is the zelda-starring title i've practically always wished for, and it pleases me to see more returns to the 2d zelda format, especially with a link between worlds being one of my favorite titles in the series.
in stars and time
this game blends rpg and visual novel in all but name. it takes the structure of the classic character-driven rpg (of the likes of final fantasy) and condenses it yet further into something where the rpg elements are almost entirely a vehicle for a character-driven text-forward narrative.
paper mario: the thousand year door
vivian #1 best girl. i would do anything for her. it pleases me to see nintendo of america decisively course-correcting on their previous transmisogynistic blunders.
animal well
i thought i was in for a light, joyful romp and i could not have been more wrong. i kept exclaiming "this is not a nice game!" as i progressed through it. this is perhaps one of the most gorgeous games i have ever played, and its willingness to subvert expectations and defy the unspoken rules of orthodox game design had me both fascinated and frightened.
the big catch: tacklebox
another title in the new indie platformer renaissance. i was absorbed by this game's atmosphere, which much like penny's big breakaway and pizza tower, is coherent with its presentation and enhances the full experience. this time, the platforming is weighty and unorthodox, complimenting the strange and off-beat mood of its world. it smartly builds off the open world structure that was begun in mario: bowser's fury, integrating it cohesively into a world and narrative. a strength of platformers is that they are a great vehicle for place and mood, to give you opportunities to really connect with the dimensions of a place and appreciate its nooks and crannies. the game tells you to climb up a mountain, but it doesn't have to tell you to enjoy the view once you're at the top. it can be a powerful organic experience. i believe that aspect is something the big catch has mastered, and i hope it will inspire further generations of games to follow in its footsteps.
asdf 2
i'm not sure i've played any other games that have broken my brain so thoroughly, and i'm grateful for it. in the territory of orthodox game design, confusing controls and mechanics are anathema, yet asdf 2 (and its creator's whole body of work besides, it seems) sets out to achieve that pointfully. it seems like a glaring omission that "brain teaser" videogames aren't a more established genre, seeing as that is so closely tied to the exact strength of videogames. it's like experiencing what it's like to learn to play videogames all over again. or to simply learn anything for the first time, as that's exactly what you're doing in this game--an experience that we have more and more scarcely as we age into our adult lives, yet i can't help but think would do us well to remind ourselves of regularly. this is an area of design i hope more and more designers and players embrace, either in parts or as entire experiences. i feel drawn myself to explore this design space and hope to do so in the coming years.