GOTY 2022
heck of a year for heavy reading/narrative games.
List items
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Just hands down some of the best storytelling (a lot of it ABOUT storytelling in the end) and writing I have seen in a game, along a slate of choices, some big, some small, all with a long-term framing that makes it satisfying to see a lot of the ramifications down the line.
I also had a personal moment where I realized this game had made the best case for religion that I had come across (and I say this from the perspective of a non-believer) and I sort of "got" it. There are all sorts of nuanced, multi-layered conversations about the subject, but the living, breathing town of Tassing that is bound together by its beliefs (despite suffering under the thumb of the institution of the church/abbey) really paints a picture of a community that cares deeply for each other borne out of religion.
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This game might do the best job at capturing a sense of place I have ever seen. And the slate of themes it hits on is impressive - different people seem to take away different things from the game. The dangers of climate change, the destructiveness of big industry, the effects of religion on a community (both good and bad), there's a lot to chew on here. And despite all the characters in this game just feeling...weary from all the aforementioned, it manages to still be extremely funny and weird.
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Gorgeous game, killer soundtrack, fantastic performances, much improved encounter design from the first game, still super gross rat tech, made me cry a lot.
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This one is like if someone took the mechanics from Tharsis, made them less punishing, and married them to a fantastic script and some great lo-fi jams. There are so many characters and subplots in this that I got really invested into, and I was impressed at the big ways in which your adventure can diverge based on which of them you decide to pursue with your limited actions meted out by the dice. Despite the true antagonist of the story being capitalism/corporations, I found many of the stories ended in a surprisingly hopeful way, with the common people living under the thumb of big forces nevertheless overcoming and sometimes thriving.
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I think this one will be a bonafide survival horror classic down the line. I feel like most of the recent games in this genre just try to be blatant homages to other classics, but Signalis feels like wholly its own thing (even with slight nods to other things, like the save point being extremely Silent Hill red square). I love everything about the graphical style and presentation, and it dodges a lot of problems that other games in this genre have.
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Extremely creative and a masterclass in short storytelling. Brings together everything in a very cool way by the end. And does it all in about 25-30 hours. There's way more here than in JRPGs multiple times its length. Really glad this finally got an official English localization, I adored it.
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This is a very satisfying murder mystery deduction game that really forces you to piece things together yourself. I wasn't initially sold on the art style, but it looks cool in motion, with each level being a weird little GIF, and it grew on me by the end. I saw a lot of comparisons to Return of the Obra Dinn, but one thing this game streamlines a little more s just putting all of the evidence in your face from the start (rather than you having to explore a physical space where you can miss clues). This improves things by making the majority of the gameplay the action of you connecting all the dots and really highlighting those fun "a-ha!" moments and making you feel smart as heck. The storytelling is two-fold with each individual level/case having its own moment in time that you are piecing together, coupled with a larger story arc over the course of the game that really builds and expands in scope in cool ways.
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I'm a sucker for a good 3D collect-o-thon platformer, and this one has a cool art style with a "little person in big world" aesthetic that I'm way into. It feels great to control and play as well. (I found out after the fact the it is from the same dev as Splasher, which also has a great flow and feel, so that makes sense). The pacing is immaculate, and there's surprisingly little padding - you get new abilities at a rapid pace, and the levels are just big and open enough to encourage exploration without feeling overwhelming or bloated.
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I would not have heard of this weird fucking game if not for the Quick Look on the site, so thanks for that! It's like the weirdest oneshot tabletop campaign that has ever existed, with some interesting mechanics and character building and your fate at the hands of the pizza dice. I appreciated how short the game was, as it allowed me to replay it to try out new character builds and attempting different infiltration tactics and getting some of the different endings.
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I have to give props to Square Enix for funding a big budget FMV murder mystery in 2022, thank you for this gift. Honestly, Square has been putting out a pretty interesting slate of sorta mid-tier games recently and I really appreciate it.
I ended up REALLY liking this by the end, the last few hours are wild. There was something very appealing as well about each chapter using the same set of actors but playing different characters in different time periods - it felt like watching a bunch of mini-plays or something.
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