Soha E is a Diversity & Inclusion leader at Riot Games and sits on the Board of Directors for Dames Making Games. She also streams every Saturday with her friend Kelsey and you can follow her on Twitter. Her avatar is made by @snowswallow_.
There’s a GTAV video that always makes me laugh. Michael flies a blimp toward a replica of the Griffith Observatory as Eddie Murphy’s “Party All The Time” plays on the radio and crashes right into the building. The blimp bursts into flames and screams from innocent bystanders can be heard offscreen. Michael ragdolls to the balcony where a quest marker waits for him, and a cutscene immediately starts where he throws his arms out to greet an NPC with a casual “Davey!”
This video is how I feel trying to write about video games in 2020. At the time of typing this sentence there are over 330,000 people dead from a COVID-19 in the United States. There is massive unemployment, one in four children are hungry, about 40 million people are facing eviction, and the government does not give a shit. Yet here I am with arms out and a smile hoping that a list of games I liked this year can provide some anodyne in this nightmare we’re stuck in.
I want to say two things before I get to the list. First, I hope you’re all okay and safe out there. Second, if you can, make sure to donate to mutual aid groups. If you’re not sure where to start then check out these awesome resources. Now for the list.
In Other Waters
I started playing this the moment I read “a non-violent sci-fi story” in its description. The genre is saturated with enough bleak and dire narratives to stir anxiety about the future of space exploration, and while there’s a time and place for that, In Other Waters provides a refreshing take with a soundtrack that soothes the nerves. Your goal as an AI interface is to guide a stranded xenobiologist through an alien planet, catalog new species, and ensure her survival. It’s methodological to the point of decompression--a needed order and structure in a time of chaos--with a gripping overarching mystery as the plot. Submerge yourself into new oceans and chill out alongside strange plants and creatures in a satisfying color palette, and if it’s your thing, pad your adventure with a damn good edible.
Persona 5 Royal
God, I miss my friends. I’ve been doing my part to quarantine since March; I canceled my wedding, wore my mask, dialed into Zoom, stayed six feet apart. My mental health hasn’t been this calamitous since writing my thesis in grad school when I experienced the slowest moving nervous breakdown. So when the update to Persona 5 was released as Royal, I nearly burst into tears. I can finally go to the movies! I’m free to visit bookstores and shop at the mall and ride the subway! I go on dates with my girlfriend Hifumi at the park without needing a mask! The streets of Tokyo are vibrant, crowded, and noisy, and oh my god MY FRIENDS ARE HERE! For the game itself, Royal is one hell of an upgrade. There are new animations, songs, mini-games, characters, and an entirely different end-game that should’ve been there all along. If you haven’t played the original Persona 5, just don’t. Skip it entirely. Play Royal instead and BE WITH YOUR FRIENDS!
So Many Ace Attorney Games
This year I played Ace Attorney, Justice for All, Trials & Tribulations, Apollo Justice, Investigations: Miles Edgeworth, Investigations: Miles Edgeworth 2, and I’m halfway through Dual Destinies. While ruminating on why I inhaled all of these very silly games back-to-back, I came to a realization. 2020 has been filled with daily, if not hourly breaking news. Remember when we started the year almost going to war with Iran? What the hell was that? Here’s the thing though, the year’s neverending rollercoaster is not dissimilar from the Ace Attorney games. There are so many dramatic twists in each investigation and trial even when the player knows the killer’s identity from the chapter’s beginning. But then you get the bad guy every time. How the cases wrap up is satisfying and justified. There will always be an overarching plot that doesn’t resolve as neatly, but the closure of individual cases throughout the series is a blast of serotonin to the brain.
Guilty Gear Xrd REV 2
While in quarantine, some people learned how to bake bread. Others got really into plants. I learned how to cut my own hair--it wasn’t too bad actually! I also decided to start learning fighting games after not playing them in 20 years, back when arcades were a huge phenomenon. Back then I played Mortal Kombat, much to my parents’ chagrin, but instead of picking that up again, I followed the sage advice of fighting games philosopher Patrick Miller and played Guilty Gear. I am nowhere near “good” at my main ZATO-1, but I found a community of beginners who give me the space to be really bad. GG taught me how to celebrate small wins in ways other competitive games haven’t. Even though I lose nine times in a row, I can land a couple of combos pretty consistently and sometimes throw my opponent off, which is exhilarating! As a perfectionist I thought this game would be a nightmare but it’s a strangely freeing and rewarding experience to learn new skills one clumsy step at a time.
Townscaper
The creator of Townscaper describes this game as "more of a toy". You click on the screen and start building instant little towns. There isn’t a goal, there aren’t any characters, you just click and click and click and then hey look, you created a neat town. While it’s not fair to compare it to a game like Animal Crossing: New Horizons because they are fundamentally different in every way, it scratched an itch for me that Animal Crossing couldn’t. I actually don’t want to upkeep my village. I don’t want to give into some weird mini-game about stocks. I don’t want to talk to anyone in my town or receive their shitty gifts that I resell feeling insurmountable guilt. For the record I enjoyed Animal Crossing a lot, but what I realized is I like the idea of building something quickly and then walking away from it without maintenance. The fun part for me is when creating doesn’t cost me anything or require materials. In a blink, I can start a new town whenever I feel like it!
Deep Rock Galactic
After two years in early access, this cooperative first-person shooter was finally released in 2020. Players take the role of one-to-four dwarves with different classes (Gunner, Driller, Engineer, or Scout) to go on a fast-paced adventure in procedurally generated areas to mine rare materials, shoot monsters small and large, and get into other space shenanigans. On top of being a super fun experience, the game is legitimately so charming. In between missions you and your friends hang out in a space rig where you can dance and drink beers that give you temporary powers that are useless but cute. In the times where we didn’t have a full four-person crew, I found that the random strangers who joined our games are genuinely friendly and helpful especially when I was brand new to playing, never leaving me for dead unless we all fail together. Rock and stone!
Ruinarch
We’ve heard all the platitudes: when they go low, we go high; an eye for an eye and the world goes blind; before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves. But sometimes you’re sick of being nice and want to go apeshit. Sometimes you need to snap and start a cult. Enter Ruinarch. Describing itself as an evil overlord simulator, this is a game in early access created by a small team in the Philippines. Your goal is to tear a village apart using any means necessary. Some ways are direct, like unleashing demons and casting spells, but how boring! The real fun comes in the mischief of turning the villagers against each other. Oops, I made Cuthbert have an affair and let his spouse discover it. Uh oh, I brainwashed Posy to start a cult and she converted half the village. My bad, I slipped and turned Greta into a vampire and she bled all the chickens dry. Over the course of 11 days, my villagers were literally at each other’s throats and violently hateful of one another, and my need to burn everything down was sated. Now, on to the next village.
Tukoni
Once my lust for revenge dwindled, I needed some me time. Self care is crucial, after all. Tukoni is free to play on Steam, lasts about 20 minutes, and it is the definition of cozy. It is a point-and-click puzzle adventure where you are a forest spirit meeting animals and helping them solve their little problems. Everyone is grateful and kind and the hand-drawn art is incredibly gorgeous. I played this game in the rare times that Los Angeles experienced rain with one of my cats purring in my lap, and the ambient noises of nature healed every bone in my body. At the end of the game the creators hint at additional future adventures and I absolutely can’t wait to return to this world with a cup of hot tea.
Ten Candles
Did I mention that I miss my friends? I miss them so much that I decided to get back into tabletop RPGs even though I didn’t end up being a big fan of D&D. Oh how little I knew about the possibilities of TTRPGs. Over Discord, a group of us got together and played Ten Candles, a game designed to be a one-shot and self-described as a “tragic horror.” Though you must find ways to survive, it deliberately rejects the label of survival horror because by the end of the game, no one survives. Over the course of 10 days--represented by candles that you blow out one by one in an ominous countdown--you are all dead. You don’t win. You only fall into despair and desperately try to keep your group together. My group succumbed in a campaign where we all betrayed each other in our final hours, losing ourselves to our most basic instincts, and learning absolutely nothing about teamwork or camaraderie. It was brutal and so damn cathartic in the bleakest year we’ve survived together.
Death and Taxes
I hope you were one of the cool people who bought the Bundle for Racial and Justice Equality on itch.io. There are over a thousand projects in this bundle where all proceeds were donated to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the Community Bail Fund. There are too many gems to count in this bundle, and it was really hard for me to choose what I wanted to highlight. Death and Taxes made the task much easier, though. You are the Grim Reaper starting a bureaucratic afterlife where you decide who lives and dies as you sit behind your desk. I sat there shuffling files, marking my choices, and faxing them to senior management. Over time I livened up my desk by adding cute trinkets: a snow globe, a piggy bank, and also a little stuffed gerbil. Each decision I faxed away had its consequence, many that I’ve instantly regretted once learning of them. For a depressing concept, the game is quite funny in its darkness and leads to a larger narrative about the choices we make when climbing a corporate ladder and whether or not we can truly break free from our fates.
All right y’all. That’s the list. Be safe, be kind, and keep breathing.