Hatchlings' Choice 2024

God damn it, who left this stick with the kids?!? (credit: IMDb)

I didn’t do one of these last year for a couple of reasons. First, I barely had enough time to write my own list, and I hadn’t been super diligent on tracking what my kids were into throughout the year. Second, neither kid (4 years old and 1 year old at this time last year) seemed all that into gaming; I was prepared to make the Bluey tv show my #1 despite not being a video game. Fortunately, not only did the kids get more into games in 2024, but the Giant Bomb Forums Game of the Year Bluey: The Videogame (UGH ONE WORD) was released. I’ve heard flimsier pretexts for blogs, so it’s time to count my kids’ favorite games of the year.

10. Suika Game

Horizontal would have made a cleaner screenshot, yes, but I can't stand it.

In spite of the mortal peril inherent in handing a young child an unlocked iPhone, I’ve let both children commandeer the device to play Suika Game. My son simply loves to mash the drop button, letting the fruit fall where it may. This technique has been disturbingly effective compared to some of my efforts, and I would love to stop thinking about the implications of that. My daughter is more careful, though prone to button mashing on occasion. She gets immensely proud of obtaining certain types of fruit, and she’s gotten over 1,000 points several times. Overall, it’s a harmless game with cute art and simple mechanics. The fact that I can allow a child to furiously tap my phone and not expect a ton of microtransaction purchases on my next statement is a major plus, too.

9. Little Kitty, Big City

Since I fail to mention it below: I really enjoyed this game's writing.

The only reason this game is so low on the list is because I barely played it. Both kids absolutely love cats, especially the two half-brothers we got since the last edition of this blog (RIP Bandit). The younger brother is the star of our house, cuddling close to my oldest and greeting my 2 year old every morning. Some of the controls are probably a bit too precise for the 5 year old to master (particularly the pouncing mechanics), but I bet she would love running around as a little kitty. The little tableaus they set up with your kitty sleeping in the sun also greatly appeal to my daughter, as do the hats you can wear. Maybe in some future edition of this blog, I’ll just pretend I didn’t already talk about this game so I can rank it higher.

Side note: the older of the two cats sat on me and headbutted me the entire time I wrote this entry.

8. Pokemon Trading Card Game Pocket

This is what the wall in my home office is starting to look like, as I tape my daughter's pictures to it.

My daughter got her first taste of the real thing this year, thanks to some leftover card packs that I bought as Halloween treats (there are special branded ones, I didn’t give the neighborhood kids full packs). Since then, her collection has grown, and we play a super bastardized version of the game together that involves us taking turns catching “wild” Pokemon. So she was fully primed to enjoy the artwork and collection aspect of Pokemon TCG Pocket, a game that has eaten up a surprising amount of my phone time lately. My son has very strong opinions on what I should be doing. Mostly opening card packs of “dragon” (Charizard), “bunny” (Pikachu), and “dancer” (Mewtwo, obviously). I let the 5 year old try the tutorial battles, but I think she vastly prefers our homebrewed version of the game. My current goal is to find a big box of cheap common cards and let her go to town on those, but I can’t help but feel that I’ve unleashed some major dragon sickness here.

7. The trailer for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024

By far my most viewed video of 2024, the trailer for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 has it all. It has airplanes. It has “hebbicobters”. It freezes at the same exact point every time if you watch it through the Xbox Store on the Series X. I’m glad my son is really into airplanes (or at least was a couple months ago), because he’s going to ride his first one shortly, and I’d like that to be as painless as possible. I did play the game itself and immediately find our house, which interested my daughter. But by and large, the kids enjoyed the trailer much more than my thus far brief time with the video game, and it’s kind of just eating up a bunch of internal console storage space.

6. Star Wars Outlaws

(Source: Polygon)

Last year, my daughter really enjoyed watching the original trilogy of Star Wars movies for the first time. I don’t really care about the franchise these days, even the old stuff, but it was nice to see her enjoy it (even if Empire is by far her least favorite). Even with little love for the films, there’s one reason that I thought she would love this game before playing it: Nix. Running around with a cute little pet and having it do stuff for you has got to be Peak 5 Year Old fantasy. The criminal underworld element is definitely beyond her for the moment, but recognizing aliens and objects from the movies she’s seen has elevated the watching experience. I really washed out early on Star Wars Jedi: Survivor this year, but I think I’ll actually stick with this one. Based on my kids’ reactions while playing each, it seems like the better call.

5. We <3 Katamari Damacy Reroll+ Royal Reverie

(Source: Bandai Namco Official Store)

If you are wondering why children would be enamored with Katamari Damacy, I suggest playing Katamari Damacy. I kind of assume this is how my 2 year old sees the world based on his reckless charging. This game also wins the Bugsnax Memorial Hoping I Don’t Need to Explain The Implications of What’s Happening Award, at least in respect to where everything that’s been rolled up is going.

4. Dragon Age: The Veilguard

Ah yes, children.

Dragon Age is, at its heart, Baldur’s Gate with all the rough edges sanded completely out of the picture. At best, this makes it a very easy game to casually dip into. At worst, it makes the game feel completely inessential. You know who doesn’t care about any of that? Little kids. There is a distinct PG-13 vibe from the majority of cutscenes and character interactions, which is just edgy enough to catch a 5 year old’s interest without making me worry too much about what she’s being exposed to. The violence is cartoonish enough to be an abstraction, though there is definitely a high volume of it. But the areas are eye-catching and the art style appealing to both children. The pacing is highly caffeinated, which maintained their interest far more than something like Dragon’s Dogma II (which my daughter at least liked). It helps that both my partner and I played a ton of this game in November, but the number of requests for “yucky dragon” is what propelled this game to nearly the top of at least one GOTY list this year.

3. Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree DLC

Kids love the tree, they can't get enough of the tree

In the last edition of this blog, Elden Ring very nearly took the top spot (losing only to Goat Simulator 3). It turns out that more Elden Ring hits the same as it did originally, with both kids clamoring for me to play anytime they saw the game thumbnail on my home screen or in the full list of games. The DLC has fewer odd creatures to follow, as well as a ton more bird enemies, but the environments once again captured my daughter’s imagination. Some of the fights were too scary for the kids, but their attention was glued to the screen during pretty much any in-game activity. I’m still not 100% sure why kids love Elden Ring so much, but as it’s one of my all-time favorite games, I’m glad they do.

Side note: I played some Dark Souls III in front of the kids (which my daughter requested at every opportunity), but boy is that an annoying game to play after getting such a quality of life bump in Elden Ring. My son was also TERRIFIED of the goo snake enemies in Dark Souls III, and they probably gave him nightmares on at least one occasion. For that reason, I can’t even grant it an honorable mention here.

2. Bluey: The Videogame

Rather than subject you to a Bluey: The Videogame screenshot, here's a cool leaf / tree star that blew into my front yard.

In my discarded draft of this feature last year, I was prepared to crown Bluey the winner of Hatchlings’ Choice 2023. Fortunately, an incredibly lazy video game wearing the mangled corpse of everyone’s favorite Blue Heeler pooch was released; even better, it came to Game Pass so I wouldn’t have to buy it. Like all Bluey merchandise, it’s shockingly low quality relative to the care put into the show itself. The animation is piss-poor, the voices sound stitched together from editing room floor takes, and there’s a pointlessness to all of the proceedings that even the worst Bluey episode wouldn’t dare permit. All of that aside, my daughter completed the game and occasionally requests to play its inane postgame. My son is 2 and wouldn’t know good quality if it bit his adorable little posterior, so he just likes seeing the Bluey characters on the television in any context. Good for the kids, bad for me and my partner, I guess.

This was the top game on my draft list for an uncomfortably large portion of the year, which is why I’m grateful to discuss…

1. Pokemon Let’s Go: Eevee!

(Source: VG247)

Now this is a kids-ass kids game. As previously noted, my daughter is a big fan of cuties. Well guess what’s chock-fucking-full of cuties. Her reading skills are pretty advanced for a Kindergartener, so she’s been able to play the game truly independently. The mechanics are easy enough for her to mostly avoid needing help, which is great news when my partner and I are trying to get work done. Most importantly, the game allows her to play the way that she wants to play. Whether that means assembling a highly inefficient team that can be bailed out by an overpowered Eevee with one paw tied behind her back, or if it means changing her character’s and Eevee’s outfits anytime she enters a new room, she’s always having fun. This is not to say it’s all on such intense guardrails that she can’t get into trouble. There have been times that she got extremely upset because she went too long between Pokemon Center visits and was put into an unwinnable battle as a result. And once, she accidentally sold nearly every item in her inventory (including the unique fossil), so my partner had to play for a few hours to recover cash and support items. But this game has been absolutely perfect for her current capabilities. I’m now highly looking forward to the Switch 2, as we only have a Lite at the moment and I bet she would love the Legends games on a big screen. I don’t see any indication that there will be another Let’s Go game, which is highly confusing. But if every decision made sense, would it still be Pokemon?

Honorable Mentions: I mentioned Dragon’s Dogma II earlier, and it’s here basically because my daughter enjoyed pretending she was casting ice powers (she’s fully Frozenpilled)... My son really enjoyed looking at Peglin on my phone, and part of the reason I opened Suika Game for him was to get him to stop launching stones with a sneaky finger press… Planet Coaster 2 is a personal disappointment, but I made a choo-choo park for my son; he LOVED it… Finally, both kids love Starfield. My son is hugely into vehicles, so he’s in it for the big loud spaceships, and my daughter really enjoys the detailed models and home decoration. It was originally in the top 10, but the huge amount of gunplay worked against it in the end.

Dishonorable Mentions: Bluey: The Videogame. Christ, I hate this stupid game, and I don’t care that it’s both number 2 and a dishonorable mention.