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GOTY 2020

"Words."

All right, that was just to pay off a joke from last year's GOTY top ten. Minor disclaimer with this list: the first five ordered entries are the only ones I'm really serious about putting forward as the year's best gaming; the bottom half is more a gaggle of half-decent obscurities that are at least worth a look and may or may not have been freebies. I didn't play many new releases in the past year - too busy trying to keep my bills low and my sanity intact - but I'm certain those top five are keepers all the same.

2020 definitely felt like a lean year for notable games, though it's all too possible that I wasn't looking hard enough (zero E3 or PAX news didn't help, though I can hardly blame them for cancelling). I imagine I'll have a more interesting "Best of 2020" list by this time next year once I've done a little more research and catch-up.

List items

  • While perhaps too big by half, Nioh 2 represents everything I love about video games: myriad gameplay systems and features all working harmoniously, heavy player customization and development that's as granular as I can handle, excellent atmosphere, storytelling, and worldbuilding, a decent challenge, and a reaffirmation of my long-standing belief that video game sequels are unique in how they buck the usual stereotype of "sequelitis" diminishing returns by being so much more confident and polished in their approach the second time around. It sands off the rough edges of the first Nioh, implementing nothing but welcome modifications and additions to the original's vaguely Soulsian formula, and adjusts the difficulty curve to be more amiable without denying the player all the tense duels and rueful-chuckle-summoning hazards they could want. As a half-yokai samurai who finds himself (or herself) deeply embroiled in the latter years of the Sengoku conflict, Nioh 2 puts you in a game built explicitly as a Souls ersatz but framed by a loot RPG sensibility and an instance/mission-based structure that makes the game more convenient to play in bursts. Nioh 2 even tacitly acknowledges the true king of the Soulslikes - Bloodborne - with a new weapon class that transforms just like the Burial Blade and is best suited for hunting monsters. Though exceptionally hard to delineate due to the sheer subjectivity involved, there are those rare games that come along and just seem to grok you for the very specific type of player you are and Nioh 2 was that for me this year.

  • I've not visited the wafer-thin variant of the Mushroom Kingdom in quite some time, staying away from Sticker Star and Color Splash mostly through a combination of their mediocre reputation and the fact first-person Nintendo games rarely seem to drop in price. The Origami King, however, started seeing a lot of good press despite the continued diminishment of the franchise's RPG aspects, and I was curious enough to try it out. While it still has that fundamental dissonance to its design - random encounters are detrimental to progress, since you gain nothing and often need to use up your stronger finite items to win them quickly - the combination of its puzzle-like approach to battles and the effortless charm of its script and characters made it an extremely pleasant way to pass the time. It didn't hurt, at least in my case, that the game was also full of collectibles and secrets to find and kept varying its approach - such as solving mysteries in the desert one moment to sailing the high seas and discovering new islands (in a style not dissimilar to The Wind Waker) the next. When Super Mario games are at their best, they represent the purest and cleanest form of sheer entertainment and escapism this medium can muster, and The Origami King had that on offer during a year where such an experience was sorely needed.

  • I don't know if there is such a thing as a video game buff the way there is for movies and music - specifically, dedicated fans who hold the bold, the strange, and the obscure in the highest regard - but Paradise Killer feels like a game made for them. A murder mystery adventure that keeps detailed logs on every clue, hint, and statement you've found or been given, while also an open-world game filled with incidental treasures that almost always hold very little relevance to the central investigation but operate instead as a means to deliver some of the wildest worldbuilding I've seen in a game setting. A death cult of immortal beings who regularly create and destroy a series of tropical paradises in pursuit of the best way to commune with their eldritch patron deities, who use regular humans like chattel and must avoid being "tempted" by any one of their gods lest they find themselves exiled to a quiet villa for three thousand years, like the titular detective Lady Love Dies. It's a game that demands a lot of investment from its player, but offers enough narrative rewards for the curious mind to make that journey into madness worth it. Also, its mix of synthwave and '80s funk probably made for the best soundtrack this year, though I might have to do some more digging first...

  • Ben Ward and Dan Marshall made a pair of adventure games in the late aughts that, while hardly pushing the envelope (by design), were full of warm affection for the slapstick LucasFilm era of point-and-clicks and were unusual among their peers in how they managed to keep pace with the wild comedic energy of genre paragons like Day of the Tentacle or The Secret of Monkey Island: a rare feat for any game from this or any other genre. Lair of the Clockwork God is both the culmination of that wit and the inevitable result of observing and working within the Indie game development scene for over a decade. It is nothing if not irreverent, for both recent trends in Indie gaming and for where British culture and politics are at now in general, and feels that much more a personal expression from its two grumpy auteurs as a result. It also finds the pair at their most imaginative and innovative, creating a string of thematically varied vignettes loosely connected by an overarching plot of teaching a sapient supercomputer how to feel, and an excuse for a rapid-fire delivery of some of the best meta video game jokes and silly sociopathy since Jazzpunk. I didn't always see eye to eye with the game's platforming - Dan's fictional counterpart insists you can't make Indie games in this century without it, even if Ben staunchly disagrees - but this is a game absolutely worth playing through for its narrative content and humor (and yet another one that felt intended for me).

  • Actress Honor Mizrahi, a very curious robot named Scout, and a cast of '90s Hollywood types (with some prominent LGBTQ representation) all find themselves involved with a series of strange murders, and the only way to solve them is to scan for clues (the interface for which looks eerily like a picross puzzle) to piece together what happened and who the culprit behind them might be. A Picross/Ace Attorney hybrid is a concept potentially fraught with issues - How do you maintain a decent delivery rate of picross puzzles without derailing the pacing of the ongoing story and investigation? Why would a picross puzzle of a cat tell you who the murderer is anyway? - but Murder by Numbers nonetheless found the sweet spot in its peerless execution, and coupled it with one of the most mature, realistic, and well-written stories I've seen in a visual novel while still dedicating plenty of time to moments of levity and goofing around. I'm glad the developers saw tremendous success this year (they also released Fall Guys) because it was well deserved.

  • An adventure game about depression that hit me hard, as anything to do with protagonists suffering mental illness is likely to do, but remarkable in its ingenuity towards using the medium of video games to deliver a narrative that either contains a genuine descent into paranoid insanity or an insidious external conspiracy to falsify same. An initially nameless patient is put through an experimental version of systemic routine therapy: that is, following the same directions at the same times every day to re-establish a sense of normalcy to that person's world. (The game also incorporates a few clever narrative puzzles in here regarding passwords and backstory details that I won't spoil.) A few loops of this, bookended with flashbacks of how our protagonist reached his current nadir, eventually starts to give way to tears in reality and a breakdown of said normalcy; the game itself messing with you by subtly mixing up the safe routine you've been following. It's a well-paced horror story that doesn't diminish the dignity and humanity of those suffering mental illness, to its credit. Powerful and potentially difficult material that's very worth a glance if you're in a position to handle it. (NB: If you bought that Racial Justice and Equality bundle back in the summer, you should already have the means to check it out.)

  • A relaxing game about disassembling and reassembling broken electronics and keepsakes, with a simple and clear-cut interface that neatly places every component in a dedicated slot, and with no timers or scoring systems that might add any amount of tension. Just a gentle tale about an itinerant repairwoman working on commissions from the picturesque seaside town of Bellariva to pay for room and board during a local festival, with her expertise and empathy helping to resolve two different family conflicts in the process. Almost certainly the most wholesome game I played this year, and again something that really helped to combat the lugubrious and anxious mood of this year and its procession of bad news. Full disclaimer: Assemble with Care was originally a 2019 release for the Apple Arcade service - the interface is clearly built for phones and tablets - but we parishioners here at the Church of Rorie do not recognize Apple-based platforms so its 2020 Steam debut is the one that matters, at least for the sake of this list.

  • An exacting puzzle game about getting it on with demon ladies. Doesn't require any description more elaborate than that, though its simple approach to block-pushing puzzles can start to get tricky towards the end. Fortunately, the whole thing takes like an hour total to complete so don't expect to get waylaid (so to speak) for too long. The entire internet was thirsty for this thing for a hot minute, but it turned out to be a surprisingly wholesome trip through Gehenna with each demoness given enough of a personality to make their acquaintance worth the brain hurty effort. There's not a whole lot left to say about it without spoiling the story or puzzles except to mention that it's still free on Steam and won't take more than a lunch break to complete, so there's no reason not to check it out yourselves.

  • A Zelda clone with a vaguely Axiom Verge premise of presenting an archetypal video game world twisted and corrupted by a strange and pernicious underflow glitch. That meta aspect to the narrative only really makes itself known at the start and the end of the plot, though, and the vast majority of the runtime is spent in large, uninteresting procgen Zelda dungeons and overworlds. I like a Zelda randomizer as much as the next guy, but robbing dungeons of some well-considered architecture also robs Zelda games of their essence. Solid enough gameplay with some neat narrative twists and goofy meta gags, but it doesn't half drag on at times. (This was free in the Racial Justice and Equality bundle too, fyi. I really cheaped out on this year's GOTY list.)

  • I perhaps like this game more for the conceit than the execution, as it's a rather dry RPGMaker project without a whole lot of graphical or mechanical flourish, but there was a time where I considered how you might build an RPG Innkeeper simulator back around the time when Recettear shined a spotlight on those nameless working stiffs manning all the vendor booths in our favorite RPGs. Developer SeaPhoenix hit upon an idea close to my own, where you'd have to decorate rooms in a specific way and complete unusual objectives to make each one of your idiosyncratic fantasy world guests feel right at home for the biggest payout. Add to that a game-long objective to repair the dilapidated mansion you inherited, fixing up rooms and opening up more floors to increase your guest limit, and spinning various plates on poles with timed events and tight scheduling. It's a little stressful in its strategic planning and money management, as running a hotel probably should be, but its decision to weave in a story and exploration elements to ensure it's more than simply a loop of checking in clients and cleaning up after them made for a compelling hybrid. (See above, re: Racial Justice and Equality bundle.)

  • (HONORABLE MENTION) Oh boy, this thing. An anime gacha game moonlighting as a surprisingly competent Breath of the Wild clone, taking Nintendo's many open-world innovations to heart when creating its rolling landscapes filled with incidental mischief with which to busy oneself. I'm never going to be that guy who pours money into a virtual slot machine in the hopes that some ultra rare waifu pops out, but Genshin's built in such a way where I don't have to be: the party you're given as part of the core story progression has more than sufficient skills and elemental coverage (which plays a major role in the game's combat and puzzles alike) to get you through the game's main content. You can toss all the microtransactions and gambling to the four winds and simply explore its world and take on its quests to your heart's content without paying a dime, and with two giant areas - and more on the way - it's a game I could see myself dipping into regularly throughout 2021 and beyond, at least until I hit that inevitable pay-to-win wall where progress screeches to a halt and the challenge level is insurmountable without monetary assistance. My only reason for excluding it from the main list is that it's far from finished: it may well be a GOTY contender for 2025 with the ambitious roadmap MiHoYo has intimated. (Also, what was it with "cute" mascot characters obsessed with food in pop culture this year? And to that effect, could Grogu fit a whole Paimon in his mouth? I'm sure there's fanart but I'm scared to look.)
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