Weasel's Games of the Year 2019

2019 was not a great year for me and video games.

Life was a lot for me this year and it caused me to take a step back from my normal playing of video games, especially of video games that came out this year. Looking back at my list of games that I now have (over 900, it turns out), I find that I still own a lot of games, even some great ones that came out in 2019 (see: Disco Elysium), but that I never got around to playing. The majority of the games that I did play this year, however, came out in previous years and I am just getting around to playing. That said, I was able to compile a list of at least five to show off here and I've more or less ordered them how I feel about them. The following are my Top 5 Games of 2019:

List items

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  1. Kind Words (lo fi chill beats to write to)

  Quite frankly, I may have played games this year with more gameplay, depth and graphics, but I still feel that its important to me that I showcase Kind Words as my "Game of the Year (of games that I played this year that came out this year)". Kind Words takes the idea that everyone feels down and sends that to others so that they can give advice, support or just kind words (pun intended) to you to help you get through what you're going through. Everyone is anonymized and you might think that would create a terrible internet forum hell in which people troll others, but I was surprised to find that every time I posted something and every issue that I saw posted was legitimate, and it truly was people who just wanted to help. Not to mention you get some chill lo fi beats to write all of this to, and each day that you log in, you are given a new song to listen to. Quite frankly, this game was important to me because I've been going through some tough mental health issues this year and I felt comfort in random strangers caring about me throwing my issues out and into the void for someone to answer and care about, and of course, I made sure that I posted on others' issues as well. If you have the chance and feel like being a kind soul to someone, I highly recommend Kind Words for you to use and participate in.

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  2. Total War: Three Kingdoms

  I am a huge fan of the Three Kingdoms timeline and have played an unhealthy amount of Dynasty Warriors, so when I heard that Total War was going to try their take on the time period, I was very interested. This was actually the first Total War game I had ever played and I was not disappointed in the least bit. While the game can become a slog at times, I was impressed by how much you could do and how fun it was to see all of the classic characters from that era in this type of game. I'll admit that I never once actually won in the limited time that I did play it, but I'd still say its one of my favorite games that I played that came out this year.

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  3. Photographs

  Photographs was actually recommended to me from a friend, but I must say that I had a very good time playing it. Photographs is one of those games that you can complete in one sitting, but that tells an intriguing story mixed in with some sometimes challenging puzzles that, even though some of them became frustrating, still gave a satisfying result when it was finished. This game also has the added effect of having a very important choice towards the end that you can talk about with your friends who have played it afterward to see what they chose. If you're looking for a nice short emotional puzzle game, Photographs is the game for you.

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  4. Arcade Spirits

  This was another game that I never fully finished, but from what I did play of it, I quite enjoyed it. I typically don't play many visual novels, but this one stuck out to me for a couple of reasons: an interesting setting, voice actors that I happened to know, and its about video games, so what's not to like, right? It isn't a short game by any means, but I enjoyed the choices that I had to make and the characters that I had met, and if time prevails for me in the future, this is one that I would come back to in order to finish later on.

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  5. Wargroove

  Wargroove was my single anticipated game of 2019 from last year and while it made it onto my game of the year list, I was slightly disappointed with the difficulty scale that it had at first. I am aware, however, that they have patched the game since it was released to address these issues, and I've loved and still love a good Advance Wars -like game. I wish I had more time to have played it, but from what I did play, I enjoyed it quite a bit. I'm not sure why I fell off of it so hard, but I hope to return to it sometime in the future.