The 2020 Game of the Year deliberations were a treat, as always. I enjoy the music deliberations each year as they usually direct me towards one or two games I normally wouldn't have heard about. I'm a sucker for environment or world building with audio - whether it's a subdued melancholy bit of ambiance like the track In Hushed Whispers from Dragon Age: Inquisition, or a heavy industrial metal bludgeon like BFG Division from DOOM (2016), there's an incredible spectrum of artistry that goes into establishing a game's Style™. There was one highlight to the 2020 GOTY Music Deliberations though that, at least for me, stood head and shoulders above the rest: Sludge Life. The duders played a track called "Bubble Up", a fat grimy gangsta rap romp that immediately asserted itself as a banger. While lyrically hard to decipher, themes of delinquency, being stuck in a "sludge life", and a need to get off this planet were expressed. I had no clue what this game was but this track planted a seed.

When a player first drops into the world of Sludge Life, they wake up inside of a shipping container, which they quickly learn is their home. A few seconds of overwhelming claustrophobia spurns the player towards the door. Taking their first steps out of the container reveals a sprawling city, sinking in sea of black sludge across the horizon. With no tutorial or cutscenes to guide them forward, the player is left to move around and experiment, quickly discovering the ability fart on command, rip a fat drag on a ciggy, jump over objects like a delinquent, get beaten by police for standing too close, and vandalizing exposed wall faces with graffiti.

The subjective nature of musical and visual artistry creates sort of a natural divide between a game's "Style" and all of its other "Substance". What actions and behaviors are there for the player to engage in? What sorts of stories or events are present to encounter? The bullet points you stack on the back of the box: these are the things I would consider to be a game's "Substance". After about 30 minutes into Sludge Life, I too questioned what the substance of this game actually was. I had no bearing on where I was going, no immediate objectives to check off, and no real idea of what I was supposed to be doing - so why was I still playing?

Navigating through this alien city of bug-eyed union workers protesting their cruddy jobs, drug-fueled tag-artists looking to be the king, and the accumulation of seemingly unrelated items that don't really do anything gives the player a sense that there is a lot to explore and see, but that the structure of "The Game" doesn't really exist. Sludge Life very quickly establishes its style, but leaves the player with an overwhelming sense of "What the F$#* is this game?"

Aimlessly noodling around this city looking for a purpose, I stumbled across an open shipping container with someone inside. A retired tag-artist named BigMud who was looking to get into the rap game. He told me to check out his mixtape because, of course he did. I picked it up, popped it into my laptop and hit play - BAM, that was it. The certified banger from the GOTY deliberations. I let the track play while I ran around tagging the city and looking for other ways to cause mischief.

That moment solidified for me the idea that Sludge Life isn't so much "Style over Substance", but rather, it's a rare case where the style is the substance. It's a giant mosaic of anti-corporate delinquency where you hop fences, break into buildings, and seek out all the creative ways that the "Sludge Life" manifests itself on this planet, that's mechanically little more than a walking simulator. I was living the Sludge Life and I didn't even know it.

Sludge Life isn't for everybody, and I imagine a fair number of people will likely bounce off its lack of structure, but it captures a feeling that is exclusive to the medium of video games. Breaking it down on paper, Sludge Life isn't much of a game at all, but Sludge Life is also one of the best games I played in 2020. Much to my surprise, there is a growing community of Sludge Life evangelists on Reddit, producing their own graffiti tags and game inspired art. The developers even have (quite ironically) some of the hottest merch on their website - selling BigMud's mixtape on vinyl, stickers of the cat with two buttholes, and pro-cigarette smoking patches. These things don't just represent the game's "style", but rather, those are the things that make the game.

It's one of those experiences where as you say the style is very much part of the substance. A game where it's cool to just inhabit the world rather than trying to conquer it in some way. There are objectives but it's all so cool and laid back and no one is really yelling at you to do anything. I enjoyed the freeform aspect of exploration and discovery quite a lot. A lot of people won't like the fact that you're not necessarily achieving things per se because when you experience something cool and unique or meet interesting characters the game doesn't ring up a quest completed banner for you. It's a fun experience and while I wouldn't go as far as to say it was one of the best games I've played recently I would say it's one of the chillest times I've had in a game all year.

@humanity: Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Also, agreed that perhaps "...best games I played in 2020" would be better described as "...games I most enjoyed in 2020".