i’ve belatedly decided to do a top 10 games list for 2024. most of the words here are the first thing that came to my head when thinking of a particular game with very little editing because i don’t have the energy.

my continued underemployment meant a tighter gaming budget, so don’t expect a bunch of AAA slop. these are mostly games i was able to get for free or under $10 at some point during the year. that doesn’t mean they aren’t great, though! i wasn’t lying when i said these are a few great games from 2024. i was a steadfast son, with thoughts and hooves divided. please check them out. thank you.

judero (talha and jack co, pc)

i already reviewed judero as part of my part-time stint with polygon, so i’m gonna be lazy and reuse a bit of that here.

“I find it easier to make things this way,” King-Spooner told Talha Kaya, his future collaborator on Judero, during an interview in 2015. “Pixel stuff isn’t very expressive to me, no space for experimenting or for mistakes to happen. It’s really derivative and there is something sad about the exactitude and perfectionism that goes into it. If you soak a piece of paper and drip ink onto it, the ink bleeds into the paper in the most incredible way. If you have a glass of water and pour a bit of milk into it, it’s just great to watch. If you play the same note over and over on a piano for two minutes with the sustain pedal down, then add a harmony, the resonance is sublime.”

While I’m not quite ready to write off digital art entirely, I find a lot of truth in King-Spooner’s ethos. The muddy, uneven complexions of his Judero models feel more real than any of the hyper-realistic Soulslikes or military shooters tearing up the Steam charts. When a giant monster crawls over painted scenery and through cotton shrubbery in a live-action cutscene, the environment squishes and bends realistically because, well, the developers set up a camera and recorded it as it really happened. The sensation that you could reach out and touch the figures on the screen is a unique one for a video game, and somehow simply knowing that they exist on a workbench in an art studio somewhere in Scotland goes a long way toward making Judero more than the sum of its parts.

As my time with Judero came to a close, I felt more like a kid watching a library puppet show than an aging writer sitting in front of his laptop with a DualSense controller. Just like a child might ignore the nylon strings holding a marionette aloft or the arm disappearing up a dummy’s backside, I was more than willing to overlook some inconsistent gameplay in order to fully give myself over to the game’s psychedelic adventure. Judero is special in a way video games often no longer aspire to be, melding the developers’ artistic sensibilities with the unique interactivity of the medium into an experience that feels just as untamed as the Scottish fairy tales from which it draws inspiration.

while this list is unordered, at least for the purposes of this blog, i consider judero my game of the year.

the pony factory (david szymanski and john szymanski, pc)

the pony factory takes less than half an hour to finish, but what a half hour it is. this “darkly comedic horror fps” developed in part by david szymanski of dusk and iron lung fame is a tight experience of the boomer shooter variety in which you descend into a pitch-black industrial facility to exterminate the grotesqueries hiding within.

i think what i liked so much about the pony factory wasn’t the game’s competent and ruthless fps mechanics but the interplay of light and shadow created both by its sin city-like, high-contrast, black-and-white aesthetics and the restrictive mechanics.

the pony factory gives you two tools, a boltgun and a flashlight, and only one can be use at a time. this creates repeated moments of tension in which you’re ambushed by a gaggle of the eponymous ponies while exploring with your flashlight and forced to enter complete darkness to dispatch them with your boltgun, guided only but the weapon’s muzzle flashes and the monstrous screams of your quarry. very simple but very effective.

stalker 2: heart of chornobyl (gsc game world, pc/xsx)

it’s hard to overstate the personal emotional impact of stalker 2: heart of chornobyl finally seeing the light of day. i first played the original game, stalker: shadow of chernobyl, during a difficult time in my life where i was unsure what to do next. the sequel releasing more than two years after abusive management forced me out of a good job and into the teeming, uncertain waters that is the games media unemployment line felt like fate, and i threw myself into the game looking for salvation.

my own small-in-comparison issues aside, stalker 2‘s existence is also a triumph of the beleaguered studio that brought it to life. based in ukraine, gsc game world developed the game throughout the ongoing russian invasion. some completely picked up their lives in ukraine and moved to prague, czech republic to work on stalker 2 in safety. some stayed behind to defend their country. one former gsc game world developer, volodymyr yezhov, died during the battle of bakhmut. he had two sons. stalker 2 is dedicated to his memory.

it’s times like these where video games feel both meaningless and vital beyond words. while having a new toy to play with pales in comparison to gsc game world keeping its staff safe, stalker 2‘s development also gave the hundreds of people who work there something tangible to hold onto and celebrate while the world crumbled around them. that fact alone makes stalker 2 one of the best, most important games of 2024, and anything i could write here about my experiences as i returned to the zone would feel cheap in comparison.

daemonologie (katanalevy, pc)

in daemonologie, you’re situated as a witch finder assigned to a small scottish village to weed out those who have strayed from god.

you do so by torture. you dunk them in rivers, sputtering and soaked. you pull their tongues from their mouths with great, iron prongs. you crush their thumbs between wooden boards. you stab and needle their naked bodies until you find the black mark amidst the bloody patchwork of their skin. when they reach their breaking point, they point you towards their neighbors. no one is safe.

you never get any closer to the truth. at the end of your limited time, you are forced to execute one villager as the witch. you’re never told if your choice was correct. was there even a witch at all? your coming and going is like cancer even if you’re convinced you’re the cure.

straftat (lemaitre bros, pc)

straftat is a free-to-play, one-on-one deathmatch shooter by the lemaitre bros that apes the aesthetics of their 2022 adventure game babbdi. where that previous game imparted a sense of smallness through its atmospheric environments and hidden secrets, straftat is a sometimes methodical, sometimes breakneck masterpiece of simplistic combat mechanics. if you’ve ever loaded into a game of halo 2 split-screen with a buddy and spent hours trading kills, you’ll know exactly what’s in store for you here.

while jumping into random straftat lobbies, i felt the same smallness as i did with babbdi, only this time there was a sinister edge to my insignificance. the arenas are plain and silent except for the bloodstains and screams of its combatants, and even then those firework-like bursts of violent excitement are ephemeral. you run, you dodge, you shoot, you kill, you die… but for whom? i couldn’t help but conjure images of dumb gods watching my matches somewhere with dull amusement, creatures of slovenly excess so long in the tooth that the only thing that registers in their almost-stasis is the death of millions of ants.

do not let the vampires siphon your energy to sustain lives meant only for mindless consumption.

ufo 50 (mossmouth llc, pc)

here’s my top 10 games from ufo 50 because i’m very original.

1. mooncat
2. rakshasa
3. barbuta
4. devilition
5. planet zoldath
6. magic garden
7. rock on! island
8. valbrace
9. seaside drive
10. waldorf’s journey

indika (odd meter, pc/ps5/xsx)

five minutes into my time with indika, i came upon a horse stabled at the convent in which the eponymous heroine begins her journey. it was massive, its hindquarters rising high above indika’s head, a small clue to the otherworldly adventure upon which she was soon to embark.

indika is a great many things. it’s a walking simulator. it’s an exploration of faith. it’s a religious text. it’s a criticism of the way the world brusquely shoves aside those who don’t fit into neat little boxes. frankly, calling indika a mere video game feels like a disservice despite the utmost respect i have for the medium. that’s how far indika pushes the artform as a whole: it’s both the greatest example of the heights video games can attain while also standing apart as something altogether too precious to risk losing in the sea of mediocrity.

at one point in the game, indika and her traveling companion ilya chat while you work through a random puzzle. ilya asks, seemingly out of nowhere, if indika‘s read mark twain. she says yes, tom sawyer, and then asks why he brought it up. after a short pause where you’re led to believe his answer will lead to the puzzle’s solution, ilya simply says, “i like it.” indika responds, “me too.” you can’t see their faces as the camera is zoomed out for the puzzle, but even in their silence, they sound like they’re smiling.

starstruck: hands of time (createdelic llc, pc)

a cute, metanarrative-heavy earthbound-like that doubles as an exploration of the self, starstruck: hands of time combines rhythm gaming with quirky world-building to manifest an adventure that’s more than the sum of its parts.

starstruck: hands of time is equal parts humorous and thought-provoking, two qualities that enticed me towards the ending even as the gameplay got a little monotonous and, at times, boring. my favorite sections were when i was put in control of a giant hand and asked to destroy the town in which the game’s protagonists reside, opening new areas for them to explore and letting loose some pent up frustration at the same time.

I ate and drank normally. I could eat and drink. I noticed no physiological difficulties. The feeling of weightlessness was somewhat unfamiliar compared with Earth conditions. Here, you feel as if you were hanging In a horizontal position in straps. You feel as if you are suspended. Obviously, the tightly fitted suspension system presses upon the thorax. . . . Later I got used to it and had no unpleasant sensations. I made entries into the logbook, reported, worked with the telegraph key. When I had meals. I also had water. I let the writing pad out of my hands and it floated together with the pencil In front of me. Then, when I had to write the next report. I took the pad. but the pencil wasn’t where it had been. It had flown off somewhere. The eye was secured to the pencil with a screw, but obviously they should have used glue or secured the pencil more tightly. The screw got loose and flew away. I closed up my journal and put it in my pocket. It wouldn’t be any good anyway, because I had nothing to write with.

Yuri Gagarin, first man in space
(Challenge To Apollo: The Soviet Union and The Space Race, 1945-1974)

like a dragon: infinite wealth (ryu ga gotoku studio, pc/ps4/ps5/xb1/xsx)

on december 14, i posted this message to bluesky with very little forethought:

like a dragon infinite wealth is mother 4 and no i will not explain at this time

i no longer believe this, at least not fully. i maybe half-believe it. my knees and hands are shaking from hunger so who knows what’s real and what’s not. in any case, i still will not explain apart from copy-pasting the lyrics to the mountain goats’ 2012 single “steal smoked fish.” this is also the outro to the entire blog so feel free to take off. oh and please close the door behind you. love you.

Across the Burnside bridge before
Anyone shot their movies there
We hid from the whipping rain
When we had run out of cocaine
Dispatch down to Plaid Pantry
Two on point, and two on sentry
Ah, the joys that the lesser days bring
Make you throw back your heads and sing

God bless all petty thieves
With tins of oysters up their sleeves
Feast when you can
And dream when there’s nothing to feast on

Across a different bridge today
Over the river and down Broadway
Feels so good to have you here
Some of you will be dead next year
I see your destinies above you
Like angels who don’t love you
Let them kiss you and hold you tight
As long as the money’s right

God bless all my old friends
And god bless me too, why pretend?
Feast when you can
And dream when there’s nothing to feast on

God bless the guys from my old neighborhood
Gone past the point where any blessings can do them any good

Attach the C-4 where you must
Disappear in a cloud of dust
But spare a thought for what it covers up
Pour a triple and raise your cup
We were here once, me and my friends
But we destroyed all of the evidence
And vanished into the night
At least we got that one right

God bless us, all of us
We who learn to shun the light
God bless all vampires every night
Feast when you can
Feast when you can
Feast when you can
Feast when you can