Top Five Videogames of 2024

Over on the Indiana Gamedevs Discord, one of the organizers encouraged members to share their Top 5 (or Top 10) games of 2024. I am fascinated by the fact that most of the other developers' top games are things I have never heard of. A friend pointed out that games were becoming like music, where each person has an individual taste that might be completely unknown to someone else. Trampoline Tales put their favorites on their blog, and I figured I'd go ahead and do the same.

It may be obvious, but these are video games. I don't pay much attention to how many or what kind of video games I play during the year except occasionally to wince at the hours spent on a particularly catchy title. For tabletop games, I log my plays on Board Game Geek and RPG Geek, which makes it easy to collect the data I need to write my annual retrospective. For this reflection on video games, I was pleased to see that Steam makes it easy to see which games I played by month over the past year. GOG's website  and my Epic account show games in order of activity. All these data sets are somewhat polluted by a combination of judging for the IGF and acquiring (but not playing) freebies from Prime or Epic. 

I ended up with seven games that were contenders for my favorite five of the year, but the ones I've chosen to list below really stood out from the others. These were not the only games I played, and in fact, they were not even the games I played most. There are some games I played this year that I found deeply disappointing, but I will probably keep those as internalized design lessons rather than writing a separate post about them.

Here are the five I listed for my fellow Indiana gamedevs, along with links and a very short blurb about them. 

1. Dave the Diver
   I didn't know much about this game except that it was popular. I found the whole experience to be delightful.
2. Tactical Breach Wizards
   Turn-based strategy, defenestration, and magic. One of the characters had an ability that I still think about, something I've never seen in a game before that is beautiful, elegant, thematic, and hilarious.
3. SKALD: Against the Black Priory
   This is a wonderful homage to classic CRPG gameplay with just enough modern twists to feel fresh.
4. Balatro
   This is a great example of a simple idea taken to a logical and beautiful end.
5. Steamworld Heist II
   A sequel to one of the most interesting takes on the turn-based tactics genre, combining a 2D camera and platform elements with robots and firearms. Fun battles and rewarding power escalation.