2024 was supposed to be quieter than last year. 2023 had given us major new entries in Baldur’s Gate, Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Street Fighter, and more, so this year was supposed to be more indie focused with games that wouldn’t pop quite as much. The face that I struggled to narrow this list even to my honorable mentions is evidence we got no such thing. If nothing else, this should be a statement about the health of the game industry. Even when big AAA titles aren’t dominating the headlines, the gaming lineup is still full of innovation and excitement.
Honorable Mentions
- Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore
No one thinks the CDi Zelda games are good, but this is an undeniable charm that has made them meme fodder for years. Arzette channels everything charming about those titles into an actual good game, or at least one that feels more what those Zeldas dreamed to be. - The Plucky Squire
The premise of The Plucky Squire is better than the final game, but jumping in and out of a 2D Zelda like picture book to a 3D child’s bedroom you explore from a Honey I Shrunk the Kids perspective goes a very long way. - The Jackbox Survey Scramble
The Jackbox games are perennial performers. You can always count on a new collection to be fun, but the setup has started to show its age. Survey Scramble borrows liberally from Family Feud and throws in just enough variations with updating surveys to make this format feel fresh again. - Harold Halibut
Harold is the best-looking game of the year for me. Every shot is meticulously handcrafted. If only it played as wonderful as it looks. Not bad for an adventure game but just missing the cut. - Little Kitty, Big City
If I gave an award for coziest game of the year this would win it. A drastic contrast to Stray from a couple years ago, but another fun game all the same. Unlike that one, your kids can play this one with no fear of nightmares.
10. The Rise of the Golden Idol
I never got around to 2022’s The Case of the Golden Idol, so this one came as a wholly new experience for me. If you like those classic mystery games from Nancy Drew and even back to Carmen Sandiego, this might be for you. You examine a scene and have to logic out a whodunit using specific keywords. There’s a bit of those old logic puzzles you might have done in school—Bill is twice the age of Mandy, but three years younger than Tara. I always loved those and I love The Rise of the Golden Idol.
9. The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom
The Switch has been home to three of the best Zelda games ever made—Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom, and the Link’s Awakening remake. Add in that this is the first title in the series to actually star Zelda (never mind CDi titles), and there was a lot of hype before this title even released. So, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that it stumbles a bit with its new “echoes” cloning mechanic, but a stumbling for a Zelda game is like Barry Sanders stumbling—you’re still witnessing a work of art.
8. Thank Goodness You’re Here!
It’s difficult to be funny in any medium, but video games have a particularly challenging time of it. For every The Secret of Monkey Island, there are a million titles that have tried and failed. Part of the challenge is making something funny that you’re going to do repeatedly—imagine dying multiple times in a Mario level and hearing the same joke over and over. Thankfully, Thank Goodness You’re Here! avoids most pitfalls by playing it safe as a classic adventure title that has you solving puzzles in a bizarre small British town that is one part Ren & Stimpy, and one part Monty Python. I genuinely had to stop playing due to laughter multiple times.
7. Helldivers II
It’s a wonder it’s taken this long for someone to make a really great Starship Troopers game. The classic Paul Verhoeven film, which served as a satire of the military industrial complex, fascism, and the novel on which it’s based, already feels like part video game in the scenes where we see endless waves of bugs gunned down in something akin to a horde mode. Yet, someone has finally cracked the code and at its best Helldivers II feels like the most over-the-top scenes in that film but you’re getting to live them out. So, why not higher? Hell is other people and that’s partially true for Helldivers II as it’s much more fun to play with a group of friends working together than random matchmaking. Considering I mostly played it the latter, it fell several spots for me personally.
6. UFO 50
This might be the most impressive title of 2024 and yet its graphics are decidedly 8-bit. A years in the making project among multiple indie developers, UFO 50 imagines an alternative history where another console was released somewhere between the Commodore 64 and Nintendo Entertainment System. This is that fictional console’s collection of 50 unique games—all of them full sized games of that era. Some are great. Some are forgettable. Starting up the title for the first time feels like wandering into a video store of the era and picking a random game to rent from a wall of boxes. Maybe you’ll get lucky and find a classic like Mortol, or maybe you’ll strikeout.
5. Minishoot’ Adventures
Cross The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past with a dual-stick shooter and you get Minishoot’ Adventures—a game with a terrible name but a lot of heart. That premise may sound straightforward, but what makes it work so well here is the design. You always feel like you’re making progress and gaining new abilities right up till the end of the game. Toss in some clever hidden secrets and much like the original 2D Zeldas, you’ll feel like you’ve truly been on a full adventure.
4. Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is one of the best metroidvanias ever made. That could be the beginning and end of what I have to say for it, but I’ll add this is the freshest the franchise has felt since the original The Sands of Time. Lost Crown plays as a 2D adventure exploring a mountain temple that slowly unfurls into one of the largest games ever in the genre. The combat is fast and tight, and the traversal feels every bit as cool and intuitive as it did back in The Sands of Time.
3. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
I can’t imagine a better team being tasked to make an Indiana Jones game than MachineGames, the team that brought us the most recent Wolfenstein reboot. They know a thing or two about killing Nazis. Still, before release I was skeptical like most that they could fully pull it off. If it doesn’t have Harrison Ford, will the acting fall flat? No worries, Troy Baker nails the Ford impersonation. Will a first-person perspective work for a series not known for its heavy firearms play? Absolutely it works, particularly as the game leans heavy on stealth mechanics. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best Indiana Jones we’ve gotten since The Last Crusade.
2. Balatro
I easily could have flipped my two choices. Ask me in another six months and I just might. Balatro is the most addictive game I played all year. On its surface it seems like a simple game of poker with a few mechanics thrown in involving the jokers. But after a few rounds you’ll start to see the depth that’s here as you figure out new combinations of jokers that modify your hand. As you progress you realize how deep the game truly is and how vast the variety of jokers there are. By the end, you’ll be entering a zen state watching the numbers rocket up hand after hand all the while hoping you might draw that one joker you desire. Buy it and you’ll likely not touch anything else for the next month.
1. Astro Bot
The best game of the year is Sony finally taking note of how the best in the business does it. Astro Bot is most obviously a love letter to the history of PlayStation. The wide variety of bots and game tributes contained within are enough to bring joy to any longtime PlayStation fan’s heart. The moment when it kicks into an Ape Escape tribute made me laugh, I was smiling so hard. And yet, the real magic here is that this is the most Nintendo platformer any non-Nintendo company has ever made. I don’t mean that in a derivative manner, but that Nintendo has raised multiple generations of game developers on their games and we’re seeing the fruits of that now. Astro Bot is a joy for both young and old to play.
[Editor’s Note: Authors were told to approach their game of the year lists however they wanted, including listing their favorite games they personally played this year regardless of release year.]
