chi's end of the year games list
Hi! It's the end of 2024. Crazy year, a lot was going on. But fuck all of that. you wanna hear about
VIDEO GAYMES
Well, I gotchu. here are ten games that are my favorite new releases of the year, and as a fun note, literally only one of them actually appeared at The Game Awards, in case you want an idea of how stacked this year was in terms of releases, if you dared to look outside of the typical mainstream console space.
Of course, start your read of my probably poorly edited blog post by listening to my favorite music of the year too!
10. Egg Squeeze - Yes, it's on the list
Mechanically speaking, Egg Squeeze is simple - but it may be one of the best examples of pull and tension in a video game yet. You can never truly be confident in how long you should be holding each egg for, and the game plays with this anxiety at every possible chance it gets. It knows what it is and it plays to that shit extremely well.
9. Shy Guy Surfing - Man, that dude can surf
This funny little runner-styled fangame might have one of the most insane suite of boss fights I've seen in a game yet, drawing from a lot of different Nintendo and SEGA games for one hell of a mashup. It realizes the under-explored potential of this genre by infusing a dash of bullet hell to make surprisingly distinct mechanics and challenges - it's also disturbingly polished, filled with lots of extras, additional post-game content, and a secret final boss fight that goes extremely fucking hard.
8. Buckshot Roulette
One of this year's big indie hitters is a game that basically boils down to 1v1 Russian Roulette, except it's with a shotgun and is spiced up with various items in between the turns. Impeccable style and a simple to understand yet masterfully tense experience really solidified this one as a highlight of the year for me.
Also, that multiplayer is fun as hell, and I yearn for the day that crazy TGS setup of the game is something I can play for myself. I want to shoot my friends with a fake shotgun (affectionately)!
7. Tetrachroma - Reversis
Tetris with Reversi mechanics is the gist of this game, and it is an ingenious combo. It really breaks a lot of the habitual actions one would make playing a normal Tetris game, and that change makes Tetrachroma play very different despite how it looks. Add that with an extremely huge collection of modes referencing some of the best Tetris variants across the many decades it's existed, and you've got one of the most feature-rich block stacking games out there (for only $5, might I add!).
And hey, to top it all off, the presentation, inspired by the CD-i version of Tetris of all things, stuns and exudes a charm that no other version of Tetris out there has. It really stands out among the wave of Tetris fan / indie remixes out there!
6. Arctic Eggs - The Wobbliest Game of the Year
A general theme of some of my favorite games this year (ignoring the fact that this is the second egg-related game on this list) is the high amount of sincerity underneath the absurdity. Arctic Eggs is a textbook example of that trend - dark, harrowing, and cursed, but also simultaneously optimistic, soulful, and relentlessly funny underneath the pain of it all.
There's a joy in its unwillingness to accept perfectionism and utopianism through both its writing and its game mechanics. Every time you're cooking for a person on the street, you're cooking with a wobbliness and imprecision that mirrors the way its characters respond to the circumstances around them. That kind of blend of evocative mechanical storytelling blends really well with this game's world and its terrific sense of humor and heart. Great as fuck video game, and one we're gonna look back at fondly when we reach the end of the decade and get super old as fuck. Man, fuck.
5. Rabbit & Steel - Bnuuy Game
In a year of roguelites and roguelikes everywhere, I have to give props to the one I enjoyed the most this year above all (this is factoring in Balatro, sorry Playstack friends I love u and the game tho) - and of course, I'm talking about the one where you play as cute as hell bunny girls.
There's a love for the exciting, flashy raids of FFXIV placed in every aspect of this game's design, but it carves out its own identity by actually having interesting buildcrafting through the loot drops and shop purchases you get, making your moment-to-moment rotations different in every run on top of the usual memorization of complex raid patterns and team-stacking mechanics. It's a great co-op romp, one I've enjoyed on the couch and online with friends everywhere, and while FFXIV Dawntrail's newest savage raids were a great time, I don't think those raids could rival a lot of the highs I felt clearing the harder tier runs of the most bnuuy game of 2024.
4. FFVII Rebirth - The biggest ultra Square Enix fest
Imagine remaking FFVII, a game that already has quite a lot in it for an at-the-time incredibly expensive and high-scope project. Now imagine doing that all over again.
Well, they did it all over again. FFVII Rebirth continues a lot of what I loved about the previous Remake entry, which includes a revamped iteration of one of the series' best combat systems, and just loads it to the brim with so much shit to do at every possible corner. There isn't a big, bombastic JRPG with this much variety to it in quite some time, and the monolithic effort that is getting through to this game's ending with all of the side quests, the Queen's Blood sideplot, and Gilgamesh quests cleared was one that really took the whole year to get through. And despite initial impressions, the final hours of this game chose to take some very interesting narrative twists and turns that leave me really excited for how they'll wrap this trilogy.
A word of advice to anyone seeing people talk about these games and wants to play them: do not wait for the third game to play the whole thing at once. Each of these games are gigantic ass video games and you're better off just playing them one at a time rather than having to work through all 3 in a row. Especially keeping in mind of this one - sheesh, that was nearly 100 hours to do most of it! Oof!
3. 1000xRESIST - Snubbed at The Game Awards but not in our heart
1000xRESIST is loaded with lots of things to say, so it's important to celebrate not specifically the fact that it covers a lot of wide-ranging, resonant feelings about the pandemic, society's treatment of the oppressed, and our own affinity to culture and family, but the way it weaves all of that into a single story that has its hooks from the first chapter, which is one heck of an accomplishment. There were a lot of scenes in that game that hit hard for me, so even though the game's final climax wasn't necessarily cathartic or emotionally satisfying with a more typical bombastic closure, there was something about the entire journey that is probably going to stick with me for the rest of my life. Damn.
It's a shame this was completely snubbed at the wider awards season in terms of recognition, and honestly shocking too - it felt like everyone that's played the game this year not only got it, but didn't shut up about it, to put it bluntly. You'd think that kind of acclaim really would had meant recognition at an industry event like that, but er, I guess not.
2. Natsu-Mon: 20th Century Summer Kid - Boku no Natsuyasumi enters a New Generation
Finally, after decades of acclaim (some of which can be attributed to one notable video essayist), the west can finally experience a brand new, Millennium Kitchen developed summer adventure(*) from the mind of Kaz Ayabe...and no one was talking about it.
Really??? It's a shame because Natsu-Mon is not only one of the best games of the year but one of the best iterations of Ayabe's summer slice-of-life adventures, combining the bratty, childhood whimsy of Boku no Natsuyasumi with the open-world fantasy of Breath of the Wild, and while that isn't particularly a novel blending, it is an incredibly fun one nonetheless. When you can go mostly anywhere, and there's not exactly an order in which you have to do any of it, you really do feel like a kid set loose to find for themselves how to enjoy the summer break.
When I was younger and went outside in the backyard, I always felt this air around me where it felt like nothing held me down from walking in any direction in whatever way I liked. Gone were the exact paths I had to take from class to class. Gone were the family members I had to follow when walking around a shopping mall or grocery store. All that stood between me was the far-out fence, the woods, and everything in-between. That exact feeling is the kind Natsu-Mon has captured unlike any other thing out there.
(*) I know there was a Shin-Chan game from Millennium Kitchen a few years back that is basically a new Boku no Natsuyasumi-esque experience but I don't think that counts due to it being a licensed game. It is a perfect match between IP and developer though!
1. Starstruck: Hands of Time - The Angriest GOTY Out There
Out of all the games I played this year, I've designated Starstruck as my personal favorite, even if its core rhythm gameplay doesn't match what I like out of the genre (or feels particularly intuitive on most controller schemes), although to be fair - I am fairly picky about that for obvious reasons.
So why is it my number one game? Well, it's the game I feel has put almost everything into using its charming, Love-De-Lic inspired aesthetic and energy to ruthlessly attack the notion of what it means to be an "artist" and to receive recognition for being one. And that's...really bold, I respect that immensely.
This game is mad y'all, and it funnels its pure hatred of the fantasy of being a "rockstar" in visually intense and striking ways. "Being an artist is evil actually" is a pretty flat takeaway from the whole experience, but I think if you dig underneath its multi-packed layers of comedy and intensity, you'll see that it's a lot more nuanced than just that - Starstruck acknowledges that when falling into the human temptation of creating, you have to accept all the good and bad it brings to you and the people around you, especially in regards to how it drives one's ego and the way they perceive the ego of themselves and others.
It's a really special piece of work, and this game likely fell under most people's radars - so if that was you, get on that and give this one a shot. You'll probably really love the funny sequences where you, as a hand, destroy the fuck out of everything. I loved those parts too.
Also, I recently recorded a segment for a podcast that I'll link back in this blog (sometime in the future) discussing more about this pick and also the really interesting conversations I had when I got the chance to meet up with the game's creator earlier in the year. It was pretty neat!
So yeah, those are my favorite games of the year. And because talking about ten games only is hard, here's the
Games that were pretty good and should be on this list too but didn't make the cut
beatmania IIDX 32: Pinky Crush - I chose against including yet another BEMANI game on my GOTY list for 2 years in a row but I still want to talk about it here. This mix is actually GOATed af and the new music + theming of this one is a blast.
MASH VP! Re:Vision - It's technically still in early access but what's here is an absurdly polished PC rhythm game that's definitely carried hard by having Naoki Maeda and TAG (both of ex-DDR fame) spearheading the project.
Beastieball - Another game I want to save to cover properly next year because a) I'm still working through it and b) it's still in early access, but it's an excellent romp that captures something few monster catchers can't in terms of packing a set of cool gameplay and narrative beats that really sell the partnership between the trainer and their creatures.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle - Super sick as hell game that probably would make the cut had it not just released and I have not enough time to finish it. This surprisingly has some really sick level design in it!
Nine Sols - this game is awesome and I'm always rooting for the Taiwan indie scene. Just haven't finished it. Oops! I'd bet it'd be on this list if I did finish it.
STRAFTAT - Fun as heck 1v1 arena shooter in a era where that stuff is long gone. Hella accessible and filled with lots of funny, gimmicky maps that make for good laughs.
Crow Country - An amazing survival horror that has fun puzzles and would honestly legit be up there for me in terms of top art direction of the year. Was on the list prior to Natsu-Mon's entry.
Naiad - A cute swimming-themed game with really pretty vignettes and music tracks. Surprisingly beefy game, so haven't finished it.
Pacific Drive - I literally just started playing it, lol. Pretty good tho. Was not expecting it tonally to be more goofy than scary.
Helldivers II - It was on the list earlier in the year! Loved the game and still play it occasionally to this day.
Great God Grove - Been in the midst of playing this and really like how charming and funny the game is!
So Yeah!
That's the post. Normally, like in past years I write a retrospective of the year overall and my thoughts on things as a whole, but I feel like I've covered that enough times elsewhere that there isn't really much else to say here. 2024 had cool video games and was overall a neat year for me, and 2025 will have a bunch more cool games (and neat things), including some from yours truly :)
Smell ya later (in 2025)! ~ Jeff