I wrote this time last year that I hoped 2024 was a better year for the games industry - this has turned out not to be the case.

In a fun inversion of my 2022 list, 2024 was the year I formally rejoined the games industry. I’m working in codevelopment, which is rather more sheltered from the storms that have wracked the wider industry, but I’ve seen so many friends lose their work I’m in danger of becoming numb to it. Something has to shift, and soon, or many of the sort of games that appear on this list would simply not be made.

In 2024 we finally released Feud out of Early Access. The response was, frankly, pretty muted, but I’m glad to have it done after eight years. We’re also deep into development on our next game, which is a different sort of genre to Feud but still in the “board game that works surprisingly well as a video game” space we enjoy playing in. More on that soon.

Some loose thoughts on my game-playing habits this year:

  • Handhelds are king. I played a huge amount on the Steam Deck, Analogue Pocket and even the 3DS got a good amount of play this year.
  • We moved house and our new place has Ethernet, so I got Moonlight set up and I play a lot of games over a local stream now. It’s pretty good but I feel like there’s still not a perfect way to interact with it.
  • The above means I increasingly play on PC more than any other platform, particularly after a CPU upgrade thanks to a Japan trip and the weak Yen.
  • I should just buy Balatro instead of continuing to pay for Apple Arcade.

In 2024, I played 38 games for the first time. I wasn’t terribly adventurous this year - you’ll likely recognise most of the games on this list - but there were a few surprises nonetheless. As always, this list doesn’t include anything I bounced off immediately or only played a tiny bit of. I’ve included a section at the end for games from previous years which I finished this year, which is an embarrassingly small section.

You can see my lists from previous years here:

Games I played for the first time in 2024

Marvel’s Midnight Suns (PC)

I’d been very excited to get to this one and its inclusion in a bundle made it an easy impulse buy. I think I really like what it’s doing, but at this point I think my Marvel fatigue has morphed into an active dislike of these characters, so I didn’t stick with it.

NieR Reincarnation (iOS)

I was determined to play through this game before it shut down in April of this year. This didn’t happen - I only played for a couple of hours, and didn’t particularly enjoy my time with it. Now the game’s gone forever. What are we doing here lads?

Hi-Fi RUSH (Xbox/PC)

I’ll not go over the deeply frustrating story of what has happened to this creative team this year because other people have written far more eloquently about it. I’ll just say that the game is wonderful and definitely worth a go, especially if you use Game Pass. The level of care that’s gone into the art in particular is just lovely, and the writing of the characters manages to make them fun to be around without falling off the edge into “deeply irritating”.

Celeste 64 (PC)

This was a surprise treat in the grey cold months of the new year and it manages to add that third dimension into Celeste in a way that’s very consistent with how the original plays. The music is lovely, too.

Persona 3 Reload (Xbox)

I was excited for P3R as I’d never played that entry in the series and, after wrapping Persona 5, was quite hungry for Another One Of Those. P3 is certainly interesting, and you can see where it’s backported what worked in P5 back to the earlier entry, but I found exploring the dungeon to be even more of a slog than it was in P4G so I sort of lost interest.

Thankfully, as we’ll see later this year, Persona players have eaten extremely well.

Helldivers 2 (PC)

I got into this at launch and played it a little bit, but haven’t really gone back yet - I mostly play games in the morning before work which doesn’t sync up very well for multiplayer titles. I really enjoyed what I did play of it; my favourite thing is the diving mechanic which is essentially just an instant punchline button when you haven’t the spatial awareness to avoid, say, diving straight off a cliff.

Witcher 3: Blood and Wine (PC)

I’ve not got terribly far into it but so far Geralt’s final(?) adventure is a real palate cleanse after the grim dark fantasy of the base game. Toussaint is lively and colourful and sunny and…what? Oh. Gross. OK, it’s still The Witcher.

Nightingale (PC)

I did a little bit of work on this game back in the day and I’m so happy to see it finally coming out. Survival games aren’t really my thing so I didn’t play a huge amount of it, but it’s a stunning thing to look at.

Mars After Midnight (Playdate)

I confess I don’t get a huge amount of use out of the Playdate - I adore the little thing but for some reason none of the games on it proved to be much more than a brief distraction. That is until Mars After Midnight, which takes the ideas Pope had with Papers, Please and twists them into something really fun and new. An essential purchase, if you have the hardware.

Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story (PC)

I’ve long admired Jeff Minter from afar - particularly for his videos of sheep on his Mastodon account. I hadn’t really played many of his games, though.

This collection from Digital Eclipse - part of their Gold Master series which is just such a wonderful idea - brings together Minter’s foundational work in a package that runs on modern hardware. Far more than that though, it features interviews, stories, artwork from the archives and more besides. In an age when game preservation is in real danger it’s projects like this that are carrying the torch for careful and considered archiving. A treat.

WarioWare: Twisted! (GBA)

I bought quite a lot of Game Boy games in Japan - they don’t seem to have been infected with Collector Brainrot quite so much there so most games are a few quid - but this was the most exciting find. I don’t think this game ever came out in Europe, and the force feedback and tilt sensor in the cartridge means it’s one of those titles that would be very difficult to play in an emulator.

It’s WarioWare, so it’s fantastic fun. It’s in Japanese, too, which is great practice.

Dragon Age Origins DLC (PC)

After wrapping up Origins late last year I decided to dive on into the DLC. Most of it is pretty underwhelming, but the big expansion, Awakening, might actually be better than the base game. It introduces you to Anders, who is important in Dragon Age 2, and Ser Pounce-a-lot, who is important in general.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 (PC)

I can’t make any comparisons to the first game because I haven’t played it, but I really enjoyed Dragon’s Dogma 2. I find its world, despite it feeling somehow much more dangerous than many fantasy games, to be a very soothing place to wander around. Fundamentally it’s a game about trying to go for a nice walk but things keep happening. I can empathise.

Botany Manor (PC)

While the puzzles in Botany Manor don’t ever reach a level of complexity to really set it apart, it’s a nicely made thing and doesn’t outstay its welcome.

Animal Well (PC)

Animal Well is a staggering achievement. It’s moody, baffling, whimsical and very clever. Every bit of it is polished to such a fine degree, from the pixel art to the tiny little haptic feedback when you jump. It also looks absolutely stunning on an OLED display, its beautiful lighting contrasted against the inky darkness of the well. I haven’t finished it yet but I will, I promise.

Every time I play this game I have a desire to go and do some game programming. Inspiring stuff.

Destiny 2: The Final Shape (PC)

They did it. The mad bastards, they did it, they actually stuck the landing.

I had such terrifyingly low expectations for the last expansion in Destiny’s big story arc but it exceeded all of them and went straight to the top of the list for me. I think it’s better than Forsaken, even.

The only downside to the story ending on such a perfect note is that my motivation to play Destiny sort of vanished; the new Episodes are neat but I just haven’t felt able to prioritise them over the mountain of other games I wanted to play this year. I think this speaks to the inherent difficulty of storytelling in a live-service game.

I’m sure I’ll get back into it but after sweeping layoffs I’m worried about the future of Destiny, and of Bungie as a whole. Let’s see.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (3DS)

I played this on a friend’s DS on a school trip nearly twenty years ago, and while I barely remembered anything from it I did remember it was something special. The trilogy release on 3DS means I can revisit it and I’m having a wonderful time with it. The script is wonderfully silly but what I think somehow elevates it is the localisation, where they’ve taken a game clearly set in Japan and tried to make it understandable to an American audience, rendering it slightly absurd in a way that I find delightful.

Dungeons of Hinterland (PC)

I was drawn in by the art, first and foremost, after seeing it in a preview in EDGE what must now be years ago. I had a good time with this one, I like what it’s doing with the setting and the dungeon bits feel unique, but some aspects like the relationships with characters in the town feel a little underbaked. It’s a nice chillout game so I may well go back to it.

Balatro (PC, iOS)

Look, you know all about this one. It’s very good.

Gears of War 2 (Xbox)

The most important thing about Marcus Fenix is that even though he’s a massive ham dude who chops insects up with a chainsaw, he’s also very polite and always says “thank you” to Anya.

Flock (PC)

Games about flying are really hard to make, I reckon. You either give the player a huge amount of control, which makes the game harder to play, or you simplify it, at risk of getting to the point where it’s not flight at all.

Flock does the latter, and it works perfectly. Height is not something you have a lot of control over, but the feeling of flying in this game is just so joyful, bird-thing singing, creatures streaming out behind you, that you don’t mind. If I’m stressed out or having a bad day I just pop Flock on and zoom around a little.

There’s a whole creature collecting game here too, and it’s really neat, but even if you choose not to engage with it it’s a lovely time.

1000xRESIST (PC)

I don’t really know what I can say about 1000xRESIST that hasn’t been said by much better writers than me. This is a game about authority, diaspora, identity, the COVID-19 pandemic, democracy, religion, parenthood and about sixty other things and it manages to fit all this within a sub-10-hour runtime in a way that feels perfectly coherent. It is a damn near flawless video game and you owe it to yourself to play it.

Thank Goodness You’re Here! (PC)

I guffawed out loud at this several times. I also think the criticisms of some of its humour being quite cruel are valid. It’s not one for everyone but if it’s for you it’s really really for you.

Loddlenaut (PC)

It’s a cute little game about cleaning up an ocean. It runs really nicely on the Steam Deck too, so it became a good bedtime game for a while.

Dragon Age 2 (PC)

I never played DA2 back in the day - I was put off it by the reviews at the time, if I remember rightly - and in hindsight that was the wrong decision. I really liked Dragon Age 2. I can honestly say I preferred its streamlined, snappier combat to that of Origins, and what the story perhaps lacks in scope prepared to its predecessor it more than makes up for in sheer focus.

Yes, there is some repetitive level design, but the fact this game was made in basically a year is staggering. It’s such a noticeable technical leap above Origins.

I played the DLC too - Mark of the Assassin was a bit of a disappointment but I enjoyed Legacy with its clear lead into Inquisition.

Tactical Breach Wizards (PC)

Tom Francis is your favourite game designer’s favourite game designer. I loved Heat Signature so I knew Tactical Breach Wizards would be mechanically extremely good, but what surprised me was how wonderfully realised the story and characters are, and how deeply funny it is.

I often find myself getting stuck in these sorts of games - tactics might be my favourite genre but I’m not actually good at them. TBW’s main missions are a pretty gentle challenge, but the added objectives (e.g. “defenestrate three enemies”) means I find myself running the levels again and again trying to perfect them, something I don’t normally do. It’s a rare game that turns me into a completionist, and TBW manages that with ease.

There’s been a recent patch with updated controller support so I need to go back and see how it plays on the Steam Deck.

Astro Bot (PS5)

I don’t really have a big history with Sony or PlayStation - I had a PSP but my first “proper” PlayStation was the PS4 - so the “nostalgia bait” in this game didn’t really do much for me. It’s to its enormous credit, then, that this doesn’t really matter. Astro Bot is a wonderful 3D platformer. It’s joyous. While Astro’s moveset doesn’t have the sheer expressivity of a 3D Mario, the level design is top-tier. I ended up 100%-ing it - another rare game to make me want to do this. It’s also the first game I can remember that Lucy has actually asked me to play because she enjoys watching it, though she’s not played it herself (yet).

The base levels are pretty gentle, but some of the bonus levels can be unforgiving, and the final one of these is tough as nails. My pal Matt has been absolutely stomping the speedrun leaderboards, too. Something for everyone here.

Nine Sols (PC)

I think Nine Sols may be one of the best games on this list. Unfortunately it’s also definitely the hardest. I went into it thinking it was another Souls-inspired Metroidvania, and it kind of is, but for the most part the combat is inspired by a different From game: Sekiro, which I love but cannot get past the second or third boss. I fear this game will have the same fate for me, but if you’re into this sort of thing don’t miss it.

Isles of Sea and Sky (PC)

I’m not very good at puzzle games, and I am particularly not good at Sokoban-style games, which require an ability to visualise future board states in a way that I struggle with (I am also bad at chess). It’s to Isles’ credit, then, that I’ve got a decent amount of the way through it and I’m having a great time. There are some truly devilish puzzles in here for you sickos out there.

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom (Switch)

The mechanical twist is very clever, though I found myself coming up with much less creative solutions than I wanted to simply because “build a bridge of beds” is so remarkably effective in most cases. One to revisit once there’s hardware that can run it properly, I think.

Cyberpunk 2077 (PC)

I remember a time when we used to refer to everything in games as “immersive”, to the point where the word sort of lost all meaning. I finally got around to Cyberpunk this year and, while I’ve only played a few hours, it is really bloody immersive, isn’t it? I’m having a great time.

Metaphor: ReFantazio (PC)

Metaphor scratches that itch I’ve had since wrapping Persona 5, and it does so with such confidence and verve it’s hard not to be impressed, even if I’m so far less invested in the characters than I was in P5. It takes a lot of the base loops and patterns of Persona and then sands off the rough edges. Dungeon crawls are a treat thanks to the real-time melee attacks, and the calendar seems to be just that bit more generous than Persona, allowing room to actually do everything you want to, as long as you manage your time right. I’ll report back in, ooh, 80 hours.

Pokemon TCGP (iOS)

Oh I do enjoy opening the packs, I do. I got the shiny Mewtwo and it was lovely. It’s a pure, manipulative dopamine hit, though I will say I’ve not put any real money into it nor has the game really pushed me to do so.

I tried playing the actual card game and it’s fine. It translates - and flattens - the Pokemon mechanics in a way that makes sense. I just don’t find it particularly interesting strategically; I’m sure it is for stronger players but when I’m just playing against the AI it seems to come down to just chipping away at HP. Which I guess is a bit like the games, sometimes.

Alan Wake 2 DLC (PS5)

I played The Lake House first, and it was neat. It was a little overreliant on the frustrating combat controls - much like the base game - but I really enjoyed the characters and the links back to Control.

The other DLC, Night Springs, absolutely whips. It’s so clear the developers were flexing here and also just having a lot of fun. I did too.

Indiana Jones (Xbox)

I really did think this was going to be an Uncharted but it is, thankfully, much closer to MachineGames’ take on Wolfenstein. I don’t even care about Indiana Jones much at all but I’ve really fallen for this one so far. MachineGames truly make the best “whack a fascist over the head with a thing” games on the planet, and in the current climate that’s a salve indeed.

Arctic Eggs (PC)

This is lovely and short with some delightfully absurd dialog and worldbuilding. Arctic Eggs utterly refuses to explain itself and I love that.

Arco (PC)

Arco took me by surprise right at the end of the year. I’d heard it was good but was unprepared for how good - when the plane touched town in Belfast I resented that I’d have to put the game away.

Pixel art can feel a little tired of late, but when it’s good, it’s really good. Arco is a beautiful game, held up by a robust and surprising tactics system. It’s a little bit Into The Breach and a big bit its own thing. Don’t miss this one, I think it’s flown under a lot of radars.

Mouthwashing (PC)

I’d been meaning to get to Mouthwashing all year and finally managed it in the Christmas break. It’s a tight little psychological horror game that doesn’t take itself overly seriously. I enjoyed it, but I think I went in expecting something working in a similar space to Signalis, and it isn’t that.

Games I finished in 2024

Here are a few games I started before 2024 - in some cases a long time before - but I have Thoughts and this is my website and you can’t tell me shit because I don’t have a comments section.

The Witcher 3 (PC)

I don’t know what I can say about The Witcher 3 that hasn’t been said a million times. I’ve been playing this game off and on since about 2016, and when the final credits rolled I genuinely felt bereft. An all-timer.

Yakuza 0 (PC)

Similar story here actually - took years to finish this but savoured every bit of it. Certainly the high point of the series from what I’ve played, at least mechanically, but I’m still excited to play through the rest and see these characters grow and develop.

I had the opportunity to visit Kabukicho this year - the area of Tokyo that Kamurocho is based on - and was utterly delighted at being able to navigate to the Golden Gai without looking at my phone. A singular place in the medium.

God of War Ragnarok (PS5)

I wrapped this one and actually did pretty much every side-quest, which is rare for me. I think the main story is perhaps a little over-long, but it ties everything together in a nice way which, in an age of forever franchises, feels almost bold.

Hades (PC)

I think it’s pretty widely accepted at this point that Hades’ story doesn’t really kick off until you escape for the first time, but doing so felt like such a monumental achievement based on how bad I am at this game that I feel happy including it in this section. The difficulty seems to ramp way up from this point on, so this might be my stop, but I enjoyed the ride.

Alan Wake 2 (PS5)

I didn’t really like Alan Wake 2 when I played it last year, which peaked with the now-famous musical number which I thought was deeply unearned in comparison to Control’s Ashtray Maze. I found the combat really unsatisfying and the whole thing just felt clunky to control in a way I associate with Rockstar games or software designed for Windows.

In the end I really came around on it, mainly due to the story and fantastic DLC. Like the first game, I will probably struggle to relate to anyone what actually happened in Alan Wake 2, but I actually briefly considered a replay for The Final Draft, which says a lot about how far my feelings on it shifted.

Did I miss your favourite? Something I need to know about? Feel free to yell at me on Bluesky or Mastodon.

I hope 2025 is better than this year, for all of us.