So I've got three games left before I've cleared 52 games in (slightly less than) a year, and one of those - the final one - is explicitly planned, once I'm done with the others. What does that mean? It means I should start putting my thoughts into a words and awards. Because I am a cheap hack who can only imitate better writers.
The final three games may qualify for these awards too (though I haven't played any of them yet and won't spoil what the last one is) so any entries you see here might be tentative or sniped away from a Surprising Good Game. Or maybe not.
ANYWAY.
52 IN 52: A YEAR IN AWARD
I could go by genres, but if I did that, some categories would be undernourished, while others would be stuffed to the gills. I could steal the categories![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
xyzzysqrl and kjorteo used, but then I'd be even more derivative and fake.
So instead, I'll make my own categories, with slightly different takes on things. Also, for the sake of brevity and visual balance, I'm going to be limiting to 3 actual nominees per award - that does make it slightly easier to guess, but then again, nobody actually reads these. Strap in, this'll be a bumpy ride.
GET BLUE SPHERES Award for: Most Excruciating Wait Between Starting a Game and Clearing It
Some games have to wait a while to be cleared. Other games have to go into hibernation. Even more have actual shelves in a national archive devoted to them due to how long they've been unfinished. This award is for the third group. Seriously, how did these go unbeaten for so long?
The Legend of Zelda
Phantasy Star IV: End of the Millennium
Final Fantasy
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
Strong Bad's Cool Game For Attractive People
Castlevania: Circle of the Moon
Sonic Mania
Unlike Celine and Xyzzy's attempts at spinning "I am so glad I am done with this", I likened it to being blueballed on a game clear. Because I'm the classiest. Regardless, Zelda and Phantasy Star are obvious, as are Final Fantasy: these are all games I knew about almost as early as I started playing video games, games I tried again and again to actually push through and beat to no avail, but the added push of 52 In 52 led me to triumph over them. Circle of the Moon was similar, and it was so long ago that I don't actually own the original cart that got me interested in the game. Strong Bad CG4AP has basically been in my wishlist or backlog since the day it came out, back when Homestar Runner was actually a thing that people knew and cared about, and it spent multiple years in my Steam library unfinished.
Sonic Mania, on the other hand, only had a week's delay between the console release and PC release... but it was the longest week known in the history of man. Sonic Mania's hype was big enough that it bent time and space around it, so it gets a nod in this category.
WHAT, ME WORRY? Award for: Most Engrossing Casual Pick-Up-And-Play Game
Not all games have to be huge, sprawling epics or bite-sized romplets. Maybe you just have an hour to kill every few days and want to burn them (and your retinas) staring at a screen. Maybe you don't want to bother yourself about completion, just playing.
Regency Solitaire
Draw Puzzle
Tadpole Treble
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
Super Motherload
Pixel Shopkeeper
All of these are games that can be tackled in bite-size "segments" - one hand of cards, one puzzle of draw, or one song of frog. All of them are solid enough that I'll come back to them now and then if I want to just kill some time. There's not much to explain here, though of the honorable mentions: Super Motherload was addictive enough but not short enough, whereas Pixel Shopkeeper is short enough but not addictive enough. You tried, guys.
AURAL SEX Award for: Best Soundtrack
Some games have memorable leitmotifs and well-orchestrated, tone-setting passages. Others sound like CRAZYBUS. Please don't sound like CRAZYBUS, game composers.
Double Dragon Neon
Sonic Mania
Tadpole Treble
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
Hatsune Miku: Project Diva F 2nd
Love You To Bits
I don't really need to point out just how good Sonic Mania and Double Dragon Neon's soundtracks are, if they're enough to push an actual rhythm game down into the Honorable Mentions. Or maybe I do - check those links again. I'll wait.
By now, Virt (or Jake Kaufman, as his meatspace name) is well-known amongst video game composers, and it's because everything he touches is absolute gold. Shantae, Shovel Knight, even Double Dragon - a game you'd never expect to laud for its music. On the other hand, Sonic Mania's soundtrack is a perfect blend of the Old Genesis Aesthetic of the 2D Sonic games as well as a new, jazzy feel exclusive to itself and maybe Sonic Generations before it. They're good songs, Brint. Tadpole Treble, obviously, lives or dies by its music as a rhythm game, but the music there is really, really strong and emotionally evocative. I'd buy a soundtrack if one existed.
On the other hand, Project Diva is still just Vocaloid music, J-Pop through the lens of automated machine singing. It's good, but I'm slowly deflating on the Stupid Singing Robot bubble. And while Love You To Bits has a great soundtrack (it's a good sign when a game tells you to play it with headphones on)... only one or two tracks is actually notable in the lot.
NOT FUCKING THIS Award for: Most Violent Ragequit
Sometimes you gotta draw a line in the sand, make a statement. Sometimes you gotta look inside yourself and ask, "What am I willing to put up with today?" Other times, you've gotta get so mad you destroy a light fixture. The irony that both of these incidents were related to Sonic games is not lost on me.
Castlevania: Circle of the Moon
Super Win The Game
Xeodrifter
(DIS)HONORABLE MENTIONS:
Another Metroid 2 Remake
Ducktales Remastered
Sonic Generations
Ragequitting is serious business. When you get so mad that you break a controller, or a window, or your console, or a loved one... it's mentally and physically exhausting. It's not a state you really want to be in very often. It's a state that usually turns me off of a game. Between Circle of the Moon's janky stat system that means you need to do a hundred hits to match a random bat's one, Super Win The Game starting reasonable and then turning masocore in the technical postgame, and Xeodrifter literally pissing me off enough to refuse to play another second of it, I had enough rage to fuel hell's fires for a few decades.
AM2R is in the honorable mentions because I recognize that I simply suck at the game and I just need to unfuck the part of my brain that has problems with aiming diagonally, and Ducktales and Sonic Generations don't get in because their rage moments were at the literal ass-end of otherwise perfectly reasonable games.
FUNY-MATION Award for: Least Cringe-Worthy Pop Culture References
Some games get pop culture right. Honest. Most don't, but SOME do. No, seriously, where are you going? Just listen, it'll make sense if you know the popular anime in the 90s...
Epic Battle Fantasy 4
Chroma Squad
Love You To Bits
MOST CRINGE-WORTHY POP CULTURE:
Saturday Morning RPG
Holy Potatoes! A Weapon Shop?!
Did I ever mention that Love You To Bits has a Guacamelee level, and a LIMBO level, and the penultimate level I'm pretty sure was a giant Dead Rising joke? Well, I mentioned it in the comments, but it didn't come up in the main post because honestly, it doesn't impact the game in the slightest and it's not repeatedly shoved in your face to try to get you to laugh at The Joke they are making. (The joke is pop culture.) They have it just exist, and it's not really even obtrusive. It's more a cameo than a witty reference. In contrast, Chroma Squad is a game literally about a bunch of tokusatsu fangeeks making their own tokusatsu show. They lampshade tropes and make sly lawyer friendly references constantly, but it fits the tone of the game. What doesn't fit the tone of the game is the Kickstarter Backer references, but those aren't exactly a pop-culture thing, now are they? And Epic Battle Fantasy is similar: It is, at its heart, an amateurish Flash Game about Fighting Lots Of Battles. It's got roughly the tone and demographic as RPG World or Adventurers or webcomics like that - its references are in broad strokes usually instead of Hello I Am Cloud Strife Of The Soldier.
And on the dark, infernal side of the coin, you have Saturday Morning RPG and Holy Potatoes, which don't do that. Instead they just give you Optimus Truck and Potato Strife and aughhgh I get it pop culture exists now shut up and give me a good game underneath that PLEASE?
MEGA MAN UNLIMITED Award for: Nearest to Perfection Without Quite Getting There
Sometimes it sucks to be second-best. What happens when you're second-best in everything? You're still better than almost everything else in one regard, and as an aggregate sum of your parts, you may even be greater than the greatest. But you'll always be the silver medal. We still appreciate you.
Guacamelee: Gold Edition
Sonic Generations
Renowned Explorers: International Society
None of these was nominated for an award. Two of them got honorable mentions, but one of those was for a negative thing so does it really count? Regardless: Guacamelee is an outstanding puzzle-platformer-brawler-bagel whose only real flaws are some really bullshit platforming later on and an ethnic earnestness that edges into the awkward territory of wondering if something is racist. Sonic Generations is 95% of a love letter to its fanbase, and 5% The World's Shittiest Sonic Boss. Renowned Explorers is exceptional in all its facets, but doesn't really stand out enough in any of them for me to quantify why it's good, just that it's real good.
No honorary mentions here, because I couldn't stand double-breaking some poor game's heart.
RAINING INDOORS Award for: Game That Gave Me The Most Feels
It has been noted that it's hard to get Sword to cry, except when it's not. Noted gush buttons are 'I'm proud of you' sentiments, loved ones tangibly watching down from the afterlife, and cute animals having feelings. It's a good bet you'll see those here.
Owlboy
Tadpole Treble
Phantasy Star IV: End of the Millennium
Owlboy is a story about falling and picking yourself up again, no matter how many times you fall. Tadpole Treble is a story about the world's most adorable frog-spawn desperately trying to get home after getting a ride up a mountain in the mouth of a pelican. Phantasy Star 4 has a depressing-ass song that plays only in the one single scene where Obi-Wan Kenobi gets killed by Darth Vader.
All of these made me bawl like an infant.
CRUNCHY PIXELS Award for: Best Trip Through Nostalgia
As a raging anti-3D advocate, all games are likely to be trips through retro-nostalgia for Sword. He enjoys a cool, refreshing Sprite at all times. But some games are better at hitting the childhood than others.
West of Loathing
Sonic Mania
Final Fantasy
HONORABLE MENTION:
Ducktales Remastered
Katamari Forever
Super Motherload
The honorable mentions of Ducktales, Katamari Forever, and Super Motherload are recreations of older games to newer sensibilities. They're Honorable Mentions because they're literal nostalgia-bait; Katamari Forever even invokes the sepia tone to fuck with you.
The actual nominees are nostalgia-bait for a different reason. Final Fantasy is one half of the Original JRPG Formula. (The other half, naturally, is Dragon Quest, but that's neither here nor there.) It's the point where a whole genre blossomed forth from. Sonic Mania is a revisiting of a franchise's halcyon days, when things were fun and bouncy and sure maybe the level design kind of sucks here and there and bosses are always bad, but everything's sincere and we tried. West of Loathing is a pastiche of western tropes through the lens of one of the world's oldest still-running Massively Multiplayer Web Games. I think KoL might be in the echelons with Neopets its imitators, now - it's basically the history of the internet, and westerns are basically the history of American-made media. It's double history.
APPLE iMBROKE Award for: Best Mobile Game
Some games are designed to be played on a phone. Others are brutally tortured until they do anyway. A third group asks you to gamble away money for a JPG of a sword. Regardless, all of these share one unifying feature: THE IPHONE APP STORE IS GODDAMN GARBAGE NOW OH MY GOD HOLY FUCK
Final Fantasy Record Keeper
Love You To Bits
FRAMED
Honorable Mention:
Gumballs & Dungeons
Klocki
Monument Valley
What's this? Two games that Sword didn't go over on his 52 In 52 Trip Reports? Yes, well, if you've actually been stalking my Backloggery (let's be real, you haven't) then you would've noticed that two games have been omnipresent on my "now playing" list, and technically can't actually be beaten, because they're serial Free To Play deals. Final Fantasy Record Keeper is, as I've described it to others in the past, a FF Nostalgiabait Battle Simulator, almost entirely gacha-run, and the entire reason I have an addiction to gacha games. Gumballs and Dungeons, on the other hand, only has a minor gacha mechanic (that can be bypassed with enough play) and is honestly best described as "Dungelot, but not actually that bad". If you've never played Dungelot or G&D... well. It's hard to explain in words just how it works. Watch a trailer to see it in action if you need an idea.
Granted, of those, one continues to be an addiction with or without money backing it, while the other lapses in and out of my attention span.
As for the others, you heard about them in my game clears, though they're all technically games I got for free on a whim, back when Apple actually offered one free app a week. I wish they still did that, but if they do, I can't find it. Anyway, while Klocki and Monument Valley are good, if I want a game about rotating things to make other things go, Framed is by far the better option due to its Noir aesthetic alone. And Love You To Bits... well, I've gushed about it enough.
MOOGLE AND WOODRAT Award for: Biggest Furry Crush
You did this. You know who you are. (You might be the only ones reading this.) But know that. You did this.
Ever Oasis
Phantasy Star IV: End of the Millennium
Pokémon Ultra Sun
This is a very simple award for very base desires. It's self-explanitory, too: I was literally sold on Ever Oasis due to its dragon ladies, Phantasy Star 4 taught me that you can, in fact make "bara Furby" not just a logical design but a damn good one, and I'm always down for Pokemon. The question, then, is which is the most fuckable.
IT BELONGS IN A MUSEUM Award for: Most Artistic Game
Are games art, or is art a game? Would you want to frame Cheetahmen on a wall? Should we have audio guides through Kingdom Hearts? Or should games be merely appreciated for their merits both aesthetically obvious and thematically subtle?
Owlboy
The Count Lucanor
Epistory - Typing Chronicles
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
Apotheon
Machinarium
Tadpole Treble
Every one of these is a masterpiece visually and aurally. Some of them get there with a few corners cut - The Count Lucanor uses public domain Bach music, Tadpole Treble is drawn and composed by a (former) webcomic artist well known for his musical interludes, and Apotheon openly cribs from actual Greek Pottery for its aesthetic. Thus, it comes down to which is the most artistic in storytelling, doesn't it? This is where Epistory edged out Tadpole Treble - the story might be the epitome of Artsy Indie Wankery, but it's there, and the key word in this category is "artsy".
INSERT COIN? Award for: Unfinished Game Most Likely To Be Continued
Sometimes Sword quits games because they're bad, or boring. Other times, they're quit because of burnout, or because he's just not in the right mood for them. Maybe he'll go back.
Jumpjet Rex
Pixel Shopkeeper
Apotheon
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
Westerado: Double Barreled
Sonic & Sega All Stars Racing Transformed
I'll probably come back to these eventually. None of them were bad games. Jumpjet Rex was a lot less casual than I was expecting, being actually an execution-based speedrun platformer instead of a rompy coin-collecting jumper. Pixel Shopkeeper is a good waste of time, but relatively grindy. Apotheon is beautiful, but clunky and unwieldy at times. Even Westerado, with its somewhat fatiguing gunplay mechanic and ASRT, with its "being a racing game", were good on their own merits.
YOU'RE WINNER Award for: Worst Game Of The Year
You get a gold star. No, wait, that's mustard yellow and it's less of a star and more of a squiggle. Now it's a broken image file. I don't think you even tried at all.
Loot Hero DX
Loot Hound
Saturday Morning RPG
Loot Hero DX is simple enough that it's barely worth being a Kongregate Flash game. Loot Hound is more a dog-walking simulator than a game - and in fact was no more playable when I actively hex-edited the game - and Saturday Morning RPG actually stands out as being the one game that I had to tap out on a loophole of "it's an episodic game and these episodes are shiiiit". These are the dregs. But I have to appreciate how ballsy they were to suck this hard.
THE BIG A-SWORD Award for: Best Game Of The Year
Some puns just need to be dropped. These entries may or may not have been up for other awards this year, but this award's purpose is simple: No matter the overall quality of the game, these are the ones I had the absolute most fun playing.
Tadpole Treble
Sonic Mania
West of Loathing
MOST HONORABLE OF MENTIONS:
Technobabylon
Renowned Explorers: International Society
Love You To Bits
Where do I start here? Well, I'll start with the fact that I almost kept all of these in as "nominees", but it would ruin the symmetry. These are all amazing examples of their genres - rhythm, platformers, RPGs, Adventure games, Strategy games. All of them would have won if I'd done genre-based categories. None of these felt at any time to be a chore to play, though admittedly Love You To Bits and Technobabylon are in the Honorable Mentions instead of up top because I did reach for guides to get through them instead of ruining my experience through bumbling around. Likewise, Renowned Explorers didn't see nearly the number of replays the other three did, or it would rank higher.
What is there to say? This is the cream of the crop, and there's not much more to say about that.
There you have it, a run-down of what I think of what I've played this year. As I said, there may be a stealth add or two depending on what I play (though I doubt it), and the proper ceremonying will happen after I'm done with my 52rd game. Hope to see all two of you there. :V
The final three games may qualify for these awards too (though I haven't played any of them yet and won't spoil what the last one is) so any entries you see here might be tentative or sniped away from a Surprising Good Game. Or maybe not.
ANYWAY.
52 IN 52: A YEAR IN AWARD
I could go by genres, but if I did that, some categories would be undernourished, while others would be stuffed to the gills. I could steal the categories
xyzzysqrl and kjorteo used, but then I'd be even more derivative and fake.So instead, I'll make my own categories, with slightly different takes on things. Also, for the sake of brevity and visual balance, I'm going to be limiting to 3 actual nominees per award - that does make it slightly easier to guess, but then again, nobody actually reads these. Strap in, this'll be a bumpy ride.
GET BLUE SPHERES Award for: Most Excruciating Wait Between Starting a Game and Clearing It
Some games have to wait a while to be cleared. Other games have to go into hibernation. Even more have actual shelves in a national archive devoted to them due to how long they've been unfinished. This award is for the third group. Seriously, how did these go unbeaten for so long?
The Legend of Zelda
Phantasy Star IV: End of the Millennium
Final Fantasy
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
Strong Bad's Cool Game For Attractive People
Castlevania: Circle of the Moon
Sonic Mania
Unlike Celine and Xyzzy's attempts at spinning "I am so glad I am done with this", I likened it to being blueballed on a game clear. Because I'm the classiest. Regardless, Zelda and Phantasy Star are obvious, as are Final Fantasy: these are all games I knew about almost as early as I started playing video games, games I tried again and again to actually push through and beat to no avail, but the added push of 52 In 52 led me to triumph over them. Circle of the Moon was similar, and it was so long ago that I don't actually own the original cart that got me interested in the game. Strong Bad CG4AP has basically been in my wishlist or backlog since the day it came out, back when Homestar Runner was actually a thing that people knew and cared about, and it spent multiple years in my Steam library unfinished.
Sonic Mania, on the other hand, only had a week's delay between the console release and PC release... but it was the longest week known in the history of man. Sonic Mania's hype was big enough that it bent time and space around it, so it gets a nod in this category.
WHAT, ME WORRY? Award for: Most Engrossing Casual Pick-Up-And-Play Game
Not all games have to be huge, sprawling epics or bite-sized romplets. Maybe you just have an hour to kill every few days and want to burn them (and your retinas) staring at a screen. Maybe you don't want to bother yourself about completion, just playing.
Regency Solitaire
Draw Puzzle
Tadpole Treble
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
Super Motherload
Pixel Shopkeeper
All of these are games that can be tackled in bite-size "segments" - one hand of cards, one puzzle of draw, or one song of frog. All of them are solid enough that I'll come back to them now and then if I want to just kill some time. There's not much to explain here, though of the honorable mentions: Super Motherload was addictive enough but not short enough, whereas Pixel Shopkeeper is short enough but not addictive enough. You tried, guys.
AURAL SEX Award for: Best Soundtrack
Some games have memorable leitmotifs and well-orchestrated, tone-setting passages. Others sound like CRAZYBUS. Please don't sound like CRAZYBUS, game composers.
Double Dragon Neon
Sonic Mania
Tadpole Treble
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
Hatsune Miku: Project Diva F 2nd
Love You To Bits
I don't really need to point out just how good Sonic Mania and Double Dragon Neon's soundtracks are, if they're enough to push an actual rhythm game down into the Honorable Mentions. Or maybe I do - check those links again. I'll wait.
By now, Virt (or Jake Kaufman, as his meatspace name) is well-known amongst video game composers, and it's because everything he touches is absolute gold. Shantae, Shovel Knight, even Double Dragon - a game you'd never expect to laud for its music. On the other hand, Sonic Mania's soundtrack is a perfect blend of the Old Genesis Aesthetic of the 2D Sonic games as well as a new, jazzy feel exclusive to itself and maybe Sonic Generations before it. They're good songs, Brint. Tadpole Treble, obviously, lives or dies by its music as a rhythm game, but the music there is really, really strong and emotionally evocative. I'd buy a soundtrack if one existed.
On the other hand, Project Diva is still just Vocaloid music, J-Pop through the lens of automated machine singing. It's good, but I'm slowly deflating on the Stupid Singing Robot bubble. And while Love You To Bits has a great soundtrack (it's a good sign when a game tells you to play it with headphones on)... only one or two tracks is actually notable in the lot.
NOT FUCKING THIS Award for: Most Violent Ragequit
Sometimes you gotta draw a line in the sand, make a statement. Sometimes you gotta look inside yourself and ask, "What am I willing to put up with today?" Other times, you've gotta get so mad you destroy a light fixture. The irony that both of these incidents were related to Sonic games is not lost on me.
Castlevania: Circle of the Moon
Super Win The Game
Xeodrifter
(DIS)HONORABLE MENTIONS:
Another Metroid 2 Remake
Ducktales Remastered
Sonic Generations
Ragequitting is serious business. When you get so mad that you break a controller, or a window, or your console, or a loved one... it's mentally and physically exhausting. It's not a state you really want to be in very often. It's a state that usually turns me off of a game. Between Circle of the Moon's janky stat system that means you need to do a hundred hits to match a random bat's one, Super Win The Game starting reasonable and then turning masocore in the technical postgame, and Xeodrifter literally pissing me off enough to refuse to play another second of it, I had enough rage to fuel hell's fires for a few decades.
AM2R is in the honorable mentions because I recognize that I simply suck at the game and I just need to unfuck the part of my brain that has problems with aiming diagonally, and Ducktales and Sonic Generations don't get in because their rage moments were at the literal ass-end of otherwise perfectly reasonable games.
FUNY-MATION Award for: Least Cringe-Worthy Pop Culture References
Some games get pop culture right. Honest. Most don't, but SOME do. No, seriously, where are you going? Just listen, it'll make sense if you know the popular anime in the 90s...
Epic Battle Fantasy 4
Chroma Squad
Love You To Bits
MOST CRINGE-WORTHY POP CULTURE:
Saturday Morning RPG
Holy Potatoes! A Weapon Shop?!
Did I ever mention that Love You To Bits has a Guacamelee level, and a LIMBO level, and the penultimate level I'm pretty sure was a giant Dead Rising joke? Well, I mentioned it in the comments, but it didn't come up in the main post because honestly, it doesn't impact the game in the slightest and it's not repeatedly shoved in your face to try to get you to laugh at The Joke they are making. (The joke is pop culture.) They have it just exist, and it's not really even obtrusive. It's more a cameo than a witty reference. In contrast, Chroma Squad is a game literally about a bunch of tokusatsu fangeeks making their own tokusatsu show. They lampshade tropes and make sly lawyer friendly references constantly, but it fits the tone of the game. What doesn't fit the tone of the game is the Kickstarter Backer references, but those aren't exactly a pop-culture thing, now are they? And Epic Battle Fantasy is similar: It is, at its heart, an amateurish Flash Game about Fighting Lots Of Battles. It's got roughly the tone and demographic as RPG World or Adventurers or webcomics like that - its references are in broad strokes usually instead of Hello I Am Cloud Strife Of The Soldier.
And on the dark, infernal side of the coin, you have Saturday Morning RPG and Holy Potatoes, which don't do that. Instead they just give you Optimus Truck and Potato Strife and aughhgh I get it pop culture exists now shut up and give me a good game underneath that PLEASE?
MEGA MAN UNLIMITED Award for: Nearest to Perfection Without Quite Getting There
Sometimes it sucks to be second-best. What happens when you're second-best in everything? You're still better than almost everything else in one regard, and as an aggregate sum of your parts, you may even be greater than the greatest. But you'll always be the silver medal. We still appreciate you.
Guacamelee: Gold Edition
Sonic Generations
Renowned Explorers: International Society
None of these was nominated for an award. Two of them got honorable mentions, but one of those was for a negative thing so does it really count? Regardless: Guacamelee is an outstanding puzzle-platformer-brawler-bagel whose only real flaws are some really bullshit platforming later on and an ethnic earnestness that edges into the awkward territory of wondering if something is racist. Sonic Generations is 95% of a love letter to its fanbase, and 5% The World's Shittiest Sonic Boss. Renowned Explorers is exceptional in all its facets, but doesn't really stand out enough in any of them for me to quantify why it's good, just that it's real good.
No honorary mentions here, because I couldn't stand double-breaking some poor game's heart.
RAINING INDOORS Award for: Game That Gave Me The Most Feels
It has been noted that it's hard to get Sword to cry, except when it's not. Noted gush buttons are 'I'm proud of you' sentiments, loved ones tangibly watching down from the afterlife, and cute animals having feelings. It's a good bet you'll see those here.
Owlboy
Tadpole Treble
Phantasy Star IV: End of the Millennium
Owlboy is a story about falling and picking yourself up again, no matter how many times you fall. Tadpole Treble is a story about the world's most adorable frog-spawn desperately trying to get home after getting a ride up a mountain in the mouth of a pelican. Phantasy Star 4 has a depressing-ass song that plays only in the one single scene where Obi-Wan Kenobi gets killed by Darth Vader.
All of these made me bawl like an infant.
CRUNCHY PIXELS Award for: Best Trip Through Nostalgia
As a raging anti-3D advocate, all games are likely to be trips through retro-nostalgia for Sword. He enjoys a cool, refreshing Sprite at all times. But some games are better at hitting the childhood than others.
West of Loathing
Sonic Mania
Final Fantasy
HONORABLE MENTION:
Ducktales Remastered
Katamari Forever
Super Motherload
The honorable mentions of Ducktales, Katamari Forever, and Super Motherload are recreations of older games to newer sensibilities. They're Honorable Mentions because they're literal nostalgia-bait; Katamari Forever even invokes the sepia tone to fuck with you.
The actual nominees are nostalgia-bait for a different reason. Final Fantasy is one half of the Original JRPG Formula. (The other half, naturally, is Dragon Quest, but that's neither here nor there.) It's the point where a whole genre blossomed forth from. Sonic Mania is a revisiting of a franchise's halcyon days, when things were fun and bouncy and sure maybe the level design kind of sucks here and there and bosses are always bad, but everything's sincere and we tried. West of Loathing is a pastiche of western tropes through the lens of one of the world's oldest still-running Massively Multiplayer Web Games. I think KoL might be in the echelons with Neopets its imitators, now - it's basically the history of the internet, and westerns are basically the history of American-made media. It's double history.
APPLE iMBROKE Award for: Best Mobile Game
Some games are designed to be played on a phone. Others are brutally tortured until they do anyway. A third group asks you to gamble away money for a JPG of a sword. Regardless, all of these share one unifying feature: THE IPHONE APP STORE IS GODDAMN GARBAGE NOW OH MY GOD HOLY FUCK
Final Fantasy Record Keeper
Love You To Bits
FRAMED
Honorable Mention:
Gumballs & Dungeons
Klocki
Monument Valley
What's this? Two games that Sword didn't go over on his 52 In 52 Trip Reports? Yes, well, if you've actually been stalking my Backloggery (let's be real, you haven't) then you would've noticed that two games have been omnipresent on my "now playing" list, and technically can't actually be beaten, because they're serial Free To Play deals. Final Fantasy Record Keeper is, as I've described it to others in the past, a FF Nostalgiabait Battle Simulator, almost entirely gacha-run, and the entire reason I have an addiction to gacha games. Gumballs and Dungeons, on the other hand, only has a minor gacha mechanic (that can be bypassed with enough play) and is honestly best described as "Dungelot, but not actually that bad". If you've never played Dungelot or G&D... well. It's hard to explain in words just how it works. Watch a trailer to see it in action if you need an idea.
Granted, of those, one continues to be an addiction with or without money backing it, while the other lapses in and out of my attention span.
As for the others, you heard about them in my game clears, though they're all technically games I got for free on a whim, back when Apple actually offered one free app a week. I wish they still did that, but if they do, I can't find it. Anyway, while Klocki and Monument Valley are good, if I want a game about rotating things to make other things go, Framed is by far the better option due to its Noir aesthetic alone. And Love You To Bits... well, I've gushed about it enough.
MOOGLE AND WOODRAT Award for: Biggest Furry Crush
You did this. You know who you are. (You might be the only ones reading this.) But know that. You did this.
Ever Oasis
Phantasy Star IV: End of the Millennium
Pokémon Ultra Sun
This is a very simple award for very base desires. It's self-explanitory, too: I was literally sold on Ever Oasis due to its dragon ladies, Phantasy Star 4 taught me that you can, in fact make "bara Furby" not just a logical design but a damn good one, and I'm always down for Pokemon. The question, then, is which is the most fuckable.
IT BELONGS IN A MUSEUM Award for: Most Artistic Game
Are games art, or is art a game? Would you want to frame Cheetahmen on a wall? Should we have audio guides through Kingdom Hearts? Or should games be merely appreciated for their merits both aesthetically obvious and thematically subtle?
Owlboy
The Count Lucanor
Epistory - Typing Chronicles
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
Apotheon
Machinarium
Tadpole Treble
Every one of these is a masterpiece visually and aurally. Some of them get there with a few corners cut - The Count Lucanor uses public domain Bach music, Tadpole Treble is drawn and composed by a (former) webcomic artist well known for his musical interludes, and Apotheon openly cribs from actual Greek Pottery for its aesthetic. Thus, it comes down to which is the most artistic in storytelling, doesn't it? This is where Epistory edged out Tadpole Treble - the story might be the epitome of Artsy Indie Wankery, but it's there, and the key word in this category is "artsy".
INSERT COIN? Award for: Unfinished Game Most Likely To Be Continued
Sometimes Sword quits games because they're bad, or boring. Other times, they're quit because of burnout, or because he's just not in the right mood for them. Maybe he'll go back.
Jumpjet Rex
Pixel Shopkeeper
Apotheon
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
Westerado: Double Barreled
Sonic & Sega All Stars Racing Transformed
I'll probably come back to these eventually. None of them were bad games. Jumpjet Rex was a lot less casual than I was expecting, being actually an execution-based speedrun platformer instead of a rompy coin-collecting jumper. Pixel Shopkeeper is a good waste of time, but relatively grindy. Apotheon is beautiful, but clunky and unwieldy at times. Even Westerado, with its somewhat fatiguing gunplay mechanic and ASRT, with its "being a racing game", were good on their own merits.
YOU'RE WINNER Award for: Worst Game Of The Year
You get a gold star. No, wait, that's mustard yellow and it's less of a star and more of a squiggle. Now it's a broken image file. I don't think you even tried at all.
Loot Hero DX
Loot Hound
Saturday Morning RPG
Loot Hero DX is simple enough that it's barely worth being a Kongregate Flash game. Loot Hound is more a dog-walking simulator than a game - and in fact was no more playable when I actively hex-edited the game - and Saturday Morning RPG actually stands out as being the one game that I had to tap out on a loophole of "it's an episodic game and these episodes are shiiiit". These are the dregs. But I have to appreciate how ballsy they were to suck this hard.
THE BIG A-SWORD Award for: Best Game Of The Year
Some puns just need to be dropped. These entries may or may not have been up for other awards this year, but this award's purpose is simple: No matter the overall quality of the game, these are the ones I had the absolute most fun playing.
Tadpole Treble
Sonic Mania
West of Loathing
MOST HONORABLE OF MENTIONS:
Technobabylon
Renowned Explorers: International Society
Love You To Bits
Where do I start here? Well, I'll start with the fact that I almost kept all of these in as "nominees", but it would ruin the symmetry. These are all amazing examples of their genres - rhythm, platformers, RPGs, Adventure games, Strategy games. All of them would have won if I'd done genre-based categories. None of these felt at any time to be a chore to play, though admittedly Love You To Bits and Technobabylon are in the Honorable Mentions instead of up top because I did reach for guides to get through them instead of ruining my experience through bumbling around. Likewise, Renowned Explorers didn't see nearly the number of replays the other three did, or it would rank higher.
What is there to say? This is the cream of the crop, and there's not much more to say about that.
There you have it, a run-down of what I think of what I've played this year. As I said, there may be a stealth add or two depending on what I play (though I doubt it), and the proper ceremonying will happen after I'm done with my 52rd game. Hope to see all two of you there. :V
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BLUE SPHERES: I'd guess Final Fantasy for this one. It seemed the least of the "Well, THAT'S over" entries and you generally seem most relieved to have cleared it without a forehead-grind against the Wheel of Leveling.
WHAT, ME WORRY: Having never played any of these, I have to give it to the singing wiggler. Tadpole Treble maybe takes an award.
AURAL SEX: Please take that out of your ear. Uhhh. I have Double Dragon Neon but haven't gotten out of the first level... Sonic Mania probably? I mean, "Sonic" is right in the name. It must contain ear-waves.
NOT FUCKING THIS: Having played You Have To, I can see how Super Win The Game would make you huck a brick. I have to flag that one because it happened at the END when you were feeling good and done.
FUNY-MATION (you should be watching) (because you miss the clever reference if you didn't): Hmmmm... Epic Battle Fantasy feels like, built on a CORE of this. I think I played 2 once and made the "what" face. 4 sounds Better.
MEGA MAN UNLIMITED: I'm still laughing at this. Uhm. Sonic Generations. It's my own personal pick, but it still has that one Knuckles challenge level that consistantly crashes the game, doesn't it? Until that's fixed, this will always be my pick.
RAINING INDOORS: no my beloved mentor figure -- okay but really Owlboy probably takes this.
CRUNCHY PIXELS: Actual Final Fantasy contains fewer pixels than any of these, yet somehow they are nomfier. Please do not eat Thief. He has a hard enough time being in this game.
APPLE iMBROKE: Didn't actual Kojima rave about Framed? I guess Framed. Did you blog about Framed? Is it good?
MOOGLE AND WOODRAT: I hate that I'm not giving this to Gryz, but Ever Oasis. Between you and Penguin I'm just stalking this game's Amazon page.
IT BELONGS IN A MUSEUM: I closed my eyes and pointed at the screen. Hey, it's Epistory. I don't envy you picking this one.
INSERT COIN?: Pixel Shopkeeper SOUNDS most likely. You handle tedious grind better than you do intense speedrun frustration or controls with a cement block tied to 'em.
YOU'RE WINNER: Welcome to your game olympics. All the oxygen has run out. And someone who will not be named accidentally hit self-destruct. Let's leave Saturday Morning RPG behind on the station to distract the alien hordes as we escape. You may have actually talked me OUT of that game entirely. No small feat.
THE BIG A-SWORD: Sonic already had a sword once and it didn't work out. Tadpoles don't have arms. No, I think West of Loathing gets to dual-wield sword-and-old-timey-revolver here.
Just my guesses!
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Something amazing, that's what. I feel really good about how mine turned out, Sqrl's were an absolute delight to read, and it kind of warms my heart to see it spreading here, too.
So of course I'm going to speculate because participation is fun!
GET BLUE SPHERES: All are excellent choices and I could see any winning, but I'm going to have to call it for Final Fantasy just because it seemed to be the one you liked the most after rereading your entries for each, and also because it has the (Finally) in the subject line.
WHAT, ME WORRY?: I was waiting for you to nominate Tadpole Treble for something because you genuinely seemed to love it. This is a good category for it, and it has to be the favorite, right? Watch me be wrong because one of those aforementioned surprise mystery games (or just me flat out guessing wrong on any of these) but... nah, I am pretty comfortable with predicting this one.
AURAL SEX: I know I just gave one to Tadpole Treble, but I really feel like I have to do it again. You know Double Dragon Neon and Sonic Mania have great music when they can push a rhythm game down to Honorable Mentions, yes, but they didn't push this rhythm game down there. And that Thunder Creek song has been in my head pretty much since your original writeup.
NOT FUCKING THIS: I read this title and thought it was the opposite Bizarro universe version of my Furry Little Body category. *Ahem* Oh for biggest ragequit, okay. Well, rereading the entries you wrote for each, it is fairly clear that you were most infuriated with Xeodrifter at the time. I'm going with that.
FUNY-MATION: Considering it was so subtle that I forgot this one even had it and that's kind of the point of the award, and it's another one you genuinely liked, I'm gonna have to go with Love You To Bits here.
MEGA MAN UNLIMITED: Oh God the category title. I didn't mean to I swear. Uh. Hmm... If we're going with two "This game was great except..." games with that One Glaring Flaw versus one that was solid across the board but just didn't stand out as much, I think I'm going to bet on the unique one and go with Renowned Explorers here. It's the one where nothing is wrong with it, which has to count for something, right?
RAINING INDOORS: You make Owlboy sound like Bird Ori and that one won Sqrl's Feel Trip award and both our Overall Best Games, so let's go with that.
APPLE IMBROKE: This is going to come down to FRAMED versus Love You To Bits, isn't it. I'm going to say Love You To Bits here, but as always, watch me be wrong.
MOOGLE AND WOODRAT: I don't know what you're talking about. Woodrat is Goodrat. Also, Pokemon are always fuckable and wow did you pick a good example image for that to prove my point, but speaking of wow, that's some pretty strong competition from the others too. My random "something tells me" wild-guess senses are thinking Ever Oasis for this, but any of the others would be a fine choice as well.
IT BELONGS IN A MUSEUM: See what I said above about Bird Ori, and Ori won my artistic achievement award. Yeah sure let's go with that.
INSERT COIN?: Jumpjet Rex is the one with the least amount of "Sword walked away from this one" being its fault; you just misjudged what you were in for. The others, you knew what type of game it was but quit because of the flaws. Therefore, picking Jumpjet Rex here.
YOU'RE WINNER: You hated Saturday Morning RPG so much that you even took extra swipes at it in the FUNY-MATION award in this very post. You have a grudge against Saturday Morning RPG. The kind of grudge that you'll honor with a hate-trophy, or at least so I'm predicting.
BIG A-SWORD: Sonic Mania hasn't won anything yet by my calculations, and unless it is to you what Mega Man Unlimited was to me, I don't think you're going to let that go when you can fix it here. It was a fantastic game, you were hype for it and then loved it when you finally played, you probably want to award it with some trophy or another, and I think you're going to.
All in all, some great games you played this year, great categories, and great (and also really tough) decisions! As I said before, I am strangely giddy about how all of this is shaping up.
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god I'm glad I didn't have to be the one who said that
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Also curse you both for making me regret deleting my Trixie "that is my fetish" icon to make room for the tadpole.