Category Archives: Game of the Year 2024

Game of the Year 2024 – Top 10

With all of the other lists behind us, we find ourselves here at the top ten games of 2024. In a year jam-packed with critically acclaimed games, I kind of found myself struggling to find games that resonated with me for large chunks of the year. For example, this was kind of a huge year for JRPGs, which is a genre of game I don’t really enjoy that much. So a lot of the biggest titles from this year are notably absent from this list.

But with that little caveat out of the way, I present to you the top ten games that I played this year.

10 – House Flipper 2

House Flipper 2 is a great example of not messing with success. Built with the same ethos in mind as its predecessor, House Flipper 2 puts a bunch of properties that are in varying states of disrepair in front of you, and tasks you with fixing them up. It’s a simple premise that sounds unremarkable because it is, but I find these kinds of games really calming. Games like this are a great way to occupy my hands while I watch TV or listen to a podcast, and House Flipper 2 is among the best in the biz in that regard.

9 – TCG Card Shop Simulator

Piggy-backing on what I said about House Flipper 2, TCG Card Shop Simulator was a real surprise for me in terms of games I would enjoy. After a miserable few years working in retail, I would never have thought playing a game about running a shop would click with me in the way TCG Card Shop Simulator has. Hell, I don’t even like card games, but selling booster packs to the same 7 ugly character models is actually kind of fun. It also helps that this game presents an idealized version of the world where no one is toxic and shitty. Some people do come in with stink lines around them though, so that is realistic.

It’s unfinished. It’s janky as hell. It’s one of my favorite experiences from this year, and I’m really excited to see this one evolve over time.

8 – Dungeons of Hinterberg

I think the best word to describe Dungeons of Hinterberg would be ‘uneven’. It’s a game that has some pretty glaring mechanical flaws, but makes up for them with clever puzzles and charming characters. I said it back in July, but had this solely been a puzzle game with a heavy focus on social interactions, and not have any combat in it whatsoever, I would have enjoyed it much more. Still, it’s one of the best games I’ve played this year.

7 – Thank Goodness You’re Here

Thank Goodness You’re Here is more of an interactive cartoon than a video game. It’s delightfully weird and hilarious, but you don’t really do anything besides walk around and hit the interact button on people and objects. The story and jokes are the only things that Thank Goodness You’re Here can really hang its hat on, and if they aren’t your jam then there’s nothing here for you. Luckily, I found this game hilarious and thoroughly enjoyed it from beginning to end.

6 – Minishoot’ Adventures

I wasn’t expecting a mashup of top-down Zelda games and shoot-em-ups to be such a compelling combination, but y’all, do not sleep on the terribly named Minishoot’ Adventures. With tons of exploration, navigation-based puzzles, and some pretty excellent shooter mechanics, Minishoot’ Adventures is the video game equivalent of discovering that chocolate and peanut butter go great together.

5 – Animal Well

I’ve already spoken about how much I loved Animal Well, both earlier in the year and earlier this week, so it shouldn’t be a surprise to see it on the top 10. I can’t think of many games I’ve ever played that were as shrouded in mystery as this one is. Every screen — every pixel of this game is deliberately placed to feed into a broader puzzle. Layer by layer you start to peel back this digital onion until you find that at the center, you still have no idea what’s happening.

I mean that in the best way too. I think Animal Well being an enigma is its greatest strength and not a shortcoming. It’s also a really good puzzle-platformer at its core, but what that platformer is in service of is what’s so amazing about Animal Well. It’s opaque and obtuse, but playing Animal Well for the first time was an unforgettable experience.

4 – Chants of Sennaar

Speaking of unforgettable experiences, Chants of Sennaar is one that I won’t ever forget for multiple reasons. Both Animal Well and Chants of Sennaar occupy a similar place of being wonderful “multiplayer” games that my partner and I enjoyed. But we both agree that Chants of Sennaar was the better experience from top to bottom. While it did technically come out last year, we only played it for the first time in 2024.

But for those few days it took us to blitz through the entirety of Chants of Sennaar, it was the only thing we could talk about. I never knew that the act of translating languages could be so engaging, but it is. I really hope another game like this is in development somewhere, because it’s a concept that’s so good that it shouldn’t be limited to one game ever.

3 – The Rise of the Golden Idol

At the end of this block of puzzle-game excellence is The Rise of the Golden Idol, one of the best puzzlers I’ve ever played. It’s a game that’s solely about observing your environment and making logical conclusions based of the information gathered in that, and previous levels.

It boasts remarkably engaging story whose twists and turns are even more impressive because you yourself are uncovering them. Understanding the motives of characters and what their mere presence in a scene implies are some of the most rewarding feelings of puzzle solving I experienced this year, and possibly ever.

2 – Astro Bot

Astro Bot is an incredible 3D platformer that’s either packed with nostalgic delights or filthy with advertisements, depending on who you are. I can understand the viewpoint of the latter, but I err on the side of the former in this regard. Astro Bot is a tremendously fun and positive experience that celebrates the long and storied history of the PlayStation brand.

But it’s more than just a nostalgia trip — it’s a really good platformer at its core that is constantly throwing new things at you, both in terms of mechanics and level design. Divorced from the PlayStation branding, Astro Bot would certainly lose a lot of its charm, but the core gameplay is solid enough that it could support just about any theme you throw at it. It’s truly remarkable and a must have for any PlayStation 5 owner.

1 – Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

There might be a bit of recency bias going on here, but I really do think that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle would have been my favorite game this year regardless of when it came out.

Holy cow, this game came out of nowhere for me and blew me away. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle takes the best parts of immersive-sim games, like Dishonored, and mushes it together with the excellent active stealth you’d see in the modern Hitman games to make something truly amazing.

Every aspect of this game shouldn’t have worked as well as it did, but it came together so perfectly. A large part of it has to be thanks to the phenomenal Harrison Ford impression that Troy Baker does, which once again, was a pretty dicey proposition on paper. But he disappears into the role and truly embodies the role, making it feel like I’m watching a long lost Indiana Jones movie. Which by the way, this is probably the best Indy story since Raiders of the Lost Ark.

But everyone is doing an excellent job portraying their roles in this game. The lead villain, Emmerich Voss, is perfectly portrayed as this slimy, miserable Nazi with the most punch-able face you’ve ever seen. Regardless of which character you’re talking about, everyone is putting in an excellent performance, all of which help to elevate this game.

And what of the game itself? That’s really good too! Machine Games is unsurprisingly adept at making the act punching fascists in the face feel as good as you’d imagine. The sound work is incredible, really emphasizing each hit with a heavy ‘thunk’ noise. Between solid melee combat and the versatility of Indy’s whip, whether it be used as a grappling hook or a cool way to choke fascists out, you have a surprising amount of variety in how you approach each encounter.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle isn’t a perfect game, but it was the best thing that I played this year.

So that’s it. That was the Game of the Year. I hope you enjoyed it. Consider subscribing to The Bonus World so you can get an email updating you whenever we publish something new.

I’ll be taking some time off, but I’ll catch you all at the end of January. Happy New Year, everybody.

Game of the Year 2024 – Most Disappointing

Honorable Mention – Dragon’s Dogma II

I knew there was a strong possibility that Dragon’s Dogma II and I wouldn’t get along as swimmingly as I had hoped before it released, but I wanted to give it a fair shake anyway. I really tried to like this game, but it’s just too hardcore of an experience for me. That isn’t to say that it’s a bad game. Plenty of people love their video games to be both punishing and obtuse, and Dragon’s Dogma II is the epitome of both. I was disappointed with Dragon’s Dogma II, but it was a long shot to begin with.

The Plucky Squire

I wrote a whole thing about The Plucky Squire back in September about how utterly infuriating this whole game was. It was glitchy mess that constantly interrupted your progression to slowly pan around the map towards your obvious objectives or force you to listen as characters exposited at you for a while. As a game, it genuinely had no faith in the person playing it as evidenced by its over-tutorialization and hand holding.

Despite all of my issues with the game, I still powered through and made it to the final boss fight. It was there that The Plucky Squire fell apart in the middle of said final boss fight and crashed. Since then, I have not been able to load my game back up and finish it. I could simply restart the entire chapter of the game and be done with it, but my experience so far has left a terrible taste in my mouth. I don’t think I’ll be returning to this one.

Star Wars: Outlaws

Star Wars: Outlaws isn’t a bad game — it’s just a boring one. In my 8 or so hours playing it, I had already begun to feel like I had identified the game’s loop and decided I already had my fill. It didn’t help that the game itself just didn’t play great. There were multiple instances of my character mantling something or using a ladder when I didn’t want them to, which isn’t great for when you’re trying to avoid being seen by the only Storm Troopers in the galaxy who can actually hit a target. Mechanically, Star Wars: Outlaws is uninspired and repetitive even when it’s working well.

But even if it was more mechanically interesting, the story (from what I experienced) was just this boilerplate Star Wars narrative that wasn’t engaging at all. I didn’t hate the main character, but I didn’t feel any affinity for them either. The main story line is a real confusing one too, focusing on your character building up a team to execute a big heist. That on its own is whatever, but when every mission feels like an underwhelming heist as is, you eventually lose confidence in the game’s ability to make that big finale compelling.

While the game has been patched a lot since I last played it, I think there are core issues with it that can’t simply be patched out. From the jump Star Wars: Outlaws feels like its doing its best Star Wars impression while offering nothing particularly new or interesting. Maybe it gets better after fifteen hours or something, but I just don’t care enough to return to it. Star Wars: Outlaws is underwhelming but fine.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard

I felt so strongly about this wet fart of a game that I wrote a damn article about it — that’s how much of an impression it left. To summarize my feelings about Dragon Age: The Veilguard, I first need to contextualize some things: First, I am not, nor have I ever been a fan of Dragon Age as a series. I’ve never hated it or anything, I’ve just never felt anything about this franchise. Secondly, I’ve played the Mass Effect series, and for the most part am a fan of it. I consider those games to (mostly) be pretty well written and compelling.

While Dragon Age: The Veilguard has some decent story lines and a couple of compelling characters, I think from top-to-bottom, that game is devoid of any soul. It is the paint-by-numbers version of an RPG. Nothing you do or say matters because you will be the hero, and nothing is going to derail that inevitability. Dialogue options feel less like making choices, and more like picking the tone of a predetermined line. The combat is flashy but gets incredibly repetitive after you fight the same recycled enemies throughout duration of the game, and even the few boss fights you encounter don’t do much to keep things fresh.

I didn’t even have particularly high hopes for Dragon Age: The Veilguard. I knew these weren’t games I had ever enjoyed, but the combat looked fun enough for me to try getting onboard. For the first few hours I was really enjoying my time with the game. I liked the characters I had met and was curious about their lives. The world seemed cool even if the lore was a little dense and hard to follow as someone without any background with the franchise. But I was really ready to engage with this game as a whole, but it just consistently showed me how paper-thin of an experience it was.

There were rarely gray areas in the narrative. Dragon Age made it very clear that it wasn’t interested in challenging anyone with divisive storytelling, ensuring that just about every conflict would eventually be wrapped up nicely and neatly with a little bow on top. There are moments when the writing is genuinely compelling, but rarely does The Veilguard have the confidence in both itself and the player to let these moments breathe. By and large, most stories seem to wrap up a bit too nicely, usually allowing everyone to get the closure they desired.

But at the end of the day, I still beat the damn thing because it was fun to play. The gameplay loop was decent, the set-pieces were nice, and the environments were cool to wander in, even if there was rarely a reason to poke around for secrets. I feel like some people will really enjoy their time with this game, while others, like myself, will just be completely underwhelmed by it.

That’s day three of Game of the Year behind us. Come back tomorrow for the final top ten list of games. Consider subscribing to The Bonus World so you can get an email updating you whenever we publish something new.

Game of the Year 2024 – Better Together

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I still find myself romanticizing those long, all-night gaming sessions my friends and I would have when we were younger, despite knowing that by 9:30 in the evening I’m ready for bed. Paired with the absolute nightmare of scheduling anything with anyone as adults doesn’t leave the door open for a lot of memorable online gaming sessions anymore. But that doesn’t mean that I’ve completely abandoned the concept of multiplayer gaming.

Multiplayer games have, for the most part, been redefined in my household. My partner is my main multiplayer buddy now, which has opened the door for me to introduce them to all sorts of new gaming experiences they’ve never had. Between traditional multiplayer games and games we’ve turned into a multiplayer experience, here are some titles that we’ve enjoyed playing together this year… for the most part.

Honorable Mention – WarioWare: Move It!

My partner has a large soft spot for minigames whether they’re consciously aware of it or not. So introducing them to the mysterious world of microgames was kind of a revelation for them. We had an absolute blast with WarioWare: Move It! and its rapid fire motion-based microgames, blitzing our way through the entirety of the game in a handful of play sessions.

It’s a fun game to play together because of how absurdly it makes you behave. It also is a game that reminded me just how inaccurate the Switch’s motion controls are, but that was part of the fun for us.

Super Mario Party Jamboree

This fucking game. Look, my partner loves Mario Party, so we’ve played a lot of Super Mario Party Jamboree. In the context of being a Mario Party game, this is probably the best one I’ve ever played, but that’s not a terribly high bar to clear.

Jamboree is kind of a return to the Mario Party games I remember playing on the Nintendo 64, solely because of how demoralizingly brutal it can be. You’ve got all the star-stealing bullshitery of the past series entries in here, but it’s coupled with the titular Jamboree mechanic which can really blow games out of whack. You have the ability to snag up an NPC on the board, who will follow you around and benefit you with their unique power, such as adding to your dice rolls or getting you cheaper prices at the shops, for example. But more importantly, they double whatever event space you land on.

With your buddy there, you can buy 2 items at a shop, you can buy 2 stars at a time, landing on blue or red spaces doubles the amount of coins given and taken away, and you even have to suffer Bowser’s bullshit twice should you land on his spot. It also allows you to visit the ghost twice, meaning you get multiple chances at stealing things from other players. The Jamboree buddy has the ability to completely break games, launch a player into a commanding lead while burying another in an inescapable pit. So it’s the perfect mechanic for this series.

It’s a nice looking game and the minigames are of a better quality than I remember them ever being, but once again, not a high bar. Jamboree, like every other entry I’ve played, has a nasty habit of piling on certain players while endlessly rewarding others. Sometimes the random stuff works in your favor, and sometimes it doesn’t. But in spite of all of that, my partner and I have a great time when playing these games together. Super Mario Party Jamboree has been responsible for a lot of laughs in my home, and that alone earns it a spot on this list.

Animal Well

I had only played Animal Well for about a half hour before my partner saw its hauntingly beautiful art style and decided to ride shotgun for the whole experience. We managed to turn this mysterious puzzle-platformer into a cooperative experience, with me manning the controls and them managing the notes and tackling the more esoteric puzzle solving.

It was so nice to have a co-pilot in this experience because their presence made it so that I could focus more on the runs and jumps I had to nail, and less on the stuff hidden in the background and periphery of each screen. Animal Well is dense with information if you’re actively scanning for that kind of stuff, and my partner is just better at catching those things than I am.

Sure, there were discrepancies between their level of participation versus mine, but Animal Well is enough of a gorgeous enigma that they didn’t seem too bothered with the idea of having to watch me wander around the map and find a fucking egg or something. It was a wonderful adventure we got to embark on together, even if there were a lot of points where we were just wandering aimlessly in the hopes something new would reveal itself.

Chants of Sennaar

Chants of Sennaar is a puzzle game that sees your character traversing a massive city-sized tower that’s comprised of different cultures with different values, priorities, and most importantly, different languages. Ascending to the top of the city requires you to pass through the various levels, where you’ll need to learn the languages within in order to find any success.

I pulled that description from a Spotlight article I wrote back in May of this year. I don’t want to sound too hyperbolic here, but Chants of Sennaar might be the best multiplayer experience I’ve ever had, and it isn’t even close.

Armed with a notebook and a controller, my partner and I set off to decode some languages. A few hours later and we were having full on discussions about the intentions and viewpoints of cultures and how those things would influence their language with one another and with other tribes. But we had to talk about those things because they were super important to succeeding in the game.

The overarching story in Chants of Sennaar involves a prophecy that each culture in the game seems to interpret and value very differently. Those cultural differences manifested themselves through their languages, wherein a culture might have a deep lexicon for words about the arts and entertainment whereas the next one might not have as many because they value science instead. Applying a decoded language to the prophecy would reveal why one culture interpreted it in a way that was so different from how another, and understand their outlooks on life. We began to understand how their societies were fundamentally different through their linguistic differences.

I cannot say enough nice things about Chants of Sennaar and I hope they make a sequel or just another game exactly like this. My only wish is that they cut out every single one of the bad stealth sections that did nothing but kill the momentum. Chants of Sennaar is the best multiplayer experience my partner and I have had this year, and possibly ever. We still talk about this game and wish we could experience for the first time again.

That’s day two of Game of the Year done and dusted. There won’t be a new list until Thursday because I want to enjoy the holiday. Happy holidays everyone. Also, maybe consider subscribing to The Bonus World so you can get an email updating you whenever we publish something new.

Game of the Year 2024 – Golden Oldies

Honorable Mention – Chants of Sennaar

I am 100% certain that you will be hearing me talk about Chants of Sennaar in some other list this year, so I won’t harp on it too much right now. This is an incredible puzzle game focused on decoding and translating languages. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever played and I cannot recommend it enough.

The Case of the Golden Idol

2024 was the year that I truly fell in love with puzzle-solving games, and The Case of the Golden Idol is one of the main reasons why. It is a game about deductive reasoning that requires you to really take in your environment, identifying who and what is in each scene along with the context of those elements.

What really clicked with me in hindsight is how The Case of the Golden Idol was both presented and played. It’s a unique spin on traditional point-and-click adventure games that I described in more detail back in the October Spotlight:

It isn’t clear who or what you play as in The Case of the Golden Idol, but you inhabit some sort of third party spectator who arrives at the moment of, or shortly after a grizzly murder has taken place. Through a point-and-click interface, you explore each heinous tableau, rooting around pockets, cupboards, and trashcans for pieces of information that can steer you towards identifying who people are, who was present, and what motives existed. At the end of each level you input your assumptions into a Mad-Libs-styled notepad, filling out the story with its key figures, items and whatever other relevant information is needed.

I don’t want to spoil anything because the story is kind of the whole game, so you’ll have to forgive the vague platitudes. But trust me when I say that The Case of the Golden Idol is a remarkable puzzler in the same vein as another beloved deduction-based game, The Return of the Obra Din. Maybe keep a notebook handy though, you’ll probably need it.

Super Mario World

It only took me three decades, but on some idle Tuesday in March I finally whipped Bowser’s ass on my own instead of relying on my older sister to do it for me. I genuinely forgot how much of this game we would skip on a regular basis, usually opting for the Star Road route directly to Bowser’s soon-to-be graveside. I think I put it quite eloquently when I said:

I stomped all of his children’s collective asses and then stomped his too. It was the first time I had ever personally beaten Super Mario World, and it was absolutely worth the 3 or 4 hours it took. Playing it on the Switch was a nice bonus too because I was able to make use of save states and the rewind feature a few times. Put an asterisk next to my accomplishment if you need to, but I could not care less. I beat Super Mario World and killed Bowser and his whole family. I am a hero.

Mamma-mia, this game is a masterpiece.

Baldur’s Gate 3

They said it couldn’t be done. They said there was no way he could find a way to give Baldur’s Gate 3 some sort of award a year after it was released. Not only did this absolute gem of a game win last year’s GOTY (spoilers I guess?), but apparently I honored it back in 2020 when it was still in early access. Who knew?

But that’s how fantastic this game is. I still think about it fondly, months after finally uninstalling it, freeing up the 6 petabytes worth of data it occupied. I’ve said my piece about this game over and over again, and I’ve also lauded it as the game that finally made me like CRPGs, which in retrospect isn’t really true.

Since being swept up in its splendor and eventually moving on, I’ve tried other games of its ilk. I think I’ve come to the realization that I still don’t like this genre of game. I don’t have the patience for any of these games. I don’t want to drink the right potions, or spec out my characters to make a cohesive team composition, or attempt to set up some wild chain reaction of events I know isn’t going to work because I planned it. I just don’t enjoy that stuff.

But in Baldur’s Gate 3 and only in Baldur’s Gate 3, I fucking love doing that stuff. I see people creaming their jeans over Path of Exile, Pillars of Eternity and the Divinity games, and I’m real happy for them, but I just want to play this game with these characters, and this story with its writing, and not engage with this genre in any other form until its inevitable sequel.

Whether it’s a lack of patience or general lack of brain power, I do not enjoy these kinds of games — EXCEPT for Baldur’s Gate 3, which is one of the best video games of all time.

That’s day one of Game of the Year in the books. Come back tomorrow for another list of games. Consider subscribing to The Bonus World so you can get an email updating you whenever we publish something new.

An Introduction to Game of the Year 2024