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.