Board 8 > Para's Top 50 games from 2020-2021

(+) Yeah! (+)

#31: SNKRX

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/5/0/8/AAA-H0AADc08.png

Oh my god, I played this game for HOW many hours? 244 hours??? Why? How could this happen? Why didn't anyone STOP me?

SNKRX is an incredibly addictive game, and against all odds, somehow my 3rd-most played game of the last two years. I had a run of games on this list with beautifully crafted worlds and thoughtful game design, but sometimes what I want is some dots moving around on the screen that shoot dots at other dots and make numbers and my seratonin go up. SNKRX is one of these.

SNKRX combines the idea of Snake with a tower defense game, all with some roguelite mechanics. Your snake, which you turn left or right as it constantly moves forward, is made up of colorful little dots that you buy in a shop, each one with its own attack pattern or special ability. You build a snake out of these and you take it through a series of increasingly challenging levels where you have your dots shoot at some ovals, who also have their own special abilities. You get permanent upgrades along the way as well as better dots. That's the whole game. Yay!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/5/1/0/AAA-H0AADc0-.png

There's a surprising amount of depth to this otherwise incredibly simple game. The various different 'characters' that you can add to your snake, themed after your basic RPG classes (ranger, wizard, etc), all have surprisingly interesting and varied abilities, and they all belong to a 'class', and adding more characters of the same class gives you set bonuses, which gives you quite a bit to think about when constructing your snake. And the items that you get every few levels add a lot to the game too - there's a lot of variety there and you can get some pretty fun builds going.

It's pretty challenging, too. It took me a fair number of attempts to get a winning run, and the game really cranks up the addiction level by giving you a Spire-like ascension mode, where the enemies gradually get more hp but you also get more slots for your snake with each run. There is what seems to be a glitch in this game where your difficulty level can go higher than intended, as well, and I've had a lot of fun trying to fight through like - I think I got up to NG+8 when the game is supposed to cap at NG+5? It gets pretty wild. At sufficient difficulty levels, this game gets downright sadistic, and playing it well gets really fun and exciting. Again, there's a truly surprising amount of depth to this game. It doesn't have a lot to it, but what's here surprisingly passed the test as far as roguelites go, for me. If I play a roguelite for more than 50 hours, it's a good one. You can take that to the bank. (The bank doesn't accept # of hours spent playing a roguelite, I tried.)

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/5/1/1/AAA-H0AADc0_.png

This was, for a time, the game that I would just boot up and play to keep my hands and my brain busy while watching a youtube video or a twitch stream or something. It's a terrible habit of mine, I waste a lot of time doing this, but sometimes it's also what keeps me sane day-to-day. Apparently SNKRX was this game for a while - it feels like I played it for months, but I guess I unlocked every achievement in about two weeks. I haven't really picked it up in a while since, which makes a game like this hard to rank. Extremely addictive and ate over 200 hours of my life, but not really fascinating enough for me to return to and keep playing once I'm done with it. It's a hard one to judge.

I was very disappointed to learn that plans to expand this game and implement some changes were canceled. I completely support the dev's decision to do this, as it sounds like he had overscoped on the project, was burnt out and struggling to keep a timetable for it, and badly needed to move on, and that's completely reasonable. The game, as it is, is already largely complete, though there are a few things I would have liked (the fact that the game doesn't tell you how much HP each character has is maddening, it's an important stat that the game makes opaque for no reason). Mostly I was just hoping that an update would give me a chance to come back to this game and experience it one more time, and maybe add a little bit more depth to this game, but it is what it is, and this is the game's final state, I suppose. If you want a snake roguelite that's about driving dots around to shoot other dots and you want to waste a few hours, this is like 3 bucks, I think it's probably worth it. Don't do what I did and play it for 244 hours though. Find something else to do! Don't be lured in by SNKRX's hypnotic charms and promises of one more run!

Fun fact: This is the first game where I took my own screenshots of the game instead of using google image search. The pics of this game I found by searching were all garbage.

Next up: Okay, this is a fun one. At least one major publication named this next game as their Game of the Year.

Gonna guess Inscryption

SNKRX sounds like the kind of game I'd easily lose 80+ hours to.

My guess is Chicory is up next.

After seeing someone guess Inscryption, that definitely jumps as a possibility.

going to gamble that the "at least one" is ironic and guess Hades

The Last of Us Part II

for some reason I mistakenly thought Para explicitly said "last year's" goty so I didn't even consider that

Unless some publication somewhere named one of the Great Ace Attorney games as GotY like 5 years ago and you're exploiting a loophole

omg more time loops!

Found SNKRX a month or two back and downloaded it on my phone. I was shocked at how fun and addictive it was because I'd never heard of it anywhere else (till now!).

SNKRX sounds cool, and I tend to reach my limit with rogueli*es long before the 100 hour mark. Guessing it's not on consoles though.

I'll guess Psychonauts 2.

It's fine you guys, you were right the first time, again.

#30: Inscryption

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/7/6/AAA-H0AADdQk.jpg

Inscryption is a horror-themed roguelike deckbuilder that is best experienced for yourself, if possible. It involves some element of surprise, mystery, or something else along those lines that rely on an unvarnished player experience. I will be using spoiler text in this review to preserve that experience.

When writing this list, I wanted to try to avoid writeups where I would have to put the whole thing in spoiler text. I was able to do that for Forgotten City, since while there was some spoilery stuff I could have talked about, it wasn't really too crucial for me to talk about my overall thoughts on the game. Inscryption, though, I do need to get into some of the nitty gritty details, and it will be safer if I do so in spoilers.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/7/7/AAA-H0AADdQl.jpg

The non-spoilery thoughts; Inscryption was very much a love-hate game for me. There are times at which I enjoyed this game enough to put it in the top 10; there are other times playing this game at which I wanted to swear it off entirely, drop it, and not include it on this list at all. I can say, without a doubt, that I understand why it has received such superlative praise. Inscryption is a unique game, and its presentation is utterly masterful. It somehow really nails the premise of playing a card game dealt by a scary serial killer in a cabin in the woods, and that's not a sentence I thought I'd be saying a year ago. When this game clicks, it *clicks.*

I was talking with someone the other day about what I call the post-Slay the Spire period of gaming we're in right now where there's a number of games coming out now where you can directly point to Spire's mechanics as an inspiration. One Step From Eden has this in spades, for instance, with its branching paths and card adding/removal. Even games like Pawnbarian which aren't strictly deckbuilders clearly draw something from Spire's ascension mode, having multiple difficulty modes that very gradually ramp up and add small changes. Inscryption is a loving tribute to Slay the Spire in pretty much every way; or perhaps a twisted parody of it. If you're a fan of Spire, you should probably check this one out, but also don't go into this expecting Spire. This isn't that. But it is an incredibly worthwhile experience.

Alright, now the other stuff.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/7/8/AAA-H0AADdQm.jpg

Obviously, if you've played the game, you know what the deal is and why there's spoiler text.

While I was ultimately quite surprised by the game's major twists, I did know that there was going to be a twist and it would be along these lines for two main reasons. One, the fact that everyone has to be hush-hush about the game kind of already means the jig is up, much like some other games in this vein that you might be thinking of right now. Two, more importantly, I played one of this dev's previous games, Pony Island. It didn't make my top 100 games of the decade list but it was a pretty interesting little experience; I found a lot of the horror elements to be extremely trite, but the fourth-wall breaking mixed media experience was really something else, and very much directly prepared me for the kind of thing Inscryption would do. Nontheless, Inscryption still found a way to surprise me, which is commendable - I did not foresee the entire game completely changing from Slay the Spire to Pokemon Trading Card Game. Unfortunately, this is where the game started to go off the rails, in my opinion.

The first few hours of this game were absolutely sublime, for me. The initial Spire-esque mechanics really hooked me and made for an extremely fun game that was exciting to play at every turn, and Leshy as the "dungeon master" so to speak is such a menacing yet also fun character that you can't help but develop a sort of stockholm syndrome for him. Everything about the atmosphere and the environment, how the card game plays out in an actual physical location that you're in instead of in an abstract UI, is genius. I love that you can get up and explore the room and discover things. The only problem I had with act 1 was using the knife to get the eyeball. I had already used the dagger once before and it did not produce this effect, either because I wasn't at the trigger point yet or because I was in the final battle, I'm not sure; but when I got the hint for the portrait of the dagger it didn't really mean anything to me and I got stuck for a while until someone in twitch chat told me the answer. Minor quibble though - it could have just been my dumb ass.

I was excited for the switch to act 2, although I was sad to leave act 1 and its fun mechanics behind, and sadly, act 2 is where I realized that this isn't really a roguelike deckbuilder game to be played and enjoyed over and over; it's a narrative experience where the card game mechanics are part of the set dressing. The Pokemon TCG send-up here is cute, but mechanically it's not very fun to play. It's not the type of game where you're gonna settle in for 20 hours, collecting cards and tweaking your deck to build something with great synergy - all you can really do in most fights is hope for a good draw and try to win as fast as possible, otherwise you'll just lose. It's more like a puzzle game, but not a very good one. I lost a lot here and started to get really frustrated, feeling like the mechanics of the game are too unfairly stacked against you, but I eventually squeezed through somehow.

At the start of act 3, I thought I was about to enjoy this game a lot more - the twist of going back to the 'real world' but with P03 in charge now, with all of the mechanics of the game changed once again and with act 2 serving as a tutorial for many of them, was brilliant. Unfortunately, I also found this part of the game to be too frustrating at times; there were some fights where I felt like I didn't have a good enough deck, but because it's no longer a roguelike I couldn't start over and try again, and as a result I really banged my head against the wall for a good while. I actually dropped the game and didn't twitch stream (which I was doing because I had friends that wanted to see the game) the rest of it as a result because I just wasn't having fun and I had to put it aside and come back to it on my own time. I did eventually break through, only to discover that all of the boss fights I hadn't yet reached were actually super clever and fun, and that the game was waiting to give me a bunch of upgrades I needed to trivialize the rest of the game. It's actually a shame, because act 3 starts to introduce some really cool mechanical concepts that you basically only get to use in one or two more fights before the whole thing's over - there isn't even a final boss (though the game's final segment is certainly memorable to say the least).

Much like I said about Pony Island, I found the game's horror elements a bit trite, at times. I love the characters and their bizarre quirks and motivations, and the surprisingly character-driven nature of this game pushes it forward, but I find all of the stuff that's like - oh, there's a SATANIC CONSPIRACY that's CORRUPTING THE GAME and MAYBE THE ACTUAL SATAN IS IN THE GAME AND IT'S SPOOKY is like, ugh, it was silly in Pony Island and it's silly here, but fortunately the presentation and atmosphere of the whole game makes it pay off anyway, even if I don't really care about the found footage segments where this is some kind of creepypasta game a person in real life found in the woods and even if I don't care about the payoff to it. I feel bad, because I'm sure some people were really blown away by these aspects, but I feel like this meta fourth-wall breaking stuff is passe at this point and it just didn't do much for me.

I was excited to play Kaycee's Mod and come back to the part of the game that was really good - act 1 - but as I did, I discovered that that part of the game wasn't really meant to hold up like Slay the Spire. The mechanics are fun but not super well balanced, and since each run kind of starts the same and there isn't a lot of variation, it really lacks that 'one more run' sort of feeling to it. It's good for exactly as long as it needs to be in the first act, which for me was about... like, four runs or so, the game's not very hard. So I played Kaycee's Mod a small handful of times and dropped the game, probably for good this time. It's not Spire. It's not trying to be Spire. It doesn't need to be Spire.

So it's a mixed bag, overall. Act 1 was great, the other acts were a bit overindulgent and annoying. The horror elements were beautifully made, but also sometimes kind of ridiculous. Brilliant at times, frustrating at times, but overall a game that I'll remember for a very, very long time, and that counts for something.

Next up: This is the only game on the list that I do not own or have downloaded. I don't have a physical or digital copy of it, and it isn't in any of my friends' shared libraries either. I cannot play this game at will.

I was gonna joke about Super Mario 35 until I remembered that you already did mention it.

Out of curiosity, are you familiar with other card games besides Slay the Spire? I find that while STS is a big influence, it's also drawing from other things. I fucking love Inscryption, and I have never played STS.

There are so many references to other card games, Magic: The Gathering in particular. I'm not certain, but I am pretty sure the 4 major NPCs are modeled off of player psychographics from that game. Also, while there's a focus on horror, and for good reason because Act 1 really sells the atmosphere, something I think that gets lost is that this game is fucking hilarious. It is such a delightful mix of horror and comedy and weirdness, just this wonderful love letter to card games of all sorts. For instance, like you I thought the "meat" of the ARG stuff was pretty trite. I do not care about the satanic game aspect, although the part about a game that completes and replicates itself though exploiting the player/designer I think is pretty interesting. But anyways, the thing that really sells the meta element is that the character it's being told through is such a spot on example of a real type of guy who plays card games. The mannerisms and way he talks about cards while interjecting over your gameplay is just spot on. It's incredible. I laughed a lot during the video sections.

I actually didn't care nearly as much for Act 1 as others did, I actually thought it dragged on a bit too long. The other parts were a lot easier to break mechanically and didn't overstay their welcome too much, though Act 3 is pretty long. But overall, the rote mechanics of the game aren't exactly what kept me coming back - it was more interesting to me just to see how those mechanics are used, and how they are are twisted versions of mechanics from other card games. Anyways, I feel weird talking about this game because my experience seems pretty out of step from the norm? Or maybe it's not. I feel like these things are underdiscussed, but also who even the fuck knows because all discussions of this game have to be hidden away.

Inscryption

I have no familiarity with M:TG, so any reference to it is lost on me, although I did imagine there must be some element of it in here. Obviously the final act with painter guy is a love letter to Yu-Gi-Oh, but I've always wondered what the other games are meant to be.

Oh I do agree that the twist that P03 is trying to use you to upload the game onto the internet is actually a great twist by the way. I knew I would forget something.

Incryption

Yeah, I'm most familiar with M:TG and Hearthstone, and there are a lot of references mechanically to those games as well as memes in individual cards. The wizard guy's orbs are a references to MTG lands and mana, and P03's robot deck giving you one energy per turn is modeled after Hearthstone. The MTG player psychographics, IMO, were pretty load-bearing too. Leshy is a Vorthos - MTG's word for a player who cares about flavor and lore. P03 is a Spike - they care about winning above all else. Those are the big obvious ones that it does a pretty good job elaborating though the story, but it also applies to the other two. The witch is a Johnny or Melvin that gets joy out of deckbuilding or designing mechanics that tell a story. The wizard is a Timmy, they just love the experience of playing the game and feeling BIG which syncs up perfectly with YuGiOh's serious card game drama. Ultimately this made the ending sequence come together in a really satisfying way for me, it's about celebrating the different things people love about card games and how no one can stand the dick at the card shop who only plays to win.

#29: The Jackbox Party Pack 7

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/2/0/AAA-H0AADdu8.jpg

Including Jackbox games on these lists always feels like cheating, in a few ways.

First of all, it's just so easy to add this game to my list. Most of these games, I have to like, buy them, install them, set aside time to play them, actually go through some level of effort and all that. When it comes to Jackbox, I don't have to do shit! Some nice person, usually Wigs, is always ready to host the games on discord and all I have to do is show up with my dumb ass and a phone, join the game, have a few hours of laughs with my dear friends, and consider it another game done. Playing games is supposed to be hard work and sweat and tears! I'm supposed to agonize over these fucking things.

Second, these things are yearly installments in an age when you're lucky if your favorite franchise puts out a game every five years. It is what it is, game development is a lengthy process nowadays and it takes a long time for a game to become polished. But in the time since they started releasing these, I can't think of many franchises that have had more than two brand-new mainline entries, and here Jackbox is with fucking 8 of these things. Jackbox is a near guarantee to show up on any GOTY list I make for now into the foreseeable future (this is the 13th best 2020 game on my list, but this is including two games older than 2020... we'll get to those). It's too easy. These lists should be obscure indie trash that only I've ever played and I can impress you with the depths of my knowledge by showing them off. Everyone knows what Jackbox is by now and who knows how many years they'll keep going with these things - I think we'll get to at *least* 12 before the future of the franchise becomes murky, but come back and talk to me in a few years and we'll see if that's true - maybe 9 will be the final one, who knows? (I hope not. Never stop making these fucking things ever please.)

The way they most feel like cheating though is that they're packs of multiple games. Every Jackbox Party Pack is really five games in one. Should I be ranking the games by themselves? I figure the answer here is no - these games (with a rare exception or two) haven't been available as standalone and are only featured in the packs, so it's more like a minigame collection than anything else. That's what I'm sticking to - one Pack is a single game. These releases are so frequent that in my game of the decade list I actually had a problem where even ranking all 6 packs on the list felt redundant and silly, so I decided to make the choice of grouping them all together as one thing (ranked at 19th, which somehow seems too low given the amount of joy Jackbox has provided over the years, but the competition was tight). I don't have that problem here, fortunately, as there's a lot fewer of them to deal with.

Anyway, despite the whole "the entire pack is one game" thing, I think the only thing to do is to have a mini-ranking of Party Pack 7 games within my ranking! Let's talk about all of them, from my least favorite to my favorite.

#5 - The Devil and the Details

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/2/1/AAA-H0AADdu9.jpg

I think most people will probably put Talking Points below this one, but I found that Devil and the Details was fun for one, maybe two plays, and sort of wears out its welcome after that. I think it's conceptually pretty cool and I like the idea of a frantic co-op game kind of like Space Cadets in Jackbox form, but all of the activities you have to do are mostly pretty simple and boring. Some of the group activities are a little more fun, but for the most part it really does feel like a series of chores that you have to do and it doesn't really feel like there's much I can do in terms of actually playing the game intelligently. I think it might be more fun in person as opposed to over Discord. It's not a bad game though, I would still be willing to play it more. Party Pack 7 has a high floor.

#4 - Talking Points

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/2/2/AAA-H0AADdu-.jpg

I've only played this one once, and I mean, I get it. This is probably the longest Jackbox game when played with 8 people, and it's pretty heavy. It's hard for most people, even those skilled at improv, to flawlessly perform a good speech to a powerpoint presentation on the fly, and this game asks a lot of you in terms of being funny. I would REALLY like to play this one again sometime, though, because I think the concept is super fun - I just love the idea of having to think of stuff to say quickly for new slides. Patently Stupid is probably a lot more of a crowdpleaser in general though, and it goes faster, so something like Talking Points doesn't get a lot of play.

#3 - Champ'd Up

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/2/5/AAA-H0AADdvB.jpg

Champ'd Up is a solidly fun drawing game sort of in the style of Tee KO, but I prefer Tee KO, and here's why; in Tee KO, most of the humor comes from the juxtaposition of your drawing and someone else's slogan mashed together by a third person, and it's just sort of beautiful to see what shakes out of that - it doesn't really matter if your drawing is good or not. In Champ'd Up, it sort of matters if your drawing is good. I feel like it's another game that's very creatively demanding, in that if you can't draw well, then you at least have to have some really good idea for a character. I feel like I just totally strike out on this one a lot. When it hits, though, it hits.

#2 - Quiplash 3

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/2/6/AAA-H0AADdvC.jpg

Having at least some variant of Quiplash in your Jackbox toolbox is an absolute requirement, as it's one of the biggest crowdpleasers on pretty much any night in most groups. That said, I wouldn't remember most of Quiplash 1 or 2's prompts by now, so either of those will usually do, which renders Quiplash 3 one of the more inessential Jackbox games out there (not to mention it has the worst music of the three). The main improvement it has is the final round, which is now questions that you answer in sets of threes, which can be really good when you do it well. It's the definitive Quiplash now, but it doesn't add much over its predecessors. (This could easily rank #1 if I wasn't taking that into account.)

#1 - Blather Round

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/2/7/AAA-H0AADdvD.jpg

Easily the dark horse favorite, and I think nearly everyone agrees on this. Blather Round feels like it harkens back to actual party games that you'd pull out of the closet at a family game night, like Taboo and such. It's chill and relaxing and not a very demanding game (although guessing can be surprisingly hard sometimes), and makes for a great opener or closer to the night since it only goes up to 6, which makes it perfect for when people are filtering into the group. It's surprisingly funny; the descriptions that people have to come up with for various characters or movie titles based on the given words leads to a lot of comedy, although I sort of wish Blather Round didn't give you so many freebies if you're having trouble; there are definitely words programmed in to make it easy. Great game though - easily the most essential game to have out of the pack.

Overall, Jackbox Party Pack 7 is really solid all around, but I think for me it's one of the least essential packs; Blather Round is still one of the weaker 'best' games of any of the packs, and I feel like most of the games here I wouldn't really miss if I didn't have access to them. If I were buying all of the packs to introduce them to a brand new group of players today, 7 is probably the last or second last I would buy (I might buy 7 over 2, since it would cover the Quiplash requirement, and I like Blather Round more than Bidiots or Earwax; 4 covers Fibbage). That said, it was still really great and I liked it a lot at the time of its release; every Jackbox pack is a riot. It basically gets onto this list for free.

Next Up: This is the least obscure game on my list.

Animal Crossing NH?

I liked Talking Points. =/

Granted, I've barely played anything from 7, so maybe it outstays its welcome quickly.

#28: Among Us

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/7/4/3/AAA-H0AADeWX.jpg

I brought this upon myself. I absolutely did not have to talk about Among Us on this list. I could have easily just said "well, it came out in 2018, so obviously it doesn't belong on this list" and you'd all go "yeah, makes sense, it did come out in 2018." There was no need to twist my own rules into a knot to make it eligible. Some people will even now probably cry foul at its inclusion on the list, despite the fact that I said quite explicitly that I might carve out exceptions like this one! All for the sake of this obnoxiously enormous cultural phenomenon that everyone's already heard of. I had to ask myself; do I really have anything new to say about Among Us? And it turns out the answer is, damn right I do. I have to talk about Among Us.

I'm putting this down as a 2020 game because, despite coming out in 2018, this game didn't *truly* exist until 2020. Sure, you could have played it in 2018, if you had heard of it, but it would have been a small player base. You might have to wait to get into a game, and forget about having a large friend group who all owns the game. Then the pandemic happened, some really popular streamers played it, and it became the next Fortnite, and that made Among Us actually come alive as it is today, and while that's the only reason I've ever even actually played it, I also fear that it might be breeding some resentment. I get it, to some extent. Among Us has become the Gen Z version of Facebook Minion memes. Politicians are playing it on stream. It's everywhere, and anything that is everywhere is going to become annoying by default. (I'm still upset that this happened to Undertale.)

Put all of the cultural phenomenon stuff aside for a second. Imagine a world where Among Us isn't an annoying, pervasive meme, just a fun little indie game about some space guys who sometimes stab each other. I wanted to talk about Among Us because it is a Good Game, Actually.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/7/4/4/AAA-H0AADeWY.jpg

You're reading this on Board 8, so chances are I do not need to re-acquaint you with the game of mafia. I like mafia a lot. I enjoy the art of spinning a well-told lie and making others believe it, and I love the tactics of banding together as a group to root out those lies even as the group is being actively sabotaged from within. I also hate mafia a lot. Forum games are absolutely soul-draining and get too personal, and at the end of the day, even at its best, mafia is just people arguing back and forth at each other until someone cracks.

Among Us kind of fixes these problems. First of all, Among Us keeps things nice and brief. Games don't overstay their welcome in length - they take just long enough for a few interesting things to happen, and then it wraps up. Things stay pretty chill, from what I've seen; you'll get a few decent debates but for the most part when I play Among Us it's never too try-hardy; everyone kind of embraces the spirit of wanting a fast and loose mafia-like game, because the game is just more fun that way. Your mileage may vary, of course.

But for me, Among Us's real innovation to the social deception landscape is the fact that it all takes place within a physical arena where you need to actually do stuff. The weakness of mafia, in my opinion, is the limitations within which you can create a cover story for yourself and explain your own actions. All you're actually doing as mafia is saying privately who you want to kill and that's it, and town has a few other night actions that they can throw around, but they tend to be pretty binary. I've always wanted a game like mafia where town has to do actual tasks that the mafia can sabotage, where mafia has to make an actual PLAN for how they're going to get the kill done and needs to cover their tracks successfully.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/7/4/5/AAA-H0AADeWZ.jpg

Among Us delivers on this front. Doing tasks, as town, is simple but gives every player something that they can focus on doing that isn't just arguing back and forth. It avoids the 'day 1' problem that mafia has by creating circumstances for an interesting mystery from the word go. It makes for a world where the mafia can immediately start making schemes rather than just lying low and trying not to get noticed. It allows for so many more possibilities of what could possibly happen.

I've played a fair bit of Among Us, but I haven't really gotten addicted to it. I prefer to play it with friends when I get the opportunity, and the idea of playing it with randos doesn't interest me even though the game is a lot more chill than mafia. But I also don't play it enough with my friends because I'm very bad at socializing and I always end up making excuses not to play games with friends. So, I don't know if the best opportunities to play Among Us have passed me by, but it seems like a game that's going to be around in one form or another for a while. And now every time there's a new social deception game, everyone's going to compare it to Among Us now instead of mafia. Sigh.

(By the way, you're not gonna fucking believe this, but this was the hardest game to get useable screenshots of from google image search so far. Absolutely infuriating.)

Next up: By some completely insane coincidence, the Greek god Charon is a notable character in four different games in my top 50. Four! I guess the pandemic's got people thinking about mortality or SOMETHING. Anyway this is one of them.

sus

when when the impostor is sus

Paratroopa1 posted...

Next up: By some completely insane coincidence, the Greek god Charon is a notable character in four different games in my top 50. Four! I guess the pandemic's got people thinking about mortality or SOMETHING. Anyway this is one of them.

Feels too early for Hades but I'mma guess Hades

There's a streamer I follow that never even played it, but did a lot of visual novel stuff, like Ace Attorney and Danganronpa. Whenever the phrase "among us" came up in dialogue, the chat would explode into
AMOGUS
AMOGUS
AMOGUS
AMOGUS

It was so bad, they had to put chat into emote only for several minutes to get over themselves. I didn't think it was all that funny at first, but in the weeks since, it's become kind of a game of chicken. The first people will just be like "chat pls" and "don't do it" and a few people here and there will just say "amogus" in lower case and see how much they can do it without getting silenced or the chat destroyed, and for some reason, it's become the funniest fucking thing to me.

Rogue Legacy 2

Among Us as a phenomenon is freaking annoying. I've never liked Mafia-like games, and to have one blow up to such epic proportions that it becomes so stupidly pervasive is extremely irritating. Honestly, it hardly matters what Among Us was. It just became too much. It was inescapable.

It also won 2020 best mobile game awards after debuting multiple years previously, which it feels like it should have never been eligible for. So in that regard, it also feels illegitimate.

But it gave us the word "sus," so it has that going for it, I guess.

"sus" existed way before then, before Among Us it was primarily used to imply someone was secretly gay

WazzupGenius00 posted...

"sus" existed way before then, before Among Us it was primarily used to imply someone was secretly gay

Oooh, another reason to hate the pervasiveness of Among Us, thanks.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=MIchMEqVwvg

#27: Spiritfarer

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/1/4/AAA-H0AADfMm.jpg

When looking for new games to play that I hope will go on this list, nowadays, I'm looking for two things: either a really good gameplay hook that'll keep me addicted, or just really, really good vibes. The former is what I'm looking for to waste a solid 300 hours of time while watching Youtube videos or whatever; the latter is what I'm looking for when I'm taking chances on trying to find that next big game that'll truly win my heart. (I did find that game, but it's #1 on the list, obviously.)

Spiritfarer looked like a game that could be both at once; a little cozy-sim game featuring cute characters and beautiful hand-drawn graphics. Since I was looking to build a profile of 2020 games to have played (as I talked about in The Pedestrian's writeup), It was pretty much a must-own the moment I saw it - it has very 'me' vibes. I was also sort of scared to play this game, because I knew this game was going to make me sad, and sad games are always kind of hard for me to steel myself and pick up. So I ended up buying this in late 2020 and kicking the can down the road until 2022 since, for obvious reasons, 2020 didn't really feel like a good time for sad games. Certainly not ones about death.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/1/5/AAA-H0AADfMn.jpg

There's really two sides of talking about Spiritfarer; the gameplay experience and the emotional experience. Spiritfarer is hard to talk about, because talking about it as a game doesn't really do a lot of good as far as recommending the game is concerned, and doesn't do a lot of justice towards the fact that this is a very vibes-based game that has a really specific mood and set of ideas it wants to convey, and the gameplay is just a vehicle to get there. But I guess I'll start with the game itself.

You are the newest Spiritfarer, leading the souls of the dead to the afterlife on a boat sailing a metaphorical river Styx (actually a big ocean with some islands in it but nevermind). Along the way, you have to build homes for them, feed them, and do a bunch of quests to help put their souls at rest. I'd call it a management game, but typically management games imply some level of urgency, that the skill of your management actually matters. Nope! Spiritfarer is entirely a vibes-based game, and there is absolutely no urgency here. Your guests' needs can be met at your leisure, there's nothing that needs to be watched over carefully or done promptly, and even if you let your guests go so hungry that they're banging down your door for a plate of onion rings (shut the fuck up, Atul, I KNOW you want fried chicken, I have to break open a fucking glacier to find a town that will sell me flour so chill the fuck out), them getting upset with you is entirely flavor, and there are no consequences for letting things go to shit. For better or worse, this is along the lines of Animal Crossing; challenging you is not the point. Good vibes only.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/1/6/AAA-H0AADfMo.jpg

What this game actually is is what I like to call a Crafting Extravaganza, a genre of game I did not put in the list, even though this isn't the only one on the list. It's a game about collecting some wood and copper and shit, getting a high enough number of them so that you can build something that will help you get more and better materials, so that you can use those BETTER materials to craft something that will give you EVEN MORE AND BETTER materials, so on and so on down the line until you have the BEST materials, and then at that point I guess you craft a giant diamond dildo and fuck yourself with it because there's nothing left in the game to do. It's sort of stupid but it draws me in every time anyway because, look, just five more wool and I can craft a fucking windmill or whatever! I'm always in a state of simultaneously totally being over crafting systems and also having them sucker me back into this repetitive gameplay loop.

So Spiritfarer is an extremely low-maintenance management game about collecting stuff, mostly, and I can't recommend it on that front. As far as the collecting stuff goes, it's mostly just sailing to an island, picking stuff up (there's no combat or anything), then going to your ship and doing a basic task to refine it, so that you can build more rooms onto your ship. Not a lot more to the game. There's NPCs to talk to who give you fetch quests, but an NPC Quest this is not, because this game has the world's most annoying NPCs. The actual characters you bring onto your boat, oh, they're absolute darlings, all of them, even the assholes. But the faceless NPCs in this game are all of the worst people alive, doing nothing but rambling on about nothing and wasting your time, then giving you some stupid fetch quest to go on, which sometimes leads to a good reward, and sometimes leads to no reward at all for no apparent reason. Maybe there's some sort of thematic point to this, like, oh sometimes caring for people is a really thankless task that wastes your time? Great, cool.

But then there's the vibes experience of playing this game. The emotional stuff. This game wasn't as emotionally devastating as I was worried it would be, but it's nevertheless a pretty rough one. Spiritfarer is a game about death; a game about caring for your loved ones in their final moments, a game about the inevitability of all of us dying someday, and this game is not dancing around this. This is a game with more than one detailing of someone metaphorically struggling and losing a battle with cancer. It is just about the heaviest subject matter possible, and Spiritfarer wants to tell it with the lightest possible touch. It knows that it cannot make this go down easy, but it is trying to make the subject of death seem as comforting as possible. It is rarely scary or intense; it's always trying to be as gentle about mortality as possible.

It kind of fucked me up to learn that most of the characters in this game are based on a real-life family member or friend that someone on the team had, because that really shines through in how much they cared about granting these characters dignity and making them so damn lovable. Everyone's gonna have one character that really hurts to say goodbye too; mine was Summer, the spiritual, vegan, lesbian snake. She's so sweet! She plays music for your plants and she insists that gemstones have spiritual energy or whatever even though I'd really rather just sell them for money. And she's dealing with nightmarish visions of a dragon. The dragon is cancer, by the way, like I said before. They don't outright say it but it's Metaphors 101. I was not okay with saying goodbye to her, and the whole game is about learning to have to do it anyway. Mainly because it was her time to go, and I have to learn to let people go and allow their memory to be a blessing in my life, and also because I can spend the remaining fragments of her soul as currency to buy a SICK FUCKING ICEBREAKER for my boat. Now I can FINALLY get your fried chicken, Atul, you motherfucker. (I am ALSO going to be gutted by you leaving.)

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/1/7/AAA-H0AADfMp.jpg

(Pictured: Astrid is a labor organizer and she is unfathomably based you don't even know)

Spiritfarer took me 40 hours to beat, which is way too long for this kind of game. I guess that they want to give me time to actually get attached to the characters on my boat, but they don't do a lot except beg me for food after a while, so I really think that this game could have been cut in half. It took me nearly a month to beat this game and it was starting to feel reeeeeeally lengthy. It's a hard recommend, because the gameplay isn't that interesting, but the vibes check - it passed the vibes check. This game's absolutely gorgeous to look at, the characters are gonna stick with me for a while (I didn't even get to talk about Buck, the D&D-obsessed cockatrice) and like, yeah, fuck it, I'm a sentimental bitch, having to ferry my dead friends to the afterlife is gonna make me feel stuff, and I kinda like feeling stuff. I also really like filling out recipe books about 50% of the way and then giving up and looking up the rest online. Spiritfarer's doing a lot for me here.

Next up: My favorite part of gaming in the 20's is gaming in the 80's.

Spiritfarer definitely needed to be half as long (or shorter). If it were, it'd be a much better game. The cast and emotional stuff was pretty good, but it never got me to cry, alas.

Damn, I knew I should have guessed Spiritfarer.

It sounds like my kind of game on a vibes level, but between the gameplay not really being my style and my tendency to indefinitely put off story-heavy games (especially long ones) I will probably not play it even if I end up buying it.

The only thing that I know about Spiritfarer is that someone made a topic calling it Sausagefarer and that was the first and one of the only times that I've heard of the game.

I haven't gone back to Spiritfarer since they updated it to Farewell edition, as you did it this year I guess that's the version you played. Do you know how much stuff they added? I'm curious if it's worth going back.

Overall I like the game quite a bit, the gameplay isn't really anything special but the characters and vibes are terrific, as you say. I like that you get used to the rhythm then they shake up the formula on you slightly for some passengers, I wish they did more stuff like that. I don't think the game runs far too long or anything, but I was definitely ready to leave it a couple of hours before it ended. The final passenger doesn't add much of anything imo.

I liked Spiritfarer for about 3 hours, and then I just got frustrated with it. Too much crafting, too much roaming, too much of people asking you for things and feeling like you shouldn't miss out on opportunities and and and...

andylt posted...

I haven't gone back to Spiritfarer since they updated it to Farewell edition, as you did it this year I guess that's the version you played. Do you know how much stuff they added? I'm curious if it's worth going back.

I honestly couldn't tell you, because I only ever played Farewell edition.

I thought Farewell edition was just their way of saying they were done adding content.

WazzupGenius00 posted...

"sus" existed way before then, before Among Us it was primarily used to imply someone was secretly gay

swirIdude posted...

Oooh, another reason to hate the pervasiveness of Among Us, thanks.

I feel like it's just the opposite? I guess in that context it would be short for "suspected" rather than "suspicious", though that's a very narrow distinction because they come from the same root word, but to me it sounds like it used to be a homophobic term, and now it's just a reference to a video game. Anything that limits the spread of political overcorrection is fine by me (to be clear, I'm all for legitimate political correctness, but if you legislate out anything that might be offensive, you'll be left with nothing at all. For example, the word "boy" is a perfectly valid way to refer to a male child, but also a racist epithet. I stole that example from the comments section of a YouTube video about the recent decision to put an in-game profanity filter that can't be disabled into Minecraft, and one of those old-fashioned ones that will stop you from writing the word "night" because the first three letters are a banned string.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOGyBNBrE1Y

azuarc posted...

I thought Farewell edition was just their way of saying they were done adding content.

Oh I played Spiritfarer when it first came out, apparently I've missed four new spirits since then lol. Yeah no wonder it drags for some people!

I did it before the new spirits and still thought it dragged heh.

#26: Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/6/6/8/AAA-H0AADfy8.jpg

Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon was a very pleasant surprise when it came out a few years ago. I presumed, going into it, that it was going to be a kind of low effort 8-bit pastiche meant to promote the main game they really wanted to sell, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, sort of in the vein of when Inti Creates also made Mighty Gunvolt. Curse of the Moon, however, ended up being a loving tribute to Castlevania III that ultimately builds upon and surpasses it; it is more Classicvania than Classicvania has ever been. It's a genuinely great work of retro-revival gaming.

I expected it to be a one-off. Of course, the sort of middling Mighty Gunvolt did actually give way to a sequel, Mighty Gunvolt Burst, that I consider a good game and genuinely worth playing despite its questionable pedigree. But I kinda figured that Ritual of the Night (albeit not developed by Inti Creates) was kind of the main focus here; Curse of the Moon wasn't supposed to spin off into its own series. Apparently, I was wrong. The announcement and release of Curse of the Moon 2 came as a huge surprise to me.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/6/6/9/AAA-H0AADfy9.jpg

I'm a big fan of retro-revival stuff. I've long been a staunch proponent of bringing back the late 80's and early 90's into modern games; delving into the alternate history of gaming where we never figured out how to make 3D games, or where we couldn't make 3D games look like more than a collection of polygons. It's not merely a matter of nostalgia for me, though I imagine that plays into it somewhat; I think that these art styles and game philosophies still have something to add to the medium, and that there's still tons of ways to build upon what was made in those years. Mega Man 9 was still the most mind blowing example of this philosophy being put to work; the decision for Capcom to make a new mainline Mega Man game that looked like the NES classics that I hold so dear is still one of the best things that's happened to me in my life. Mega Man 10, however, was even better; a statement that Mega Man 9 wasn't merely a one-off gimmick, but something that they were willing to repeat, to build on the retro-revival style itself. Mega Man 10 is one of my favorite games of all time for a reason; I think it's exceptionally well-polished, built on decades of understanding of how to make that style of game, and it sheds the gimmicky nature of MM9's back-to-basics formula to take on a new identity of its own.

This is why Curse of the Moon 2 was such an exciting sequel prospect for me, and it delivered. It's hard for me to say if I prefer the first or the second, because I think both are pretty comparable games, but I do think CotM2 builds on the first in some great ways. The new cast of characters all feel more differentiated from each other in this game than in the first, and all of them kinda feel more powerful to use, in their own ways. The different story modes in this one have a lot of new ideas that feel less like they're thrown in there at the last minute, too; the last act, where it kind of turns into an adventure game where each character goes to different levels and you have to find secrets, is especially fun.

As I probably said in my review for the first game, I just really enjoy the Classicvania mechanics. The characters in this game have sluggish movements, and I like it that way; every jump is a commitment, and every attack comes at a potential cost. Of course, I've said that I don't like Dark Souls, and I'm basically describing Dark Souls, which is sort of hard to square; I guess it's because I'm not very good at 3D action games and 2D platformers are kinda my native tongue, so to speak, so I'm just more used to this kind of thing. I like that the subweapons in this game feel powerful and wise usage of them is key to winning. I do feel that this game is a little too hard at times; some of the bosses feel like they require a great deal of trial and error and some of the levels (the volcano level comes to mind) are a bit on the overwhelming side. I played a lot of this game in co-op mode, which I think made the game a little easier to handle; the co-op mode is surprisingly fun, having a friend helps a ton and being able to stand on each others' shoulders is cool.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/6/7/0/AAA-H0AADfy-.jpg

The game is, of course, stylishly presented; the pixel art in this game is superb while also remaining true to what was in style in 1990. I feel like the soundtrack was better in the first game, with generally more memorable melodies, but this game really goes heavy metal with the VRC6-style chiptunes and it's a really interesting listen - probably a little too experimental and baroque to be a crowdpleaser for most, but I enjoyed the intracacy and the pushing of boundaries it's going for; this game is trying to be heavy and dirty, like an old Grunge album.

The most important reason Curse of the Moon 2 is good, though, is that it has the two most important features in a game; a Zelda 2-style downstab, and a corgi who drives a tank. What's not to love? Curse of the Moon 2 isn't gonna be everyone's bag; it really specifically appeals to people who like old Castlevania games and wants one that will really properly kick them in the ass. That's me, though, so this game feels like it was made for me. And, I can play it and pretend that the dreaded 3D revolution of the late 90's never happened! It's like seeing a movie with a lot of practical effects. It's a state of 'state of the art' that I can really get behind.

Next up: There's a little black spot on the sun today. It's the same old thing as yesterday.

I have no idea whether or not I've heard of that game before because all of the Bloodstained games have very similar titles and I couldn't tell you how many different games there are.

-hotdogturtle-- posted...

I have no idea whether or not I've heard of that game before because all of the Bloodstained games have very similar titles and I couldn't tell you how many different games there are.

There's just three. Ritual of the Night is a SotN-like, and Curse of the Moon/Curse of the Moon 2 are Castlevania III-likes.

Paratroopa1 posted...

Next up: There's a little black spot on the sun today. It's the same old thing as yesterday.

Is there a game called King of Pain?

Oh, wait. You have the Ukraine bundle. It's Ring of Pain.