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

(+) Yeah! (+)

Oh god it's showing my topic as the hot topic. Please no

My group's favorite Jackbox game is Trivia Murder Party 2 but Job Job has definitely made a running for #2. The wheel on the other hand was a complete whiff, I don't think any of us liked the non-trivia parts and just personally I prefer Murder Party's style of trivia too.

Job Job definitely not an ally though after trying to out me as trans to my whole friend group by hitting me with a "if you went back in time, what's the one thing you'd tell your younger self?" prompt

Kenri posted...

My group's favorite Jackbox game is Trivia Murder Party 2 but Job Job has definitely made a running for #2. The wheel on the other hand was a complete whiff, I don't think any of us liked the non-trivia parts and just personally I prefer Murder Party's style of trivia too.

Job Job definitely not an ally though after trying to out me as trans to my whole friend group by hitting me with a "if you went back in time, what's the one thing you'd tell your younger self?" prompt

As far as my own Job Job answers go I'm not sure anything will top me answering "How can your co-workers tell you apart from the evil version of you?" by answering "Evil Para is straight" (yes my name actually showed up in a prompt, what a gift)

but this is news to absolutely nobody

Job Job is great.

That sounds like a really fun game. I like "pick funny answers" games but not when you have to come up with your own entirely, i'm just not clever enough. madlibs-style sounds great

Dels posted...

That sounds like a really fun game. I like "pick funny answers" games but not when you have to come up with your own entirely, i'm just not clever enough. madlibs-style sounds great

I think you would enjoy Job Job, basically how it works is everyone writes a couple of paragraphs about random topics, and then the words that everyone used get given to other people and then you have to use only the words given to you to respond to prompts, so it's got that sort of constraining factor that makes it funnier because people can only use what they have given to them

Waypoint Radio just spent some time discussing Slice & Dice in their latest episode, so that might start getting more attention all of a sudden

(what if Ren or Cado lurks here and thats how they found it lol)

#3: Monster Train

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/9/2/4/AAA-H0AADxb8.jpg

Back in late 2017, Slay the Spire was released. Now, some people will tell you that Slay the Spire was really released in 2019, but don't listen to them; that's just when it came out of early access. For you normies who don't have nearly 1500 hours in Slay the Spire, sure, maybe that suffices. But I got into Spire in 2017, and it almost completely dominated my life for the entirety of 2018. I had kind of a rough year, and Slay the Spire ended up being my biggest comfort game; I played it whenever I needed to relax and clear my head, which was basically all the time. Too much of the time, probably.

I started playing it before the Defect was even part of the game; I played it through the Defect's early release, beta art and all, and I played through plenty of balance changes and minor upgrades. By the time the game was fully released in 2019, I was actually pretty played out of it. Sure, I came back for the Watcher, the fourth character, who ended up being really cool and sucking me back in for a couple hundred hours. But while most people were still discovering this game in 2019 and 2020, and even to this day, I was played out of this one by 2020. I occasionally go back to it, but I got what I wanted out of it for the most part. I needed a new fix. Enter Monster Train, which would eventually pull off an unbelievable trick - it would get me to play what is basically a Slay the Spire variant and get sucked into it for over 1000 hours all over again.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/9/2/5/AAA-H0AADxb9.jpg

Monster Train is initially pretty unassuming, and I nearly passed on it originally. It'd be hard to blame you if the game looks like some kinda wannabe mobile game; something about the logo and the visuals give off an annoying vibe that at best, sells Hearthstone, and at worst sells Clash of Clans or something. The game's visuals aren't actually that bad, really, but the game's first impression is weak, and combined with a name that is very direct but not very attention-grabbing, I could see a lot of people completely overlooking this game. Slay the Spire pounced and landed in an absolutely dominant niche, setting an entirely new trend for indie games by successfully replicating a Dominion-like deckbuilder game in a video game format; there was nothing like it on the market, and it demanded attention. Monster Train looks like a cheap knockoff, at best.

But make no mistake; Monster Train is no cheap knockoff. It IS a knockoff, yes; the devs admitted as such, and seem to have felt so guilty about it that they actually offered a sale for anyone who already owns Spire, which is cool. It makes sense, as people who own Spire are more likely to be interested in Monster Train, while... already having Spire to play. But the foundations of Monster Train are absolutely rock solid; as much as the mechanics seem to borrow from Slay the Spire almost 1 to 1 at times, it really takes these and put its own twist on them, while also in a lot of ways actually smoothing out some of the things I don't like about Spire. This game demands every bit as much attention as Spire gets.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/9/2/6/AAA-H0AADxb-.jpg

If you're familiar with the Slay the Spire format then Monster Train will be easy to understand, but I'll recap. Slay the Spire is a sort of deckbuilding roguelike RPG; you fight through a series of monster battles using a deck of cards, which starts out weak and shitty but grows more powerful over time as you add more cards to it, while also collecting helpful items. Monsters fight you by showing what attacks they will perform, and you can respond by playing cards up to your energy level to attack them or block their attacks, until you reduce them to 0 hp. Any hp you lose is carried over to the next fight as you travel down a branching map of various risks and rewards, and chances to recover your hp can be few and far between. Eventually, you fight bosses, and eventually you either win, or you die and start all over.

Okay, so that's also exactly how Monster Train works, except it's a game where you summon creatures, and they fight monsters sort of like a tower defense game. You're on a train that's travelling to a destination, and you must outlive timed waves of enemies as it arrives. There are three floors to your train, all of which you can summon creatures to to try to stop your enemies' assault; with each turn the enemies survive, they climb up a floor of the train until they reach the pyre, the glowing hot core that powers the train, which serves as your hp for the run. You want to let as few monsters get by you, zero if possible, on your way to eventually fighting the final boss. As you go along, you add more creature cards to your deck, as well as spell cards which can be played directly onto your creatures or theirs for various effects, as well as gaining items that improve your abilities, and you go through a map of branching paths that lead to different rewards. Again, it's Slay the Spire, but with monsters, on a train.

There's a couple of things that really set this apart from Slay the Spire. First of all, the tower defense setup is interesting and really changes the game. I know the words 'tower defense' don't really inspire a lot of confidence that this isn't the sort of boring moba knockoff that this game's art style is trying to make it look like, but I think whereas Slay the Spire fights can go on indefinitely if you don't ask, Monster Train's monsters are constantly advancing and MUST be dealt with ASAP, and that adds a lot of urgency to the game; you have a strictly limited amount of turns with which to make the biggest impact possible. This also adds another dynamic layer to the game in which you need to 'build' your units, adding upgrades to them over time, in addition to cultivating your deck; you can win by getting one really powerful unit, or you can win with having a lot of good spell cards, etc. Lots of different ways to improve your deck beyond just adding and removing cards.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/9/2/7/AAA-H0AADxb_.jpg

The other thing is the sheer variety of playstyles here. Slay the Spire has four different characters, each of whom has their own starting deck and library of cards to draft from. Monster Train takes this a step further; in addition to having five possible clans, six with DLC, all of whom have their own starting deck, units, and spells, you pick TWO and mix and match them, making a starting deck of both their cards and having both of their libraries to draft from. This exponentially increases the number of different ways to play the game; there's 21 different clan combinations, not to mention all of the starting champion heroes you can pick from, and the alternate starting cards for each.

This really opens the game up. Each combination of two different clans means tons of unique combo potential for each; every clan has their own gimmick but they're all designed to be able to play in concert with one another, and each clan has particular units or spells that combo in really cool ways with stuff from a different clan. Each combination plays uniquely, and every combination of two clans + starting champion is tracked on your results page for 72 different starting configurations. For a completionist like me, the replay value here is insane. Four classes in Spire is one thing but no two runs of Monster Train feel alike at all.

Quite simply, I think it's the most polished of all the deckbuilding roguelikes out there. Slay the Spire has a few things that annoy me; the random boss items varying wildly in quality, which is fixed in Monster Train by simply giving you a +1 energy/+1 draw/+1 space option every time, which is still an interesting choice in its own right; all are good and none are obviously correct. And the events which can range from game-breaking to game-losing completely at random in Spire are toned down a lot here, which is good, I think; events are still sometimes game-breaking in Spire but they're always at least positive, and you get a bunch of rewards all at once too which is nice; the choice of WHICH batch of rewards to take, again, is much nicer than just praying to get somtehing good in Spire. I've said this before, but I don't like the 'slot machine' approach in this type of roguelike, where sometimes you get something good and sometimes you get something bad; Monster Train rewards are ALWAYS good, but the matter of choosing which will help you MOST, now that's a major challenge.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/9/2/8/AAA-H0AADxcA.jpg

The game is overall probably a little easier than Slay the Spire I think, which isn't a bad thing; it's still pretty challenging, especially at its peak difficulty (it uses an "ascension" style difficulty mode like Spire - everything in this game is basically like Spire). Unlike Spire, I can kinda winstreak this, but it's still pretty hard. Unlike Spire, where it feels like fights require you just barely squeeze out every little resource you have, it feels like Monster Train is built more around strategy than tactics; you basically HAVE to completely break the game to win, but there's a lot of broken combos of cards you can make, and the game EXPECTS you to do it. This is kind of a fun feeling; you'll feel like you made something really overpowered, but then it'll turn out that it was actually just enough to get by. The game just has so many different, emergent ways to create a powerful build, though, that the idea of breaking the game isn't really as intimidating as it sounds. I'd say pretty much a solid 95+% of the cards in the game are really solid; there's a lot you can do here.

I've been trying to evangelize this game a lot to people who enjoy Slay the Spire, and a lot of people haven't gotten around to taking my recommendation, and I completely get it. I recommend Slay the Spire for most people first, since it's the more popular game, and for most people, Slay the Spire is plenty. You can get tens, hundreds, or thousands of hours out of Spire and be completely satisfied; picking up another game just like it probably isn't that appealing if you're not addicted to the genre like I am. A lot of people picked up Spire in 2019, or 2020, or later, and aren't even really done with it yet, or it hasn't been long enough to warrant giving Monster Train a try. But for me, it was the defining game of 2020, and the defining game of the early months of the pandemic. And I picked it up all over again in 2021 too, when the expansion came out that added a new class and a lot of powerful and fun new features that made the game fresh again. If you ever do end up getting tired of Spire, but you're feeling the itch for an addictive roguelike in the same vein, Monster Train is absolutely the way to go. I can't say enough good things about this one; it's a masterclass in taking what was good about Slay the Spire and building on it to create a deckbuilder I consider nearly perfect.

Next up: I wanna preface this by saying that the top two games on this list are GOAT-tier for me; they're both in my top 10 games of all time and could be higher. Anyway, this next one - it's finally a chance for me to correct a huge error in my "game of the 10's" list.

Just did some analysis and realized I've written about 70,000 words for this project so far, which is like, a 230-page book or something

if you read this topic, you read a fucking book, congrats

https://youtube.com/watch?v=tdJ_iwFL6R8

I didn't mention it but Monster Train has a really nice soundtrack; I usually mute Spire when I play but I don't mute Train, I think it's got music worth listening to

I'm actually gonna do a ranking of all these entries by soundtrack just because I didn't talk about music a lot lol

When you said there was a game you had over 1000 hours in, for some reason it didn't occur to me it might be Monster Train.

Monster Train >>> Slay the Spire for me. I appreciate what Spire is doing, and it obviously came first and defined the genre, but MT is just far more interesting to me, and I think a big part of that is that Spire feels far less out of my own control. I don't generally play true roguelikes because I don't enjoy games where I'm at the whims of RNG and you gain nothing when that happens. You do technically unlock stuff in Spire, I guess, but if I ever ended up in a bad situation with MT, I was able to say "I probably could have done something about this." I also simply felt like the gameplay loop was more engaging, even when I'm doing something silly like spamming heal spells onto a single creature because that buffs it to ridiculous levels. I was surprised to find Steam only has me recorded at about 12 hours on Monster Train, because I could swear I've played more than that. (I make no bones about being one of the completionist players with hundreds of hours, but that feels really limited.)

And have you really written 70k words? Your Monster Train write-up was long, but I guess I didn't realize what wordcount totals run like on forum posts. Your first two actual write-ups were 500 and 700 words, so if that's the average, I guess this makes sense. Thank you for not just writing a single sentence about each of these games and calling it a day.

azuarc posted...

Thank you for not just writing a single sentence about each of these games and calling it a day.

Glad you appreciate it! It just wouldn't be engaging to me to make this topic if I wasn't giving my thoughts about the game, that's what I really want to do.

1-2 sentence writeups have their own appeal but mostly when they're for something I already know well. For games I've never played/maybe never heard of, definitely prefer longer ones like this!

Paratroopa1 posted...

You can get tens, hundreds, or thousands of hours out of Spire and be completely satisfied; picking up another game just like it probably isn't that appealing if you're not addicted to the genre like I am.

Yeah this is the boat I'm in. I like Spire, I've put a fair amount of time into it (tens rather than hundreds of hours), and that was enough for me. I'm intrigued by the unique parts of Monster Train you mention like the tower defence, but it doesn't sound different enough to get my attention, I have little desire to play a Spire-like all over again. Oh well!

And the events which can range from game-breaking to game-losing completely at random in Spire are toned down a lot here, which is good, I think; events are still sometimes game-breaking in Spire but they're always at least positive, and you get a bunch of rewards all at once too which is nice; the choice of WHICH batch of rewards to take, again, is much nicer than just praying to get somtehing good in Spire.

I assume the second Spire here is supposed to say Train? I had to read it a few times to make sense of it lol.

Guessing Outer Wilds Echoes again for like the seventh time.

There was at least once in the write-up where para cited the wrong game. That was probably it.

And MT is not really much like Spire for me. I enjoyed Monster Train. I didn't care for Slay the Spire.

I have now Wishlisted Monster Train.

Sorry I haven't been posting much, but I've been reading this topic pretty closely and wishlisted Unsighted, GOTG, and Slice & Dice, which all look interesting. I also got Overboard!, which is a pretty fun game. Still in the middle of Overboard! but I do like the depth that each character has so far.

Some various thoughts:

Mario Party Superstar - Maybe it's the years of playing the N64 Mario Parties through Netplay, but Superstar was a muted response for me. I wish there were more boards and that the minigames had a little more soul to them (compare Look Away from MP2 and Look Away from Superstars to get what I mean). Stickers are really great, though, and I'm glad they brought Horror Land and Yoshi's Tropical Island, both favorites for me.

Great Ace Attorney - GAA2 still ranks as one of my favorite AA games, but GAA1 brings this down hardcore. The presentation is the best AA has to offer. My girlfriend's going through GAA2 and I'm watching it through her eyes, so I wonder how GAA2 holds up.

New Pokemon Snap - I absolutely adore this game. Count me as another one that expected a lukewarm sequel and got the most passionate Pokemon project yet. I love the Pokemon diversity and all the interactions. I gave up on the game and just watched 1-4* picture walkthroughs, which was a delight because WOW. There are so many interactions in this game and I don't nearly have the patience for this game. I gifted this game to my niece and hopefully she'll get just as much love from this game as I did.

Jackbox 8 - Love Poll Mine and Job Job. I'm not so hot on the other 3 games. I think I still prefer 3 because I like every game in 3. But Job Job is an absolute delight to play.

Monster Train - I'm a huge Slay the Spire fan (#3 game of the 2010s decade) and I got Monster Train. It's good, but it didn't hook me as much as Spire did. I think Spire is more tightly designed; I found that I used the same combos over and over in Train than in Spire. I also feel the bosses and enemies are more smartly designed in Spire to challenge your deck. I finished about half of the combinations (minus DLC) in Train. I also did not go up the Ascension at all. I might come back to this, but I feel pretty firm in preferring Spire.

andylt posted...

I assume the second Spire here is supposed to say Train? I had to read it a few times to make sense of it lol.

yeah oops, I was comparing both games so often that I wrote the wrong one, I didn't proofread very carefully

I'd like to preface my next writeup by taking another look at my list from last decade. I recapped the top 25 of my list from 2010-2019 at the beginning of the topic, like such:

1. Crypt of the NecroDancer
2. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
3. Undertale
4. The Witness
5. SpyParty
6. CrossCode
7. Mega Man 10
8. Darkest Dungeon
9. FTL: Faster Than Light
10. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Spirit of Justice
11. Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective
12. Night in the Woods
13. Rhythm Heaven Fever
14. Slay The Spire
15. Baba Is You
16. Virtue's Last Reward
17. The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds
18. Super Mario Maker
19. Jackbox Party Packs 1-6
20. Cadence of Hyrule
21. Portal 2
22. Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling
23. Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony
24. Miles Edgeworth: Ace Attorney Investigations 2 - Prosecutor's Path
25. Mass Effect 2

I decided, for the purpose of illustration, to re-do this list based on my opinions in 2022:

1. Outer Wilds (New)
2. Crypt of the NecroDancer (Down 1)
3. SpyParty (Up 2)
4. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Down 2)
5. Undertale (Down 2)
6. The Witness (Down 2)
7. Return of the Obra Dinn (New)
8. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Spirit of Justice (Up 2)
9. Baba Is You (Up 6)
10. Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective (Up 1)
11. Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony (Up 12)
12. Darkest Dungeon (Down 4)
13. Slay the Spire (Up 1)
14. CrossCode (Down 8)
15. Rhythm Heaven Fever (Down 2)
16. Virtue's Last Reward (-)
17. Mega Man 10 (Down 10)
18. The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds (Down 1)
19. FTL: Faster Than Light (Down 10)
20. Jackbox Party Pack 1-6 (Down 1)
21. Super Mario Maker (Down 3)
22. Night in the Woods (Down 10)
23. Miles Edgeworth: Ace Attorney Investigations 2 - Prosecutor's Path (Up 1)
24. Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling (Down 2)
25. Grim Dawn (NR)

For the most part, things haven't changed too drastically. A few games fell a few slots - this should not be read as an indictment of CrossCode, MM10, FTL, or NitW, I just feel that I had them a bit too high and shuffled a few things ahead based on giving things a couple more years to digest, but they're still fantastic and I stand by everything I said about them. Overall, my favorite games remain pretty steady. This is a killer list, by the way. I mean of course, this is over 10 years instead of just 2, but Hades and Guardians of the Galaxy probably don't make this list. I love these games.

But there are two new entrants to the list; they are both games that I unfortunately played JUST after finishing my decade list - like, weeks after. So I unfortunately wasn't able to include them.

The first is Return of the Obra Dinn, a game that I still can't stop thinking about or watching people play two years later. A brilliant detective mystery where you investigate a series of strange deaths on a cargo ship by going back in time to the moment they died, Return of the Obra Dinn is really one of those games you can only play once, but there's nothing else like it. I really enjoyed how it made me feel like it was actually ME solving the mystery; the game gives you no direct hints or feedback, it simply lays the scene out and asks you to interpret it. I fell in love with the game's style and story as well as the smart gameplay mechanics, and it's a game I'll always remember playing for the first time fondly for its emergent style of puzzle solving.

The other, as you'll notice, is at the very top - Outer Wilds. I'm almost sort of mad that I didn't play Outer Wilds earlier, because it ended up retroactively being my favorite game of the decade, and it wasn't really all that close. I bring these two games up because, along with The Witness, Obra Dinn and Outer Wilds form a sort of trilogy of late-10's games that I always end up recommending in similar ways. All three games are completely different, but all of them share a similar sensibility about having the player solve a big mystery by giving indirect clues and having you make logical conclusions about what's going on based on them. None of these games tell you what to do or what's going on outright; they simply put a bunch of stuff in front of you and ask the player to make sense of it themselves.

Outer Wilds, though, is just the best. I don't even want to talk about what Outer Wilds is too much, as merely the experience of finding out anything about what's going on in the game is something I think people should find out for themselves. But, in short, it's a space exploration game where you travel to different planets in search of the answer of a grand, cosmic mystery. While The Witness is all about puzzles, and Obra Dinn is about murder mystery-solving, Outer Wilds is more lore-heavy, with more text to read and comprehend, and it's more about figuring out what's going on in a general sense and experimenting with the world in order to figure out what you're able to do about it. That's about the most I really want to be specific about the game. Unraveling the game's mysteries is one of the most mindblowing experiences I've ever had in a video game, and much like Obra Dinn, it's an unraveling that you can really only do once; after that, it's unraveled, and it can only truly be enjoyed again vicariously through other people unraveling it themselves.

It is no exaggeration that I think Outer Wilds is the most finely-crafted, carefully-curated mystery experiences in any video game I've played, and I don't know if I'll ever play anything like it again. I'm gonna be thinking about this game until I die, from its geniusly designed 'puzzles' to the incredible environments and atmosphere to the way it's genuinely changed my outlook on life. It's truly a shame that I can only play it once; if I could forget a game and play it over again, I'd pick Outer Wilds in a heartbeat. But I've played it once, and sadly, I'll never play anything like it again. Nobody will ever make another game like Outer Wilds.

...Wait.

Wait. They made a sequel?

They made a motherfucking sequel???

#2: Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/5/4/1/AAA-H0AADykF.jpg

(Note: I'm not going to spoil ANYTHING in the plain text, or in the screenshots. I never include what I think are major spoilers in the screenshots of any of these writeups, but I'm being ESPECIALLY cagey about this one, because... well, you know why. If you've played the game, you know what I'm not showing and why.)

They made a sequel! Sort of. It's actually an expansion, but I played the original Outer Wilds for 25 hours and this 'expansion' for 18 hours. It's as close to a sequel as I ever expect to get to this game. It's one more hike up the trail for the Outer Wilds expedition; one last adventure in this masterpiece of a game. It was more than I could have ever asked for.

I was initially rather hesitant about the announcement that they were making an expansion to Outer Wilds. I had played the game by the time the news came out, and I was immediately skeptical. I don't think I can stress enough that I consider Outer Wilds to be basically a perfect game. There's virtually nothing major about it that I would change, and nothing that I felt could have been added or more fleshed out that would have improved the game's experience at all. It is basically exactly how it should be. The notion of an expansion to the game coming in and upsetting the incredibly delicate balance that the game already had was really strange and hard to wrap my head around. The only reason I decided to be optimistic about it was that I trusted the dev team. They already made Outer Wilds, after all, and I trusted that they wouldn't be making an expansion to the game if they didn't have a really good idea of what to do, and how to make it fit. I trusted that if they were doing it, then they definitely had a story they still wanted to tell.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/5/4/2/AAA-H0AADykG.jpg

I needn't have been worried - in fact, now that I've played Echoes of the Eye, I can't imagine the game without it anymore. The part of the game that the expansion goes into now feels entirely necessary, a core part of the experience, a chapter in the story that absolutely needed to be told, its themes required for a full understanding of what Outer Wilds is about. Even though I trusted the dev team, I wasn't really sure if they would be able to pull this off, but they did. If Echoes of the Eye falls short of the greatness of Outer Wilds at all, it is by the teensiest of margins; a 9.75/10 game versus a 10/10 game, if even that. It is really hard to match the experience that Outer Wilds delivers, but Echoes of the Eye manages to live up to its own hype, while at the same time delivering a surprising, new experience all of its own.

Again, like I said about Outer Wilds, I don't really want to talk about what Echoes of the Eye is. Even if you've already played Outer Wilds, I don't want to talk about it; if you're confused about what this 'expansion' even is, you're going to have to find out for yourself, because I'm not gonna talk about it here; not without spoiler bars. I actually haven't really decided what I'm going to talk about yet; much like Outer Wilds itself, this review is a sort of long, winding journey where I don't know where I'll end up at the end of it. I didn't want to do spoiler bars for any of these writeups, but I think it might be necessary here. I've said about as much as I can about Echoes of the Eye without getting into spoiler territory, and I consider spoiler territory to be "talking about any aspect of the game basically at all."

So there's your non-spoiler review of Echoes of the Eye. It's a worthy followup to the game that everyone who played Outer Wilds has to play. It's something that I thought I didn't need, but I foolishly realized afterwards that was completely necessary. It was one more chance to revisit this game and truly appreciate how great it is; a sort of celebratory afterparty for me where I get to have a victory lap and also feel like I can properly say goodbye to the game, but also just a brilliant game in its own right. (In case it's not obvious, I had to be clear about my definition of what counts as a 'game of the year' here to include expansions, since Echoes of the Eye is an expansion. But by all rights it deserves to be in the 2021 GOTY conversation.)

Now come the spoilers. Please, for the love of god, look away if you haven't beaten Echoes of the Eye. It's just for me and the people who have played it. I can't not talk about my experience with the game.

I think that everything I already said about the game feeling like a crucial part of the core experience now will probably ring true for anyone who has played Echoes of the Eye. The setting and the story of The Stranger are fascinating, and answers a key question that I didn't realize the original story left hanging - why did the Nomai only pick up the Eye of the Universe's signal when they did? But even more importantly, I think the thematic exploration here - the fear of oblivion, and keeping your eyes open and unafraid to the painful truths lying within the unknowns of a vast and indifferent cosmos - are a beautiful and poignant rumination, a poetic appendix to the story already told in Outer Wilds. Outer Wilds is breath-taking, awe-inspiring, and often scary to behold and even scarier tothink about, but Echoes of the Eye really takes that theme of 'fear' and does something with it.

The game can't help but have the jig be up from the start by warning the player that this game is not for the faint of heart, and offering an option for 'reduced frights.' This was immediately a bit alarming, giving that Dark Bramble was already intense enough as it was, and the anglerfish somehow DIDN'T warrant a 'reduced frights' option; but something in the expansion did? So I knew whatever the hell was gonna happen, it was gonna be freaky as shit. I'm not someone who handles scary stuff poorly in general, but I don't deal well with jumpscares specifically, as I get easily startled and it's kinda bad for my heart. Being scared can be fun; being startled isn't. I ended up deciding to go with "Reduced Frights" off. I wanted to face this game with my eyes open, unafraid. I wanted to play this game as intended.

Once you figure out the initial puzzle of where you're even supposed to go, which took an embarrassing amount of time sitting around in space and wondering if I was doing it right, Echoes starts off with a bang as you arrive on the Stranger. I was, of course, already preparing myself for scares, and it starts out pretty creepy, landing on a dark, derelict spaceship floating in the middle of nowhere. Going into a nearly pitch-black room, ominous music drawing me forward to a single lit button. Knowing that the only way forward is to press it, expecting the absolute worst. Pressing it, and... it's beautiful. I was so dumbfounded by the first drop into the raft ride that I gasped out loud, said "what the fuck?" and started laughing. I'm not normally a very vocal video game player. I don't gasp and say what the fuck a lot. But that got me good. It was one of the most memorable moments in the game right from the start.

Exploring the Stranger - the first half of the expansion, essentially - is wonderful. Of the two 'halves' of the expansion, it's the one that feels more familiar to the core Outer Wilds experience; exploring abandoned dwellings, finding remnants of past civilizations and clues that help add together the mystery of what this spaceship is doing here, and what happened to the people on it. I think it's cool that they still found a lot of ways to make it fresh and new; the environment with the ring-shaped world with a river flowing through it is novel, and the use of pictures instead of text makes for a different experience. It seems a bit contrived at times that there's a bunch of really convenient picture-reels everywhere, but I like that you have to derive what happened or understand information based on the implications of what they're showing you rather than text spelling it out for you. Exploring this area is really cool, and figuring out the first huge revelation - going to sleep by the fire with the soul-lantern-thing - is a great brain teaser that makes you feel like a genius for solving it.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/5/4/6/AAA-H0AADykK.jpg

More Echoes of the Eye spoilers. Please don't read unless you've beaten the game, I'm begging you to not read them

The second half of Echoes of the Eye, venturing into the 'dark world' and avoiding the spooky elk, is understandably a really divisive part of the game, and I get it. I wasn't sure how I felt about it at first. For starters, it's REALLY SCARY with reduced frights off. I struggled with it at times; it's crazy anxiety-inducing and heartrate-increasing in a way nothing else in this game is, even the anglerfish. I still committed to leaving reduced frights off, though, because I WANTED the full-bore experience - I actually think turning reduced frights on is okay, it's still spooky enough, though I think it also renders the game a bit too easy. I liked actually having to solve the stealth sections in this portion; I think they were fun.

The other problem is that I ended up getting lost a lot of the time; it's so dark that it's really hard to actually get a feel for what the areas are like, and how you can avoid the elk. I ended up wandering lost for quite a while in a lot of the areas and this ended up getting frustrating when I couldn't figure out how to get around some of the guys. This isn't helped by the fact that some of the stealth sections are just really hard, and while one of the major ones can actually be bypassed with a really clever trick, the other one can't, so you just have to keep trying it, but I kept falling in the water on accident because I couldn't see the floor, oops. I did actually start to get a little frustrated with the game at some point, which wasn't the best of feelings. I don't want to be frustrated at Outer Wilds.

But man, the payoff was so worth it. First of all, the environments in the 'dark world' in particular are just dumbfoundingly beautiful and haunting at the same time; you can see why the elk are content to just hang out there forever, it's so cozy! And wandering about these areas is just so damn spooky. I'm not really a fan of atmospheric horror games all that much, mainly because I'm just not a huge fan of the vibe of like, grotesque monsters and horrible murder and generally bleak environments and situations, but Outer Wilds isn't doing ANY of that, it's JUST sticking to a eerie-but-awe-inspiring vibe which is awesome, which made this a horror experience I could really get behind.

And figuring out the 'puzzles' for what you have to do is so damn satisfying; learning the way all of the rules of the world work is mindblowing. I actually figured out the trick of leaving the lantern behind and walking away on accident, just through experimentation. I guess it wasn't really accidental, because I did try it on purpose to see what would happen if I walked away from it, but I was surprised that it did something; I figured I'd just get lost. And putting it all together and being able to meet the Prisoner at the end was absolutely breathtaking; arguably a better and more satisfying ending to the game. It's not the only time I cried in Outer Wilds, but it's probably the time I cried the most.

I think most of what I could say about the expansion is self-evident to everyone who's played it. The scary bits definitely turn some people off more than others, but I really felt the payoff was so worth it. It's just brilliant. I can't think of anything more to say.

Long story short, Outer Wilds might be my favorite game of all time, and Echoes of the Eye firmly solidifies that; if not for a few nostalgic favorites from the late 80's/early 90's that are so unimpeachably special to me, this would rank #1 all-time. It's my favorite game ever made since 1994, and that's kind of insane for me to think about.

But I did feel like it would be KINDA lame to have Echoes of the Eye at #1 - it feels a little too obvious, being that it's an expansion DLC to my favorite game of the 10's, and it's not a full game.

Fortunately, I did play one game this past year that spoke directly to my heart even more profoundly than Outer Wilds did, somehow, so that game took the #1 spot instead.

Next up: My 2021 GOTY, and one of my favorite games of all time.

It's like, the only game of interest to me that I've not mentioned or implied in this entire thread, so its absence should make it guessable!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/6/2/5/AAcM16AADylZ.jpg

I feel attacked

I played Outer Wilds a long time ago and couldn't complete it. I was juggling too many games and I think Outer Wilds in particular needs to be played to completion. I recently picked up Outer Wilds again and I'm really loving it. It's such a unique game, especially as someone who hasn't ever played an atmospheric mystery game like Myst. I'm looking forward to completing it.

Hopefully this isn't a spoiler question, but is Echoes of the Eye already embedded in my Outer Wilds file? Or is it another mode I click from the menu? Is it clear if I'm playing Echoes of the Eye or not?

I also got around to buying Slice & Dice and I love it. Dicey Dungeons was really fun, but I think most of it was due to presentation instead of mechanics. I loved the art, the achievements, the music...but the mechanics felt a little lacking, especially for a dice-based rogue-like. I think Slice & Dice captures it much better. I got 4/6 normal wins so far. I got to the final boss each time, either dying to it or beating it. I could see myself playing this for a long time.

SSBM_Guy posted...

Hopefully this isn't a spoiler question, but is Echoes of the Eye already embedded in my Outer Wilds file? Or is it another mode I click from the menu? Is it clear if I'm playing Echoes of the Eye or not?

It is already in the game if you have it installed, although it requires some steps to access and is largely self contained - it doesn't change much base content. Essentially (very minor structural spoilers) they add a new very large area to explore with its own unique mechanics. So it is not going to be immediately obvious to a new player what the DLC entails, but knowing that you can probably easily guess when you find it.

I would honestly recommend completing the base game before attempting the DLC.

That's a lot of spoiler bars! I like your Witness/Obra Dinn/OW analysis, personally Tunic also scratched the same itch as those for me but I will eagerly check out any game that gets favourably compared to any of them.

I'm always a bit disappointed when (basegame Outer Wilds spoilers) the time loop is used to advertise the game. I understand it as it's a core conceit you discover very early on but I loved knowing absolutely nothing going into that game. Though of course it helps that I played it in 2019 before I'd seen it hyped up at all so my expectations were pretty nonexistent. God what a game though. I'm glad Echoes pretty much lives up to the original for you as I've heard some be a bit less enthusiastic about it, I'll definitely play it sometime.

Can we get a rundown of 50-2 pls, I want to predict 1 but I forget what's already appeared >_>

Also glancing at your 2010s list I guess I should check out whatever SpyParty is, as we share a lot of other favs (unless it's a Jackbox kinda thing).

How much of an Outer Wilds spoiler knowing that its a gameplay loop where you have a set amount of time to explore for clues and figure out how to do things which is info you use to progress further the next time

because thats all I know and it seems like basically nothing

That Outer Wilds spoiler is like, the first thing I'd tell someone to try to hook them into the game if I thought they needed more of a hook than my recommendation alone. It's not a terrible spoiler, but I'm still not going to say it just in case.

You know, I guess I never DID do a list recap, and I should have, so here's the list so far:

1. ???
2. Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye
3. Monster Train
4. The Jackbox Party Pack 8
5. New Pokemon Snap
6. Slice & Dice
7. Unsighted
8. The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles
9. Hades
10. Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy
11. Phantasy Star Universe (Clementine)
12. Deltarune Chapter 2
13. Mario Party Superstars
14. Ynglet
15. Petal Crash
16. Valheim
17. Animal Crossing: New Horizons
18. Overboard!
19. Gnosia
20. Storybook Brawl
21. Paper Mario: The Origami King
22. WarioWare: Get It Together!
23. Understand
24. Iris and the Giant
25. Ring of Pain
26. Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2
27. Spiritfarer
28. Among Us
29. The Jackbox Party Pack 7
30. Inscryption
31. SNKRX
32. Death's Door
33. Astalon: Tears of the Earth
34. The Forgotten City
35. Spookware
36. 30XX
37. Bean and Nothingness
38. Dum-Dum
39. One Step From Eden
40. Mario Golf: Super Rush
41. Pawnbarian
42. RITE
43. The Pedestrian
44. BPM: Bullets Per Minute
45. Murder By Numbers
46. Fall Guys
47. Luck Be a Landlord
48. Webbed
49. Dorfromantik
50. The Legend of Doom

I didn't know about that spoiler when I first played, and it was cool figuring it out. That said, I don't think knowing about it in advance is that big a deal. Honestly, it's kind of a spoiler for most time loop games - how cool would it be to play Majora's Mask (game everyone knows is one of these) without knowing in advance? But still, not a huge deal.

andylt posted...

Also glancing at your 2010s list I guess I should check out whatever SpyParty is, as we share a lot of other favs (unless it's a Jackbox kinda thing).

SpyParty is a game where one player has to pretend to be an AI-controlled guest at a fancy party while the other person has to try to find them; the 'spy' has to sneakily complete a list of objectives while blending in with the AI guests, while the other player watches from afar with a sniper rifle and gets one shot to kill them. It's incredibly brilliantly designed, but it's also kind of hard to get into, especially since it's strictly a 1v1 competitive game with no real single player, so it's the sort of thing you have to be really into to play.

I'm stumped on what #1 could be, but I assume it'll be an "oh, duh" moment when I see it. My random guess is Chicory, for no particular reason.

I've gotta play Echoes of the Eye sometime. I'm not as big on Outer Wilds as most of its fans seem to be, but it was still an insanely cool experience.

Paratroopa1 posted...

SpyParty is a game where one player has to pretend to be an AI-controlled guest at a fancy party while the other person has to try to find them; the 'spy' has to sneakily complete a list of objectives while blending in with the AI guests, while the other player watches from afar with a sniper rifle and gets one shot to kill them. It's incredibly brilliantly designed, but it's also kind of hard to get into, especially since it's strictly a 1v1 competitive game with no real single player, so it's the sort of thing you have to be really into to play.

oh this sounds awesome, but yeah probably difficult to get into, I don't play many multiplayer games these days anyway. Pretending to be an AI is a great premise though, I used to do stuff like that in games as a kid for fun.

For #1 I'm guessing Unpacking. It's not a roguelite or a speedrun game but it is colourful and 90s and I think it can probably be called, uh, 'gender', as the kids would say, in a way that I imagine would appeal to you.

This Is How Professionals Play Spy Party
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvO5epO-298

What could I see appearing on this list? Tunic? Rogue Legacy 2? It Takes Two?

- Games with cute characters and colorful, fun worlds. I'm a big softy. I like my games warm and fuzzy. If it can make me cry that's worth double points!

- Anything with really bright colors and stylized visuals.

- Games that are replayable over and over again, such as roguelikes. I love to waste time playing games while also wasting time watching youtube videos - it's basically my favorite hobby.

- Anything that reminds me of something I played in the 90's. I am trapped in the 90's, both emotionally, and in terms of my gaming tastes.

- Games with novel or interesting stories.

- Games with novel strategic game mechanics that I can sink my teeth into.

- Games with really good soundtracks. Good music keeps me coming back.

- Games that are challenging, but not overly so. "Easy to learn, difficult to master" is my preference.

- Platformers, puzzle games, rhythm games, any sort of strategy/RPG things tend to be my primary genres, but I'm pretty eclectic and will play almost anything.

uh...Lenna's Inception fits most of that description, but I doubt that's the one.

Para's already said that Lenna's Inception and Unpacking didn't make it, and I think Tunic is a 2022 game?

Has Paradise Killer been mentioned yet?

It makes sense to be Chicory. Exciting! Im in the middle of playing it and its definitely a relaxing game.

Chicory is a good shout, Wandersong didn't make the 2010s list so I didn't think to include it but it makes sense. Can't think what else would be there, I doubt it's something like Psychonauts 2.

Edit: Oh I see now the list of games she hasn't played includes both Unpacking and Psycho2 >_> Yeah it must be Chicory then. I suggest checking out Unpacking though if it's ever on sale Para, not sure if you'd enjoy the gameplay but I think you'd appreciate the narrative and the way the narrative is delivered. And it's packed full of '90s+'00s nostalgia (including video games)! Very short tho.

And suddenly, Powerwash Simulator.

swirIdude posted...

I have now Wishlisted Monster Train.

And guess what's on sale for $7.49 now?!

Its also in the current Humble Choice alongside Deathloop so if you want both of those its not a bad deal

It's coming, I wanted to do this writeup some degree of justice

Para's saving it for Halloween because it's Vampire Survivors.

Safety bump

power outage bump

Hadn't played any Slice & Dice for two weeks while I was on a trip for work, came back today and immediately got my first win

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4onTqN7Ctk