I recently played 24 Killers.

Twice. Once with my friends on our shared game channel. Once alone in my room.

First let me preface this with... wow, I kinda loved it? Another friend of mine that I recommended the game to said she had trouble not just comparing it to Moon RPG, which the game is not shy about claiming as its inspiration. From its faceless protagonist, the core theme of empathy and self actualization, the charming mix of 2d and 3d graphics, to--probably the most obvious inspiration--the entire game mechanic.

I have not personally played all of Moon RPG, but I have seen enough to be like, "okay, yeah I get it." (It is on my list, but so are about 75 other games. I'll get to it eventually.)

I had a really good time with 24 Killers though. I quite enjoyed the writing. I like an abrasive main character that slowly grows more empathetic, and I really enjoy all of the weird little mons that you meet. Some of them are quirky or sad or have surprising personalities and each gives you just enough to understand a bit of their inner world. It really builds a nice microcosm I think. A well balanced pie slice of this little chunk of foam.

Now, as with all of the games I write reviews of, I try to interrogate them from my own view as a gamedev. What I would incorporate, what I might try to avoid.

I've been replaying Kingdom Hearts lately. The first one. The original--not Final Mix.

I have nothing against Final Mix. I own it in the ps4 collection. But sometimes I'm just looking at all of my PS2 games and want to pop a disc in. For nostalgia's sake.

Also, they recolored all of the heartless, and I'll never forgive them for this. Luckily, now that you can play on PC, the original colors have been modded back in, but also I'm not buying all of Kingdom Hearts again on PC.

But I didn't bring you here just to hear my unpopular opinions about Final Mix. I brought you here to hear my unpopular opinions about KH1 in general, so let's get started!

Vibes.

And we're back with part 2 of all of the games I've played this year!

Most people post their Game of the Year, Top 5 Games this year, Top 10 Games this year, etc...

I cannot simply choose one or two or ten games that I liked this year. Nor can I choose only games that were released this year because I never play anything in a timely manner. My list is backed up from years long since passed. I have determined to at least pretend to start some of those games I have in my steam library that have gone unloved for longer than I care to admit.

So I'm just going to list off Things I've Played This Year in order of broad categories from least-ish interesting to most-ish interesting. Hopefully, I don't leave anything out.

Anyways, let's jump right in!

I started typing up a post of every game I've played this year and then decided it was probably too long, so I'm diving it into two parts. Next part coming, uh... probably before the end of the year. I'm trying to give myself a little more time to finish/start certain games (and also to remember what other things I've played this year), so we'll see how that goes.

Short or Incomplete Experiences

(in no particular order)



Despite not usually being full games, game jam games still have quite a bit of work put into them. A lot of them have some spark of imagination, an interesting concept, or just a unique feeling that I think makes them worthwhile to experience. Like reading a short story, maybe the idea hasn't been fully explored, but you can often get something valuable out of the experience anyways.

I thought I'd talk a little bit about some experiences that might go overlooked. This is just a short list of free, incomplete or short games and toys (about an hour or less in length) that I've played this year. Many of them may seem rough or unpolished, but I thought they were worth fiddling around with for various reasons.


• Monster of the Weekend
  A little monster raising game jam game. Pretty neat! At first it seemed like I might be missing something, but as you play and try different combinations of food to feed your monster, it opens up the world in different ways. Pretty cool.
• The Riddle of the Temple
  A sort of test made in Decker. Will probably take less than 10 minutes to get through it all, but very enjoyable.
• Silver Thread: Deux
  I thought Silver Thread was pretty good for being the dev's first game. It reminded me a lot of little games I'd download off of tumblr back in the day, where it's maybe not super polished or well designed, but you can tell the dev cared and has some interesting ideas that could be iterated on in future projects.
  Deux, like the first one, is not very long. I don't think the mystery is really that deep or interesting, but it's still decently fun to play though. I like the character interactions, and the art is quite nice.
• Post Memory
  Made for a visual novel jam. Also by the Silver Thread dev. It's about moving to a strange little town and delivering mail. It's also a little rough around the edges, like their other games, but I think this one is my favorite so far. There are certain little "glitches" that I'm fairly certain are there on purpose that unfortunately don't really add much to the experience in its current form, but I think it's neat to find them regardless.
• Carpet Gallery
  A "toy" made for Toy Jam. Not really a "game" but more of an interactive experience. You just wander through uh... hundreds? of rooms filled with "carpets". Kind of an interesting labyrinth to explore. I feel like it would be neat to come back some months later and chart a different path through there.
• Company
  Another Toy Jam toy. Plant flowers. Attract little guys. That's it.
• Tender
  Another game jam game (I play a lot of those evidently). Raising strange and alien plants while following the diary of your botanist parents who have disappeared on this foreign planet... A cute a sweet little story. Neat concept. Maybe about an hour long.
• FISH FEAR ME (demo)
  Despite being on the short/incomplete list, I think I spent about 10 hours playing FISH FEAR ME already. lol
  It's technically still just a demo but I would dare to say there is quite a lot to be done.
  FISH FEAR ME is... it's like... if SNAKE FARM (the developer's previous game) had tank controls--which is to say... chaotic. Haha. (Okay but hear me out though...)
  Like SNAKE FARM, it's a top down roguelike hoard shooter/bullet hell where you can basically control the difficulty of the game by summoning as many or as few enemies as you'd like. The player is encouraged to summon specific fish (increasing in difficulty as the game progresses and you get stronger weapons) to get currency to unlock better skills and equipment.
  I thought maybe I wouldn't like FISH FEAR ME from the outset because... tank controls... but it turns out the first boat you get is just crap and you quickly unlock more interesting and specialized modes of movement. I was hooked...
  Get it? It's a fishing pun...

Anyways, those are my recs to keep you busy while you wait for any games you may be receiving or buying for yourself this holiday period. All of them are free, so you have no excuse to skip out on them!

I had assumed it would be an adventure game in the vein of The Legend of Zelda where you pick your way through the world fighting monsters and solving puzzles, but it's really quite different from that, sort of blending in management sim(?) elements (managing your towns by gathering resources every day, fighting off monsters, fixing broken things around town, etc.).