Ghosty: I have put at least 250 hours into this game. There's something strangely therapeutic about this game. It feels so chill and so hectic at the same time! I like the journey towards the final boss more than the final boss though. Thankfully, that is most of the game. But this is a game I have been able to play even when I feel so crap that other games have been too demanding to enjoy.
John: A short eerie first-person poem, elevated by the accidental choice to leave debug controls in the release version. You can experience the poem as intended, or step outside its boundaries and contemplate it in a new way.
Carmichael Micaalus: Very strange, very goofy.
Psychic_Heist: Like "Tekken 7," "Guilty Gear Rev 2" represent its franchise in peak form. Unlike "Tekken 7," "Guilty Gear Rev 2" is the much better fighting game in teaching the player how to play it. In fact, it's the best fighting game in teaching you it's many mechanics that I have ever seen (shout out to "Mortal Kombat 11" though for catching on). You will hear from many that "Guilty Gear" has a steep and difficult learning curve. They aren't wrong, but let me point out that the developers of Rev 2 also want you to learn about the ins and outs of their game, and provide the player with many tools to do so.
This series has always had a top-notch presentation, but ArcSys are always pushing themselves, never settling for playing it safe, and took Revelator to a whole other impressive level. Accompanied by its guitar shredding soundtrack, you really do feel like you're fighting in high-budget anime fighting sequences. The character roster and move set is brimming with so much diversity of playstyles and move set creativity, that it genuinely boggles my mind that they were able to make it all work with a mostly balanced and viable cast.
Rev 2 reflects my tastes for highly stylized over the top fighting action that requires consistent study and practice for skill progression. I tend to think of fighting games as musical instruments, and "Guilty Gear Revelator 2" is a
Gibson Explorer.
DoorCurtain: While I still didn't like it as much as the first game, the cartoony antics on display in this entry more than make up for it. Next Level Games was allowed to bring Mario and friends alive in this game with incredible animation, with the best work being done on Luigi. He's never been more adorable and dorky, and seeing his Mr. Bean-esque reactions to everything around him was a real treat. I think the gameplay is a more fun take on what Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon was as well.
Rainiac: This morbidly enjoyable puzzle-platformer has you intentionally sending a knight to their doom, then using their dead body to help their replacement get past the obstacle that just killed their comrade. The various puzzles are intuitive, and the game's dark humour shines through the screen. An underrated gem.
lieronet: I wish I had an iPhone so I could keep playing this game. Michael Brough's take on a deckbuilder, you move your guy around on a 4x4 grid of tiles, and you attack the bad guys with whatever's on that tile. Tiles level up as you get kills, and you can build your own board. A deceptively simple concept that's enormous fun to play.
Peaches the Rayven: It's hard to sell a game about dating cats.
I'll start with the bad - it is almost twee at times, with a cast of anime love interests designed to appeal to nerdy players - one Extremely Online girl, two big lunks with dark pasts and hearts of gold, and two aloof boys who turn sweet on you once you know them. But they are all written in a witty way, the odd fantasy aspect of the game does shine through, and a few years ago it very much appealed to my then-in-denial, non-binary heart when I could get my little self-insert referred by they/them pronouns.
The game is pure fluff, but it's well-made fluff, and it has a few tricks up its sleeve to increase some replayability. I was poking fun but the characters are genuinely adorable and do have multiple layers under their cliché exteriors. I'm very glad I learned to identify with the doofy main character and get to know the story about how there's potential in everyone.
Nate: A budget title with lots of fart jokes... which I'm sad to say made me giggle. Truly the strength of this game was putting its developer out of business.
Remnant: You familiar with Rez?
Yes? Well, this game is like that, but prettier.
No? Well, we're gonna need an evening with some special edibles for you to really appreciate the works of Tetsuya Mizuguchi.
Atamine634: This was the only multiplayer game I played a good deal of this decade after high school and it was the sweet spot between something simple like the console shooters I grew up with and complex military shooters like Arma that I always wanted to try. Also, it has a map that is the equivalent to the competitive shooter version of the Water Temple. Mad Props.
John: Two nifty sets of compact platformer rules explored thoughtfully without wasting your time.
Zeloz: Cute little 3DS arcade game that reminds me of Joust, but perhaps a little less aggravating to control.
John: The gorgeous PC-98 predecessor to Alysia Dragoon, given new life with a classy 3D update that doesn't compromise the original's thoughtful rules in the slightest. It's a mecha game where every act of violence you can perform has a cost you have to weigh it against. In that sense it's closer to the genre's mournful storytelling roots than most mecha games ever get.
FreezingInferno: Warriors games can be relaxing timekillers, and adding the Fire Emblem flavor to this one gives it some interesting twists. If it had more variety in weapon users and characters then it'd be wonderful, but as it stands it's good.
eatthepen: Generally I don't trust or like comedy very much, but I howled with laughter for the full length of this game without ever feeling uncomfortable. A nuanced and careful take on the intensity of adolescence, from highs to lows, as sharp on racial as on queer politics, and absolutely joyous. Also, regrettably, I am a Noelle and this game called me out real hard.
Polly: A queer, throwback cyberpunk graphical adventure game that takes so much influence from games like Snatcher and Policenauts that it'd seem a bit gratuitous if it wasn't doing its own thing and its creators' love for cyberpunk wasn't so startlingly genuine. There's no shortage of interesting characters and fun charming dialogue to interact with as you wind your way through the game's layered narrative and assist your new robot companion (who literally steals the show at all times) come to terms with the nature of their existence.
Zeloz: The gameplay never really sank its teeth into me (get it? cuz' they're animals. with teeth), but I really like the premise of having to gradually expand one's territory while fighting to survive in a post-human world filled with larger animals. That it doesn't explain up-front what happened to the humans made for an intriguing plot hook.
Iffy: This game felt pretty rough at times and felt rushed, but it smooths out near the end and it sets up a very well-executed sequel.
FreezingInferno: Look, I got it on clearance for 30 bucks and it's fine, okay? At full price I can see how one might be let down, but this game was fine personally. I got the controls down pat and only struggled in a few places, and what I got was fun enough. It's not the devil. It's fine.
jetstorm4: This is an odd one. Of the 3DS RPGs that came out, this is probably one of the most difficult of them. After choosing your main character out of eight choices (and gathering the rest quickly as party members), you're given little direction on the adventure there is, which is definitely there and quite worth it. I recommend it to anyone looking to fulfil that SaGa fix or someone looking for something with less straight narrative.
Peaches the Rayven: A surreal visual novel/interactive fiction disguised as a point-and-click, about the thin veil separating reality and imagination but also the upper and lower economic classes.
It's hard to describe and I'm sure it's saying something important about something but I just liked playing it. It was released episodically and every episode had a moment of awesome, from learning how to navigate the 'Zero' highway, to hearing the lyrics to the musical sequence being sung as you chose them, to the game's shifting perspective as you use an in-game computer to predict the future.
It had its fair share of complaints due to delayed release of new episodes, which is fair, but each one was bigger and weirder and had more care in it than what came before. I'm no musical genius, but if you like a song that helps tell the story, this game will give you more than one blissful moment.
DoorCurtain: You ever feel like playing a very long, very thorough collection of fairy tales and fables? If you can stand the very slow beginning (apparently sped up for the remake!), Dragon Quest VII is the game for you. Lots of nice little stories to experience as you slowly but surely piece together a world by saving its location in the past. The class system is open and free like Dragon Quest VI, but is only unlocked about 20 hours in and is far smarter about limitations made so that nothing is terribly overpowered. As glacial as the pace could sometimes be, it's a game I felt very, very satisfied with beating by the time I hit the 100-hour mark. Did I mention the game is very long?
Remnant: I never played Diablo or Diablo II, and I never touched this one until the console port came and all that auction-house drama was long-gone. Just looking at this one, it's damn fun. Best couch co-op I had in the seventh generation.
Pauncho Smith: Complete with arcade-style shooting action and deliciously-corny 90's era Saturday Morning cartoon voice acting.
jetstorm4: Do not sleep on this game. As far as Yoshi platformers are concerned, Yoshi's Island and this are the ones to play. While cuddly looking and adorable, it's more intense than the game initially lets on. The surprisingly rockin' soundtrack elevates it too.
Nate: While it's not as tight as Stick it to the Man, it's by the same company and has a similar feel. Wish it was easier to hone in on the idea they present, but still a great follow-up.
John: Twelve games by twelve authors, made sequentially, each developed in just three days. The first game (by Terry Cavanagh) is a mysterious open-ended launching off point, which the subsequent devs build off to great effect. Michael Brough's chapter is a highlight, but it's absolutely worth playing all twelve to get the full effect.
LastZimOnEarth: This is honestly the hardest game on my list for me to write about, both because it's clearly a very personal game for its creator and because of how much it ended up resonating with me. It may have been sold as a light-hearted, charming semi-biographical RPG about the creator's struggles with mental health but the story it told managed to really hit close to home for me, personally.
Carmichael Micaalus: Space jumps are always fun. It may fall under "more of the same" for most people, but for the most part I do enjoy Borderlands gameplay and humor.
Ghosty: This game. What is this game!? The sort of game that breeds an obsession in those sensitive to it. Smooth, slick, stylish and ever so fluent. A real difficult game. Master of game feel.
Carmichael Micaalus: This game was just very visually pleasing to me. Vista points are always nice in a game like this, and the wordless telling of the story was an interesting way to go about it.
Atamine634: The final part of proto-Portal without the gimmick, Halfquake's last masochistic journey is a little less memorable than Amen but it's a special game for its concept alone.
Remnant: By the end, Destiny became an expansion-pack-fragmented-mess that was all-but-invalidated by its too-soon sequel, Call of Duty style, but I had a ton of fun with this game and a couple of friends at launch during a troubling personal time. Bungie built an interesting world (even if their approach to exposition was bizarre and ineffective), and I don't regret a bit of time I spent in it during the rollout of this IP.
Rainiac: This game gave me a panic attack when I first played it, but don't hold that against it. The game's haunting atmosphere is perfectly realised. It hurts to lose your first party member, but in many ways it feels like a necessary rite of passage.
TenguGemini: The ending being DLC really sucks, but I adore everything else about this game.
Remnant: The popcorn-game series of the 7th-gen gets "one last ride" on the 8th, and it was a good one. I love complex RPGs and turn-based strategy games and games that make me think and feel and all that. But it's also nice to indulge in the sort of pulp-adventure fantasy that has made Nathan Drake a fun character with which to defy logic, biology, and physics. Uncharted is basically "Indiana Jones as written by Joss Whedon," and I'm fine with that.
Carmichael Micaalus: This is one that could have used just a little more time in the oven, I think. Some of the later spell card transitions can very well lead to an undodgeable kill, and some of the core mechanics don't feel right to me. That said, it was still a fun game.
Rainiac: Behind its cutesy exterior lies the beating heart of a killer. It suckers you in with its colourful presentation, then kicks you in the balls repeatedly. Things get especially crazy when you're controlling three Snakebirds in one puzzle.
Iffy: Probably the most fun I've had soloing in an MMO. It has a great story and encourages exploration, in a world that's very easy to get absorbed into.
Polly: John Thyer is good at looking at the things he enjoys and breaking them down to appreciate their basest components and simplest verbs. Expanse is the logical result of breaking down modern and retro shmups into one small, succinct, and sharply focused sub-10 minute experience that brings to the surface everything that's ever felt fundamentally "good" about the entire genre.
eatthepen: I didn't play this game until after I'd come to understand my experiences with depression and to know, at least in the abstract, how to deal with them. At every choice the game presented me with, I knew the 'right' answer — keep taking the meds, stay in therapy, tell your loved ones honestly how you're doing — but I also found the game perfectly conveyed the feeling of reluctance to do so. I was able to fight my own battles over again inside this game and, ultimately, 'win' them; I cried more at the 'good' ending of this game than at any sad moment I think in any piece of media I've ever experienced.
Pauncho Smith: Another silly game where things go "BOOM!" and "FWOOSH!"
Rhete: Mind bending puzzle game that frequently makes you think outside of the box. Almost everything about this game, the mood, the logic, and the visual style, still feels unique years later.
Ghosty: A game that perhaps goes a little too hard for all it's different gameplay facets; It still drips with love and care. The visual style reminds me of a certain online game by a certain Sega, but moved back a console generation or two. Something which I have a particular affinity for. It also feels like it draws on a particular anime whose art style was partially inspired by the mentioned game, and was rather slow and involved a virtual game world.
But the action is fast and fun, the puzzles border on just too hard in places, and the parkour is its own little game inside the game. In fact, 'little' would be an understatement. But I like all those things, even if I wasn't so keen on the parkour at first, and one dungeon I just had to take a break from to get away from the puzzles. But it has a very particular charm and poise and while the plot isn't too... Original? It still tells it in a very good way. Also, throwing balls! Seriously, I like the action in this game a lot! The story had some real good moments and I like all the characters.
jetstorm4: DON'T SLEEP ON THIS. THIS GAME IS VERY GOOD. It's a 3D platformer made in Unity for a Game Jam and a love letter to the mascot-based food platformer. While that sounds weird, it's quite the fun, short time.
Peaches the Rayven: Time to give the devil his due. The devil, in this case, being game apps for smart devices.
I didn't even start this decade with an iPhone or its ilk, but since it's the timeframe these games came into their own, why not acknowledge a genuinely free game? No, not a gacha game where you pay for a chance to see punk band anime girls or get a billion versions of Captain Kirk on your starship (yes, I played both those games, too) - this game is free as in you can pay for it if you want, but it's genuinely free.
In SpaceTeam, you basically get the hectic, action-packed party version of Star Trek. Your device is turned into a panel of switches, knobs, sliders, and numberpads while your friends will get the intructions for how those need to be set (try not to shout at them that they need to 'Set the Blastometer to 3!' when you're the one with the Blastometer). As the game proceeds, it naturally becomes faster-paced and will require you to move your device like a motion-sensitive controller.
I seem to like games with a simple premise but infinite variations, and this delivers. It's dumb fun but it's a cute idea that can while away several minutes, or just kill time until Kevin finally shows up for board game night (we were going to order pizza anyway, Kevin, you didn't have to stop off at Del Taco like you always do!).
Nate: It's a fun indie RPG with some interesting ideas, unfortunately it ended on a cliffhanger and the studio no longer makes games, so fuck me.
Zeloz: Just the cutest darned horizontal shmup to ever pew the pews. Or... mew the mews. Because they're cats. It gets a little too bullet-hell-y for my tastes, but it's goddamn adorable through and through.
Rainiac: Side scrolling brawler set in Victorian times. The game is presented as a stage play about the main character's 'real-life' adventures hunting demons across the globe. The quirky presentation combined with well-implemented combat makes this a beat em up that more people should be aware of.
Atamine634: A fantastic execution of religious horror from an actual place of faith. FAITH is one of the best games I've played to capture the horror of the unknown and maliciousness that bumps in the night.
John: My favorite of Brough's recent roguelikes. It's much less overwhelming than Imbroglio, while still packing a ton of nuance into its 5x5 grid.
jetstorm4: Name Three Characters, set what they look like, pick your wagon, and GO. Work your way through the frontier with random events! Get eaten by bears! Move your way through herds of buffalo! Ford the river! Fly into space! Maybe you'll get to the west! Maybe!
John: LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT SPIDERS AND CUBES.
lieronet: Best Diablo game since Diablo II. The only game in the genre I've played that's managed to make the combat feel as snappy and rewarding as the OG. Character building is both varied and deep, without managing to feel overwhelming. The devs are also committed to keeping the grind to a minimum, with the best loot being able to drop anywhere, so you can play the levels you want instead of grinding HellBaals all day. This game is an ARPG masterpiece.
Zeloz: A pretty standard... (forgive me) Metroidvania, albeit with a procedurally generated twist, a la Diablo. Yeah, the premise
is pretty stale, and it honestly doesn't do much outside of the standard set by Symphony of the Night (the control scheme and weapons seem lifted straight out of that game) besides the random room and corridor layouts for every playthrough, but it's a competently-made game with pretty good pixel art that makes for a nice distraction every now and then. Hard Mode just about turns the game into a proper action game with stakes.
Nate: The greatest horror game for the Wii U, made perfectly for the system and utilizing its hard drive and dual-screen system. Not as good on the PS4, but still a good time.
lieronet: I've played maybe ten hours of this game so far, but I can already tell it's something special. I've always been very aggressive in my approach to the Souls games, and Sekiro rewards that like none of the rest.
John: Bitsy is my favorite new game making tool from recent years. Whenever I'm in the mood for a small intimate game I'll browse Itch for a bitsy game that catches my eye; I've probably played over a hundred of 'em at this point. This one is my current favorite, because of the beautiful art and very complete story it squeezes into a tight three minute run-time.
TenguGemini: DQ Builders 2 improves on 1 in pretty much every conceivable way. It's cute as hell, and having actual goals and characters helps make the Minecraft formula work for me.
Remnant: There's originality, there's doing tried and true things well, and then there's combining lots of things that people like into one without making the flavors clash or cancel each other out. Darksiders was Zelda meets God of War; only the lore and art design were fresh. Darksiders II adds Diablo-style RPG-elements and Prince-of-Persia-style platforming into the mix and somehow it just...works. For me anyway. I can see how the derivation could turn people off.
FreezingInferno: A really stylish and elegant shmup that's simple to pick up, but is also challenging as hell. It's stuck with me all these years, so here it is.
DoorCurtain: You're a box. Extend your boxy body with more boxes. Drop boxes in different places as platforms or weights. Land your boxy extensions onto ledges, then reel yourself onto the end that landed onto it. Fun, cute, and at times brain-busting, BOXBOY is a delightful little gem of a puzzle game. I wish the protagonist, Qbby, was in Smash.
Pauncho Smith: A silly game where things go "BOOM!" and "FWOOSH!"
TenguGemini: This improves mechanically over VC1 in all kinds of ways. I still like VC1 a tiny bit more, but this game is great.
Zeloz: A puzzle-platformer where you go around and collect the stuff and try not to die, even though you have unlimited lives. It really doesn't do much outside of what one would expect from a PC game from the 80s (aside from have an in-game automap), but there's a bit of beauty in the simplicity, and it feels better to play than, say, a Spelunker or a Montezuma's Revenge. It's a relaxing little game that one can wind down with after a long work day, in bed with a Switch, tired but too restless to sleep (the Green-On-Black IBM PC-esque palette works really well for this). It's very close to what I imagine an ideal action game on, like, a smartphone would be like. Without the gacha stuff, anyway.
Carmichael Micaalus: The Neptunia humor carried this one for me. I can see what they're doing with the combat, but without knowing the fights ahead of time, being unable to change your moves in the middle of combat could lead to some real slogs. (But in standard Neptune fashion, they built in ways to cheese the combat later in the game, which can help things along on that front.) I did enjoy it, but the standard Idea Factory jank is there.
Rhete: Something just clicked for me with this game in a way the original didn't. Stealth Inc. 2 focuses a lot on unique tools, which all feel great to use. Exploring the main hub with the tools you unlock from levels was a twist I really enjoyed. Just a very solid and satisfying game overall.
Nate: I loved this game more than I thought I would, but it's kinda far down the list because it's a bit.unfinished, or at least feels that way.
John: The best teleport in videogames, goddamn. I had a blast exploring and mapping out this world, it's just a really cool space and you have such interesting tools for navigating it.
lieronet: You might think that your enemy in the zombie apocalypse is the unthinking horde outside your safehouse, but the real villain is the clock. Dead Rising 2 is all about doing as much as you can inside a tight time window, and this gameplay loop of trying to do it all is incredibly satisfying. Combo weapons bring a new twist to the game, giving much of the mall's clutter new context, and bring a large measure of replayability to the game. Really a shame to see the franchise go downhill, the early entries were something special.
jetstorm4: A mixture of visual novel and turn-based RPG, Crimson Shroud uses choice and dice rolls to determine actions of characters while describing their journey down into a ruin looking for an artifact. The graphic style is wonderful -- each room is a miniature fantasy set and every character and monster is a miniature with a base and only one dramatic battle pose. Wonderful little game.
FreezingInferno: A really engrossing shmup in the Gradius vein that I personally felt enough joy from to want to get better at it and get the best ending. What a ride that was, and what a game this was.
Nate: Throwing small children at giant plant monsters has never been so fun.
lieronet: Fun little citybuilder with some spicy survival game flavor. Frostpunk does moral choices better than most games I've seen, by virtue of making it really hard to survive by only making the good choices.
Atamine634: A small audiovisual project made on Game Boy hardware that's an electronic poem about my home of Louisiana.
John: Unabashedly queer and angry, a visceral journey that wears its heart, identity, politics, and kinks on its sleeve.
Atamine634: A VN I admire for its ambition at tackling such an existential topic. Also funny as fuck too.
Zeloz: Even when the game started to feel like a rehash/extended parody of the first game (or a 10th anniversary celebration of it, one could argue), I couldn't help but appreciate the quality-of-life improvements to the Disgaea engine it brought, making it easy to kinda slip into and play. Never finished the game's story, but for being the last time I felt compelled to play a Disgaea game, it was a pleasant note to go out on.
Not sure if the gender-changing Laharl bits have aged well, though.
Rhete: Nowadays Yakuza 0 is the obvious title for people to start with, but I actually began my Yakuza journey with the fourth one. After a somewhat rough start, I became completely hooked on the story, and ended up loving the hell out of the game, making me a fan of the series for life.
John: Interactive slapstick comedy is one of those formal conceits that seems really demanding to pull off. Tiny Sorceress does it expertly, with minimal assets and animation and no sound, in under five minutes of play-time. Subtly, an inspiring masterpiece.
Carmichael Micaalus: An addon/promo game for Ghost 1.0. Unlike 1.0, this isn't a stealth game, so I was able to beat it. Short and fun.
Beepner: I bounced off the original Far Cry's attempt (and frequent crashes on my computer at the time) at the large outdoor FPS subgenre, but 3 is where the franchise streamlined the formula that it would subsequently beat into the ground with spinoffs and sequels. A lot more forgiving than something like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. while still offering plenty of depth.
Nate: A cute game about anarchy and overthrowing corrupt governments, which would be anger-inducing and intense, if THEY WEREN'T SO CURE, AWW, WHO IS A CUTE ANARCHIST?! YOU ARE!
Zeloz: A 3D remake of one of my most cherished games ever, designed primarily to run on smartphones, wasn't ever going to convey the grand cinematic experience I imagined in my head in 2nd Grade. But it doesn't matter whether or not Adventures of Mana met my steep expectations for a remake, because at the end of the day, it's still a really cute and fun Action RPG, now with a translation that clears up some of the ambiguities and awkward phrasings the original script had. Plus, with touch-screen controls (even in the Vita version), the game feels much more accessible.
I mean, the 3D engine not being utilized to give the characters gestures and emotions and
depth is still a *little* bit irksome, but I'd still recommend it to any newcomer to the game.
FreezingInferno: An incredible 5-stage throwback to the glory days of Contra. Unfortunately it goes on for two more stages after that, and they're kind of jank and unfair. Nevertheless, it's that same high-octane hard as hell blow up EVERYTHING action that you want from a Contra-like.
Zeloz: It's more-or-less the Scorched Earth of the current era; you got your tanks, you got a selectable loadout, and you got online multiplayer to blow up friends and others in turn-based combat, all with a spiffy neon-ized look. The single-player missions are also pretty nice, though solving some of them does seem like exercises in 4-dimensional chess at times.
lieronet: Endlessly engaging colony management/physics sandbox game with a huge amount of that Klei charm.
DoorCurtain: The music quality sucks! Which is unfortunate, because the soundtrack of Dragon Quest VIII is one of the best in the whole series. Fuck Sugiyama. Anyway, this game feels the closest to a realization of what everyone was imagining in their heads whenever they played a classic JRPG. There are overworlds to explore, but they're in full 3D with hills, cliffs, rivers, and grasslands fully modeled and textured. Moving the camera around to see where everything was felt awesome after playing so many games where your character moved onto an overworld map with sprites representing towns and dungeons as big as the character sprite. I also liked the skill point system, which made your very few party members feel intricately and thoughtfully balanced against the rest of the game. Though, pro-tip: make sure Yangus specializes in axes, not clubs, like I did.
Atamine634: I'd understand if someone thought Betrayer was boring as shit, but this slow-paced, open-world survival horror game set in 1600s Virginia is a memorable experience for the thematics around colonial evils and the delicate maturity for how it handles them.
Nate: It's another Platinum game, so take a shot.
Carmichael Micaalus: A relaxing puzzle game. There's no timing elements, so you can go at your own pace and back up as much as you need. It's also $2.99.
Rhete: A really enjoyable Yakuza spinoff that doesn't do a whole lot to shake up the series, but is just really solid all around. Also you can get some really cute girlfriends.
Polly: The second game in the Lonely Wolf Treat series gives us a more thorough introduction to Mochi. She spends much of the episode comedically trying to convince the ACTUAL best girl in the series not to freaking eat her and overall succeeds in both somehow not being eaten and being the sweetest little cinnamon roll ever. The added tension near the end of this episode is a clear jumping-off point that spearheads events important to the remainder of the currently available episodes.
lieronet: Fun, funny rogue-lite that stands out in a decade full of them. Wide variety of creative guns and items, with a good sense of humor about itself and a commitment to theme that verges on the deranged.
Pauncho Smith: My brother would be very upset if I didn't have this on here. Only problem was he made me play it with him.
Zeloz: I liked making the bear say the naughty words. One of my favorite smartphone word games from the decade.
John: Proudly boasts "a story-based RPG with no additional in-app payments!" on its store page... it's a shame that's as novel on the app store as it is. The Atelier-inspired crafting was fun enough to hook me at the start, but ultimately the story and characters are what connected me to it, to the point where I was sobbing through its closing moments.
FreezingInferno: Pretty dang good for an open-world game with a million things to do. The swinging feels great, the combat has a learning curve but gets you into a good groove, and the actual plot on display here has all the high action and grand drama of one of the Sam Raimi movies. It was a wild ride, but one I don't regret.
Carmichael Micaalus: For how much I like Arkanoid games, I've played remarkably few of them. Shatter mixes things up with different board types, boss battles, and various power-ups, not to mention the incredible soundtrack.
