Hi there! I played a lot of video games this year, and I can't wait to tell you about them!
Who the hell are you, and why should I care about your opinions on video games?
I'm one half of 80% Relatable, and alongside my partner in crime Vivian, I have been recording old-school let's play videos on YouTube for over half a decade now, mostly as part of our ongoing series "Two Queers Play." I also write my own short stories in Twine and Bitsy, and though I hesitate to call them fully fledged "games."
Well, all right, how were The Games this year?
Broadly, I saw two major trends in gaming this year. First, was the rejection of a streamlined user experience. As more and more AAA titles blunt themselves by shearing off any and all points of friction, many of my favorite indie games this year had purposefully obtuse and frustrating user experiences. It's not that they weren't fun to play or lacked accessibility features--rather, they simply refused to make concessions to making the experience of playing them passive and safe.
The second major trend is related to the first, but deserves to be stated on its own for how prominent it has become. More than anything else, 2022 was the year of me getting a few minutes into a game, stopping dead in my tracks, and muttering “oh god, I’m gonna have to take notes, aren't I?”
Moving away from the general trend of having games that remind you about your objective at all times, indie games this year have been more and more hands off, refusing to intrude on the player's attentions and keep track of information for them. My trusty notebook and pen saw thorough usage this year, decoding languages, drawing maps, and even (gasp) doing math.
In seems that, in 2022, indie games have had enough purposeful coddling of the player experience--either you meet them on their level, or you don't play them at all. And honestly? I'm all for it. I'd rather play a game that purposefully makes my inventory claustrophobicly small or one that refuses to translate its in-game language to me than one that solves puzzles for me before I've even had the chance to try them. (I didn't play it myself, but those God of War Ragnarök clips I saw going around just frustrate the hell out of me.)
Anyway, in lieu of a top 10 or whatever, here are all of the games I played that came out this year with some kind of superlative, and some final thoughts.
GAME THAT, BY VOLUME, REQUIRES THE MOST INDEPENDENT NOTE-TAKING – TUNIC
In a fiercely competitive category, I can say that the adorable isometric adventure game required the most external investment on my part in order to complete the game. That's especially impressive given that the game already comes with a very robust in-game manual to explain most of its puzzles. Beyond that, it was a phenomenal love letter to the bygone era of spending an entire weekend scouring GameFAQs to figure out some obscure puzzle in your favorite top-down adventure game.
GAME WITH THE MOST FRUSTRATING AND CUMBERSOME USER EXPERIENCE (LAUDATORY) – SIGNALIS
Beating out a lot of competition, SIGNALIS feels so tightly and intentionally designed to be completely fair and playable while causing the most stressful user experience possible. While the enemy placement and respawn timers deserve praise in this regard, the inventory management is the standout culprit. Seven would be too many. Five far too few. Six was the perfect sweet spot, and it made me want to pull my hair out for the entire duration. Not to mention the story and setting all scratch that queer, cyberpunk, interplanetary sci-fi itch of mine, all within the most hauntingly beautiful package.
GAME WITH THE MOST BULLSHIT CONVOLUTED PLOT STRUCTURE (LAUDATORY) – AI: The Somnium Files - nirvanA Initiative
Okay, yes, the twist in this game was, objectively, bullshit. But it was also the only possible way to follow up an experience as powerful and engaging as the original game. Sure, the plot had more holes in it than Swiss cheese, but the writing and character work were so strong that it just didn't matter. I enjoyed every minute of playing this game, and I'm forced to admit that any issues I had with it came far after the credits had rolled. Please continue to let Uchikoshi write incomprehensible sci-fi bullshit for as long as he wishes.
GAME THAT FEELS LIKE IT IS JUST THINLY-VEILED FANFICTION (LAUDATORY) – Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes
I swear I've read this exact plot on AO3 before. It was genuinely fun getting to do musou gameplay with my favorite Fire Emblem cast, though.
GAME THAT PROVES YOU CAN ADD CARD GAMES TO LITERALLY ANY GENRE – Neon White
The dev medals in this game are fucking impossible, how do you people play this game so damn quickly.
GAME THAT IS MOST OBJECTIVELY ANIME – FRANKEN
Specifically, pre-'00s anime, which makes it somehow even better.
MOST WRIST PAIN FROM A FISHING MINIGAME – Outdoor Adventures With Marisa Kirisame
I have never mashed spacebar so hard in my life.
GAME WHERE EVERY INDIVIDUAL SCREENSHOT LOOKS LIKE THE MOST BEAUTIFUL THING YOU’VE EVER SEEN – CARROT: Pancakes & Waffles
Chase Fox's artwork is just the perfect mix of colorful, fantastical, optimistic, and completely earnest, and each new still demands time and attention to observe all of the small details hiding away.
GAME WHERE EVERY INDIVIDUAL SCREENSHOT MAKES ME DEEPLY UNCOMFORTABLE – Mr. Rainer's Solve-It Service
Even the ones that make me feel happy make me feel uncomfortable. Etherane's art style is impeccable like that.
GAME THAT IS SO DISTRESSINGLY REAL THAT IT IS PHYSICALLY UNCOMFORTABLE – I Hate You, Please Suffer -Basic-
Very few games haves so ably captured the wanton cruelty and misery of mere existence under capitalism like I Hate You, Please Suffer. More importantly, the game's message is one that is ultimately hopeful--that by relying on one another, we can make our lives measurably better than things seem in the worst moments in front of us. Can't wait for the full release.
GAME WITH THE BIGGEST DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HOW GOOD ITS NAME IS AND HOW MUCH FUN IT IS TO PLAY – TRIANGLE STRATEGY
I can't deny that the turn-based SRPG combat in TRIANGLE STRATEGY is genuinely fun, deep, and inventive. But holy shit this game is one of the driest things I have ever read. This game really wants to sell itself on the strength of its setting, writing, and characters, but the setting is pretty generic high fantasy, the writing is terse and drawn-out, and there are too many characters introduced far too quickly to really keep track of them without significant effort. These problems are also exacerbated by the plot that the game is so proud of, which largely hinges, at least in the beginning, on interpersonal drama and political intrigue. Even with the game's (admittedly very helpful) character bio feature, I struggled to accurately follow the shape of events until I was deep into the game's second half.
Oh, and it also takes fifteen-plus hours before the main conflict even starts, with scarcely a half-dozen tutorial battles meted out between hours upon hours of cutscenes. It's like TRIANGLE STRATEGY is just afraid to let the player, you know, play the damn game.
But it is really fun when it lets you, I suppose.
GAME THAT HAD ME MOST LEGITIMATELY EXCITED FOR IT TO RECEIVE DLC – Citizen Sleeper
This far-future sci-fi adventure game has an incredibly rich cast and thoughtful writing, telling most of its story through character interactions and expounding upon the rolls of a dice. I haven't played any of the DLC campaigns yet (as of this writing, 2 of a planned 3 are out), but I am making sure I have the time to stream it again once they all have been released. I loved my time with this game, which already felt like a complete experience to me, so the thought of having even more of it is just incredible.
GAME WITH THE BEST DICE PHYSICS – Betrayal At Club Low
The competition was much narrower here, as Club Low uses virtual physically-simulated dice to recreate the atmosphere of an evening tabletop one-shot campaign. And the writing backs this up, with the tone of an agreeable (if somewhat amused) DM, judging your decisions and chastising you for trying the same checks over and over again. The game mechanics also emphasize this feeling, from having you actually "kick the table" when the dice don't land correctly, to meting out skill points quickly enough to ensure you'll be able to finish this session before you run out of soda and snacks. Absolutely worth playing and re-playing.
GAME THAT SAID "ABOLISH PRISONS" THE LOUDEST – Frog Detective 3: Corruption at Cowboy County
I did not expect the silly animal series to cap off its run with a pastel-colored, kid-friendly game about the inherent injustice of carceral punishment, but boy howdy was I happy to be surprised.
GAME THAT MOST ACCURATELY CAPTURED THE EXPERIENCE OF BEING A QUEER HIGHSCHOOLER IN THE MID AUGHTS – Butterfly Soup 2
From grappling with burgeoning queer identities amidst a fresh rise of nascent homophobia, to navigating the difficulties of addressing one's unaddressed biases and prejudices, Butterfly Soup 2 beautifully builds on the characters and themes of the first game. I also appreciated how we got to see even more of the core cast's families, as well as the histories and repercussions of their decisions to immigrate to the US.
GAME THAT ABSORBED MUCH MORE OF MY TIME THAN I WAS INITIALLY PREPARED FOR – Isle of Arrows
All I'm asking for is a freestanding tower to place in the middle of this 8-tile long square of path I set up 30 waves ago, come on game.
GAME WHICH MOST ACCURATELY RECREATED THE EXPERIENCE OF PILOTING HEAVY MACHINERY – A Day of Maintenance
I mean, yeah, there's more to it than just piloting your unexpectedly huge crane across a desolate planetary landscape full of the debris of human existence you never seem to encounter directly yourself, all while chatting with your space robot boyfriend about the ethics of labor and artificial intelligence. But the actual experience of driving an unwieldy construction machine, radioing dispatch, and adjusting the free-standing CD player? Those definitely felt all too real.
GAME WITH THE MOST UNEXPECTEDLY COMPELLING WRITING - NEEDY STREAMER OVERLOAD
From the looks of it, I expected this game to be a low-effort shock title trading off the market of people who just want to play DDLC but again. I'm glad the 8PR Discord put this game on my radar, however, because it turned out to be an incredibly thoughtful, poignant, and distressing depiction of mental illness and its relationship to the number-go-up mentality of modern streaming. Sure, it does indulge in some of the disturbing imagery you'd expect of a pastel-colored game that comes with a "psychological horror" warning, but the game feels like it comes from a place of empathy, rather than treating the spectacle itself as the end goal. The writers clearly did their research, and the localization is impeccable.
GAME WITH THE HIGHEST DENSITY OF MOTHMAN – Soul Hackers 2
Dude got an entire dungeon to himself just to fuck with the party, which is some kind of life goals. Also, while the combat system took a while to grow on me, I did enjoy some classic ATLUS dungeon-crawling with a compelling and well-written adult cast. Music was aggressively mid for a Megaten game, though.
GAME THAT IS DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE MOST INTERPERSONAL CONFLICT – Splatoon 3
Why isn't anyone taking care of the fucking Flyfish?
THE KIRITO SWORDARTONLINE MEMORIAL ISEKAI AWARD – Digimon Survive
I was a late convert, but I'm so glad I got turned onto modern Digimon games. They're full of the deep, inventive, and moving monster-collector stories I always wished a certain other series would delve into. And while it's a visual novel, Survive is no exception, containing some of the best damn character writing in the series to this point--give or take a localization error.
Also, I can't help but notice that Survive, which actually bills itself as a visual novel, had more actual SRPG gameplay than TRIANGLE STRATEGY.
GAME THAT I HAVEN'T PLAYED YET BECAUSE I CANCELLED MY PRE-ORDER WHEN A CERTAIN VOICE ACTRESS MISLED HER FANS ABOUT HOW THE STUDIO BEHIND IT VALUED HER LABOR – Bayonetta 3
Everyone I've talked to says it's the best, though, so I guess I'll enjoy it when I get to it.
GAME THAT DIDN'T TECHNICALLY COME OUT THIS YEAR BUT RECEIVED ANOTHER MAJOR EARLY-ACCESS UPDATE THAT WAS VERY GOOD – ULTRAKILL
Also, the game has gotten somehow even gayer than it already was? How is that even possible at this point.
EPISODIC GAME WITH A HANDFUL OF NEW EPISODES THIS YEAR THAT CONTINUES TO BE MINDBOGGLINGLY IMPRESSIVE – Scarlet Hollow
Episodes three and four of the stupefyingly intricate visual novel Scarlet Hollow came out this year, and the game continues its admirable commitment to making each playthrough of the game feel unique. Between the myriad of ways your chosen character perks interact with the story, to the minute and delicate ways that every single character respond to your decisions and statements, it feels incredible that such a game even exists at all.
GAME THAT WAS ALREADY THE BEST BUT RECEIVED AN UPDATED VERSION ANYWAY BECAUSE, SOMETIMES, THE THINGS YOU LOVE MOST CAN GET EVEN BETTER – Soundless Final Verse
I maintain that soundless is one of the single best English-language VNs out there, and it's criminal that it hasn't gotten more attention. If you have any love for denpa writing, do yourself a favor and pick up the fifth anniversary edition.
GAME(S) THAT I'M STILL IN THE MIDDLE OF PLAYING BUT GENUINELY NEVER EXPECTED TO BE PORTED ONTO MODERN CONSOLES SO I FELT THAT THEY WERE WORTH MENTIONING HERE – CHAOS;HEAD NOAH and CHAOS;CHILD
Now all we need is a port of the Occultic;Nine game.
BUT THAT'S NOT ALL!!
There are a few other games from this year that looked really interesting, but I haven't gotten to play yet for the sole reason that being a Content Creator is suffering. Games like Immortality, PRODUCER 2021, and Please Be Happy all have been right up my alley, but I've regretfully had to earmark them for playing on the channel at a later date. Such is life, I suppose.
ANYWAY, THAT'S ALL OF THEM, THANKS FOR READING
If this strange selection of games sounds cool to you, check out our YouTube channel at https://catgirl.training, a real hyperlink that I am not making up.