First of all, I think it would be odd to write any sort of article or review on games in 2024 without accepting that the games industry is in a deeply weird place, like many other industries suffering from a case of acute late stage capitalism. Earlier this year, Nicole Carpenter at Polygon noted that by June, lay-offs in the game industry in 2024 had already outpaced lay-offs for all of 2023, and that rate isn’t slowing. From a cursory online search, this number reached around 14,000 (conservatively) by September of this year and they just - keep - coming.

The reasons quoted depends on who you speak to. It’s definitely true that the games industry, as well as the way we game, has changed dramatically in the last 10-15 years. The last decade has seen a massive move towards live service models - the dawn of battle-pass gaming, and to games like Fortnite and Roblox spawning entire platforms that never want you to leave. Do they make money? You bet they do. Are they safe, regulated spaces for your kids? Uhh…. But don’t worry, they’re more than happy for you to leave your money at the door. And in this new environment, big studios just can’t seem to get it right. From Sony heavily investing in and immediately shuttering the game no one asked for in Concord to studios laying-off departments that have just made critically acclaimed games - what we’re left with is the people who actually work on and produce the games we play being laid-off for decisions made by management, whilst management themselves take home juicy bonuses. Oh, and remake, after remake, after remake.

This isn’t just limited to game developers either - with games media outlets similarly suffering. I can’t seem to listen to any of my favourite gaming podcasts or log on to social media without hearing about beloved workers within the industry being laid off and added to the ever growing pile of talented games journalists in search of work. Whether it’s shady AI deals or seeing someone shambling around inside the reanimated corpse of your favourite games website, 2024 has been a deeply weird year in video games journalism.

With that out of the way, listed below are my personal top ten games of 2024. It should be noted that these are very much my top ten and not representative of popular acclaim (for one, I just couldn’t seem to get into Balatro, though I imagine I will try again), and at times may include games released in previous years which I got around to playing this year. I also played a few games in early access which I will not be listing here (mainly Hades 2), and there were others I loved but hand over heart have not played enough of for them to appear on this list. Maybe next year, Pepper Grinder.

On a final note, as I put my soapbox away, I would urge anyone reading this to consider supporting independent games and tech journalism, with some favourites listed below:

• Aftermath

  • a worker-owned, reader-supported news site covering video games, the internet, and the cultures that surround them.

• Remap

  • Remap is a new media company from the creators of the long-running video game website, Waypoint, and its popular adjoining podcast, Waypoint Radio. Join Rob Zacny, Ricardo Contreras, Patrick Klepek, and a rotating cast of friends as they set off on a new adventure that has them obsessing over the video game Dragon’s Dogma nearly as much as they question the nature of capitalism.

• 404 Media

  • 404 Media is a journalist-founded digital media company exploring the ways technology is shaping–and is shaped by–our world. We're focused on investigative reports, longform features, blogs, and scoops about topics including: hacking, cybersecurity, cybercrime, sex, artificial intelligence, consumer rights, surveillance, privacy, and the democratization of the internet

Fuck capitalism, go home. X

10. Arco, with an honourable mention of Tactical Breach Wizards

Okay so, straight off the bat, I’m sort of cheating on this one, and for that you have my sincerest apologies. I whittled the games I played this year down to 11, and could get no further. I’m also someone who struggles to get invested in tactics games, so when this year two separate tactics titles made their way into my heart, I couldn’t bear not to mention both.

If you like approachable tactics games with witty writing and the ability to both manipulate turns- ahem, I mean time, and magically yeet people out of windows, I heartily encourage you to check out Tactical Breach Wizards. A cast of unlikely magical heroes (with just as unlikely and unusuala repetoire of skill trees and magical abilities) race to save the world, with banter that reminds me of the better parts of the shows I remember from the early to mid ‘00s. Oh, and theres a cat.

Now put down your broomstick and crystal enhanced M14 and grab your titular arco (bow). Arco is an accessible but unique tactics RPG which tells a gripping tale of revenge and anticolonialism through the viewpoint of four separate protagonists over the course of around 20 hours rendered lovingly in glorious pixel art.

The consequences of the decisions Arco asked me to make throughout it’s story were not always clear, and frequently surprising. I must admit, I’ve been burned enough by RPG’s in the past that when faced with a big decision I am often guilty of save-scumming (cough, baldurs gate 3, cough) or quickly looking up the results of specific choices online to help make my decisions for me (thank you, reddit threads). However, I made an active effort during Arco to do the opposite, trying to truly embrace my role in this RPG, and make the decisions that felt right. Frequently, even if I thought I was doing the right thing, decisions in Arco bit me in unforeseen ways - the travellers I left alone and unaccosted on the road turned out to be bandits, and we start our battle with the protagonist in a difficult first position. For me, these decisions walked a very fine line - they often made my decisions feel consequential, without having a big enough effect of the overall outcome of my journey for me to feel the need to save-scum and change my decision. It felt like my journey. It felt like the small decisions I made in the day to day life of Arco had real consequences - and too many could be fatal. I get greedy and turn over a rock looking for treasure, and a snake bites me? That’s life, buddy, these things happen.

The battle system is nothing to sniff at either, with a unique take on a tactics system. The protagonists and enemies decide on their actions before they are all played out in real time (rather than in a traditional “turn order”), before going back to the top of the order. Players can see the enemies intended next action and plan accordingly; including trying to dodge enemy fire in bullet-hell(lite?) style action. However, to call this game simply turn based would allow it to appear less frantic than it actually is; as between your turns of dodging hails of enemy bullets you’ll be - literally- trying to escape your own guilt. Our characters' past actions haunt them in the form of ghosts which draw ever closer during the action-selection portion of combat - forcing you to either take turns quickly to stop these creatures getting close, or planning part of your action to put some distance between you - or deal with them.

Alongside skill trees that keep the combat fresh, quality writing, and a soundtrack that is better than it has any right to be (and I imagine will make its way to my RPG table sometime soon), Arco is certainly worth the cost of entry.

Sadly, indie gaming is a crowded field and despite critical acclaim, the developer laments that the game has sold somewhat poorly - to the point that they say they’ve been put off making unique games and will focus in the future more on “what sells”. Thankfully, Arco has been nominated for several accolades as award season rolls around, and with any luck will find its way on many GOTY lists and with that, new audiences.

9. Lethal Company

Look, if there’s one way you can make me fall in love with a game, no matter how simple, it’s to just let me have a silly time with my friends.

Enter Lethal Company, which made it’s way onto Steam in early access in October 2023, before rapidly going viral and overtaking Baldur’s Gate 3 for concurrent players, all from the hard work of one developer who cut their teeth developing games in Roblox. Players, with up to three of their friends, assume the roles of junk scavengers for the ominously named Company - and spend in-game days fighting against the clock working their way across different moons which (ostensibly, see below) represent different biomes to collect junk to meet an ever increasing quota. What happens if you don’t meet quota? Don’t sweat it, you won’t be around to worry about it. It’s PS1 style graphics might not inspire awe in hardcore lurkers on digital foundry, but I found the goofy character models charming, and the blocky monsters somehow even more unsetttling for their janky sinister movements.

Moons each boast a difficulty level (which can spike due to weather variations) and host a unique roster of monstrosities that stand between you and the junk you sorely need to collect if you don’t want to end up breathing hard vaccum. Whilst you don’t have much in the way of an arsenal to fight back, you can pick up a variety of tools. Where from? The company store of course.

Whilst you can play Lethal Company solo, I would recommend finding at least two buddies to shack up with in your teeny space ship, as multiplayer is where Lethal Company really shines. Sure, you could all run off in different directions and meet back at the ship. Or, you could spend some of your hard won cash on walkie talkies to try to stay in contact, leaving one person on the ship who can follow your journey on the ship radar, where they can conveniently spot enemies for you and open locked doors (this sounds much easier than it actually is, we tried it once and chaos ensued).

The monsters span from harmless to almost always lethal - from “loot bugs” (yipee!) to the feared Coil Head - (clearly inspired by Doctor Who’s Weeping Angels - with one team member having to keep an eye on them at all times, or they’ll tear right through your crew). Whilst there is a degree of mild horror here with jumpscares, I wouldn’t say this is a hardcore horror game. Think jumpscares that end up making you laugh? Or maybe that’s just me. Though if this all sounds a bit much for you, then you’re in luck because there are plenty of streamers who did it for you.

One of my favourite features in the game is vicinity based chat - that is, you can only hear your crewmates when they’re nearby, and they become fainter, then inaudible as they move further away from you. When you stop hearing a friend, is that because they took a wrong turn, or have they been torn to shreds by some sort of dog monstrosity?? (did I mention chat cuts out completely when your crewmates die?). There’s even a fan-mod of a creature who mimics your dead teammates audio to get closer to you. There’s nothing quite like hearing a friend who you haven’t heard from in a few minutes pop back into your ears, first quietly then rapidly louder saying, “run run ruN RUN RUN RUN!”.

This all being said, the game has it’s shortcomings. Each moon is essentially the same industrial-aesthetic “facility” attached to a different small biome area - so the part of the map you end up exploring and thus spending the most time in on each “moon” is largely aesthetically the same, with it’s own cast of creatures and a randomly generated interior and associated loot. This can get a bit old. A lot of the joy of the experience comes from the novelty of discovering new moons, items and monsters, and the hilarity that ensues from said novelty. I’m almost certain the game doesn’t hit the same way if you memorise the enemies in each area and take countermeasures for all of them.

However, this game encapsulates a lot of what I love about the indie scene. A reasonable cost of entry (£9.99 on the steam store at time of writing), unique mechanics, and bringing new ideas to a wider audience, briefly going viral and taking over social media. Am I spending 100+ hours on Lethal Company? Hell no. Did I have a blast with my friends dipping in and out of it over the course of the year for less than the cost of a Deliveroo order? Absolutely. I can say less of a lot of £70 titles from the last few years.

8. Slay The Princess

“You are here to slay her. If you don’t, it will be the end of the world”. These words filter through my headphones as the screen opens onto beautifully handrawn art that makes up the world of Slay the Princess. Not only is the game fully voice acted (unusual, in the indie space, for obvious reasons), but I am delighted and surprised to hear that the line in question is being read to me by Jonathan Sims, taking on the role of The Narrator (Sims being recognisable otherwise from his role as “The Archivist” in popular horror narrative podcast, The Magnus Archives).

Slay The Princess wants you to know from the get-go that it is a love story. It is a game that could tentatively be called a visual novel, composed of branching narratives which challenges our perspectives on traditional storytelling structures. Our three characters are The Protagonist (whom we inhabit as the player), The Narrator, and The Princess. We are informed from the start that we are here to slay her, and that our failure to do so will doom the world. Except our Protagonist has the same information that we, as the player, do. That is to say, none. We can question The Narrator but he isn’t very forthcoming, and in fact, quite combatative to our questioning, simply urging us forward. A run of Slay The Princess usually begins in The Woods, before entering The Cabin, and then onto The Princess’ chamber. Whether our quest ends in success, defeat, or somewhere in between, you will (almost) always end up back in The Woods, driven forward by The Narrator, in a world that is being shaped and reshaped by your decisions, gradually revealing a larger nature to the story and journey we are on together. There are paths on paths on paths, but the game isn’t endless.

I think the first time I realised this game was something special was the first time I really doubled and tripled down on refusing to do what The Narrator asked of me; refusing violence, refusing to Slay The Princess. Eventually he told me he’d had enough of me, that I was dooming the entire world, before describing, in his role as Narrator, that instead, I reached out my hand and sunk my blade into The Princess’ chest. And I did. Because you see, he’s The Narrator. He removed my agency, because in story telling, events happen as The Narrator describes. Another time, when I refused, every option I was given to progress the narrative (see example above) was replaced by a looooong list of identical options: “SLAY THE PRINCESS”. So we see, in one example, the game insists it is a Story, the power of The Narrator was given precedence, whereas in the next scenario the game doubles down on the fact that it is a Game, removing our agency by limiting the inputs we have to proceed. Slay The Princess wants to challenge the nature of storytelling, the nature of a game, and how the two interact.

This is an ambitious goal, and and I should make it clear I think this game is fascinating. I also completely understand that it was made for Little Freaks Like Me, and won’t be everyones cup of tea. Nor does it always stick the landing perfectly; I thought Sims performance was commendable, but as the roles he takes on through this branching narrative mount they do verge on being quite samey. The story is by its very nature a metanarrative and meta-commentary on storytelling within games and can feel like it’s lost eating its own tail sometimes, and not always by design. That being said, again, I never really stood a chance at refusing this games allure. It’s a game exploring the nature of storytelling with a voice actor I love wearing a horror aesthetic with a charming and simultaneously unsettling handrawn artstyle.

I never stood a chance.

If you missed Slay The Princess this year, it’s recently had a large update in the form of The Pristine Cut, which has dropped as the game makes it way onto consoles. The games Steam page advertises this as containing 3 new chapters and expansions to existing ones with around 35% new content, which in my opinion is an absolute steal at £12.99.

7. Helldivers 2

There were always going to be some things that would proably happen in 2024. Labour were probably going to win in some sort of landslide against the Tories. My cat would probably continue to insist dinner time is always. I would probably continue to spend too much on pourover coffee equipment. What none of us predicted was the success of Helldivers 2, a third-person shooter which moved away from it’s topdown roots, from developer Arrowhead Studios.

To call Helldivers 2 a sensation would be an understatement. I’d be one of the first to admit that I’d heard of a game called Helldivers but I couldn’t really tell you what it was about, and if I had to push myself I think I was probably thinking of imagery to do with Killzone instead. With that said, Helldivers 2 released earlier this year and became Playstations fasted selling game ever. Okay, so what’s the deal? Players take on the role of a soldier on the frontlines of a galactic war against giant bugs and robots to protect Super Earth and Democracy. Think Starship Troopers with all the tongue in cheek humour that that implies. Players team up with a squad of up to three other players and take on missions to forward the current overall goal of the game. Did I mention there is an overarching plot that is constantly being managed by one guy taking on a Dungeon Master role who the internet brielfy lost their minds over?

What was it that captured our hearts about this game? Was it the relative dearth of cooperative online games that want your entire life (cough destiny cough)? Was it the cooperative spirit that took root in the community? Was it the microtransactions that were actually pretty respectful? I think it was a little bit of everything. I played a fair amount of Helldivers with “real” friends - but equally I played plenty of this game with folks from the Waypoint/Remap discord and even frequently with complete randoms that the game paired me up with. Never have I dropped into games with randoms who end up working so well together and so respectfully towards a common goal! Sure, occasionally someone takes you out with a 500kg bomb, but who hasn’t done that from time to time? More often than not a very embarressed, “My bad!!” popped up in the chat or someone popped onto mic for a moment to say “Oops dude my bad I didn’t see you there” and gets you right back in the action. I can only speak to my experience, and of course there are always shitty people online. I’ve had close friends who have had much crappier experiences with randoms online, but from a lot of the coverage this game received, it seems that compared to most online spaces, this game was a bit of an exception when it came to community behaviour. But more often than not, I ended up with folks who wouldn’t leave without every Helldiver intact, they’d insist on being last onto the Pelican, and would insist on emote-hugging every Diver before we set off in our pods for the next mission.

There’s just something incredibly satisfying about wiping out waves upon waves of terrifying bugs and robots in a tight knit team, calling in tactical drops, orbital lasers and automated turrets (which have friendly fire turned off and will absolutely mow you down if you cross it’s path) and occasionally being blown to literal pieces before diving right back in, whilst having a (in my experience) positive relationship with your fellow gamers. Can you remember anything similar in living memory online? That’s what Helldivers 2 brought to the table for me this year.

Coming in at around £30-35 this game was an easier buy than most AAA releases and this very likely worked in it’s favour. The ongoing support from the developer has obviously hugely helped as well, and they’ve been wonderful at staying in role and continuing to pump out in-game propaganda - like when they denied for a prolonged period in character that flying termanids had been spotted, despite actively adding them to the game.

I played a tonne of Helldivers towards the beginning of 2024 after it’s release, and like anything else, fell off after a while, like any game you played arguably too much of over a short space of time. They’ve just released a bunch of new content including a new enemy type and if anything, the main thing that should convince you to pick it up at some point is that writing this portion of the article is making me want to do nothing more than get straight back into my Hellpod and plummet back into the fray.

6. 1000x Resist

That’s pronounced, “a-thousand times resist”, btw. I checked.

Hekki Grace, reader. It’s time to dive into the world of 1000x Resist. 1000x Resist was in my wishlist for a while and I still wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. All I knew was that I’d watched the teaser trailers and decided it was entirely my shit.

1000x Resist is a story about identity. It’s a story about finding your place within something larger than yourself. It’s about diaspora. It’s about memory. It’s about a pandemic. It’s about protests. It’s about control. It’s sort of a fancy (and sometimes frustrating) walking sim with some platforming. It has some of the most cinematic shots I’ve ever seen in a video game. It sort of defies description, but I’ll try.

In the opening minute of the game, our character, Watcher, essentially kills God. Well, a girl who sort of became God. And Watcher is sort of her clone. She was once a normal teenager, but when an illness was brought to the Earth by an alien force and she was the only one with immunity, the government took her away and tried to discover the key to her immunity. Except in the present day, the entire world (well, our small, encased world where she keeps us safe) seems to consist of purely clones of her who all have different roles within this microsociety. There’s Knower, who oversees the library and knowledge keeping, there’s Healer, who looks after the sick but also oversees the cloning process, there’s Fixer, who keeps the tech running, and my absolute favourite, BangBangFire, who oversees defence. And of course, us. Watcher. Watchers role is to lead the other sisters, the other clones, through the ALLMOTHERS memories, her past, in a process called communion (and you can bet that this catholic raised boy had a blast with that), where we the player, also get to explore how this world came to be, and how that will inform our present and future.

In the simplest terms, 1000x Resist is a roughly 10-12 hour walking sim with some platforming intermissions through which the game tells a complex non-linear scifi narrative exploring the nature of memory, existence, blame and diaspora. To reduce it to that, in my opinion, is a huge disservice. It’s beautiful, it’s multifaceted, it’s another indie that’s fully voice acted, and dear reader I simply couldn’t put it down. Much like other items on here, you could argue it made its way onto this list because it is a game laser focused and developed for little freaks like me. I think the world would be much better if we had more games like 1000x Resist. I don’t want to talk about the story anymore at risk of spoiling things for you.

I walked away not entirely sure I fully understood the entirety of the game. I think being unknowable is part of the point. I know it made me cry on more than one occasion. And I know I’ll probably watch a 4 hour Youtube video essay on it one day, much as I did with Signalis this year. I think I mostly just lack the writing expertise to express the experience of reckoning with this game. Others have said it better. All I can say is that if anything I’ve said sounds like your jam, and you’re a little freak like me, play 1000x Resist. I know for a fact it’s an experience I’m going to revist in the future.

Stay tuned for part 2 :) (outtro music)