My Favorite Games in 2016

I've actually never done a post about this before, but video games are one of my major loves. They are, in my opinion, possibly the most perfect art form. Combining the best aspects of writing, cinema, music, and personal experience through interaction, they lure me in in ways that few other genres on their own can. My favorite games are usually those that are sprawling and involved--the Chrono Triggers, Baldur's Gates, Skyrims, Witcher IIIs and (yes) World of Warcrafts of the gaming landscape. This year I found myself visiting a lot of the more artistic and mostly shorter games, which were really rewarding given the little time I had to play. I went on an absolute tear through them, playing some of the new releases and catching up on a few I had missed in the last few years. I would highly, highly recommend each and every one. Each made me ecstatic and broke my heart (or terrified me) in a variety of ways that were ultimately very satisfying. Here they are in no particular order:

1.) Never Alone

If you thought Eskimo mythology would make a beautiful and compelling gaming experience, you are weird but definitely right. Never Alone was recommended to me by a former coworker, and it turned out to be a completely serene and absolutely beautiful experience. I love mythology of all sorts, and this game's art style and characterization is a narration drawn from the traditional Innupiat lore, and even incorporates some of their traditional art styles. It radiates a calm and fragile beauty, much like the culture it emulates, now threatened with extinction.


2.) SOMA 

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Dark, beautiful, creepy, and expertly paced. This is a horror game done right. There are a few "jump scares," yet SOMA (made by the same developers who made Amnesia, a game that unnerved me completely) largely builds its foreboding atmosphere through bits of story dropped here and there in computer terminals and by the great sense of mood, atmosphere, and sound design. It also deals with some really interesting themes, like whether an eternal life that humans can achieve on their own is even worth it.

3.) Everybody's Gone to the Rapture

It's hard to know exactly what to say about this game. You don't really do much--its not a traditional game in any real sense. You are dropped into a gorgeously rendered and detailed world with a potent sense of place and a fantastic mystery. A haunting soundtrack (or often, silence) follows you as you walk around finding audio diaries, character interaction (of a sort), and environmental storytelling clues. Lonely radios crackle with messages expecting to find no one, and strange lights like little angels pace through the air. This was a spellbinding, absolutely haunting game that manages impress upon you in five hours more story than many novels.

4.) Firewatch 

Similar to Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, this is a game that focuses on story telling by dropping you into a gorgeous environment, allowing you to explore while exchanging friendly, often touching banter with Delilah, your Forest Ranger co-worker. You play Henry, a seemingly good but also deeply flawed man trying to run from some problems in his past by taking a job during the summer helping keep watch for forest fires from a tower in the Wyoming woods. Like a good book there is a brilliant, branching script with different days acting as the different "chapters." What unfolds is an unsettling mystery revealing clues that you and Delilah are not alone in the woods, all set against the backdrop of your growing emotional attachment to Delilah in the face of your apparent helplessness to protect her across great distances, your only contact being the walkie-talky. The writing here is absolutely stellar. While this is not really a "game" in the traditional sense, it is one of the most memorable gaming experiences I've had in years. This shows what immersive video game story telling is capable of in the right hands.

5.) That Dragon, Cancer. 

I, uh. Yeah. Wow. I played this because I saw the Kickstarter. It is a game a father designed to tell the story of his infant son with terminal Leukemia. It is a puzzle game that teaches you rules, and then deliberately breaks them to make you feel helpless as it tells the story. You are not so much controlling a game, as being allowed into it. Gaming logic only applies insofar as it is then broken to open emotions in the player. At one point you are playing a "mini-game" explaining illness to Joel's siblings by crafting a story of a hero conquering a dragon. Ryan's wife frames this with faith in Christ, while Ryan's own faith is cracking, struggling, advancing under the unimaginable pressures. I'm just going to leave the father, Ryan's, unflinching and gut-wrenching 2016 Game Awards speech for you to watch, and move on.

"Often in video games we get to choose how we are seen. ... But sometimes a story is written on to us, or it is told because of us, or in spite of us. And it reveals our weaknesses. Our failures. Our hopes. Our fears. You let us tell the story of my son, Joel."

6.) Inside 

The sequel of sorts to Limbo by developer Play Dead, this game absolutely assaults you with intrigue, atmosphere, and mystery. I can say without reservation that the first 15 minutes of this alone are a masterpiece. One of the most beautiful games I have ever played (a theme in this list), even when it takes some of its more breathtakingly weird turns you still can't help but take in the surroundings, the eerily unsettling sound design, and are at almost every turn trying to piece the dialogue-less story together. I can honestly say nothing will prepare you for the endgame. Take that as you will. Every time the camera shifts, or you complete a puzzle, you are rewarded with new and painstakingly crafted artistic vistas that make you ache to find out the lore behind the world standing before you.


7.) Oxenfree 

This game is impressive on a number of fronts. The first is obviously the gorgeous mixture of watercolor and a sort of Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends art style. The second is how delightfully unsettling and ominous a game that took a side-scroller perspective can be. Horror games often trade on the camera's intimacy to the viewer in First or Third-Person perspectives. Here you hover, God-like over the characters you control in a two-dimensional plane. And yet, when things go sideways, it is deliciously unsettling, without ever losing its inviting character. This is a game that you want to let creep you out. A third impressive feature is how genuinely attached you become to the characters. They start off a bit annoying, and the dialogue options you are initially presented with feel forced. But as you progress, so do they, and you become genuinely concerned not just for their physical safety, but for their sanity as well.


8.) Ori and the Blind Forest 

I'm definitely behind the eight-ball on this game (which is about two years old now). Regardless, if Disney made the perfectly executed platform game, this would be it. It is adorable and heart-wrenching, with slick controls never failing you. Another game blessed with environments that seem to literally glow with otherworldly life, Ori has uncanny level design, and some of the most addictive progression mechanics I've experienced. Making Ori that much more maneuverable, or giving him another jump or charge ability, is ridiculously rewarding as it allows you to glide that much more effortlessly though an admittedly punishing level progression. Its not easy. But wow is it pretty. Part of the beauty of this game is how much skill can play in: an average play through can last up to eight or nine hours. Speed-runners can knock it out in forty minutes without batting an eye (the world record is around 17 minutes).



9.) Darkest Dungeons 

This is a game that asks: what if your heroes also have severe flaws? How would you manage them? Whether they are terrified of becoming lost in a maze (and so threaten to flee every time you backtrack), or they are abusive to failures of their teammates, in Darkest Dungeons you don't just consider how strong or how much magic a character has--you inventory how crazy they are. This is a game brimful of character and narrative, and it will make you want to swear at your screen a time or two before you get a handle on its mechanics. Do you bring a torch to fights to light your way and help your character's fear? Or do you go sans torch, which heightens fear but also allows you to get the drop on your enemies and gain greater reward? While this is another game I am behind the times on, it was probably one of the most enjoyable dungeon crawlers I've played in a long while.

10.) The Swapper 

All good Science Fiction exaggerates a moral feature of our contemporary world in order to bring it into focus. The Swapper does this with unnerving panache. Given a device that allows you to solve otherwise unsolvable problems by duplicating yourself, the game slowly builds the realization in you to ask: am I killing others like me to survive? Is this ok? Can I do otherwise? Sacrificing clones is demanded for almost every puzzle. The Swapper uses the games core mechanics to nonetheless burn the question into your head: are people means, or ends? This haunting and intelligent story traps you in its compelling loneliness. Perhaps the most rewarding part of this game is that its puzzles are not merely incremental, but force to to view it from entirely different angles.


11.) Stardew Valley

I'm not even ashamed to say I love this game. I mean, a little. But it is the most zen, relaxing, addicting game I played this year. When I had a stressful day, Stardew was there. It is honestly hard to even explain if you haven't played it for a few hours. It will grab you and not let go. It is like a kidnapper, only adorable.

11.) The Witness 

I both loved and hated this game. I'm not typically one for puzzles, which is this whole game. But the puzzles are embedded in a dazzling, stylized island world that just begs you to uncover its mysteries. So I did. I'm not ashamed to say I had to look up more than a few puzzles to solve them. The gameplay gives you no handholding--each puzzle teaches you something, a rule, a movement, an association--each of which become fair games to be applied or twisted in later puzzles. What is most intriguing to me as an aspiring linguist, is how many ways the "instructionless" instructions can be misinterpreted. Once you hit that "eureka" moment, it is extremely rewarding. In the end I add this game to the list because of the aching mystery of the game. But, if you don't like puzzles for the sake of puzzles (like me), this may need to take a backseat. Its beauty was sometimes overwhelmed by its "why didn't that work what is this game??"