Play More Indies. & some of those other games too.
2024 was a challenging year for me. It started off with a horrible flood that set things back and it didn’t stop there. Thankfully, through the darkest of the year we were able to persevere and crossover into a hopefully much brighter January. But before we got here, there were some life moments, some family and friends, and some pretty rad games that helped me float along through both the sunshine and the storms.
A major bright spot of 2024 was being invited to Summer Game Fest and heading out to Los Angeles. I had the chance to indulge in a few Volvy-ritas at the Devolver Digital lounge, got blown by Dan Ryckert on the Giant Bomb couch, hopped down a warp pipe at Super Nintendo World, and hung out with so many peers and friends that I normally don’t get to see in person all that often. Oh, and play and put my eyeballs on some terrific games. A major tone shift in what began as a not so great year and one I continue to be thankful for. But you aren’t here for a diary entry you’re here to scroll all the way to the bottom and see what I put at the top spot. So without further ado, here are my favorite games of 2024.
#10 – Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure
Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure is one of those games that when someone explains it to you it may not seem like the wonderous and heartwarming puzzle box that it is until you get your hands on it. When I first had the chance to play it at Summer Game Fest 2024, it immediately left me pining for more puzzles. An unordinary RPG that builds on the core puzzle design of sliding tiles to move the world around you in intuitive and rewarding ways that had certain late game puzzles had me smiling after scratching my head long enough. The cherry on top of Arranger that pushes it over the edge and onto my list for the year is the characters story that are surprisingly deeper than what I was expecting from this little puzzler. Even if you may not feel lost, but find yourself interested, I’m confident you’ll walk away with more than a solid sliding puzzle game.
#9 – Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle was a genuine surprise gem of the year for me. Sure a big budget game built on the bones of beloved franchise may give it a much larger potential for something to be great there but it really just didn’t seem like my type of game. At least not one I was going to drop everything during a busy December to jump into, I’d probably just download it on a whim months later. But man am I so glad I did because this game whips.
Getting lost in it’s varied locations across the globe while solving puzzles and decoding cyphers was possibly the most I’ve ever felt invested in an immersive sim game– admittedly a genre I do not dabble in much. Stealth sections of games are almost always not my jam either, and in a game where I was almost always choosing to sleuth around and stay undetected I couldn’t bare to not check every room or path on this adventure. On top of all that was just how fun it was to get sucked into a good Indiana Jones story. Great voice acting and dialogue, a villain you truly wanted to watch fail, and engaging cutscenes that would occasionally pivot to a gamepad input that heightened the drama unfolding. Oh, and punching Nazi’s over and over again never gets old.
#8 – Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth
Yakuza/Like a Dragon was a series that evaded me until I played 2020’s Yakuza: Like a Dragon and since being introduced to Ichiban Kasuga and the world of Yakuza/LAD I’ve been a fan ever since. Infinite Wealth was one of my most anticipated games of 2024, and although it may have fallen flat in some aspects of it’s narrative and pacing it still remained one of my favorite experiences with Ichiban and the gang. Powerful character moments attached to Drink Links, certain main story beats that brought the tears, and the contagious positive energy radiating from Ichiban shined through some of the duller moments for me.
I could’ve spent the whole first few months of 2024 slowly zipping around on that Segway, chipping away at every side quest, and making my way through all of what Dondoko Island had to offer and would’ve been perfectly content vibing with the crew. It was so easy to find myself slipping down every alley, searching for every opportunity to sing karaoke, or scooping up as many Aloha Links as I could. Existing in that world they created never felt boring. If some of the story stuff worked better for me, Infinite Wealth would have easily catapulted up higher on this list for me but I still don’t regret a single second spent in Hawaii and Japan.
#7 – The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom
This is one of the most slept on major releases of 2024. The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom not only brought us the first playable Zelda but one of the better top down adventures in the series. Most Zelda games are typically built around weapons and tools, which is no different here except that with the introduction of the Tri Wand to create echoes of the world and enemies it offers a new and unique way to overcome the obstacles in Zelda’s way.
There are countless solid puzzles to solve and a variety of dungeons to conquer by making smart use of the echoes you accumulate along the way. What starts off as a simple way of cloning beds and clay pots to build paths to out of reach areas later blooms into more thought provoking uses for both puzzles and combat scenarios. Add in this delightful soundtrack that scores this seemingly toy-like aesthetic borrowed from the latest remake of Link’s Awakening that all compounds into something worthy of praise. If you’re a fan of Zelda games and have skipped this one for some reason let this be the nudge you need.
#6 – Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
The more time that has passed after playing Rebirth the fonder my memory of it becomes. It still has some glaring pacing issues, an at-times unsatisfying narrative thread, and maybe just one too many mini-games, but the world and characters that exist in Rebirth are some of the best portrayals in the series to date. Whether it’s Barret opening up about his anxiety about being a good father or that one Red XIII moment, there’s so much more depth to these characters and the dying planet around them that wasn’t showcased in this way, to this degree in the past. Even when Cloud refuses to show any emotion or offer up sparse words in response, it works, it feels relatable and understandable. So even with some of the other shortcomings Rebirth has, there’s still some heart beating below.
Oh, and once you figure out how to really get in a groove with the combat I truly think it’s one of the most brilliantly blended turn-based and action systems I’ve ever played. Something I hope doesn’t get discarded after the third remake comes out. Stylish, invigorating, and possesses a high ceiling for mastery if you want to go that deep with side quests and optional fights it’s truly one of the best modern combat systems in games today. Final Fantasy VII will always carry a conversation around it being such an important piece of gaming history, but Rebirth is an achievement and benchmark for what remasters can continue to be.
#5 – 1000xRESIST
What a game. 1000xRESIST is one of those rare occasions where people you know and trust are hyping this thing into oblivion and you’re just trying to go in with cautious optimism that it can be what they praise it to be. It absolutely lived up to it for me. It’s funny too because very early in 1000xRESIST I was vibing with the story a little bit and intrigued to learn what was going on, wasn’t overjoyed with the gameplay, and had reached out to another friend who was also playing to see if they had felt similarly at all. Almost immediately after expressing these feelings I reached the end of that chapter and quickly switched from swaying back and forth on it to needing to see this through as soon as possible. The gameplay loop is what it is but at a point it started to gel and blended itself well to the story being told. So once that rollercoaster hit the first loop the rest of my being was onboard to see where 1000xRESIST would go, and trust me when I say it goes. This is not only on my list but something I’d highly recommend if you’re a fan of thought provoking narrative games. Hekki grace.
#4 – Unicorn Overlord
Another surprise gem of the year for me. When Unicorn Overlord was announced it immediately landed itself on a list of games I was looking forward to– I just wasn’t expecting it to feed the little gremlin part of my brain so voraciously. A tactical RPG with an almost too vast of a roster for you to build your units around, I found myself playing long after the credits rolled to clean up side quests and knock out every achievement. The final fight of the game did feel like it had a slight difficulty spike and some of the specific option quests did feel tedious, but otherwise if you’re a fan of this style of tactical RPGs this is one of the best in the genre I’ve played in quite some time. It’s making me question my lack of playing other Vanillaware games and how I need to fix that soon.
#3 – Astrobot
It’s rare to see a platformer at all these days that aren’t starring a plumber, let alone an exceptional one. Astrobot has had dozens upon dozens of flowers thrown at it already, and rightfully so! I may not be as unabashedly high on it as many are, but still I had an absolute joyous time hunting down bots and exploring the worlds in each galaxy. A celebration of PlayStation and PS adjacent video games, a bop-filled soundtrack, and some challenging bonus levels all added onto my enjoyment of what is a top-tier platformer. The mouse level alone makes Astrobot one of the best things I played this year. If you own a PlayStation 5 this is the platforms killer app in my humble opinion.
#2 – Thank Goodness You’re Here
Quite possibly the funniest video game I have ever played. Thank Goodness You’re Here is the best British export this decade if not longer. As you journey through the town of Barnsworth looking to help the residents however you can, you can’t help but be assaulted nonstop with jokes that somehow almost always landed for me. Between environmental gags and slapstick humor, to bits that carry on throughout the game and get built upon, Thank Goodness You’re Here shouldn’t have had as high of a laugh rate from me as it did– it’s truly a comedy marvel. I feel sorry for the folks who don’t end up finding this game funny because I think this is a must experience game if you enjoy this type of humor. I’m looking forward to the day that time has passed enough where I can experience Thank Goodness You’re Here and laugh as hard as I did the first time.
#1 – Balatro
It’s somewhere around 2AM and myself and a bunch of friends are gathered around our glowing screens moving around suited playing cards appearing as if we are a row of gamblers on a casino floor but in reality it’s a Discord call filled with shared gameplay screens of Balatro. Maneuvering my hand around to continue to pull straights in a mix of strategy and luck, I breathe deep and the call huddles around my screen as I play my next hand to either blow it all, or win my first run.
Balatro is possibly the best poker video game I’ve ever played, even though it isn’t that. Sure, it borrows base rule sets and a deck of cards, but outside of that you have systems, layers of depth, and mechanics that move it so far away from being just a poker adjacent game and instead one of the best deck-building roguelikes. I’ve tried to play so many other deck-builders and roguelikes and I usually bounce so hard off of both, especially deck-builders that who knew all I needed was a poker themed paint job to get sucked in. That last part is slightly in jest, but also it was something that made onboarding into Balatro much easier for someone like me who likes card games and is very familiar with poker. So having that base knowledge did make Balatro initially much more approachable to me, but learning how to really utilize joker cards and other ways to build better runs is where these cards truly shine. I’ll never forget the shared euphoria winning my first run of Balatro and I’m still always chasing my next.
Thanks for checking out my top ten! As I sat down and reflected on my year both professionally in the industry and in my personal life I remain humbled and thankful for all of the family, friends, collaborators, and beyond that spent time and energy with me. Together we can make 2025 our best days yet.
Check out our full 2024 recap and be sure to keep it locked to Pass The Controller. For a deeper dive on all things gaming and nerd culture, listen to the Pass The Controller Podcast with new episodes weekly on your favorite podcast platform. Want to continue the conversation with us and our community? Join our official Discord server.
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