My favourite game of the year is a game where you just play poker. Not in a Red Dead Redemption way, where you can play poker and then go out of the bar to do quests, kill some guys, enjoy some voice acting. No. It’s just poker. Except of course, it isn’t. Balatro is more than just poker. It is a special and singular little game that has managed to completely consume my year.
When you boot Balatro up, it does appear unassuming. You are given a hand of cards and, over the course of a few more hands and discards, you are asked to score a set amount of chips. Typical poker rules apply, where a two pair is fine but if you can get something like a full house you’re going to get a much bigger score. Once you hit the blind, you are taken to a shop. Here is where Balatro starts to evolve. In the shop, you can buy Jokers, which will radically change the course of play. Some change the rules, such as cards which allow you to build a straight with a gap of one or with four cards, or perhaps a Joker that will treat Spades and Clubs, and Hearts and Diamonds as two interchangeable suits of black and red. Some however change your score. It might be more chips for playing face cards, a bonus for how long you go without playing your most frequent hand, perhaps a x3 multiplier for when you play your last hand. These Jokers that change your score are the key to making it through the escalating gauntlet of “blinds” (rounds) that make up the game.
These blinds themselves provide challenges, as on every third blind, you will be given an additional obstacle to overcome. Some are as simple as facing a bigger blind or only being able to play one hand, but some are potentially game ruining as they debuff all cards of a set suit or disable all Jokers until one is sold. If you’ve built your entire run around playing diamonds, a blind like that can ruin everything. Speaking of though, the shop doesn’t just offer Jokers. There are vouchers which offer long-term improvements to your run, as well as booster packs that can add cards to your deck, change the cards already in your deck or make certain hands more valuable. What this leads to is insane runs where depending on the random number generation (or RNG to the real losers) you could be picking up five of a kind on the ace of spades while holding Jokers that boost your score when playing aces and only having black suits in your hand. You will eventually break the game. That is how the game is designed and quite frankly, that imperfection of structure is the perfection of the game.
Everything I’m saying will sound crazy if you’ve not played or watched footage of Balatro. I admit, when I heard about it, I was confused too. But, where there can be strategic complexity, the face of the game is refreshingly simple. All areas of the screen are neatly segmented and overlaid with a CRT filter that gives an old school vibe to the game that the gameplay is also leaning into, which allow the personality on the Joker cards to pop. They are all given unique and fun designs that weirdly create a connection between them and the player. You’ll do a run of the game and see that Joker that got you your first win. A warm nostalgia spreads across your chest and you smile, picking the Joker again. This time you fully shit the bed and are out on ante 4. But what a face that Joker had. Crucially, the musical score for Balatro is also perfectly weighted, this endlessly looping track that never once got on my nerves throughout all my playthroughs. While I would often substitute it with a podcast or an album, playthroughs with the sound on were never grating. Those little noises as cards clock up extra points are so well judged too, little addictive bursts of pleasure to stimulate the brain. I would be remiss though if I failed to mention the fire effect in the game. Early in your time with Balatro, you will notice you get a score that causes the score boxes to set alight. This is what happens when you play a single hand so good it eclipses the entire blind. That is the high you will spend the rest of that run and every run forever after chasing, a small design decision that can itself be enough to sustain a gameplay loop around.
All of that would be enough. I have roguelikes that I have returned to frequently throughout the years that offer me no new content but retain that addictive gameplay hook, and Balatro would remain a great game if the same were true for it. The same is not true though. Balatro has a level of depth to it that makes returning to it frankly a necessity. There are more Jokers to unlock by playing in unusual ways, new decks that can completely change your playstyle and even a challenge mode, full of twenty hand crafted runs that are all intended to push the rugged Balatro player into doing something new yet again. Roguelikes often become a game of bashing your head against the wall, yet Balatro doesn’t stop at making it fun to hit your head against the wall. There are new ways to hit your head against the wall, new walls to hit your head against and new treats hiding behind the wall. You’ll have so much fun that you won’t realise you’ve given yourself concussion (for the sake of the metaphor, replace concussion with losing five hours of your life to Balatro that you could have put towards writing the next great American novel). People have managed to 100% Balatro but not without sacrificing hundreds of hours to it. Even without getting close to that feat, I can’t admit my playtime isn’t staggering.
Again, this all sounds like complete nonsense, so do yourself a favour and buy a copy of Balatro. It is on all consoles, PC, even your phone and you will not regret a single one of the (many) hours you lose to it. It is proof that not only is the indie gaming scene the most exciting facet of that industry right now, but also proof that even a genre as overextended as the roguelike still has plenty of juice to be squeezed. Now if you’ll excuse me, I think it’s time for another round. Dealer, I’m all in. Poker reference. Yeah.
Honourable Mentions:
Buckshot Roulette – If you thought Balatro didn’t go far enough in perverting an existing game and turning it into something new, may I present to you Buckshot Roulette, a game that boldly asks “what if you played Russian Roulette with a shotgun?” The vibes are rancid but undeniably compelling.
The Casting of Frank Stone – I’m always a sucker for Supermassive Games and their now classic playable movie style of gameplay, so another serving is always welcome. While Frank Stone falters a little with an ending that hews too close to Dead by Daylight to be fully satisfying as a standalone game, the journey getting there was one of their best yet.
TCG Card Shop Simulator – I always question if I can put a game in early access on this list, but seeing as I sunk 20 hours into this over four days, it feels wrong not to acknowledge that I have had and am continuing to have a blast with this game. There’s nothing like coming home from a hard day of being a manager and decompressing by playing a managerial sim.
Peglin – “What if Peggle was Slay the Spire?” is a pretty simple premise as far as they go, but then why hasn’t it happened until now? Though lacking the purity of either game, Peglin combines the two into a game I keep dipping back into.
UFO 50 – I can’t claim to have even scratched the surface of UFO 50, a densely packed and carefully curated compilation of 50 full-length retro games from fictional developer UFO Soft (but actually developed by Spelunky team Mossmouth.) From what I have already discovered though, this is a feat as vast as it is special, that I want to keep returning to all next year.
Warhammer 40K Space Marine 2 – This is undeniably little more than a big dumb shooter game that failed to get me actually invested in the Warhammer universe. However, blasting and slashing through hordes of goons with a friend was a great time and I don’t think my time with it is yet done, a thought that does still excite me.
Today marks the tenth anniversary of me writing this blog. It hasn’t always been this exact site, we’ve jumped around as I’ve tried to change and evolve with the times and I’ve drifted from weekly to fortnightly to whenever the energy emerges, but all the same I’ve been doing this funky thing for ten years. As someone cresting the age of 25, there’s not a lot I’ve been doing for ten years that isn’t breathing, eating or urinating, so writing is a big deal! For anyone who has been here for ten years, thank you. Anyone who has been here for five years, thank you. One month? You’ve done your best, there’s a lot of lore to catch up on, but thank you nonetheless.
To celebrate, we’re going simple; a top 7 list that celebrates my favourite films from the entire time I’ve been writing. Some of them have had reviews but I’m not linking to them because to be completely honest, the idea of reading things I wrote when I was 15 fills me with a level of dread that I’m still working out how to convey in words. If you’re desperate, seek them out, but I’ll be giving you my thoughts the whole way and my thoughts have also evolved a lot over the last decade. With all this said, it’s time for honourable mentions!
Gone Girl
David Fincher took a novel with an already excellent narrative and spun it into one of the best thrillers ever made. It is sick, it is twisty, it is some of the best stunt casting in history and if you ever meet a woman who calls it one of her favourite films, she is either a keeper or plotting to take your kidneys.
Interstellar
For most of the last decade, I’ve felt the need to defend the notion of “love is stronger than gravity and time.” I no longer want to defend myself, because anyone who doesn’t believe in the unbearably sincere heart at the centre of one of the coolest sci-fi films yet made does not deserve my time.
Mad Max: Fury Road
You know that scene in Mad Max:Fury Road where the camera pans along the convoy of cars, constructed out of trucks and bikes and nonsense, eventually landing at the guy who is playing a guitar that shoots fire? That scene alone is why this is one of the best films of the past decade.
La La Land
Again, despite there being so many people who love La La Land, I feel an inherent need to defend my adoration of it. It is big and bold and a little bit stupid, but crucially it is a blast of joy directly into my heart that I watched five times while it was in cinemas. That can never mean nothing for a musical agnostic.
Call Me By Your Name
Okay, again, I should defend myself about this film starring Armie Hammer and focusing on a relationship with a hefty age gap. I do again refuse. Watching this film transports me to a place of pure sensuality where I drift into Italian landscapes, peachy platters and languorous stares. It announced Luca Guadagnino and Timothée Chalamet to me and both have continued to impress.
The Lighthouse
The Lighthouse has been one of my biggest growers of the past decade. I was interested by it at first but left it low on my Best of 2019 list, before becoming swamped by love for it during the pandemic. That love is yet to waver and I’ve still not seen anything that comes even close to this madcap spectacle of boys, beans and bottoms.
Uncut Gems
For a film that is structured to both resemble and create anxiety attacks, Uncut Gems sure is a film that has brought me comfort. It’s all you could ever want. Funny, tense, unpredictable, gleeful and home to not just Adam Sandler’s best performance but what still remains one of my favourite performances by any actor ever. Stunning.
Now on to the actual ranked bit!
7. Parasite
Not to spoil the rest of the list but Parasite is a fascinating entry on the list as it’s the only film here that won Best Picture at the Oscars (or the Palme D’or at Cannes for that matter.) So exciting was its win that in celebration, it made me throw my back out and be in quite a lot of pain while Bong Joon-Ho was grinning the happiest grin I have ever seen. The only thing that equalled his level of joy was mine after watching Parasite. Everyone loved to say that you should watch it knowing as little as possible but it was actually the rewatching that made this film reveal itself as an all time masterpiece. What initially appears to be an interesting thriller about how capitalism keeps us all down gets to develop into that kind of bonkers space that Korean thrillers are great at occupying (without needing to get into the extremity that other Korean films can often descend into.) It also feels like a weird compliment, but Parasite is the film that got a lot of people watching subtitled films for the first time in their lives. This opened a whole world of cinema up for a lot of people and for that alone, we should celebrate it. That doesn’t have to be the only celebration though because again, this film is awesome. If you still, still, haven’t seen it, just do it tonight. Please, you have no idea what a fun time you’re missing out on until you try.
6. Lady Bird
We’re entering a phase of very emotionally charged films that I am deeply connected to and will find tough to rationalise. First of them is Lady Bird. I saw this film at a very specific time in my life. To see a film about a young adult finding themself in the year before going to university in the year when I had myself just gone to university was somewhat shattering. Lady Bird’s world wasn’t mine, yet I felt like I belonged there. The way that Greta Gerwig, directing her first solo feature film, created a film full of love that itself inspired love is intangibly wonderful. Saoirse Ronan does very gentle work in the lead role too, being borderline imperceptible in crafting someone who is utterly and entirely believable. A huge debt is also owed to Jon Brion’s spritely score, which spends most of the runtime zipping us between scenes, before coming in with some last minute sucker punches. The easiest way of explaining the impact that Lady Bird had on me is by saying that it made me visit Sacramento. While in California on a holiday, I knew Sacramento had to be somewhere I visited and I spent my three days visiting as many of the beautifully unremarkable locations from the film as I could (as well as watching two of the other films on this list, Uncut Gems and a film yet to come!) For most, Lady Bird is a great film. For me, it will always be that little bit more special than for most.
5. Petite Maman
It was tough not to put Portrait of a Lady on Fire on the list, a film that attempts to rewrite film language and sculpt a new way of telling stories about neglected cinematic lives. What softened the blow for me was the unshakable knowledge that Petite Maman would absolutely be on the list. This film is special, genuinely. In less than 80 minutes, Celine Sciamma tells us everything about childhood, the intangible magic of the everyday and the strength of parental bonds across time. The story is simple. A young girl’s mother disappears after the death of the family matriarch and while wandering the woods, the young girl meets another almost identical young girl. As it turns out, this is a younger version of her own mother, brought here through means both mystical and unexplained, and the two spend the film hanging out with each other. They play, they go on adventures, nothing remarkable occurs whatsoever. Yet in that lack of the remarkable is where Sciamma strikes and the simple surface of the film allows a very deep emotional connection. The use of music is sparing but impactful once used, the cinematography presents a sci-fi concept in a fully believable way and I genuinely believe that this film has one of the single best cuts in any film since Lawrence of Arabia. Of all the films on this list, I think this is the film that may have passed you by and if so, it will take you no time at all to remedy it and make your heart overflow with love.
4. Arrival
I was going to do a whole “Arrival is more than just a sci-fi film” thing, but I immediately want to shoot that down as an idea. Arrival is as great a film as it is precisely because it’s a sci-fi film, using the language of that genre to make grand and legitimately profound statements on language as a broader concept. If somehow, all these years after release, you still don’t know where Arrival takes its story, I won’t be the one to spoil it for you, it’s too much of a treat to interfere with. However, even if you did know the trajectory from the start (or if you picked up on the clues quicker than I did) the film is immensely satisfying, a colossal but exquisitely deatailed puzzle box that is aching to be opened. As I said, each piece is perfect. Amy Adams gives the performance of her career, Bradford Young’s cinematography perfectly compliments the design of the world and the structure is such a marvel that its Vonneguttian delights are bound to sneak up on you. When I first saw Arrival, I thought it was seriously impressive, an awesome film and one that gave me hope for the future of sci-fi (not for nothing, Villeneuve has become the face of go for broke sci-fi this past decade.) On reflection now, Arrival is special. It clarifies things for me. I understand what I want out of sci-fi because of it, I understand what I want out of stories because of it and I know what I want out of my life because of it. I also wail like a banshee because of it, in an ending that ironically only gets better the more I see it.
3. Little Women
I’ve never cared for those deluxe recliner chairs that certain cinemas have. I think that they basically encourage you to think of comfort instead of thinking of the film you’re here for and promote a disinterest in anything beyond the experience of “luxury”. The one time I didn’t feel this was when I was watching Little Women in a recliner and was laid back in a way that meant I could cradle myself as the tears, the beauty and the sheer joy took over my body. For someone who instinctually rejects period dramas and has never read the Lousia May Alcott source novel, Greta Gerwig’s adaptation won me over within seconds. The way Gerwig changed the structure so that two time periods run alongside each other and allows for the maximum emotion at every single moment of the film is a simple change but one that becomes revelatory. Every moment of joy is maximised, every sorrow as bitter as can be, yet the world is perpetually exquisite. I genuinely don’t think there is any fifteen minute stretch I can make it through without crying, whether from sorrow or joy. Everyone is at a perfect pitch, all being a little too ridiculous for their worlds, all falling down just so perfectly onto each other. Saoirse Ronan is once again sublime as Jo, a character I still don’t know if I want to be or want to be with, Timothee Chalamet is the perfect level of pathetic and Florence Pugh gets to be stuck up in a way that never annoys. Words don’t really convey the fullest extent of the power Little Women holds. Even phrases like “my little women,” “and I’ll watch” or “I just think that women…” barely convey my point, though it doesn’t help that I get misty eyed just writing them. Women! Rad! I need to stop writing this one or I’ll be sobbing over a keyboard.
2. Paddington 2
I remember the first time someone tried to tell me how good Paddington 2 is. It was my first year film lecturer and he was absolutely raving about it, coming into our seminar flabbergasted (flabbergasted in the way that only a man called Benedict can be flabbergasted) that none of us had seen it yet. This stuck in my head when the campus cinema had their screening and so with scepticism, I bought my ticket and took my seat. Safe to say, I’m not a sceptic anymore. What some would write off as a bit of a meme now, a nice film that’s unremarkable, is still secretly a genuine masterpiece. Paul King refused to let the shackles of the label “a film for children” stop him in making a film that has ranked (for me) above films by Scorsese, Fincher and Sciamma. The script is air-tight, featuring constant call backs to earlier in the film and refusing to let any end be loose by the end, helped by a game cast of “it’s them, from that” faces that are sure to delight every Brit. It also helps that the film is relentless in its ambition to spread joy, a pursuit that will moisten the eyes of the hardest sceptic. Once upon a time, that was me. Now I’ve talked about five films in a row that make me sob. In a very real way, Paddington 2 marked a changing point in how I view cinema. I abandoned my pretensions and opened my heart to films that I could otherwise have closed myself off from. If Paddington 2 had done that despite its quality I would still owe it a great deal. When it has changed me as a person and is a film of honest to God perfection? Well, it’s marmalade sandwiches and smiles all around.
1. Whiplash
Yeah yeah yeah, I talk about how much I love Whiplash all the time, grow up and get over it. It genuinely is that good and any scepticism on your part is your loss alone. I’ve rewatched Whiplash a few times now, always going in with the mindset of “well surely it can’t be as good as I remember, I’ve put too much pressure on it in my own head and it will now be merely fine.” Each time, I have been wrong. Whiplash is, on the surface, a thriller about a drummer chasing greatness and the lengths to which he’ll go for it. It’s a common trope, other films of the same era like Black Swan also had very good takes on this concept. While Whiplash does have some really strong and well realised themes though, it is as good as it is because it’s the best thriller I’ve ever seen. The tension is unbeatable, with even the lulls serving as moments that make the audience worry about what may happen next. Sharone Meir’s tight and sickly cinematography pair with the percussive pace that the drums give us, setting the stage for one of the all time great film performances. I am of course talking about J.K. Simmons as Fletcher, an unrepentant monster who pushes all of his students beyond breaking point. He is the great and eternal mystery that keeps the legacy of Whiplash alive, in that the constant question of the film is “why is he doing this?” and “is his cruelty worth the greatness?”
One of my favourite scenes in this film (of which there are many) is one in which Fletcher and our protagonist Andrew have a relaxed conversation at a bar. It’s a moment where Fletcher lets his guard down and starts to open up to Andrew about why he pushes his students like he does. Suddenly the mask comes off the monster and we can understand why he does what he does. Or so we think. Going into the final showdown, Fletcher once again turns on Andrew and the safety that we felt we had is cruelly revoked. It all builds into what I can confidently refer to as my favourite final scene of any film, a scene which I struggle to watch and not give a standing ovation to, cringe as it sounds. Damien Chazelle has done brilliant work since Whiplash (his masterpiece of mess Babylon could easily grow on me over the next few years) but he has never yet hit this level of perfection. His other films have had moments of perfection, perfect elements, but never since have they been so well wrapped in such a tight and satisfying ball, aimed directly at the viewers heart. Ten years on, there are still very few films as good as Whiplash, so lets hope that we can get even a hint of this cinematic brilliance from the next ten years.
As a bonus, how about some of my favourite TV, video games and albums of the past decade while we’re here?
TV
Twin Peaks: The Return – Call it TV, call it a long film, it doesn’t matter what you call it. Nothing has been the same since Twin Peaks: The Return and even after all this time, we are only just starting to see films and TV that have taken its radical message to heart.
O.J.: Made in America – Again, doesn’t matter how you categorise it, O.J.: Made in America is one of the best documentaries ever made. It has the sprawl and length of a great YouTube video essay but the rigour, research and restraint of a project from true professionals.
Nathan for You – Cringe comedy has never been quite this sublime, as Nathan Fielder stretches the boundaries of fiction and non-fiction in ways that are hilarious until they’re terrifying, before they lurch right back to hilarious.
The Traitors UK – It feels weird to put a reality show on this list, but when it’s as perfectly sculpted as The Traitors it’s tough to complain, especially when greeted with the joy of the normal people who populate the UK version. The plot twists in this would be outlandish if they were plotted but as unscripted TV it is dynamite, and a testament to the power of appointment TV.
Taskmaster – Five comedians get set a silly task and then get shouted at based on how badly they do. That’s the simple set-up of a comedy masterclass, in which no matter whether you’re presented with faces familiar or not, you are set to giggle loudly and constantly for a solid hour.
Albums
Melodrama by Lorde – Being nineteen is statistically speaking one of the hardest things in the world and that hyperbole exists entirely because of Melodrama. Lorde’s second record took all that was already great from her first and sent it into the stratosphere, in which every emotion could exist at its most powerful forever.
We Will Always Love You by The Avalanches – We Will Always Love You feels like a mixtape that we sent into space for aliens to discover, in the hope that we can teach other lifeforms the variety of our experience on life. Across an hour of sensational songs, The Avalanches take us on an odyssey and it is one I have retaken over and over again.
brat by charli xcx – brat is the newest anything on this list, but I would feel stupid if I didn’t already describe it as an iconic album of this era. The brat era is only just getting going too, with new remixes always dropping, but if Melodrama was a defining album for my late teenage years, brat is a defining album for my mid-twenties.
Jubilee by Japanese Breakfast – I feel very safe when I put on Jubilee. After my friend George recommended it to me, I couldn’t stop listening. The album is beautiful and joyful, but also strangely sad in places unexpected. Every time I come back (and it is often) I find something brand new to love.
Be The Cowboy by Mitski – Like many people during the pandemic, Mitski did an Irish jig on my heart. For me, Be The Cowboy is her opus, an unstoppable bull in a china shop full of my emotions. I love it deeply and for my own safety, I cannot listen to it too often or I will start eating drywall.
Video Games
Disco Elysium – No world I’ve entered has been quite as well written as Disco Elysium, which is a relief as it’s a game built almost entirely of text. Like my favourite novels, it’s not so much scenes or characters that occupy my dreams, but an atmosphere, a feeling of growing dread and nausea in a world unlike our world in fewer ways than we hope.
Baldurs Gate 3 – Where Disco Elysium is amazing because it’s a dense world to pick apart, Baldurs Gate 3 is an equally dense world that positions itself as a play area. If you can dream it, you can do it, and you’ll be delighted to discover that everyone else who played it dreamed and did completely differently to you. Plus, how can you not love that rotating party that follow you through the game?
Slay the Spire – For sheer hours dropped, Slay the Spire rivals even Animal Crossing: New Horizons for me. This rouguelike deck builder has had many imitators but nothing has come as close to this perfection, through which I can constantly battle with a smile on my face.
Hades – Rougelikes have had a real moment in the past decade, with the crowning jewel being Hades. Supergiant Games took all their skill in character design, music and narrative and applied it to a gameplay loop that I got stuck in for a long time. To this date, my longest single session of gaming is for Hades, a blistering 13 hour day spent grinding the dungeons while I ignored Uni essays.
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – For sheer joy, nothing beats Mario Kart and the deluxe release of Mario Kart 8 gave us everything we could want from the franchise. The racing was slick, the tracks were sick and it was immediately accessible to anyone whether this was their first or fiftieth race. It is perfection and a ninth game has a lot to prove.
I’m playing Skyrim right now. I know what you’re thinking, “oh, I love replaying Skyrim, I can always go back to it” and you are wrong. I am playing Skyrim for the first time ever. Hopefully that gives you an idea of the scope of my backlog and why I’ve played very little this year, not even a single one of the Game of the Year nominees at the “prestigious” and “real” The Game Awards. There’s a lot to play! I don’t have the time or money to keep up with all these new releases and so I quite simply don’t try. But! I always have room in my heart for sweet little indie games (as evidenced by my game of the year every year for the past few years) and 2023 has been no exception, in that our winner has proved to be exceptional. This year, that game is Cocoon.
Cocoon doesn’t begin by offering you much of a story. It doesn’t end by offering you much of a story either unless you’re willing to think in abstract terms, WHICH I AM. You are an insect-like creature who crash lands on this beautiful desert planet. You’re not given a goal but naturally, you’re going to explore and learn what everything does. This switch moves that platform, this button reveals a new path, classic puzzle game stuff. Eventually though, you’ll approach a platform which, when activated, kicks you out of this world and into a grey reality. In this world, your previous world is now a ball which you can carry around and use for new puzzles. At this point, I’m going to recommend that if you don’t know what this game looks like you check out a quick trailer, because I’m good with my words but we’re dealing with concepts that words can barely explain. It’s worlds within worlds in which the worlds you no longer inhabit are puzzle solving tools in the worlds you do inhabit.
This all sounds quite mind bending and that’s for a very simple reason; it is. But, the genius of the game is that it takes you towards these difficult and confusing concepts very gently. There are no tutorials in the game, only exploration and experimentation. There’s an obstacle in your path that stops you from progressing, so try a new way to go around it. Exit your current world, head into a different world, pull a new item from there and use it to progress in the old world. It’s a method of puzzle presentation that never holds your hand but guides you ever so gently towards solutions in ways that made me literally gasp and shout at the screen. I felt consistently rewarded for my understanding of the game and for picking up new mechanics, remembering old and fusing them in new settings. All of this is to say that I have no idea how to write about the actual gameplay of a puzzle game! Puzzles! Pick up orbs, enter orbs, game!
The look and sound of the game is also absolutely perfect. The actual scale of these worlds is impossible to ascertain (as the ambiguous little ending seems to tease), which the visuals lean into. You seem to be a little bug creature traversing through little worlds, but even as you leap out into bigger worlds, the scale still prevails. Your worlds are all a little bit bigger than you, looming just a bit above you on top of oceans that are just too deep to swim in. Between all the chaos, it creates some coherence. I say chaos, the worlds all have designs that are distinct enough to make sure you’re never confused as to which thing was where. Just by colour, the distinction is simple. Red world, green world, purple world. You know what they do in other worlds, you know where you left it and you know what you’ll need to return to do. When the puzzles themselves are this brain bending, simplicity in design is a gift.
Finally, as is often crucial for indie games, Cocoon can fairly easily be finished in one sitting. If you need to take a step away and clear your brain between tricky puzzles, by all means go for it, but it rewards memory of things that have come before. It doesn’t hang around so long that you’re forgetting the earliest lessons it taught you, instead leaving on a high which, again, gestures towards a narrative for those who are interested. As a lover of puzzle games for most of my life, Cocoon hit all the spots I needed and wanted it to. It was a treat that I want to distribute to everyone and if puzzle games are even slightly your jam, it is a game that you owe it to yourself to play.
Honourable Mentions:
Sea of Stars: I’m someone who never gravitates to RPGs but Sea of Stars grabbed me regardless. Its throwback presentation appeals to someone unfamiliar with where we’re throwing back to and I can’t wait to keep discovering more.
Solar Ash: Though I had some issues with moments of traversal, Solar Ash excels because it just feels great. It’s a sci-fi skating game by way of Shadow of the Colossus, which works so much better than it should with that premise.
YEAH! YOU WANT “THOSE GAMES,” RIGHT? SO HERE YOU GO! NOW, LET’S SEE YOU CLEAR THEM!: The worst named game I played this year is also super fun, which makes recommending it annoying. It’s a series of games based on those fake mobile game ads you see, but where the games are real and actually fun! Drop in drop out fun, I can’t stop returning to it.
I’ve been sitting on this one for a while. As soon as I played it, I was desperate to talk to everyone about Immortality. The issue was, I didn’t want to be the person to spoil Immortality for people who haven’t played it. I did what anyone rational would do and made my girlfriend play it, who in turn made her friend play it and then we had a little video game reading club. Anyway, the point being, I was considering writing a post about the game around the time it first came out, but felt it needed time. Time we have given it and time it has endured. I’ll talk about the game in non-spoiler terms first and then do a bit of spoiling later. If you want to, feel free to skip it and go down to the honourable mentions. With all that said, let us finally discover Immortality.
The first main question; what is Immortality? Let me answer that question with another question; who is Marissa Marcel? That’s the question that opens Immortality and it’s what powers the first part of your investigation. We do have some knowledge to get us started. She was an actress who starred in three films, all of which were never released. We have clips (presented as full motion video, meaning these feel like true film clips) from these films, including behind the scenes clips such as rehearsal or audition clips, and we have to click through them for clues. Again though, not as simple as it seems. You will click on objects or faces in the clip and the in-game system will take you to another clip with that same object or face, usually a new clip. Viewing all of these clips will hopefully give you answers into who Marissa Marcel is (or was) and what happened (or didn’t happen) to her. It’s a delicious setup and one that never failed to compel me.
What also compelled me was the unconventional gameplay loop. If you played Her Story, a previous knockout from creator Sam Barlow, you’ll know the kind of thing to expect. You are hunting for and then sorting through clips, trying to piece together a story out of what you have already seen and attempting to work out what is still hiding. You don’t really know how many clips there are left, or what you’re looking for. You just know you’ll know when you see it. Adding to this loop is the ability to rewind and fast forward through footage. At first it feels a little pointless, but rewinding can help bring more out of the clips and allow you to pull deeper meaning than what initially appears on the surface. These things combined allow for truly original storytelling. You discover the path through the narrative and the order you discover things may change the final conclusions you come to. That is so thrilling and nothing apart from Her Story has ever done that for me (once I play it, I’m sure I’ll say the same about Telling Lies.) Playing a game and filling two sides of A4 while making notes is the kind of nerdy delight that not enough games offer me.
You only buy into the narrative through because absolutely everything stands up to inspection. The film clips we’re seeing are from three very different genres, three quite different periods and encompass plenty of forms, and not once do you question their validity. The team at Half Mermaid worked their asses off to create hours of footage that you are able to fast forward through or completely disregard. It’s also important to note that because of the object-matching mechanic that is inherent to the gameplay, the smallest thing in frame has to matter. Writing objects and themes across a novel or a screenplay is one thing, but having these exist across scenes that you could click through at random and still work takes talent. What I’m trying to get at is that it’s difficult to praise a game like Immortality for its graphics in the same way you would God of War, but the game is nonetheless designed perfectly. The score is amazing too, adding an air of mystery to the simple act of clicking through scenes. Somehow, tension appears! And then there’s the decision to make the controller rumble and add an ominous sound effect when rewinding certain scenes, which… Well, it’s time to get into spoilers, isn’t it?
Please, if you haven’t played Immortality, skip ahead now. What I’m about to reveal is one of the greatest discoveries I’ve ever had in a video game. While I was rewinding through a scene, a second scene started to appear through the first. This was not a scene I had seen before, and it didn’t seem to have any of the actors I’d seen before. There was also the matter of the dialogue being strangely cryptic, about becoming another or about survival through generations. I was hooked. What other clips had this sort of thing hiding in them? The moment where I found a clip that, upon rewinding, snapped into the scene with what I referred to as “the shadow people”, my jaw hit the floor and my heart started racing. There was a whole other story happening under my nose in Immortality, featuring characters called The One and The Other. I didn’t yet know who they were but discovering their story felt like the key to uncovering Marissa’s fate. Discovering each of these clips filled me with dread, as they stared through the screen into my eyes, but I was always hungry for even more.
Once you discover The One, the thematic breadth of the game becomes startling. When you begin Immortality, you take the title to be some kind of gesture towards the nature of film as immortalising and capturing the images of people to be preserved forever. To say the game isn’t about that would be wrong, but it soon reveals itself to be this in tandem with the stories of immortal beings. “Becoming another” no longer refers to just acting, but to the act of literally possessing a humans body. Thinking about the levels that the themes exist and thrive on it impressive, but you become even more impressed when you remember that these scenes have appeared to you in a different order than to other players. Certain scenes have to be watched before other scenes can be triggered in the timeline, but you’re largely left in the wild. All of these things lead to an outstandingly chilling ending. It becomes established that if an immortal immolates themselves, anyone who watches this act will become their next host. This knowledge however, occurs after you have witnessed exactly this act. Without realising it, you moved from the role of observer into the role of participant and now you are trapped. As the final film cells melt away, the face of The One fills the screen and chills ran up my spine. It is a superb way of using the form of the game itself to enhance the final sting in the narratives tail.
If I am to recommend anything about Immortality to you, I recommend that you play it at the same time as a friend. You can exchange notes, work out where the story is heading and cryptically dance around revealing a scene that the other has not yet discovered. It was what I did with my girlfriend and we had a giddy nerdy time with it. In a time where video games trend towards homogeny, Immortality is a gift. It feels special and unique. Please, play it and spend money on it if you can. Otherwise, it is (at time of writing) on Xbox Game Pass and, unbelievably, on Netflix. If its existence on that platform doesn’t convince you of the strange hybridity and unique categorisation at play, nothing will.
Honourable Mentions
Vampire Survivors – I adore a little game I can pick up and play, which is exactly what Vampire Survivors offers. No game lasts more than half an hour and it has a deceptively deep well of content. I only regret playing it when I look up and realise that two hours have passed in my “one quick run” session.
Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga – I was sceptical of a new Lego Star Wars, especially after the fatigue that I’ve felt for the film franchise these past few years. But, here is Lego Star Wars updated for the modern age, meaning it has all the filler you dread but also crave. One day I will try and 100% this game and it will kill me.
Pentiment – Despite consisting of almost entirely text and being about 16th century politics and religion (or perhaps exactly because of those things), Pentiment stole my heart. It’s the rare RPG where I felt like my decisions really mattered, especially the ones I didn’t want to make.
Escape Academy – Do you like escape rooms? Yes? Then Escape Academy is for you. The overarching story is nice but not needed, because I could have just played hour after hour of wacky and wild virtual escape rooms.
Lapin – We’ve had super hard platformers about blocks of meat, we’ve had super hard platformers about transgender women with depression, we now finally have Lapin, the super hard platformer about rabbits. The bits I played charmed and my girlfriend was absolutely head over heels for it.
Disc Room – I still feel nostalgic for the simplicity of games like Super Hexagon and Disc Room feels like a return to those kind of games. All you have to do is dodge spinning blades, but it’s the way the enemies develop and the game rewards your effort that makes Disc Room so much fun.
Trombone Champ – Toot toot! I love a rhythm game and it turns out that ones I’m terrible at are really really funny to play. Proper giggle inducing stuff, toot!
I’ve warmed to card games as a genre recently. For a long time it felt like there wasn’t much middle ground between the exploitative whirlpool of games like Hearthstone or the absurd depth that leads to total inaccessibility that I found in things like The Lord of the Rings: Adventure Card Game. Then I discovered Slay the Spire and fell in love with the possibilities of the genre. Much as I like its open ended and endless nature though, it means that there isn’t really room in my life for another endless card battler. Which is why Inscryption is so great.
Before I say another word about Inscryption, it’s worth knowing that this is one of those games that is best experienced when you don’t know anything about it. I’m going to try not to give away any of its secrets, but I played it fairly blind and would recommend you try the same too. For those who want to know more though, it is a card battling game based in the lodge of a being whose identity is mysterious. He narrates your journey and asks you to play his game so that he may do something nefarious with you. Between matches, you are allowed to explore his cabin and find what he is hiding, which may aid you in your future battles. But something here is wrong. When you started the game, why did it only let you click continue? What are all these greyed out buttons on the pause menu? Is this card talking to me?
(Spoiler alert, he probably is)
All of this fun meta storytelling would be totally worthless if the game itself wasn’t actually fun to play. Fortunately, the card battling in Inscryption is built on rock solid foundations and feels strangely fresh. There’s a central mechanic which requires you to sacrifice cards you already have on the table in order to place strong cards, a mechanic I’ve never seen before. It took a little while for me to work it out, as well as work out the further mechanics the game later adds on top, but once it clicks it feels properly satisfying. Sometimes I found the learning curve a little steep, like a section in the third act that I had to grind away at for over an hour to make any progress on, but it was otherwise a take on a tired genre that plays in fresh ways as well as subverting the old ways narratively.
Inscryption is the break from formula you need.
I’m also totally in love with the audio and visual design of the game. The tone feels a bit like it’s in the horror genre, almost entirely because of the weird noises of the world. It is the kind of game that is best suited to playing late at night, in the dark, with your headphones turned loud. The cabin creaks, the wind howls, the knives sound like they really hurt. Pair that with minimal but chilling visuals, it works immaculately. There’s a clear understanding from Daniel Mullins (the creator of the game) of what this genre needs to be satisfying at a fundamental level, which allows for playful visual subversion throughout. Again, I won’t say more to avoid spoilers, but as the game changes, the visuals also change and set the tone for what’s to come. It never feels like an attempt to be weird just to be unpredictable, but always a natural continuation of the previous events.
So if you, like me, also remain tired of games that takes weeks to finish through hours of unrewarding grinding, Inscryption is the break from formula you need. It’s got a cool story to explore, feels great to be spending time with and has damn good gameplay to boot. Quite honestly, if you’re not already interested it’s not for you. It certainly is for me though.
Honourable Mentions
Overboard! – A video game adaptation of the “good for her” film genre, Overboard! (yes, the exclamation mark is in the title) asks you to help a new widow get away with the murder of her husband while on board a boat. How you do it is up to you, whether it involves seduction, sabotage or further acts of murder. Whatever you choose, great writing keeps each new attempt fresh.
Genesis Noir – A jazzy noir thriller about the life of the universe as imagined through the metaphor of a breakup. Explaining the plot of Genesis Noir gets us nowhere, but it looks great, sounds awesome and has an ending to drool over.
Maquette – It’s the requisite Annapurna game! Some of the puzzles in Maquette felt frustratingly oblique to me, but it is all based on this genuinely great hook of transferring items between spaces in which size is all relative.
Before Your Eyes – For the second year in a row, a video game made me cry. It feels a little like cheating that Before Your Eyes did it, because it relies on the player resisting blinking for as long as possible, but this gimmick is used in a way that never actually feels like a gimmick and is festooned with a narrative that would still probably have made me cry even if my eyes were experiencing normal function.
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