I don’t really have to be the one to tell you that 2020 was a bit of a shit show. But while we were locked in our homes and away from our offices, there were plenty of great games to come out, especially in the indie sphere. Here are my top ten games of 2020:
10. Ori and the Will of the Wisps
Ori and the Will of the Wisps makes this list for the very obvious reason that it’s another Ori game. On top of that, it’s designed to follow neatly after its predecessor, Ori and the Blind Forest, so players won’t spend too much time retreading the same mechanics. It’s beautiful, it’s wonderful, it’s Ori.
This game also makes the list for a personal reason: It was the first game I reviewed for MonsterVine!
Favorite Moment: The ending cutscene (I won’t spoil it here. Just know it’s awesome).
9. Carrion
It’s not often that I get to play a game that reminds me of John Carpenter’s The Thing. Carrion could have made my top ten list on this idea alone, but it’s so much more than that. Where a more conventional game would have players assume the form of a super-soldier battling an omnipotent monster, Carrion puts them in the position of said monster. Your goal is little more than to maim, kill, and evolve your way through a secret underground laboratory.
As Carrion progresses, it dishes out a story that garners empathy for the creature, but the real meat of this delightfully brief title comes from the abilities the meatball learns along the way. Abilities like photokinesis and hyrophilia change how the monster traverses the map, while others, like harpagorrhea and arachnoptysis, enhance the game’s combat. Combined with its use of storytelling through a unique point-of-view, Carrion’s position on this list is rightfully deserved.
Favorite Moment: Literally being the creature from The Thing.
8. Final Fantasy 7 Remake
Disclaimer: I still haven’t played the original Final Fantasy VII from 1997. There was some minor grieving from gamers that Final Fantasy VII Remake wasn’t faithful enough to the story that was previously established. I can’t comment from that perspective, but I can say the story and writing for FF7R wasn’t the best, but it was serviceable.
From a solely gameplay perspective, however, FF7R might be my favorite game of 2020. The action-RPG combat felt satisfying at all levels of play. Nailing a combo and following up with a special ability and then swapping to another character to do it again was always smooth and encouraging of the fast-paced, high stakes combat. Of all the games on my list, FF7R probably did the best at selling its illusion.
Favorite Moment: Fighting the Hell House.
7. Bugsnax
There wasn’t much to glean from Bugsnax’s earlier trailers, and there still isn’t really much to tell about the game if you haven’t played it or watched a Let’s Play. There are bugs but they’re also snacks, and if you were to eat them your limbs would transform into said snacks.
On the surface, Bugsnax is wacky and colorful and it invites players in on this premise alone. But by the time you’re finished with the game, it’s transformed into something that’s emotionally evocative and relatable. Characters like Chandlo Funkbun break away from their clique-based stereotypes by first leaning into those stereotypes and then breaking away from them. Sure, running around and capturing creatures that are equal parts crawly and delicious was a fun loop. But Bugsnax comes into its own once you’ve really started interacting with its characters on a meaningful level.
Favorite Moment: “Bunger. Bunger. Bunger.”
6. Röki
Röki is a modern take on the point-and-click adventure formula. Set in a fantastical version of Scandinavia, it tells the story of Tove, a young girl who is trying to save her kidnapped brother from the clutches of a monster. Along the way, she runs into a myriad of mythical creatures, like trolls and the Yule Cat, who have found their way into Icelandic folklore.
It’s a bit awkwardly paced, but Röki explores an underrepresented mythos and pulls on the typical heartwarming threads of family and loss, all through a classic formula. It also features some of the most compelling and brain-wrinkling puzzles I experienced in 2020.
Favorite Moment: That “A ha!” moment that comes from solving the dining room puzzle in the game’s third act.
5. Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time
I had to wrestle with my biases to make sure Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time’s position on my list wasn’t overly inflated. I grew up a Sony fanboy, and the original trio of Crash games developed by Naughty Dog in the late ‘90s tends to have me reaching far for my nostalgia goggles.
It’s not a stretch so say that Crash 4 might be the best entry to the series yet. It expands on the classic pseudo-3D platforming formula re-popularized in the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, giving the series a flourish of much-needed contemporariness. Crash 4 also experiments with several new elements and mechanics, like the frenetic and artful N. Verted levels, and takes the series in an exciting direction that I’m hopeful to see more of.
Favorite Moment: Getting through Cortex Castle.
4. Ghost of Tsushima
I owe an apology to the developers at Sucker Punch Productions for writing off Ghost of Tsushima for as long as I did. Over the last generation of gaming, the open-world formula, with its sprinkled lore bits and superfluous pit stops, wore down on me heavily. When it launched, descriptions of Ghost of Tsushima painted it to be very much like your standard cookie-cutter, Ubisoft-branded open world. As a result, I ignored Tsushima until about five months after its release, which I’ve come to regret immensely.
To be fair, Ghost of Tsushima does feature many of the same trappings and illusions of other big-budget open-world titles. Its success, to me, comes largely from Sucker Punch’s expertly crafted atmosphere and environment. It also succeeds by flipping the tropes of post-WWII jidaigeki (Japanese period dramas) on their head. Protagonist Jin Sakai is less a de facto honorable warrior and family man than he is a victim of those very ideals, and much of his progress comes from challenging them.
Favorite Moment: Seeing Jin reach out his hand to touch the pampas grass as he rides through it on horseback.
3. Spiritfarer
Spiritfarer is probably the most thought-provoking title I played in 2020. Developed by Thunder Lotus Games, players assume the role of Stella, Charon’s replacement as ferry person of the underworld. As such, her task is to find passing spirits and take them to the underworld. Spiritfarer is also a lite management simulator. Stella can grow crops on her ferry, nurture livestock, and fish.
Spiritfarer is another game that relies heavily on its character interactions. Every spirit Stella meets on her adventure has their own motivations, goals, and unresolved tensions that need to be worked out before they move on to the afterlife. A lot of these tensions revolve around relatable and emotional topics and have a direct analog to Stella’s life as an end-of-care nurse prior to her entrance into the underworld. There’s a lot to take in here: Spiritfarer is constantly asking players to approach death in a serious and thoughtful manner. It’s an emotional game that left me crying more than once.
Favorite Moment: Saying goodbye to Stanley.
2. The Last of Us Part II
This is probably the most divisive game on my list, at least relative to my fellow MonsterVine colleagues (it did win The Game Awards GOTY, so maybe it’s not that divisive). It’s easy to boil down The Last of Us Part II’s main plot to “DAE revenge bad,” but that’s really missing the point of what the game intended.
What I see when I play TLOU2 is a compelling parallel structure that showcases a brutally human duality. Yes, revenge is bad, but it’s the similar-yet-contrasting paths Ellie and Abby take to sate their hunger for personal justice where the meat of the story is revealed. In other words, it’s less about the takeaway and more about the journey. That journey was maybe a tad too long, but it’s one I enjoyed enough to play the game twice back-to-back.
TLOU2 also has the best trans narrative I’ve seen in a game to date (eat your heart out, Tell Me Why). Lev’s struggle with finding comfort in who he is while living amongst a hyper-religious cult with strict normative gender standards is, to me, the most compelling story to come out of TLOU2 and one of the better subplots in gaming-at-large.
Favorite Moment: Ellie’s cover of “Take on Me” by a-ha.
1. Hades
Anybody who has heard me talk about Hades will know its placement as my favorite game of 2020 comes as no surprise. It’s a once-in-a-generation game that is relatively perfect in every regard: The high-octane hack-and-slash combat is both simple and nuanced; the overall art direction, bar none, is the best the last year had to offer; and there isn’t a single element in Hades’ whole package that’s tact on or unexplored. On top of that, Hades feels like the first roguelike to explore death in any meaningful way (which feels weird to say considering how pivotal death is to that genre) by supplying new lore bits, well-acted dialog, and phenomenal characterization each time the protagonist, Zagreus, has to restart his journey through his father’s chthonic realm.
It’s cliche to say, but Hades has managed to ruin other roguelike games for me. I’m eagerly anticipating a post-Hades revitalization of the genre that adopts its thoroughness and attention to detail.
Favorite Moment: Not fighting Cerberus.
