I found an old file in my documents that was the start of a backlog spreadsheet/review masterpost of all the videogames I played in 2023, but I quickly forgot about it after I started using Backloggd. Finding that sheet is making me inspired to write a blog about my thoughts on these games! I want to make it a practice to try to write down my thoughts on the media I consume to hopefully get a better understanding of the type of media I want to create myself. Also, I just want to be more of a Backloggd and Letterboxd girl.
This was surprising hard to compile because (1) I actually don't play too many games! There are so many games that I have on my backlog that I know I will enjoy and that will likely emotionally destroy me, but I keep hestitating to start them because I don't feel like I'm in the right headspace to fully enjoy it (e.g. Pathologic II, Disco Elysium). I want to accurately pay attention to the story and I want the act of playing them to be something special, but that pressure leads to the issue that, well, I never end up playing those games because the right time never comes! And (2) a lot of the hours I spent gaming last year was contributed to extremely long story-based games (Yakuza 5, Baldur's Gate III) which I still have not yet finished. And (3) my memory is awful lol.
Any discussions of spoilers are appropriately labeled under spoiler tags!
I would like to get this out of the way to clear my conscious: yes, the allegations are true, 2023 for me was the year of the mobile game.
Brain fog and depression were very big unavoidable factors of my life last year, so in those episodes, all I wanted to do was boot up some Bloons TD 6 or Super Auto Pets and have literally zero thoughts about anything! I don't know if I would say I enjoyed these games because they tend to end up feeling like a chore after so many hours, but at least relative to the other games I played on Steam, these two are some of the top games that I spent a lot of time playing in 2023.
Also in this group is a game which I am awarding the Worst Game of 2023: BTD Battles 2! Losing battles in this game was tilting, winning battles in this game was unrewarding, and of the only two times my new PC has crashed in its entire lifespan was while playing this game. Both of my monitors would fully freeze up (but I would still get audio—if I'm on Discord calls I can still talk to and listen to other people) and the only way to fix it was to force turn off my computer. This was such a common issue on my old build and I was so scared that this was something I'd have to deal with all over again, but after uninstalling the game on the second crash, I've never had this issue since. I don't know if this is a GPU issue, if this game is mining so much crypto that it overheats and bugs out my poor XFX Speedster, but I think this game bricking my computer is a blessing in disguise because I can proudly say that I will not be playing this game again in my life. Begone!
I was initially going to psychoanalyze why I felt so averse to admiting that I play mobile games, but I really don't think it's that serious. A likely factor of this aversion could just be that these games don't excite me as much as others, so seeing a Bloons game rank over Baldur's Gate III or Hades feels intrinsically incorrect as my hours played was not proportional to my enjoyment. Also, I was specifically playing these games during periods of depression lol. I remember more mobile games like Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp and Neko Atsume: Kitty Collector which I look back on fondly, so maybe in 2024 I'll find some games of this genre that resonate more with me.
Now, on to the real games for real gamers with their real desktop computers and keyboards:
IMMORTALITY was fantastic. Discovering the stories of the different films and navigating their throughlines and relating it to Marissa's life was possibly the most engaged I've been with a story this whole year. Ambrosio is such a visually stunning film and I wish the developers would release the full director's cut of the movie though I know it will never come. Minsky as well, Marissa's bob was iconic.
Spoilers for IMMORTALITY
Something very interesting to me was the artistic directions of the films. Ambrosio and Minsky felt like they had a solid creative vision, but the visuals of Two of Everything felt like a means to an end more than anything. Being Marissa's first film back in 20 years, directed by her previous love interest Durick, the entire project felt like an attempt to reignite that spark that was there so long ago that was smothered too short by the freak accident—only for the product to be uninspiring, for Marissa's performance to be a stilted. The film is a desperate attempt to return to a normal that can no longer be achieved. Marissa and Durick are both yearning for something that can no longer exist.
I WILL SAY: I got the credits to roll at a very weird time where I felt like there was so much more to discover in the game, and after that the game lost a lot of momentum (because, well, it technically ended). I wasn't fully grasped by The One and The Other's inclusion in the game—I think that the films alone tell a beautifully tragic story of an actress trying to find herself in an industry after being groomed into it at a young age. The whole "Marissa was an alien doppelganger this whole time" plot weakens the story for me, and I think I got what I needed from the game sans the extraterrestrial haunting elements. But Charlotta Mohlin's performance was very evocative and the "Candy Says" scene did get to me.
On a final note, this game will not be getting a 5-star rating for me because I applied to the developer's studio in November after playing this and they didn't get back to me. I'm still bitter. And unemployed.
04/10/24 UPDATE: I definitely did not play this game in 2023. I played this in 2024. I knew this, because I played it after quitting my job. Why did I include this here? Whatever, lol. My feelings still stand.
Oooooh Inscryption was good. It was gooooood. It's also impossible to talk about without spoiling it or hinting towards important plot beats that are greatly enhanced by going in blind, so all my thoughts will be under the tag:
Spoilers for Inscryption
Act 1 was peak. This would've been one of the strongest 5-star entries in my backlog had the game ended there. From a design perspective, the gameplay of card cost being based on sacrifices is genius. Act 2 was fine; the third act was more interesting but still eclipsed by the first.
Personally, I cannot get myself to care about ARGs. They're interesting only for the moment I find out there is one, and if ARG explanation video essays didn't exist then I wouldn't even interact with ARGs to begin with. Meta ARG horror is the hot trope of 2023/2024 indie projects, so my initial reaction to hearing that there were "hidden messages in the video glitches!!" and "strings of text that needed to be ciphered!!" was more of an eye roll than anything. So in terms of those elements, I found the plot a bit dull, which was a mild disapointment as the game thus far had been so fresh and exciting to me. Maybe my views on this would've been different if I properly played the game when it released! But as it stands, this game was very very good and very inspiring in terms of what goes into making card games.
The odds of you knowing about this game is extremely low, so it is my pleasure and duty to instruct you to play TRAUMAKT~4.SEXE right the hell now!!! I think the only apt way to describe this project is that it's batshit insane. It's beyond description, beyond genre, and I am in awe of it's creation. I haven't seen a multimedia collage of different game engines stitched together into one game before, and I'm so impressed by how strangely cohesive the experience was. The story is unapologetically debaucherous, unapologetically transgender, unapologetically unfiltered. Definitely one of the highlights of the year. And best of all: you can play it! in your browser! for free!
VA-11 HALL-A was a waste of my time and I did not enjoy it. This is the first game I will officially give a "DNF" tag; I stopped playing after 1-2 hours. I had hopes that this would be a chill game about serving drinks where a minimum wage laborer connects with other lower class people trying to make the most of their bad situations, and instead it was a collection of boring characters wrapped in a cyberpunk aesthetic just for set dressing. The cyberpunk genre is one that lends itself to a critique on capitalism, and the first NPC I served was a boss who was complaining about his employees not working hard enough in the already crunch-heavy field of journalism, and the main character (while working a minimum wage customer service job she hates) has nothing meaningful to say regarding that power dynamic and is just a yes-man to whatever the status quo would dictate. The first and last time the game brings up these ideas is in the intro where megacorporations are running normal society to the ground. If this is brought up again later, then I guess that's my bad, but I really do not want to play further to find out. The gameplay was also too simple to feel engaging, so this game struck out hard given that the only two pillars the game has was its character dialogue and drink serving gameplay.
That said, it would be very funny for when I play Cyberpunk 2077 if that game also had no capitalist critique but I end up loving it because I can walk around cool looking cities.
If on a Winter's Night, Four Travelers is so visually stunning. The only games I've seen made on Adventure Game Studio was the Chzo Mythos series, so seeing such an impressive display of pixel artistry was captivating to watch knowing the limitations of the engine.
Spoilers for If on a Winter's Night, Four Travelers
I loved the first act and I wish it was longer. I think it spoke so strongly because my entirely personality is having unrequited feelings for people who are emotinally unavailable LOL!!!
Though the second act dragged on a bit long (especially when you figure out that the husband is dead very early on), the mansion environment design was immaculate, and my hands hurt for the artist that had to draw those backgrounds TWICE for the reality and delusion timelines. Again, stunning stunning artistry.
The final act with the army doctor revisiting the battlegrounds and letting his men finally die felt like a very poignant note to end on.
And would you look at that, it's another free one baby!
I am honestly shocked that only last year was the first time I played Hades, but Discord chat logs don't lie! The passage of time scares me daily.
Every praise given to this game is deserved. The dialogue is well written, perfectly executed by the voice actors, and there's so much of it to chew on: new dialogue seems to pop up in every new run as you choose a different god's boons, as you choose different dungeon rooms, even if you just die and play enough times there seems to be new content. I've only exited the Underground once and I feel like I've missed 90% of the content still in this game.
And, my god, the art direction is phenomenal. From the character sprites to UI, everything is cohesive and stylish and responsive and fun. Hades is up there with Disco Elysium as one of the games I look to when I want to experiment with my own art style. Jen Zee and everyone else in Supermassive's art department popped the hell off here. Also, there's gay people!! In my video game!!! If this game is just the first pass, I am so excited to play Hades II. I need to play this again, what a gem.
I don't have much to add on the rest of these games, so it's time for the rapid fire round!
Halls of Torment is a very fun Vampire Survivor-like with fantastic Diablo-esque early PC game CGI graphics. The sound design is obviously the highlight here, slashing through hoardes of skeletons feels so satisfying with the hundreds of crunching bone sounds in your ears. So ASMR. Fun fact: apparently Vampire Survivors came out in like, 2021? With how people refer to it as the grandfather of its genre I thought it was an old cult classic from the 90s!
House Flipper is a Unity asset flip that's actually fun! Interior design is one of those things that I'd love to get deep into, but it's just too expensive of a hobby and requires too much manual labor and construction knowledge that I'm not privy to. So, this game is a blast to just experiment with furniture at will with none of the purchase regret. It's very therapeutic cleaning a trashed house on a rainy night. House Flipper 2 is on the wishlist!
SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake was fine. I give it the same critique as I did with SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom - Rehydrated: the new engine looks fantastic but feels so stiff to play. I stopped playing after the pirate world, so this is another DNF entry! I'm sure this game would've slapped if I was 10, but this didn't grip me as an elderly adult at age 23.
Dead Plate is an RPGMaker game so it's difficult to control by nature, but I can't bring myself to hate on it because it is really charming. We need more BL stories like this and while I think the writing was weak, it's nice and cute for what it is. The art style is adorable. I guess this was technically a DNF game as well? But that was mainly because my hands were hurting so much from trying to move around so I had to look up a video of the ending, lmao 💀.
I almost forgot to add Lethal Company to this list. Nothing to add, fun party game! Good for that Roblox developer who's now a millionaire or something.
There are a lot of big mainstream games I finally want to play in 2024! I don't know if I'm going to get to all or any of these until my Yakuza brainrot dies down, but these are upcoming titles on the radar:
- Cyberpunk 2077
- Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
- Yakuza 6: The Song of Life
- Death Stranding
- Outer Wilds
- Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater
But more importantly, I need to actually FINISH the games I started!!!
- Yakuza 5
- Baldur's Gate III
- Dark Souls III
- Disco Elysium
- Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag
This list is so long. It's embarrassing.
On an ending note, I think it's appropriate to shit-talk the game industry again: through my 2023 job woes, the games industry was one that I wanted to try to break into despite having no portfolio nor education nor connections, which led to a lot of crunching on personal gamedev portfolio projects and subsequent burnout. And of course, the 2024 layoff wave is making the industry feel more and more unattainable. And despite all that, one of my top games of the year was a game created by two solo devs in a month for a game jam! So I guess as I approach 2024 I'd like to pay more attention to the indie scene and seeing what solo developers are cooking up. (And maybe one day I could join the ranks as a "solo developer"... when I have time... and money...)