As I write this intro, I don’t know what game I picked as number one. Triple-A games often let me down in 2024, and indies were there to pick up the slack. But, as much as I liked them, few cemented themselves as all-time favorites. That has made assembling this list incredibly hard and, if I was writing it next week, it might be entirely different.
Honorable Mentions
Shout outs to Metaphor: ReFantazio, Star Wars: Outlaws, UFO 50, and Mario & Luigi: Brothership.
Many of TheGamer’s editors have cooked up their own GOTY lists. You can check them all out here.
10
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
I’ve barely played any multiplayer, and haven’t touched the zombies mode, but Black Ops 6 has the best Call of Duty campaign I’ve ever played. The shooting is as good as ever, while Treyarch’s latest steps the series’ game up with inventive and varied level design that never settles into that familiar corridor shooting rut. A mini open-world game. A Doom-style keycard collectathon. Dishonored-style infiltration. Black Ops 6 has it all.
9
Balatro
The best-designed game of the year. Ridiculously fun to play. If you have a friend who doesn’t like roguelikes, show them Balatro, which illustrates the appeal of putting together abilities that play off each other better than any game since Hades. It isn’t higher only because I haven’t played more.
8
Silent Hill 2
Same goes for Silent Hill 2 which I’m only about halfway through. Once I finish it, I may well look back at this, furious that I didn’t pick it for number one. Sorry future me, past me ran out of time.
But in what I have played of Silent Hill 2, Bloober Team’s remake offers the most satisfying puzzles I’ve seen in a game this year, fantastic level design, terrifying combat encounters, and a nuanced central performance from its TGA-nominated lead, Luke Roberts. Scrounging for ammo in its disgusting apartment bathrooms and hospital hallways is an incredibly stressful joy.
7
Clickolding & Funeralopolis: Last Days
I’m cheating a bit, but Clickolding and Funeralopolis: Last Days are inextricably linked in my mind. Both of these first-person horror games set in single locations feel like direct responses to the pandemic.
Neither says a word about COVID, but developers Strange Scaffold and BananaJeff have tapped into the horror of being alone with other people in a way few pandemic-era games have, whether examining a tense and transactional hotel room standoff or the relationship between an apartment manager and his fellow tenants at the end of the world.
6
Harold Halibut
The tale of a man whose name is half-fish and half-human, Harold Halibut is a similarly chimeric creation. It takes the retrofuturist aesthetic and stop-motion animation of Wes Anderson films like Isle of Dogs, adds in some incredibly basic point-and-click gameplay, sets it in the best video game setting I’ve explored this year, and uses it all to tell a platonic(?) interspecies love story.
Harold Halibut’s mechanics aren’t pushing the medium forward, but with a look this bold and, frankly, impractical, it would be foolish to make the verbs too interesting. Just take it in and appreciate Slow Bros.’ incredible aesthetic achievement.
5
Astro Bot
Some games are seven-course meals that you savor over a long time. Others are bags of candy that you inhale like a kid on Halloween. Astro Bot is, somehow, both.
Its endlessly inventive levels are as substantive a work of design as anything on this list, but between its vibrant aesthetic and the constant injections of dopamine provided by its collectathon structure, Team Asobi somehow concocted candy that fills you up. That’s right, Astro Bot is the Snickers of video games.
4
Crow Country
An excellent survival horror game in the mold of PS1 Resident Evil, Crow Country is a brilliant update on an old-school genre. The amusement park setting is a joy to explore, and houses a shockingly great video game story with a twist ending that completely took me by surprise.
3
Fallen Aces
I rarely play early access games, but New Blood Interactive’s immersive sims have consistently gotten me to make an exception. Gloomwood, which entered early access in 2022, made my list that year. And Fallen Aces takes the genre in a completely different direction, abandoning that game’s Thief-inspired horror in favor of a Golden Age of Comics sheen that makes it look unlike anything else in gaming (except maybe the Barbara level in What Remains of Edith Finch).
Each mission is outstanding, with sprawling levels and an equally wide range of approaches to tackling them. Fallen Aces made it this high on the basis of its first act, and I can’t wait to see what the rest of the game has in store.
2
Celeste 64: Fragments of the Mountain
Look, I’m here for a good time, not a long time. Extremely OK Games’ 3D update on its 2018 platformer Celeste may only take two hours (or less) to complete, but with its perfect understanding of what makes Celeste tick and EXOK’s peerless translation of the original’s mechanics to 3D, it packs a wallop into that tiny runtime. The Super Mario Sunshine-inspired Cassette Tape levels are god-tier platforming.
A speedrunning shooter where the foot is mightier than the sword, Anger Foot is the purest gaming experience of 2024. Running through its gauntlet of Nicktoon-inspired apartment buildings is a grungy rush, and expert pacing, paired with unique guns and abilities kept me engaged until the credits rolled. Is it juvenile? Sure. Is it the most fun I had with any game this year? Absolutely.
Next
Why Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Should Win Game Of The Year
2024’s Game of the Year nominees are all strong, but Rebirth’s was the only one to take me on a journey.