Game Of The Year Editor’s Pick, 2024

This is my third GOTY list for TheGamer, and it’s my favourite thing we do as a site each year. We have a bunch of talented writers at the site with a wide and weird taste in games, and it’s always a pleasure to see which games pop up on which lists. You can find a link to all of our individual top ten lists here.

Personally, this year was dominated by indie games and a new MMO devouring most of my time – which means I generally don’t get to play the big triple-A blockbusters. Honestly, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Pacific Drive

Set against the backdrop of the Pacific Northwest, Pacific Drive is a quietly haunting game where you traverse through dense woodlands and stark cliff faces slowly upgrading your ride and avoiding mannequins come-to-life and bizarre anomalies.

It’s a story of you and your car, a semi-sentient being with a mind of its own, with satisfying and compelling roguelite gameplay full of twists and turns you never see coming.

With an amazing soundtrack and an atmosphere that seems to fill the room around you, Pacific Drive is one of my must-plays of the year.

Dragon’s Dogma 2

I bounced off the original Dragon’s Dogma and was worried that it might be the same when it came to the sequel. While the game still refuses to hold your hand, the progression makes just that little more sense, and I felt encouraged to explore. I love my pawns and I will die for them. And I died – many, many times.

Once Human

Once Human is a truly strange game, one that manages to stand out in a sea of multiplayer survival crafters. The free game has some questionable monetisation, and seasonal resets can make it feel like a bit of a grind, but if – like me – you’re just in it for the sense of discovery with each wipe, Once Human beats all competition.

Wandering out into the world to collect blueprints, blowing-up enormous monsters with balloons for heads, and slowly collecting an army of weird little creatures to take back to your base is just great fun.

Halls Of Torment

Halls Of Torment takes the Survivors-like formula and improves on it dramatically, introducing a progression system that isn’t dissimilar to ARPGs. For the price of a pint of beer, I’ve got over 80 hours of dopamine-fuelled undead-slaying fun out of Halls Of Torment this year.

You can jump in for 30 minutes and do a quick run, or stick around for a couple of hours and really grind out some fresh gear. Its nostalgic art style, excellent soundtrack, and simple but rewarding gameplay has me coming back time and time again.

Halls Of Torment may or may not also have featured on my 2023 list. Don’t tell my boss.

Backpack Battles

I’m an auto-battler fiend. These are the types of games that devour most of my time, usually when I’m meant to be doing something else. Backpack Battles has a simple formula: you go head-to-head with other player’s backpacks. It takes on a form of competitive Tetris as you carefully have to fill your backpack with items, sometimes taking five or more minutes between games just making sure everything fits.

With a bunch of interesting synergies built into its items and steady updates, if you’re a fan of games like Super Auto Pets, Hearthstone Battlegrounds, or The Bazaar, Backpack Battles might be for you.

Enshrouded

In any other year, Enshrouded might’ve taken my top spot. It’s an incredible survival game with a vast voxel-based open world (which means I could finally build the dwarven mountain home of my dreams) that has received continued support throughout 2024. I played the hell out of this when it first came out, my friends and I had a blast exploring the world, developing our village, and taking on the increasingly difficult bosses.

Enshrouded isn’t finished yet, and I imagine this will be a game for the ages, right up there alongside the likes of Valheim.

Throne And Liberty

Despite its flaws – of which there are a few – Throne And Liberty is the best new MMO I’ve played in a long time. I’m always on the hunt for that new MMO thrill, and when one turns up that I put 400 hours into (yes, this game grabbed hold of my life completely) for free, I can’t complain much.

Its large-scale PvP is an absolute clusterf*** and I love it. Being part of a top ten guild on my server was a great experience, and I loved the strategy involved in our first castle siege event. While the grind is ever-present in games like these, I see a bright future for Throne And Liberty, as long as NCSoft can keep up with the demands of running a live-service game in an increasingly competitive market.

Balatro

Balatro held the top spot on my list for the majority of 2024, but sometimes the cards fall a certain way and you lose on the river. I love everything about Balatro, from its hypnotic soundtrack to the clever design of its Joker cards, both visually and mechanically. I play Balatro on the bus, I play Balatro in my bed. I play Balatro in my dreams, I play Balatro in my head. Balatro is life.

Nothing has come close to the pure dopamine you get after constructing the perfect twisted poker deck and you hit a high-score with a number so large it has letters in it. Balatro is also only just getting started, as I imagine there’ll be new decks, new cards, and new ways to play changing the game for a long time to come.

Path Of Exile 2

A last-minute dash to the top, Path of Exile 2 exceeded my almost impossibly-high expectations. Like many others, I loved the first game, although I always found it difficult to properly engage with it because by the time I started playing, the game was loaded up with more content and skill trees than my tiny brain could possibly fathom.

Path of Exile 2 feels like a fresh start and I’ll be there right at the beginning this time. I’ve also been enjoying the game so much using a controller, which brings balance to the intense technical skill trees by allowing me to indulge in this beautiful, complex, difficult world from the comfort of my sofa. PoE2 is a masterpiece. Its art style, class design, sprawling endgame: it feels like a forever game.

Supervive

What the hell is Supervive, you ask? It’s a battle royale with MOBA elements, with an incredibly high skill ceiling across its host of varied characters. Supervive is now in 24/7 Open Beta and I don’t blame you if you haven’t heard of it because it hasn’t received much marketing. But it’s by far the most fun I’ve had since Apex Legends.

It has a steep learning curve, but when you start to master your character and learn the game on a macro scale, Supervive is like nothing else I’ve ever played. It condenses all the grind of a 40-minute League Of Legends game into ten minutes of high-octane action. It’s a MOBA with much less farming and a strong focus on fighting. You jump in and out of games quickly and even if you lose, it’s still fun. That’s a winning formula.

As long as there is one person alive on your team, you’re never out of the game. We’ve managed to claw back victories from the grasp of defeat many times. Rather than languish in an hour-long game of League with no hope of winning, Supervive is instantly rewarding, and one good play can turn the game on its head. I see a bright and hopefully competitive future for Supervive – we’ve just got to get more people to play it.