Personal Picks
These games didn't get enough votes to make the main list, but our writers love them nonetheless.
Samuel Roberts: Jazzpunk
A funny and weird first-person game that I’ve recommended to people a lot over the years. It’s got loads in common with Naked Gun and Airplane, in replicating that rapid-fire, sketch-style humour, which is a hard thing to do successfully in a game. It’s a true original. I love it.
Evan Lahti: Papers, Please
Wielding a rubber stamp, the lowly government drone is cruel or martyrish. Taking bureaucratic paperwork and making it tough, fun, and intensely meaningful is a big achievement. It’s as relevant and valuable as ever, in this time of border walls, visa restrictions, and immigration bans.
Tom Senior: Empire: Total War
It has its issues, but of all the historical Total War games this is the one that captures the series’ aim: to deliver the ultimate grand strategy game. Whether you’re protecting trade routes or rushing cannons to your frontlines, the campaign has an unmatched sense of scale.
Chris Livingston: Garry's Mod
Part-sandbox and part-toybox, this is a goofy physics playground for building, destroying, inventing, and collaborating. There are a million things to do and, thanks to hundreds of thousands of custom creations from the community, you’ll never run out of entertainment.
Tim Clark: Don't Starve
I don’t play Klei’s Goth whimsy survive-’em-up nearly as much as I used to, but I’m not sure I’ll ever feel as attached to anything as I did to my 300-day-old dream camp. Before the Meat Effigy catastrophe ended it all. The expansions add plenty of value, too.
Jody Macgregor: The Walking Dead
I gave up on the comic, don’t watch the show, and I’m fussy about adventure games. But I love The Walking Dead because it replaces puzzles with choices and lets me make altruistic, hopeful ones in contrast to most zombie fiction’s cynicism. Also, I cried at the end.
Fraser Brown: Black Desert Online
This is an MMO, so I should be in a cave murdering things, but instead I’m spending my days bossing my workers about, taking jaunts across the world with my loaded cart and selling booze. Murdering monsters and helping NPCs are only side jobs. It’s wonderful.
Katharine Byrne: SteamWorld Heist
SteamWorld Heist is a true masterstroke. While its wily cast of robotic space pirates do much of the heavy lifting, the ability to aim and fire in real-time, pulling off trickshots, elevates this above the competition. Did we mention there were also collectible hats?
Hannah Dwan: TIS-100
Zachtronics designs the most impressive puzzle games around – TIS-100 is its greatest success. Design algorithms using logic and computing to fit a solution: it’s smart in a way that can only work with plain logic puzzles. It also pushed me towards learning about actual computing!
Andy Kelly: Hacknet
One of the best sims of ‘movie hacking’ on PC. An elegant command line interface and imaginative mission design makes cracking into these systems a joy. One minute you’re stealing a recipe from a restaurant chain, the next you’re battling a rival hacker for control of your system.
Chris Thursten: Prey
This love letter to the likes of System Shock deserves praise for the way it lets you chart your own course through a believably simulated space station. Not all of its ideas come off—the Nightmare creature is a bit of a dud—but Prey is a victory for player-respecting design nonetheless.
Tyler Wilde: Defcon
A simple game of mutually-assured destruction. Build your airfields, silos, and naval fleets and then pointlessly defend your state by exchanging nukes with the world—kill more than the enemy, lose fewer than the enemy. It’s more challenging than it sounds, even though no one actually wins.
Phil Savage: Life Is Strange
A beautiful time travel adventure that builds upon and surpasses Telltale’s template. Whatever you might think about the hella dated dialogue, Dontnod should be commended for crafting a memorable tale that makes you care about what happens to its two main characters.
Tom Marks: Warframe
You can play Warframe for 100 hours and only scratch its surface. It’s a game that’s perfected grind, making the simple act of moving through its procedural levels and smashing into enemies a high-flying joy. Few games feel as empowering, and next to none are updated as often.
Steven Messner: Night in the Woods
Adventure games tend to bore me, but when they capture the emotions of being a cocksure teen trying to find their place in an adult world, it’s hard not to be engrossed. Night in the Woods is part-ghost story and part-coming of age story and it’s touching, evocative and hilarious.
Andy Chalk: Legend of Grimrock II
It expands on its predecessor in every way, with multiple multilevel dungeons, outdoor environments, new monsters and secrets galore. The genre is too niche to ever allow for major mainstream success, but for fans of that old-school style (like me!), this is as good as it gets.
James Davenport: Little Nightmares
I’ve never been so deeply unnerved while running from left to right. A simple sidescroller with a disgusting aesthetic, filled with gruesome creatures that look like they’re moulded from pig grease. It’s short, but its images hit close to home and linger long after the credits roll.
Leif Johnson: The Long Dark
The survival genre in its purest form. No zombies or rideable dinosaurs cross your path here; instead, it’s just you, your calories and some scattered junk against the cruel menace of the deep Canadian winter. Quiet, beautiful and contemplative, it reminds us there’s poetry in despair.
Matthew Elliott: Friday the 13th
Right now, Friday the 13th is the only thing I want to play. I’ll admit that it’s hilariously shabby, but with the right group of people it’s impossible to stop playing. Every failed escape attempt keeps me coming back, and every game is different. It’s an enthralling and violent game of hide-and-seek.
Joe Donnelly: Football Manager 2017
I’ve played Football Manager on and off for close to 20 years now and I enjoy it more with each iteration. FM is the quintessential football simulator that’s as much about multilayered micromanagement as it is about winning trophies and signing your boy or girlhood heroes.
