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Hades was my personal game of the year. I didn't sperg out completely but the game was fun for around 20-40 runs. Very well produced, fun gameplay and surprisingly decent writing for the most part.
Released this year:
RPG gotta be The Dungeon of Naheulbeuk, I had a lot of fun with this one. And props for having a demo, I wouldn’t have touched the game on release otherwise, but as soon as I got half of my party knocked out in the last tutorial fight I knew I was going to buy it. It runs out of steam a little in the last few chapters, but still a very good game.
Primal Light – platformer, good gameplay, good controls, fun boss fights, gorgeous graphics.
Beautiful Desolation – Looks great, the weird setting and story are also good. Gameplay is alright, mostly a standard adventure game with some minigames, it’s probably very easy if you play a lot of adventure games, I suck at them and was able to beat it without getting stuck once.
bonus points for being an adventure game where you eventually can quickly solve many of your problems by nuking the factions you don’t like, including the final “boss” area
Creaks: puzzle-platformer by the devs of Samorost. I liked Samorost 3 better, but Creaks is good too.
Older games that I played this year, that were also good:
Kero Blaster – Platformer. If the graphics don’t bother you, it’s a very solid, difficult game.
Order of the Thorne: King’s Challenge: another adventure game, it’s short and easy, but looks fantastic and has a great, cozy fairy-tale atmosphere, very relaxing game to play.
I couldn't even tell you what games were released this year. Monster Train, Sands of Salazar(still Early Access) and Crusader Kings 3 were apparently the only 2020 games I bought AND played, so I guess those three by default. I tend to wait for massive discounts because buying single-player games early is dumb and pointless unless it's a small dev you want to support.
Monster Train: Actually forgot that was a 2020 game. Really solid, I still much prefer Slay the Spire but Monster Train's probably the second best roguelite deckbuilder. Been pretty well supported thus far too.
I put about 100 hours into Bannerlord in the weeks after release. I enjoyed it but felt it was limited and decided to wait until more things are added, bugs are fixed, and the game is out of EA. Not sure how long that'll take, though.
GOTY all year every year:
Tabletop Simulator - This has saved my 2020
Actually great tier:
Outer Wilds - All-round awesome game. It has story, simulation, soundtrack, graphics. It's game-y, it's playful, it's sandboxy
Supraland - Unpretentious 3D puzzle-platformer
Baba is You - Harder than my MSc
Subnautica - The main quest deflates towards the end, as with most games. Eat/drink is a chore after the first hour. Enjoyable all around
A Hat in Time (or the latest DLC or whatever) - Pwetty platforming, oozes charm and the best jump mechanics outside 3D marios
Blasphemous - Okay metroidvania with the best Spaniard imagery in any game so I vote with my heart here
Fun but forgettable:
Paradise Killer - Secretly a platformer collectathon. Great aesthetics and soundtrack
Beginner's Guide - Short, twist not too predictable
Edith Finch - Just a worse The Hex. Blue balls ending
Heaven's Vault - The translating mechanic was so much fun. The game is a glorified point & click adventure, and not one of the best
Fun itch scratchers:
Hades - Loses on enemy, builds and boss variety to Isaac. Better controls and pace
Root Digital - Boardgame adaptation, better than most TRPGs and TBS. Vagabond 5 turn victory ez
Bonfire - Unique. I've been playing the alpha for a decade, and it finally got a Steam upgrade and release
Minion Masters - I miss dota. Games are short and you can coop with a friend against bots pretending to be ladder players
Riders of the North Sea - A decent worker placement game. Lacks variety
OverDungeon - Over-the-top real time card roguelike. Less thinky and more hectic than Slay the Spire
Didn't like as much as I expected based on your overhyped opinions:
Bloodstained - Nothing new
Yakuza 0 - It's an interactive movie, which I don't mind, just don't lie to me
Mobius Front 88 - <3 Zachtronics, this wasn't it chief
Way of the Samurai 4 - Jaaaaaank
Danganronpa - Too weeb, controls too stiff
Druidstone - Eh
KUF: The Crusaders - A whole campaign worth of tutorial, obtuse mission objectives
Darkest Dungeon - Suffering and RNG for its own sake
Currently playing and not sure about yet:
Outward
Lost Technology
Troubleshooter
I haven't played Cyberpunk 2077 yet and in general 2020 was not a good gaming year for me, so I'd have to put Ghostrunner as my favourite game which was actually released this year. A lot of people recommend Hades, which I found it decent at best. Good games which I played this year, but were not released in 2020 are: Dead Cells, The Messenger, Gothic I and Gothic II.
Streets of Rage 4. The only others I played were that top down cowboy game in which 50 percent of the outlaws are women, Resident Evil 3 (meh) and the Super Mario 64 PC port, which is kind of hard to count. That SM64 port got the most playtime from me, though. 100% completed the game for the fourth time in my life. I hope more N64 ports will come soon.
I put about 100 hours into Bannerlord in the weeks after release. I enjoyed it but felt it was limited and decided to wait until more things are added, bugs are fixed, and the game is out of EA. Not sure how long that'll take, though.
jfc not only haven't I played a single '20 title, I also haven't heard about most of the games mentioned in this thread since I barely visit the upper 2/3 of the forum list any more.
Guess I've become one of them now
Monster Train: Actually forgot that was a 2020 game. Really solid, I still much prefer Slay the Spire but Monster Train's probably the second best roguelite deckbuilder. Been pretty well supported thus far too.
You about gave me a heart attack thinking Erannorth was another 2020 game I'd forgotten, but it released in late 2019 so I'm safe. And yeah, I'd more directly compare StS and Monster Train despite major outward appearances (The pseudo tower defense thing of Monster Train looks like a bigger difference than Erannorth to StS in comparison) simply because Erannorth is a different beast entirely. I'd still put StS at the top of the heap overall but Erannorth is so fucking strange it's hard to really pin down who I'd recommend it to, and I'm conflicted on if I like it myself but since I've played 17 hours of it easily it's clear that I do like it to some degree. I think the clunky interface (Which gets less clunky on SSD strangely, and I haven't played after the last few patches and he's trying to improve some UI stuff) and overreliance on a billion weird-ass keywords bring it down some. Erannorth is also more like fancy-solitaire since you almost exclusively build your deck to be a rape-engine rather than taking cards for counter-play. Particularly in StS you'll pick up cards and relics with certain encounters and bosses in mind since you know you'll get fucked if you don't have something to cover you if that comes up, and to a lesser degree there's a LITTLE of that in Monster Train, but in Erannorth (Partially because the enemy pool is so fucking huge and partially because the enemies are rarely that tricky in their actions) you're focused entirely on strengthening your own deck. I'm also not much of a fan of the stats in Erannorth, it they were used in the events or if they were chunkier (Each point was more meaningful) I might like them a little more, but they're pretty minor and mostly just serve as gotchas for some perk and card requirements. And almost all my bitching also varies wildly depending on your race and class.
More rambling than I intended but Erannorth does that to a person. It's a cool game but it'd be nice if the dude developing it actually was leading a team so there were other people doing art, writing clearer descriptions of mechanics, etc. But since he's making his weird-ass niche card game himself I'm still glad he is.
Monster Train: Actually forgot that was a 2020 game. Really solid, I still much prefer Slay the Spire but Monster Train's probably the second best roguelite deckbuilder. Been pretty well supported thus far too.
Erannorth is also more like fancy-solitaire since you almost exclusively build your deck to be a rape-engine rather than taking cards for counter-play. [...] but in Erannorth (Partially because the enemy pool is so fucking huge and partially because the enemies are rarely that tricky in their actions) you're focused entirely on strengthening your own deck.
That's called a deckbuilding boardgame and it's one of the best, most liked mechanics all around. Dominion, Clank, Mage Knight, Aeon's End, Legendary, Star/Hero Realms, Ascension, the new Dune Imperium...
I was hoping for a good deckbuilder roguelike in that vein for PC (mostly because I don't like the RNG mitigation of Aeon's End), and now I know where to aim.
Monster Train: Actually forgot that was a 2020 game. Really solid, I still much prefer Slay the Spire but Monster Train's probably the second best roguelite deckbuilder. Been pretty well supported thus far too.
Erannorth is also more like fancy-solitaire since you almost exclusively build your deck to be a rape-engine rather than taking cards for counter-play. [...] but in Erannorth (Partially because the enemy pool is so fucking huge and partially because the enemies are rarely that tricky in their actions) you're focused entirely on strengthening your own deck.
That's called a deckbuilding boardgame and it's one of the best, most liked mechanics all around. Dominion, Clank, Mage Knight, Aeon's End, Legendary, Star/Hero Realms, Ascension, the new Dune Imperium...
I was hoping for a good deckbuilder roguelike in that vein for PC (mostly because I don't like the RNG mitigation of Aeon's End), and now I know where to aim.
I suppose that's true. Of those I've played Dominion, Star Realms, and Ascension and I suppose Erannorth feels a little bit like that. Although even then it's not like you're competing with other players or the AI for cards, and you get a little bit of fuckery since there's also metagame unlocks (As you rank up each race and class it opens more cards to you) AND when/where/why you're offered cards can be peculiar. I had a mystic that somehow nearly reached max level and didn't get playsets of additional mystic cards. And on top of all THAT there's weirdness where cards themselves can level up during each run as you play them, kind of like Griftlands.
Since you're looking for something along those lines it's probably worth a peek though, because there's an absolute assload of variety in there. I would suggest waiting a week or two to see if it ends up in the Steam Christmas sale (It wasn't in the Thanksgiving sale so it may miss Christmas too, but they do run sales on it so it'll happen eventually) just to save a few bucks. Also worth noting, if you don't care for the fucky 3D poser art some industrious person made a mod to replace all enemies with yoinked art. I will say that the greasy 3D art does somehow play better than the nicer art, probably because it's less distracting and it's a little more unified. The replaced art does a pretty good job of keeping factions and types looking appropriately but the 3D art oddly enough works better as a vague way of gauging power/threat. Only reason I'm mentioning all this is that if you strongly feel you'd prefer the art mod I'd still suggest playing a few games with the starter art just so you can compare. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2185751968
Monster Train: Actually forgot that was a 2020 game. Really solid, I still much prefer Slay the Spire but Monster Train's probably the second best roguelite deckbuilder. Been pretty well supported thus far too.
Erannorth is also more like fancy-solitaire since you almost exclusively build your deck to be a rape-engine rather than taking cards for counter-play. [...] but in Erannorth (Partially because the enemy pool is so fucking huge and partially because the enemies are rarely that tricky in their actions) you're focused entirely on strengthening your own deck.
That's called a deckbuilding boardgame and it's one of the best, most liked mechanics all around. Dominion, Clank, Mage Knight, Aeon's End, Legendary, Star/Hero Realms, Ascension, the new Dune Imperium...
I was hoping for a good deckbuilder roguelike in that vein for PC (mostly because I don't like the RNG mitigation of Aeon's End), and now I know where to aim.
I suppose that's true. Of those I've played Dominion, Star Realms, and Ascension and I suppose Erannorth feels a little bit like that. Although even then it's not like you're competing with other players or the AI for cards, and you get a little bit of fuckery since there's also metagame unlocks (As you rank up each race and class it opens more cards to you) AND when/where/why you're offered cards can be peculiar. I had a mystic that somehow nearly reached max level and didn't get playsets of additional mystic cards. And on top of all THAT there's weirdness where cards themselves can level up during each run as you play them, kind of like Griftlands.
Since you're looking for something along those lines it's probably worth a peek though, because there's an absolute assload of variety in there. I would suggest waiting a week or two to see if it ends up in the Steam Christmas sale (It wasn't in the Thanksgiving sale so it may miss Christmas too, but they do run sales on it so it'll happen eventually) just to save a few bucks. Also worth noting, if you don't care for the fucky 3D poser art some industrious person made a mod to replace all enemies with yoinked art. I will say that the greasy 3D art does somehow play better than the nicer art, probably because it's less distracting and it's a little more unified. The replaced art does a pretty good job of keeping factions and types looking appropriately but the 3D art oddly enough works better as a vague way of gauging power/threat. Only reason I'm mentioning all this is that if you strongly feel you'd prefer the art mod I'd still suggest playing a few games with the starter art just so you can compare. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2185751968
The reason why I've not bought it yet is probably because it's both windows-only and mouse heavy. I'm on a Mac and have a windows setup that works for gamepad or over Parsec, so mouse-heavy or graphics-heavy games are just meh.
The reason why I've not bought it yet is probably because it's both windows-only and mouse heavy. I'm on a Mac and have a windows setup that works for gamepad or over Parsec, so mouse-heavy or graphics-heavy games are just meh.
Good catch on the mod! I hadn't noticed, but like I mentioned I also haven't played much during the last few patches. Wonder why the modder couldn't/didn't update his existing listing and made a new one instead.
With the caveat that I haven't finished them, I probably most enjoyed the BG3 EA. It doesn't feel like Baldurs Gate at all, but it's a fine game anyway even though many of the companions are insufferable pricks.
Honourable mentions to Dungeon of Naheulbeuk which actually made me laugh because of some of the dumb stuff that reminded me of past tabletop games and to DOOM Eternal for giving me original DOOM/DOOM 2 vibes.
Troubleshooter has a pretty great soundtrack and the devs add to it about 3 times / week based on how often it updates, so it's definitely a bargain purchase.
My Goatees from this year are Half Life: Alyx and Beautiful Desolation.
Dungeon of Naheulbeuk and Ghostrunner might be on that list from what I've seen playing through their Demos, but I haven't got around to actually playing the full games yet.
Other than that it was mostly old stuff including starting to play through the Shadowrun campaigns, some forgettable AAA fare like FC3 and AC3, Dragon Quest XI, dabbling in MH:W and Street Fighter V, CoOp titles like Streets of Rage 4, FC5, F76, Vermintide II, Hell Let Loose, a bunch of VR games and various Indies like War for the Overworld, Valiant Hearts, Thimbleweed Park, Surviving Mars, STASIS and the likes.