In 2020 Iâm newly retired, so Iâve had free time. I think itâs fun to do reviews, so without further ado hereâs every video game I played in 2020!
(4/5) Among Us â Very fun. Itâs only fun with voice chat with friends, so Iâve only gotten to play once or twice. Iâve been watching it more than playing it. Also free to play for mobile gamersâIâm tired of the âeveryone buys a copyâ model of group gameplay.
(4/5) Brogue. Brogue is an ascii-art roguelike. Itâs great, and it has a nice difficulty ramp. Itâs a good âquick breakâ game. I play it in preference to other roguelikes partly because I havenât done it to death yet, and partly because I donât need a numpad?
(4/5) Cook Serve Delicious 3. One of the more fun games I played this year. You get really into it, but I had trouble relaxing and paying attention to the real world when I played too much, haha. I own but havenât played the first twoâI gather this is pretty much just a refinement.
(4/5) Green Hell. Price tag is a bit high for the number of hours I got out of it, but I havenât finished the story. Great graphics, and the BEST map design Iâve seen in a 3D game in a long time. It feels like a real place, with reasonable geography instead of copy-pasted tiles. I love that as you walk along, you can just spot a cultivated area from the rest of the jungleâit feels more like itâs treating me like an adult than most survival games. Everything still gets highlighted if you can pick it up. I played the survival mode, which was okay but gets old quickly. I started the story modeâI think it would be fine, but it has some LONG unskippable scenes at the start, including a very hand-holdy tutorial, that I think they should have cut. I did start getting into the story and was having fun, but I stopped. I might finish the game some time.
(4/5) Hyperrogue. One of my recent favorites. The dev has made a fair number of highly experimental games, most of which are a total miss with me, but this one is fun. I do wish the early game wasnât quite as repetitive. Failing another solution, I might actually want this not to be permadeath, or to have a save feature? I bought it on steam to support the dev and get achievements, but itâs also available a version or two behind free, which is how I tried it. Constantly getting updates and new worlds.
(4/5) Minecraft â Compact Claustrophobia modpack. Fun idea, nice variety. After one expansion felt a little samey, and it was hard to start with two people. Iâd consider finishing this pack.
(4/5) Overcooked 2. Overcooked 2 is just more levels for Overcooked. The foods in the second game is more fun, and it has better controls and less bugs. If youâre considering playing Overcooked, I recommend just starting with the second game, despite very fun levels in the first. I especially appreciate that the second game didnât just re-use foods from the first.
(4/5) Please Donât Press Anything. A unique little game where you try to get all the endings. I had a lot of fun with this one, but it could have used some kind of built-in hints like Reventure. Also, it had a lot of red herrings. Got it for $2, which it was well worth.
(5/5) Reventure. Probably the best game new to me this year. Itâs a short game where you try to get each of about 100 endings. The art and writing are cute and funny. The level design is INCREDIBLE. One thing I found interesting is the early prototypeâif I had played it, I would NOT have imagined it would someday be any fun at all, let alone as amazing as it is. As a game designer I found that interesting! I did 100% complete this oneâthereâs a nice in-game hint system, but there were still 1-3 âhuhâ puzzles, especially in the post-game content, one of which I had to look up. Itâs still getting updates so Iâm hoping those will be swapped for something else.
(5/5) Rimworld. Dwarf fortress, but with good cute graphics, set in the Firefly universe. Only has 1-10 pawns instead of hundreds of dwarves. Basically Dwarf Fortress but with a good UI. I wish you could do a little more in Rimworld, but itâs a fantastic, relaxing game.
(5/5) Slay the Spire. Probably the game I played most this year. A deckbuilding adventure through a series of RPG fights. A bit luck-based, but relaxing and fun. I like that you can play fast or slow. Very, very well-designed UIâyou can really learn how things work. My favorite part is that because itâs singleplayer, itâs really designed to let you build a game-breaking deck. Thatâs how it should be!
(4/5) Stationeers. I had a lot of fun with this one. Itâs similar to Space Engineers but⌠fun. It has better UI by a mile too, even if itâs not perfect. I lost steam after playing with friends and then going back to being alone, as I often do for base-building games. Looks like you can genuinely make some complicated stuff using simple parts. Mining might not be ideal.
(5/5) Spy Party. One of my favorite games. Very fun, and an incredibly high skill ceiling. Thereâs finally starting to be enough people to play a game with straners sometimes. Bad support for âhot seatââI want to play with beginners in person, and it got even harder with the introduction of an ELO equivalent and removing the manual switch to use âbeginnerâ gameplay.
(4/5) Telling Lies. A storytelling game. The core mechanic is that you can use a search engine for any phrase, and it will show the top 5 survellance footage results for that. The game internally has transcripts of every video. I didnât really finish the game, but I had a lot of fun with it. The game was well-made. I felt the video acting didnât really add a huge amount, and they could have done a text version, but I understand it wouldnât have had any popular appeal. The acting was decent. Thereâs some uncomfortable content, on purpose.
(4/5) Totally Accurate Battle Simulator (TABS). Delightful. Very silly, not what youâd expect from the name. What everyone should have been doing with physics engines since they were invented. Imagine that when a caveman attacks, the club moves on its own and the caveman just gets ragdolled along, glued to it. Also the caveman and club have googley eyes. Donât try to win or it will stop being fun. Learn how to turn on slo-mo and move the camera.
(4/5) We Were Here Together. Lots of fun. I believe the second game out of three. Still some crashes and UI issues. MUCH better puzzles and the grpahics are gorgeous. They need to fix the crashes or improve the autosave, we ended up replaying a lot of both games from crashes. Itâs possible I should be recommending the third game but I havenât played it yet.
(3/5) 5D Chess with Multiverse Time Travel. More fun that it sounds. If you play to mess around and win by accident, itâs pretty good. Definitely play with a second human player, though.
(1.5/5) 7 billion humans. Better than the original, still not fun. Soulless game about a soulless, beige corporation. Just play Zachtronics instead. If youâre on a phone and want to engage your brain, play Euclidea.
(3/5) A Dark Room. Idle game.
(1/5) Amazing Cultivation Simulator. A big disappointment. Bad english voice acting which canât be turned off, and a long, unskippable tutorial. I didnât get to actual gameplay. I like Rimworld and cultivation novels so I had high hopes.
(3/5) ADOM (Steam version) â Fun like the original, which I would give 5/5. Developed some major issues on Linux, but I appreciate that thereâs a graphical version available, one of my friends will play it now.
(4/5) agar.io â Good, but used to be better. Too difficult to get into games now. Very fun and addictive gameplay.
(3/5) Amorous â Furry dating sim. All of the hot characters are background art you canât interact with, and the characters you can actually talk to are a bunch of sulky nerds who for some reason came to a nightclub. I think it was free, though.
(0/5) Apis. Alpha game, AFAIK I was the first player. Pretty much no fun right now (to the point of not really being a game yet), but it could potentially become fun if the author puts in work.
(4/5) Autonauts. I played a ton of Autonauts this year, almost finished it, which is rare for me. My main complaint is that itâs fundamentally supposed to be a game about programming robots, but I canât actually make them do more than about 3 things, even as a professional programmer. Add more programming! It can be optional, thatâs fine. Theyâre adding some kind of tower defense waves instead, which is bullshit. Not recommended because itâs not for everyone.
(3/5) A-Z Inc. Points for having the guts to have a simple game. At first this looked like just the bones of Swarm Simulator, but the more you look at the UI and the ascension system, the worse it actually is. I would regularly reset because I found out an ascension âperkâ actually made me worse off.
(5/5) Beat Saber. Great game, and my favorite way to stay in shape early this year. Oculus VR only, if you have VR you already have this game so no need to recommend. Not QUITE worth getting a VR set just to play it at current prices.
(1/5) Big Tall Small. Good idea, but no fun to play. Needed better controls and level design, maybe some art.
(0.5/5) Blush Blush. Boring.
(3/5) Business Shark. I had too much fun with this simple game. All you do is just eat a bunch of office workers.
(3/5) chess.com. Turns out I like chess while Iâm high?
(3/5) Circle Empires Rivals. Decent, more fun than the singleplayer original. It shouldnât really have been a separate game from Circle Empires, and Iâm annoyed I couldnât get it DRM-free like the original.
(3/5) Cross Virus. By Dan-box. Really interesting puzzle mechanics.
(4/5) Cultist Simulator. Really fun to learn how to playâI love games that drop you in with no explanation. Great art and writing, I wish I could have gotten their tarot deck. Probably the best gameplay âambienceâ Iâve seenâgetting a card thatâs labeled âfleeting sense of radianceâ that disappears in 5 seconds? Great. Also the core stats are very well thought out for âfeelâ and real-life accuracyâdread (depression) conquers fascination (mania), etc. It has a few gameplay gotchas, but theyâre not too bigâlayout issues, inability to go back to skipped text, or to put your game in an unwinnable state early on). Unfortunately itâs a âroguelikeâ, and itâs much too slow-paced and doesnât have enough replay value, so it becomes a horrible, un-fun grind when you want to actually win. I probably missed the 100% ending but I wonât be going back to get it. I have no idea who would want to play this repeatedly. Iâm looking forward to the next game from the same studio though! I recommend playing a friendâs copy instead of buying.
(2/5) Darkest Dungeon. It was fine but I donât really remember it.
(2/5) Dicey Dungeons. Okay deck-building roguelike gameplay (with an inventory instead of a deck). Really frustrating, unskippably slow difficulty curve at the start. I played it some more this year and liked it better because I had a savegame. I appreciate having several character classes, but they should unlock every difficulty from the start.
(2/5) Diner Bros. Basically just a worse Overcooked. I didnât like the controls, and it felt too repetitive with only one diner.
(2/5) Donât Eat My Mind You Stupid Monster. Okay art and idea, the gameplay wasnât too fun for me.
(2/5) Donât Starve â Iâve played Donât Stave maybe 8 different times, and itâs never really gripped me, I always put it back down. Itâs slow, a bit grindy, and thereâs no bigger goalâall you can do is live.
(3/5) Donât Starve Together â Confusingly, Donât Starve Together can be played alone. Itâs Donât Starve, plus a couple of the expansions. This really could be much more clearly explained.
(1/5) Elemental Abyss â A deck-builder, but this time itâs grid-based tactics. Really not all that fun. Just play Into the Abyss instead or something.
(1/5) Else Heart.Break() â I was excited that this might be a version of âHack Nâ Slashâ from doublefine that actually delivered and let you goof around with the world. I gave it up in the first ten minutes, because the writing and characters drove me crazy, without getting to hacking the world.
(2/5) Everything is Garbage. Pretty good for a game jam game. Not a bad use of 10 minutes. I do think itâs probably possible to make the game unwinnable, and the ending is just nothing.
(1/5) Evolve. Idle game, not all that fun. I take issue with the mechanic in Sharks, Kittens, and this where buying your 15th fence takes 10^15 wood for some reason.
(4/5) Exapunks. Zachtronics has really been killing it lately, with Exapunks and Opus Magnum. WONDERFUL art and characters during story portions, and much better writing. The gameplay is a little more varied than in TIS-100 or the little I played of ShenZen I/O. My main complaint about Zachtronics games continues to be, that I donât want to be given a series of resource-limited puzzles (do X, but without using more than 10 programming instructions). Exapunks is the first game where it becomes harder to do something /at all/, rather than with a particular amount of resources, but itâs still not there for me. Like ShenZen, they really go for a variety of hardware, too. Canât recommend this because itâs really only for programmers.
(1/5) Exception. Programming game written by some money machine mobile games company. Awful.
(4/5) Factorio. Factorioâs great, but for me it doesnât have that much replay value, even with mods. I do like their recent updates, which included adding blueprints from the start of the game, improving belt sorting, and adding a research queue. We changed movement speed, made things visually always day, and adding a small number of personal construction robots from the start this run. Iâm sure if youâd like factorio youâve played it already.
(3/5) Fall Guys â I got this because it was decently fun to watch. Unfortunately, itâs slightly less fun to play. Overall, thereâs WAY too much matchmaking waiting considering the number of players, and the skill ceiling is very low on most of the games, some of which are essentially luck (Iâm looking at you, team games).
(3/5) Forager â Decent game. A little too much guesswork in picking upgradesâwas probably a bit more fun on my second play because of that. Overall, nice graphics and a cute map, but the gameplay could use a bit of work.
(3/5) Getting Over It â Funny idea, executed well. Pretty sure my friends and I have only gotten through 10% of the game, and all hit about the same wall (the first tunnel)
(3/5) Guild of Dungeoneering â Pretty decent gameplay. I feel like itâs a bit too hard for me, but thatâs fine. Overall I think it could use a little more cute/fun art, I never quite felt that motivated.
(1/5) Hardspace: Shipbreakers. Okay, I seriously didnât get to play this one, but I had GAMEBREAKING issues with my controller, which is a microsoft X-box controller for PCâTHE development controller.
(2/5) Helltaker. All right art, meh gameplay. But eh, itâs free!
(3/5) Hot Lava. Decent gameplay. Somehow felt like the place that made this had sucked the souls out of all the devs firstâno one cared about the story or characters. Itâs a game where the floor is made out of lava, with a saturday morning cartoon open, so that was a really an issue. Admirable lack of bugs, though. Iâm a completionist so I played the first world a lot to get all the medals, and didnât try the later ones.
(3/5) House Flipper â Weird, but I had fun. I wish the gameplay was a little more unifiedâit felt like a bunch of glued-together minigames.
(2/5) Hydroneer. Utterly uninspiring. I couldnât care about making progress at all, looked like a terrible grind to no benefit.
(1/5) io. Tiny game, I got it on Steam, also available on phone. Basically a free web flash game, but for money. Not good enough to pay the $1 I paid. Just a bit of a time-killer.
(3/5) Islanders â All you do is place buildings and get points. Not particularly challenging, but relaxing. Overall I liked it.
(3/5) Jackbox â I played this online with a streamer. Jackbox has always felt a little bit soulless money grab to me, but itâs still all right. I like that I can play without having a copyâwe need more games using this purchase model.
(3/5) Life is Feudal â Soul-crushingly depressing and grindy, which I knew going in. I thought it was⌠okay, but I really want an offline play mode (Yes, I know thereâs an unsupported single-player game, but itâs buggier and costs money). UI was pretty buggy, and I think hunting might literally be impossible.
(2/5) Minecraft â Antimatter Chemistry. Not particularly fun.
(3/5) Minecraft â ComputerCraft. I played a pack with just ComputerCraft and really nothing else. Was a little slow, would have been more fun with more of an audience. I love the ComputerCraft mod, I just didnât have a great experience playing my pack I made.
(3/5) Minecraft â Foolcraft 3. Fun, a bit buggy. Honestly I canât remember it too well.
(1/5) Minecraft â Manufactio. Looked potentially fun, but huge bugs and performance issues, couldnât play.
(4/5) Minecraft â Tekkit. Tekkit remains one of my favorite Minecraft modpacks.
(3/5) Minecraft â Valhelsia 2. I remember this being fun, but I canât remember details as much as Iâd like. I think it was mostly based around being the latest version of minecraft?
(4/5) Minecraft â Volcano Block. Interesting, designed around some weird mods I hadnât used. I could have used more storage management or bulk dirt/blocks early in the gameâfelt quite cramped. Probably got a third of the way through the pack. I got novelty value out of it, but I wouldnât have enjoyed it if I had ever used the plant mod beforeâitâs a very fixed, linear progression.
(5/5) Minit. This is a weird, small game. I actually had a lot of fun with it. Then I 100% completed it, which was less fun but I still had a good time overall.
(3/5) Monster Box. By Dan-box. One of two Dan-box games I played a lot of. Just visually appealing, the gameplay isnât amazing. Also, Dan-box does some great programmingâthis is a game written in 1990 or so, and it can render hundreds of arrows in the air smoothly in a background tab.
(3/5) Monster Train. A relatively fun deckbuilding card game. It canât run well on my computer, which is UNACCEPTABLEâthis is a card game with 2D graphics. My MICROWAVE should run this shit in 2020. Ignoring that, the gameplay style (summon monsters, MTG style) just isnât my cup of tea.
(2/5) Moonlighter. Felt like it was missing some inspiration, just didnât have a sense of âfunâ. The art was nice. The credits list is surprisingly long.
(2/5) Muse Dash. All right, a basic rhythm game. Not enough variety to the game play, and everything was based around perfect or near-perfect gameplay, which makes things less fun for me.
(3/5) NES games â various. Dr Mario, Ice Climbers. Basically, I got some Chinese handheld âgameboyâ that has all the NES games preloaded on it. Overall it was a great purchase.
(2/5) Noita. âThe Powder Gameâ by Dan-Box, as a procedurally generated platformer with guns. Lets you design your own battle spells. Despite the description, you really still canât screw around as much as Iâd like. I also had major performance issues
(3/5) Observation. I havenât played this one as much as Iâd like, I feel like it may get better. Storytelling, 3D game from the point of view of the AI computer on a space station. I think I might have read a book itâs based on, unfortunately.
(2/5) One Step From Eden. This is a deck-building combat tactics game. I thought it was turn-based, but itâs actually realtime. I think if it was turn-based I would have liked it. The characters were a bit uninspired.
(1/5) Orbt XL. Very dull. I paid $0.50 for it, it was worth that.
(4/5) Opus Magnum. Another great game from Zachtronics, along with Exapunks theyâre really ramping up. This is the third execution of the same basic concept. Iâd like to see Zachtronics treading new ground more as far as gameplayâthat said, it is much improved compared to the first two iterations. The art, writing, and story were stellar on the other hand.
(3/5) Out of Space. Fun idea, you clean a spaceship. Itâs never that challenging, and it has mechanics such that it gets easier the more you clean, rather than harder. Good but not enough replay value. Fun with friends the first few times. The controls are a little wonky.
(1/5) Outpost (tower defense game). I hate all tower defense.
(3/5) Overcooked. Overcooked is a ton of fun.
(4/5) Powder Game â Dan-box. I played this in reaction to not liking Noita. Itâs fairly old at this point. Just a fun little toy.
(1/5) Prime Mover â Very cool art, the gameplay put me to sleep immediately. A âcircuit builderâ game but somehow missing any challenge or consistency.
(2/5) Quest for Glory I. Older, from 1989. Didnât really play this much, I couldnât get into the writing, and the pseudo-photography art was a little jarring.
(4/5) Raft. I played this in beta for free on itch.io, and had a lot of fun. Not enough changed that it was really worth a replay, but it has improved, and I got to play with a second player. Not a hard game, which I think was a good thing. The late game theyâve expanded, but it doesnât really add much. The original was fun and so was this.
(3/5) Satisfactory. I honestly donât know how I like this oneâI didnât get too far into it.
(4/5) Scrap Mechanic. I got this on a recommendation from a player who played in creative. I only tried the survival modeâthat mode is not well designed, and their focuses for survival are totally wrong. I like the core game, you can actually build stuff. If I play again, Iâll try the creative mode, I think.
(3.5/5) Shapez.io. A weird, abstracted simplification of Factorio. If I hadnât played factorio and half a dozen copies, I imagine this would have been fun, but itâs just more of the same. Too much waitingâblueprints are too far into the game, too.
(2.5/5) Simmiland. Okay, but short. Used cards for no reason. For a paid game, I wanted more gameplay out of it?
(0.5/5) Snakeybus. The most disappointing game I remember this year. Someone made âSnakeâ in 3D. There are a million game modes and worlds to play in. I didnât find anything I tried much fun.
(1/5) Soda Dungeon. A âmobileâ (read: not fun) style idle game. Patterned after money-grab games, although I donât remember if paid progress was actually an option. I think so.
(4/5) Spelunky. The only procedurally generated platformer Iâve ever seen work. Genuinely very fun.
(4/5) Spelunky 2. Fun, more of an upgrade of new content than a new game. Better multiplayer. My computer canât run later levels at full speed.
(1/5) Stick Ranger 2. Dan-box. Not much fun.
(3/5) Superliminal. Fun game. A bit short for the pricetag.
(3/5) Tabletop Simulator â Aetherâs End: Legacy. Interesting, a âcampaignâ (series of challenge bosses and pre-written encounters) deckbuilding RPG. I like the whole âcampaign RPG boardgameâ idea. This would have worked better with paper, there were some rough edges in both the game instructions and the port to Tabletop Simulator.
(4/5) Tabletop Simulator â The Captain is Dead. Very fun. Iâd love to play with more than 2 people. Tabletop simulator was so-so for this one.
(2/5) Tabletop Simulator â Tiny Epic Mechs. You give your mech a list of instructions, and it does them in order. Arena fight. Fun, but I think I could whip up something at least as good.
(3/5) The Council. One of the only 3D games I finished. Itâs a story game, where you investigate whatâs going on and make various choices. Itâs set in revolutionary france, at the Secret World Council that determines the fate of the world. It had a weak ending, with less choice elements than the rest of the game so far, which was a weird decision. Also, it has an EXCRUTIATINGLY bad opening scene, which was also weird. The middle 95% of the game I enjoyed, although the ending went on a little long. The level of background knowledge expected of the player swung wildlyâthey seemed to expect me to know who revolutionary French generals were with no explanation, but not Daedalus and the Minotaur. The acting was generally enjoyableâthereâs a lot of lying going on in the game and itâs conveyed well. The pricetag is too high to recommend.
(0/5) The Grandmaâs Recipe (Unus Annus). This game is unplayably badâitâs just a random pixel hunt. Maybe it would be fun if you had watched the video itâs based on.
(3/5) The Room. Pretty fun! I think this is really designed for a touchscreen, but I managed to play it on my PC. Played it stoned, which I think helps with popular puzzle gamesâit has nice visuals but itâs a little too easy.
(3/5) This Call May Be Recorded. Goofy experimental game.
(4/5) TIS-100. Zachtronics. A programming game. I finally got done with the first set of puzzles and into the second this year. I had fun, definitely not for everyone.
(3/5) Trine. I played this 2-player. I think the difficulty was much better 2-player, but it doesnât manage 2 players getting separated well. Sadly we skipped the story, which seemed like simple nice low-fantasy. Could have used goofier puzzles, it took itself a little too seriously and the levels were a bit same-y.
(2/5) Unrailed. Co-op railroad building game. It was okay but there wasnât base-building. Overall not my thing. Iâd say I would prefer something like Overcooked if itâs going to be timed? Graphics reminded me of autonauts.
(2/5) Vampire Night Shift. Art game. Gameplay could have used a bit of polish. Short but interesting.
(4/5) Wayward. To date, the best survival crafting system Iâve seen. You can use any pointy object and stick-like object, together with glue or twine, to make an arrow. The UI is not great, and thereâs a very counter-intuitive difficulty system. You need to do a little too much tutorial reading, and it could use more goals. Overall very fun. Under constant development, so how it plays a given week is a crapshoot. The steam version finally works for me (last time I played it was worse than the free online alpha, now itâs the same or better). I recomend playing the free online version unless you want to support the author.
(1/5) We Need to Go Deeper. Multiplayer exploration game in a sub, with sidescrolling battle. Somehow incredibly unfun, together with high pricetag. Aesthetics reminded me of Donât Starve somehow.
(2/5) We Were Here. Okay 2-player puzzle game. Crashed frequently, and there were some âhuhâ puzzles and UI. Free.
(3/5) Yes, your grace. Gorgeous pixel art graphics. The story is supposed to be very player-dependent, but I started getting the feeling that it wasnât. I didnât quite finish the game but I think I was well past halfway. Hard to resume after a save, you forget things. I got the feeling I wouldnât replay it, which is a shame because itâs fun to see how things go differently in a second play with something like this.
These are not all new to me, and very few came out in 2020. I removed any games I donât remember and couldnât google (a fair number, I play a lot of game jam games) as well as any with pornographic content.
2020 Videogames was originally published on Optimal Prime