I needed something to publish to my blog this month, why not talk about The Game Awards?!? This was a big year for Geoff Keighley and his celebration of video games. Each year we watch it, and each year we joke about it, but honestly, it does keep getting better. There is measurable progress for the production, and in its 10th year now, I think they've mostly hit their stride.
Also, for the last few years my friends and I have played “The Game of The Game Awards” where we do a fantasy-style pick of all the games we think will win, and also came up with some wild predictions that may or may not have scored us any bonus points. I encourage you to check it out even if you've already watched the TGAs.
Playing Little Kitty, Big City at my niece's birthday party a month or two ago sort of set me off on a path of playing a bunch of short and cozy games, walking simulators, light puzzle games, things of that nature. I've played quite a few of them in relatively quick succession recently. I had known about Little Kitty from IGN's Justin Davis, who mentioned the game on their podcast “Game Scoop.” But I didn't really have any intention of playing it. Meanwhile my wife found out about the game from her TikTok feed and encouraged us to check it out.
When I was done with Little Kitty, I moved on and played Return to Grace, and I thoroughly enjoyed pretty much everything about that title. Sort of like Firewatch, except it's set in an alternate future where atomic age sci-fi aesthetics have dominated interior design, but then I finished that game. And then I moved on to and finished Botany Manor. And then I played and finished A Short Hike. Now I'm playing an indie game that is sort of a Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes inspired game called Merge & Blade. All of these games are relatively short, most of them don't take more than about four hours to play, so you can get through them in a single evening.
I won't be talking about A Short Hike because that's a relatively old game at this point, but I figured I might write about the others because they're much newer, and might not have as much hype surrounding them. Not only were they concise, but they were well thought out, and have a lot to offer even though they're packed into such small and short presentations.
December 30, 2023 was the last Pixel Pints podcast episode that will be recorded for the foreseeable future. All of us founding members have decided to put the show on hiatus. It's been a good ride. I can't speak for the others, but I can speak for myself. Somewhat in honor of that, I thought it might be good to do another top 20 list. Don't worry I'll get into the titles on this list, but first, I'm going to muse and rant a bit on the gaming industry as a whole. More specifically about “journalism” and gaming enthusiast media.
Special shout out to MobyGames. I reached out to them last year when I was going through my frontend development course, and they provided me with API access. I haven't done much with it yet, but all of the links and images for this list (with the exception of the above image created with Topsters 3) are all from Moby. Maybe I can come up with a creative way to use the API that would be beneficial for the site and that community as well as offer some cool utility... I'm open to suggestions.
If you're so inclined though, and want to skip ahead to a specific title, just click the number next to it on the list above.
