Dru’s Game of the Year List 2024
2024 was a hell of a year for games in Drutonia!
Below is my top 10 games of the year as well as a bonus review from a friend! I also threw on a few movies and books that stood out. Enjoy!
2024 top 10 Games
Tactical Breach Wizards Score: 5 out of 5
Developer: Suspicious Developments PC / Steam / 13.8 hours
What if two of my favorite games from two of my favorite genres fell in love and made a beautiful game baby? They did! My very favorite turn based tactical shooter XCOM lends the isometric, top-down view and cover system while kaiju-crashing mech-control puzzle-adjacent mechanics from Into The Breach are ever-present.
Enter Tactical Breach Wizards. .The satisfaction of nailing the shot in XCOM mixed with the elation of perfectly placing your units and executing your plan in Into The Breach. Every level is a map reminiscent of the former while many engagements play out similarly to the latter. The perfect combination of both as the missions do not drag on how XCOMs can and the punishment for failing is not heartbreaking, (looking at you Into the Breach). This combination is wonderful but does not surpass the other two games on mechanics alone.
The story hits like a hammer fired out of a narrative cannon at a nail only a millimeter away. You start the game with a single grizzled special operations operator with a jaded past. Instead of an assault rifle, he wields what looks like a gun barrel with a wizard’s staff inside. He is able to predict the imminent future and uses this to tactically assault unwary do-badders. Intrigued? You should be! I thought the game was about his tale of redemption, and it kind of is, but each of the five characters you add to your squad over the course of the game are given as rich a back story as the ‘main’ character. The stories weave together flawlessly mostly via conversations in front of the literal door you are about to breach on each level.
I won’t go into each character that makes up the motley crew but suffice it to say that despite the low poly/minimalist design of the characters and environment, Tactical Breach Wizards packs more wit, compassion and insight than many novels I have read.
Come for the outstanding gameplay design. Stay for the incredible world building, humor and storytelling.
2. UFO 50 Score: 4.5 out of 5
Developer: Mossmouth PC / Steam / 18.7 hours and counting
UFO 50 should not exist because impossible things, by their definition, cannot share our reality; however, despite this, UFO 50 does. This game asks an odd question, what if you took the game design sensibilities of the current time and applied them to the graphical fidelity of the 80s and 90s? Now we have our answer, the result of the blood, sweat and tears this effort requires results in one of the most unique and fun games I can remember.
I’m burying the lead here, so let me take my shovel and tell you… they made 50 of these games. FIVE - ZERO. This means two things: they can’t all be hits and some must be some gems. These are both correct assumptions but that doesn’t take away from the extreme highs of UFO 50. Every game in this collection stands on its own and rewards you the more time you dedicate to them. Some of them are not at all beginner friendly and only deliver as much as you are willing to give them.
I could pontificate eternally about the design strategy impossibility and the wonderful in-game fictional company created to make each game, but instead, I want to focus on why some of my favorite UFO 50 games are so special.
Avianos
What if grand strategy games like Hearts of Iron & Europa Universalis were made to function on significantly powered down software? Enter Avianos. The simple graphic style does little to disparage the surprising depth of this wonderful strategy game. In a post-apocalyptic world, humans have destroyed themselves and dinosaurs reign over the earth; however, they are doomed to repeat humanities mistakes as they vie for control of territory.
The game plays out in turns over a grand map. You choose which god your people will worship this turn, which grants you three ‘moves;. These include moving your armies, accumulating resources, building structures & casting spell rituals. As you pray to gods more frequently, their moves can be upgraded. This cycle creates a wonderful but contained ‘One more turn and everything will be perfect!’ mentality that is hard to shake and an extremely effective serotonin producer..
The game's biggest weakness is the actual battles between armies. A simply rendered battlefield featuring your units on the left and the enemy units on the right. You do not directly control your units but can order them to Fight, Hold or retreat. Watching the low fidelity battles play out can be a blast but there is a certain lack of joy when the army you’ve spent turns building falls because the soldiers get randomly bottlenecked.
Still, UFO 50 is always a button press away from the aptly named Reset. Battle not going your way, reset and run it back in just a few seconds! Avianos ended up consuming my brain for weeks, tempting me to play during work hours. A temptation I mostly resisted.
Party House
Your goal, throw the most popular party, that’s the goal. You go through your rolodex to see who you could invite to your party. Do you want to invite the hippie who will definitely relax the vibe but isn’t super popular? Or would you rather invite the notorious gambler who is going to cause trouble but makes sure there will be money at the party for you to expand your house for bigger parties? These are the questions that plague your party house!
The mechanics of Party House are simple: you have a door and must choose to let guests in or accept the amount of guests you have and score points for the party. If you have too many trouble makers, the police will be called and break up your party. If you invite someone, like a celebrity, they will bring additional guests in their entourage, which may offer you too many guests for how big your house is and the fire department will come to break up the party. You have a set number of days to lure special guests to your party. These range from genies, aliens, leprechauns and dinosaurs which you must spend your accrued popularity points to add these folks to your rolodex and get them on the invite list to your party. Will you use security to kick out folks who are being too troublesome or will you use the cupid to make two old friends of yours leave the party because they aren’t popular? These are just two of many many unique guests that work together to create an addicting puzzle to navigate. I personally loved pairing the comedian with the dancers and old friends to maximize the popularity bonuses of my wall-to-wall extravaganzas!
These simple mechanics blend together perfectly to create a low stakes, high fun challenge that has yet to stop being fun. I look forward to trying to throw the perfect party for years to come.
Rock On Island
Imagine, you are an ambitious cave girl who wants to protect your family’s cave. Dinosaurs and other ancient monsters keep emerging from the forest and coming to attack your home. Luckily, they follow scripted paths to your home (mostly). You can order cavemen to stand along this path to attack the monsters with various weapons. Torches, spears, rocks, tar and eventually even wheels!
In the alternate world of UFO 50, the tower defense genre gets started early with the rocking good time of Rock On Island! This game does what great tower defense games often strive to do, create fun gameplay that obscures depth. Will you place a fire next to your caveman defenders to make them stronger or use those bones to upgrade your character’s meager axe into a flaming death toss? Will you place a chicken next to the fire to cook to give you more bones later to spend on upgrades? Will your cave survive long enough to reap those rewards? There is definitely a ‘right’ way to play Rock On Island but I have enjoyed experimenting without the help of the internet’s guides to the perfect set up to complete each level. Well, maybe I’ll just take peek…
3. Balatro Score: 4.5 out of 5
Developer: Localthunk PC / Steam / 30.5 hours and counting
My relationship with math has been fraught since a harrowing calculus experience during my senior year of high school; however, that relationship has undergone intense counseling in the form of Balatro. Balatro is wearing the sheep’s clothing of poker only to reveal the wolf of weird math and efficiency.
It’s hard to quantify the magic of Balatro. Balatro is responsible for several, just one more run… oh no it’s 2am! You are playing only against yourself to reach a target amount of chips (points). Straightforward, at first. Until you start adding more cards to your standard 52 card deck. 6 kings? Why not? Remove all 2s? I think I will! The perfect blend of poker (hoping the right card is about to flip into your hand) and madness of making a broken deck combine to create a sense that you're driving 100 mph down the highway with one greasy hand on the wheel. There’s nothing better than drawing the last card to complete your straight flush on the last hand and there’s nothing worse than running out of discards on the cusp of victory.
But I’ve obscured the gold here, the game sounds fun but it wouldn’t be this high on my list without an ace up its sleeve… Jokers. Balatro allows you to add modifiers to the hands you play. Some of them are fairly straightforward, making all face cards score twice or being able to make straights out of four cards in a row instead of five. But sometimes, they are stranger, one of my personal favorites being: play a hand with just a 6 and the card is destroyed but you create tarot cards to otherwise make meaningful and strange changes to the remaining cards in your deck.
Describing why Balatro is truly incredible is like describing a kaleidoscope to someone who’s only seen the rainbow. If you like score chasing or just well made games, give Balatro a try and thank me later.
4. Arco Score: 4 out of 5
Developer: Franek, Max Cahill, Bibiki, Fayer PC / Steam / 8.5 hours
Every year, I try to keep an eye out for turn-based tactical games. These are my very favorite things and I feel fortunate to be gaming at a time when they are popular enough to get made. They are usually indies that don’t have huge marketing budgets. Arco is such a game with a minimalist pixel art style and an intriguing blend of real-time and turn based combat. Tangentially similar to last year’s Phantom Brigade but with revenge ridden cowboys in the wild west in lieu of combat mechs. Where Phantom Brigade stumbled, Arco excelled. Unless your turn based gameplay is perfect, games need something else to bind them together. Arco blends them masterfully by telling the story of revenge from different perspectives while avoiding many of the tropes that make such stories uninteresting and tired. Even though the characters are represented by little more than small sprites, the writing carries enough gravitas and narrative umph to keep you hooked until the very end. I won’t go into several of the heart-wrenching scenes that caused me to tear up during my playthrough. Suffice it to say, the character work coupled with the authentically Southwestern soundtrack will pull even the coldest heart’s strings.
Arco is not without it’s issues though. There were some pacing issues here and there, some chapters felt a bit long and others felt a bit too short. The freeze time, plot your move, then execute nature of the combat was incredible but a system of guilt adding ghosts that chase and kill you during the time freeze felt a bit half baked. I understand trying to add a sense of urgency to players’ decisions but the ghost always felt like more of an annoyance than an interesting mechanic.
That being said, the combat design is otherwise masterful and rewards great planning and powerful abilities. There’s nothing better than narrowly dodging a shotgun blast by switching places with the person who fired at you while simultaneously preparing to backstab them with your other character as the bullets hit. *Chef’s kiss
5. Capes Score: 4 out of 5
Developer: Spitfire Interactive PC / Steam / 26.3 hours
Speaking of tactical turn-based gems, enter Capes! I have always wanted this genre and a superhero ascetic to get together and they do so in Capes beautifully. Capes’ story is exactly adequate. The writing is, at best, funny with a side of poignant and at worst, as quippy as the most Marvelly Marvel spinoff show. Despite this, the game shines with its extremely well balanced gameplay.
Spitfire Interactive was faced with the superhero video game problem of, ‘If these people are superheroes how can they be threatened by regular enemies?’ The game makes this interesting by having many of the playable characters be lower-case super. With powers that are cool and feel good to use without making a group of enemies feel like fodder.
Capes excels in a number of ways, that include optional objectives on every mission that encourage players to use skills/abilities/characters that otherwise would have stayed on the bench throughout the course of the games lengthy campaign. They also succeed in making each of the 8 or so heroes that join your team over the course of the game feel very unique and powerful in their own way. I found myself always thinking, ‘well this is obviously the strongest character in the game’ with each new hero being added to the squad.
I thought Capes levels would become trivial after upgrading the defensive hero Facet but some serious thought went into the design of the levels that result in some intense difficulty spikes. This also encourages you to go back and play previous missions to maximize XP to upgrade your heroes. Other than a few stealth-first missions, Capes missions continued to provide interesting challenges throughout the game’s runtime.
The villains of the game are mostly boilerplate baddies but the worldbuilding leaves a lot of room for more intriguing storytelling. In a lot of ways, Capes feels like the beginning of something great, more than a standalone product. Capes 2 may very well be one of my most anticipated games, assuming the first game was successful enough to warrant it. I very much hope that is the case as Capes shows as much promise as any initial entry by an indie studio to date.
6. Helldivers II Score: 4 out of 5
Developer: Arrowhead Game Studios PC / Steam / 61.4 hours and counting
At its best, Helldivers II feels like a 13 year old Dru’s fever dream – in the best way. You and three of your friends are fighting against impossible odds to stop the imminent destruction of innocence. You fight with a purpose more powerful than your own survival, a belief in something bigger than yourself. When you fall, and you will, you do so in the blaze of glory, in this case, FOR SUPER EARTH!
Let’s start with the perfect packaging. The introductory cutscenes starts with an extremely well-produced propaganda video featuring your beloved Super Earth and its people being threatened by socialist robots and horrible mindless bug monsters. Only you stand between these hordes of monsters and democracy!
The studio behind this achievement tows the line incredibly well with many community updates being written by fictitious Super Earth leaders. New weapons & stratagems must be secured from hostile planets. Choices must be made, protect the mining colonies on the outer rim of planets or protect a planet full of orphaned children of Superearth.
The magic trick Helldivers pulls off is a progression hidden inside a story unfolding in real time. This takes real chops and a commitment to ongoing story that usually only MMO’s like Final Fantasy 14 and World of Warcraft generally bother with. This only works because the core of the game is so strong.
You hear the hissing of nearby bugs the size of buses as you try to reunite with your squad screaming for backup as they are overrun. A four legged gargantuan bug monster spews acidic bile at you as you run until you’re out of breath. You’re surrounded, you’re not going to make it back to your friends across the map nor home to your fictional partner back on Superearth. But you will make a difference. You will take as many of these monsters with you as you call in a 500kg bomb onto your location. You’re out of ammo but you have a few more grenades you chuck at the ravenous horde descending. A final lethal claw cleaves you in twain just as the bomb you called in makes contact, erupting the entire screen in righteous hellfire. I’m not describing a rare moment in Helldiver’s 2 but a common occurrence that rarely fails to deliver an adrenaline pounding fight to the death. Over and over and over again, you will fight. Close calls become commonplace and last minute extractions become the norm. The perfect balance of excitementment and danger cycles again and again without veering into mindless repetition.
This was easily the most fun I had all year playing with my family but there were diminishing returns for me. The last extraction lacks the punch of that first one. As you learn what weapons work best against what enemies, the frantic fighting becomes less an exercise in tactical prowess and more of a plan to be executed that only fails if you are not good enough. The tension turned to real life annoyance after a while as playing on too low difficulty didn’t feel rewarding but too high a difficulty became a bit too punishing. At its core, Helldivers II is an outstanding achievement and the studio continues supporting it, including the introduction of a third faction I can’t wait to fight. I just wish I loved the game now as much as I did when it first came out. What I would give to relive that first white knuckle extraction. The first time I felled three Bile Titans as my squad sprinted to my aid. Like watching your favorite movie the 10th time, it's still great but you don’t quite get the goosebumps the same way again.
7. College Football 25 Score: 4 out of 5
Developer: EA Orlando Xbox / 200+ hours and counting
Over 10 years ago, I would forge some of my favorite multiplayer gaming memories building a dynasty with friends. No job, no school, all football. We played NCAA 14 like our plane was going down. We fought for fake recruits out of high school, jumped to different schools when job offers came in and built small schools like the Washington State Cougars into National Champions. But alas, it was not meant to be as college kids realized that their likeness was generating millions of dollars that they couldn’t legally access. So the college football game was put on indefinite hiatus… until now!
Sure, NIL may spell the end of collegiate sports as we know it, but now we can have a college football game again! Instead of real players being named QB #15 in the game, they can be themselves! Its a dream come true for football video game fans who grow tired of Madden’s extremely iterative development style.
This is my comfort food game. I’m in an outstanding league, courtesy of Dadbods with nearly 30 other users. We recruit from the same pool of players and live out our dreams of running a dynasty. I’ve chosen to become the head coach of my beloved Auburn Tigers and have managed some success on the field but we’re not quite contending with the big dawgs of the league yet.
Back to the game though. It isn’t perfect but it is far better than I had anticipated. The gameplay feels good and fluid. The difference between a 5 star recruit and a 3 star recruit feels real and translates onto the field. The gap in skill feels like an adequate analog to real life. The feeling of landing a top prospect over a rival school is unmatched; however, some of the depth of the game’s systems start to erode as you spend more time with them. The recruiting system feels like there is a ‘right’ way to land a prospect, which leads to less playing with the mechanics and more work that can feel tedious at times. The game shines on the field but it is far from perfect. A lot of mechanics are not fully explained, looking at you high pass button and wired little chits under the oline. As is true in Madden, speed kills. It’s not super fun playing against the CPU when they try to press your 99 speed wide receiver at the line, only for him to run past them for the 5th time that game for a long TD.
My misgivings are dwarfed by my love for this game. For the first time in many years, I have for gone Madden to play this instead, and I feel no sense of regret. The game is not higher on my list only because it has so much potential yet unrealized. That being said, I am anxiously awaiting my upcoming matchup with Ohio State to try and take the lead in my conference. Two extremely gifted CBs I recruited the first year of this dynasty are both healthy for the first time and on the field together. Something about recruiting these not-at-all real players connects me to them and no other game given me that kind of ownership.
8. Steamworld Heist II Score: 3.5 out of 5
Developer: Thunderful Development PC / Steam / 21.7 hours
As a huge fan of Thunderful Development’s Steamworld games, I was very excited to play this sequel to the criminally underrated Steamworld Heist 1. After being mostly disappointed by last year’s Steamworld Build, I knew this game would be a chance for Steamworld to ascend to the heights of its former great titles: Steamworld Dig & Steamworld Quest. Although Heist 2 did fall a bit short of these lofty expectations it was still some of my favorite gaming this year.
The XCOM but 2D formula still works incredibly well. The satisfaction of taking out two enemies with the perfect sniper shot across the level to protect your flanked compatriot was unlike anything else this year; however, the sequel differentiates itself from the first game by implementing character classes. The first few hours of the game feel very similar to its predecessor, with the exception of the pirate background replacing the space adventure one. You meet lovably crafted robots and take turns moving and shooting through environments full of evil cult fanatics and corrupt navy bots. If this is all the game was, it would be just fine; however, the true depth of Heist 2 begins to reveal itself as your characters find new weapons and gain new levels.
Each character’s class depends on what weapon they are using and, herein lies the rub, you can unlock skills in one class, then keep them as you move to a different one. For instance, use a shotgun to unlock and unwieldy double shot: allowing you to fire twice, dealing massive damage. On a further mission, equip a sniper rifle but bring over the doubleshot skill you learned before. Now allowing you to take two sniper shots across the map for massive damage! Multiple this possibility by every other skill and class and the result is a dizzying array of combinations of skills that give you the upper hand in battles against enemies that get much more difficult after each passing mission.
Alas, I’ve only talked about one half of this game, its best half by far. What I haven’t mentioned is the time between missions where you navigate your ship between bars’ islands, ports and enemy ships. Unfortunately, this bit is, at best, a cool down between missions and, at worst, quite dull. You can upgrade your ship to go a little faster or fire missiles instead of regular gun blasts at other patrolling ships. I wish this was as interesting as it sounds. The game’s predecessor did away with any need for traversal with a simple, mission select system and I understand why the designers would want to make something larger and more robust but I was never having a great time sailing between islands or trying to avoid the much more powerful ships at sea. Unfortunately, you do spend a lot of time doing just that. My other issue with the game is that it overstays its welcome just a bit. The final chapter is interesting and serves the narrative well but, by the time I got there, I was ready for the game to end.
That being said, the gameplay never stops being fun and the constant drip feed of experience, compounding of skills & collection of weapons is satisfying throughout. Although the main story never hooked me, the gunplay never let me go.
9. Shogun Showdown Score: 3 out of 5
Developer: Roboatino PC / Steam / 5.7 and counting
In the very crowded market of run based, rogue-like games that release on Steam at any given moment, it takes a unique twist on the genre to really hold its own.. Shogun Showdown mostly threads that needle, especially for my taste. Pixel-art (Yes), samurai (Yes), strange magic (YES) round out a surprisingly deep experience.
You control a nameless warrior who must fight through a legion of increasingly difficult enemies for… reasons. You assign attacks/abilities into a queue for your character then hit the spacebar to execute. These orders can be as simple as ‘attack both adjacent tiles’ but, when paired with increasingly complicated abilities, the game becomes a sort of tightly controlled ballet. I use shadow dash to appear behind this small enemy, heavy attack to take out the largest one then use a crossbow to fire at the final enemy across the room, all in one smooth sequence. At its peak, Shogun Showdown feels like executing the perfect pirouette.
Only a few matters of taste kept the game from ranking higher on the list. An issue some run based games face, like this one, is progressing too far into the run without a really synergizing combo.This very well could be a skill issue on my end but the few times I reached the final boss section to find that all of my abilities did not quite work well enough in tandem, creating a lopsided loss that ultimately pushed me away from dedicating more time to the game.
With each victory, additional options unlock, such as new characters with varying abilities as well as more powerful enemies to face. I’m not quite done with Shogun Showdown, as I feel the perfect run is right around the corner, I just wish the turn was a bit closer..
10. Hauntii Score: 3 out of 5
Developer: Moonloop Games Xbox / 7.2 hours
My affinity for small, tight game experiences grows more and more each year. My perfect game is no longer a sprawling epic but is instead a controlled experience that grabs me and won’t let go until it's over. Hauntii is not quite perfect but manages to capture a beautiful art style that is seemingly simplistic, only ever using the colors black and white, while capturing the magic of a strange world.
Tight controls and unique powers that allow you to control various creatures and objects kept me intrigued long enough to begin experiencing a surprisingly deep and powerful story based in a rich and strange world of cities in the sky, a strange angelic figure tied to my character’s fate and impossibly enormous sand whales that can transcend time and space.
Hauntii never quite eclipsed other indie games that have grabbed my attention over the years but stands as a beautiful achievement, even if parts of the game feel a bit too much like a collectathon that detracts from the beautiful and esoteric story that is unfolding a bit too slowly.
Bonus Review!
A lot of deserving games did not get played by me this year, and had to be outsourced for opinion. The list is long and I intend to catch up on many of these in 2025. Looking at you Stalker 2, Dragon Age, Lorelei & the Laser Eyes, Animal Well and Frostpunk 2.
One such game was the surprisingly adept Indiana Jones and The Great Circle. I am only a few hours in myself but have been really enjoying it. My colleague Austin, has finished the game and lends his expertise below!
Indiana Jones and The Great Circle Score: 17 Nazi Knock-Out Punches
Developer: Machine Games Xbox / 35ish hours
It’s a good game. It has fun twists and turns and went in a direction I wasn’t anticipating. The semi open world is fine, but the actual navigation of it can be tedious. You don’t get any other form of moving outside of running and walking. Backtracking can really turn you away from collecting stuff. Additionally, the game takes a dip when you have a companion. They shout out hints very early on puzzles. Aside from those things, I would absolutely recommend playing it. I give 17 Nazi knock-out punches.
Books!
Chain Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
A powerful indictment of the American prison system that still haunts me months and months after finishing. Basically, the (fictional) prison system facilitates a blood sport that rewards its most adept fighters with freedom. A genius work by a debut artist. It’s going to break my heart when the novel gets adapted into a Netflix series that gets it all wrong. I’ll watch the whole thing though.
Play Nice! : The Rise, Fall and Future of Blizzard Entertainment by Jason Schreier
Arguably video game’s most esteemed reporter Jason Schreier writes this exhaustively researched detailing of one of gaming's biggest and most influential companies. As an enjoyer of many Blizzard games over the years, it was fascinating to begin to understand how it all came together and how it has changed. Highly recommended to anyone who enjoys learning about the business of video games as well as the human cost of art.
Red Noise by John P. Murphy
A far future space western that came to me just when I needed it. A salve for an overworked mind is not just good, it’s good enough. Even rote premises, such as a loner with a dark past, can still be well executed as Red Noise is. The book doesn’t break a lot of new ground but is paced well with intrigue and action to keep even the most disheveled (me) reader engaged from beginning to end.
Movies!
Alien: Romulus
While traveling for work, I generally pass the time in the evenings at the local movie theatre. What a treat to have enjoyed the latest entry in the Alien series. Much to my amazement, Romulus stands among the series’s greats! The tension and worldbuilding of a far future dystopia is Drutonian catnip and I happily lapped it up. Aside from a few unnecessary allusions to previous entries in the franchise (as well as a wholly unnecessary extended cameo) this story gripped me all the way to its chilling final chapter. A must see for any sci-fi or scary movie fan.
Between the Temples
A thoughtful drama about a Jewish clergyman, played beautifully by Jason Schwartzman, who’s character lost his wife and subsequently, his purpose in life. Between the Temples captures the emotion of someone drifting through life that hits close to home while packaging the experience in a wrapper of humor. A few scenes didn’t land with me but the unlikely friendship in the movie felt truly earned.
Didi
A coming of age movie aimed right at me. Didi is about a boy living in the U.S. during the early 2000s trying to fit in. The story of a struggling teen captures the awkward nature of adolescence without being hamfisted about the power of family and friendship, as movies like this often veer into. Seeing an AIM chat box evoked more sense memory than maybe I was prepared for but overall enjoyed the heck out of this movie.
The best game I experienced all year is unfortunately, not on this list, but it is immortalized on the Youtube channel CousinChat. Follow the link below to watch JP and I experience one of my now favorite games of all time The Outer Wilds.