2018 may have given us some incredible games, but it has been a difficult time for many.
A breadth of compelling, interesting, and genre-breaking games have come out in 2018, with artists constantly pushing the boundaries of what games can do. At the same time, it’s difficult to ignore a sense of hopelessness and sorrow about the world we live in. Life seems quite bleak all over the world. Perhaps I was simply able to ignore it before and cannot now, but things feel dark.
Still, games strive for hope. Through teaching empathy for others whose struggle we don’t understand, or showing us lives and pains we do not know, they help us to connect with one another. Even in escapism and in connecting with others over a shared game or a shared love of play, they help bring us together when it feels like all else wants to break us apart. There are a great deal of bad things in games, but there is also joy and friendship and connection.
Games, and the artists who make them, give me hope.
The following are some examples of the games that help us get away from our lives, see the value in a simple conversation, find adventure in our seemingly-bleak existences, or feel the difficult journeys of those around us. They’re presented in no particular order save the last one, the Game of the Year for myself and Indie Games Plus.
Thank you, as always, for exploring these wonderful games with us.
Library
Library is a simple game. You roam around the book-lined halls tossing tomes at your friends. Most of the people don’t even react in any way despite you hurling fifty books at them. You’d think they’d at least be impressed at your ability to carry that many books at once.
That simplicity makes the game easy to dive into, though. Library doesn’t really ask much of you. It just wants you to meander through the library and toss books at some cheerful folks. Even the books themselves can’t help but grin at the silliness of it all. There’s something really compelling and fun about that when you’ve had an off day.
Library only wants you to take a few minutes to grin at a really goofy task. To enjoy a little walk through a place where the people are all happy an enjoying themselves. Its colors and art style exude cheeriness, making it an often-welcome refuge from the gloom and horrors of our regular lives. Its a short bit of freedom from the real world, but its commitment to making you smile make it well worth every moment you spend with it.
Library is available on Itch.io and Steam.
The Witch’s House MV
The Witch’s House quickly became one of my favorite horror games when I tried it a few years ago. Its ability to turn from complete calm to startling horror made it very effective at terrifying me, and its story dragged me in as I struggled to unravel its mysteries. Thinking over puzzles and narrative while being unnerved is a heady concoction that The Witch’s House did exceptionally well without endless darkness and huge, scary monsters. It excelled at creating an atmosphere of pure dread.
The Witch’s House MV offers all that with a sharp new look, new story events, and a higher difficulty level that makes its terrors strike that much harder. It reinforced the things about the game that made it so chilling years ago, while also adding some new elements that make it feel like a brand new game. It’s hard to go into too many details about the new content, as it deserves to be experienced on your own, but it is well worth it.
Just be sure your heart can handle it. This is one of those scary titles you can feel clenching your chest tight. You will feel it when it chooses to frighten you.
The Witch’s House MV is available on Steam.
Semblance
Puzzle platformer Semblance, with deformable terrain you can thump and mold however you like, it lets you find your way through its puzzles in whatever way you think will work. Its squishy, malleable levels, on top of looking like they’d be really fun to just run your hands over, give you a chance to be clever.
Many a puzzle platformer will make you feel smart for finding the solution, but there really is only one answer. You’re forced to figure out how the developer wants you to get through it. Semblance, instead, asks you to find your own solution. There are optimum ways, sure, but you can smack and squish the terrain in surprising ways that will also let you get to where you want to go. By playing around with the mechanics and the mold-able terrain, you truly feel like you’re the one coming up with the answers. It’s less a test of figuring out what someone else thinks should work, and feels like your own exploration of a natural place.
That it does this without forcing you to do puzzles you don’t like, looks soft enough to touch, and tells an interesting story in silence, made Semblance into an incredibly charming experience.
Semblance is available on the Humble Store, Steam, and the Nintendo Switch.
#Selfcare
We vent with games. We escape with games. Yet games can be a source of even further pressure, bring more damaging elements into our lives, or fail to really help us calm down.
#Selfcare asks us to stop. To let go. To breathe. To take a moment for ourselves without feeling guilty about it. It’s designed to be a place of shelter where we can pop bubbles, play around with a tarot deck, or take in the things we treasure. As a game, it’s a place to play around with things outside of the self, yet its mood is one of self-reflection. Its play brings us to a state where we can look in on our own lives.
It’s difficult to find time to just think on our own lives. There is so much outside demand that makes it feel frivolous or wasteful to do so. #Selfcare tries to break down that resistance and give you a place where you can relax and just feel.
#Selfcare is available on the App Store and Google Play.
Rakuaga Fantasy
Rakuga Fantasy brings some wonderfully-absurd humor to dungeon crawlers. Digging around in grim, bleak catacombs can only stay compelling for so long, after all. As such, I welcome getting attacked by a chicken strip basket with a chip on its shoulder. Or any of the other silly enemies the game offers. It’s just a nice change of pace for the genre.
Rakuga Fantasy doesn’t just add goofball enemies and call it a day, as it also brings some Warioware-like minigames into the mix. From keeping health food away from your dinner to kicking over buckets of rocks, fighting each enemy feels more like a fun event. It also further cranks the game’s silly nature, making for a dungeon crawler where it’s hard to know what to expect.
That element of constant surprise, and of always having to adapt to new situations, honestly makes it feel refreshing for the genre. Combing through a dark tomb should be an experience fraught with the unexpected, and our reactions should be difficult in those times. Knowing you can get by just by clobbering monsters leaves you feeling prepared, and takes away that sense of the unknown. Yes, it’s an effective way to play through a game and is fun, but the mystery is a powerful part of dungeon delving. Rakuga Fantasy, as lighthearted as it is, creates that feeling well, capturing an essential part of battling beneath the earth.
Rakuga Fantasy is available for free on Itch.io.
September 1999
September 1999 is five minutes and thirty seconds long, carrying you through various locations in a broken-down apartment. These brief moments tell a short story in fear, using atmosphere and sound to create a powerful creeping dread. No moment is wasted. And somehow, it all works despite the player’s ability to look around and do whatever they like for their time there.
You know that something has gone wrong in place. You can sense it, just as you can sense that it is steadily growing worse as time passes. It claws at your heart as you play it – a feeling that something is about to happen and you will not enjoy it. It does all this in moments when most other horror games take minutes and hours to accomplish the same.
September 1999 is available on Itch.io and Steam.
The Haunted Island, a Frog Detective Game
The Haunted Island, a Frog Detective Game‘s protagonist is straight up adorable. I love this frog, and want to spend my time with them. All of my time. That’s a pretty solid start for a game right there.
It doesn’t hurt that everyone in this game is funny and charming and silly. It’s just a pure pleasure to meet these characters and talk to them. I just want to know more about this crew of oddball characters and their lives. The Haunted Island, a Frog Detective Game excels at creating this sense of budding friendships with these characters as well. It captures that feeling of genuinely liking people and wanting to help them.
The Haunted Island, a Frog Detective Game is a playful game, one built around creating a community without feeling like you’re being subjected to busywork (which is what kills me with Animal Crossing). It takes me to a place that I enjoy visiting for a short while, filled with folks I want to know and help and befriend.
The Haunted Island, a Frog Detective Game is available on Itch.io.
Cyberpet Graveyard
Cyberpet Graveyard turns your desktop into the final resting place of some interesting digital creatures. These beings await to be discovered as they lurk around your computer, turning your humdrum PC into a land of adventure. Except these beings are a little bit cursed, so maybe it’s a dangerous adventure.
Nathalie Lawhead’s work continues to astound with how it can use games to touch those who play them directly. Cyberpet Graveyard is a game of sorts, sure, but the way in which it turns the player’s computer into a place of fun and delight creates a unique connection. It’s a special feeling that somehow bleeds beyond playing a game and into something more. It’s a kind of fun and delight and sorrow that truly feel like your own. These creatures feel like they belong in your world, and aren’t the constructs of some visited place of code.
If you love the adventure of finding lovable monsters, this is the closest you’ll likely get to doing it for real.
Cyberpet Graveyard is available for free on Itch.io.
Minit
Minit is a sprawling adventure made into bite-sized, one minute chunks. You have come into possession of a cursed sword that knocks you out, sending you back home after a minute has passed. Within these sixty seconds, you need to find items, help townsfolk with quests, explore dungeons, and battle bosses.
That Minit can cram so much mystery, secrets, and vast places into such a short amount of time is an incredible feat, and a welcome one for those who have very little time to play during the run of a day. It’s endlessly surprising to see how far this world expands, and what things are cleverly hidden within it. It captures a sense of curiosity and exploration despite its brief play times, and its visual style gives the world a playfulness that makes events even more fun.
Minit is a marvel of world-building, planning, and pacing. The developers have distilled so much adventure in such a tiny space that this game needs to be experienced to be believed. I hope they are truly proud of this incredible achievement.
Minit is available on Itch.io, Steam, PS4, Xbox One, and the Nintendo Switch.
Secret Little Haven – Game of the Year
Secret Little Haven is about finding who you are, even as you’re forced to keep it secret. It’s about the families we choose for ourselves. It’s about finally finding people who care when you feel like no one could.
Alex Cole is a teen trans girl, but she hasn’t quite figured herself out yet. You join her as she surfs the internet in 1999, checking out magical girl blogs, browsing forums, and chatting with friends. Maybe you can take some time with her and use the doll maker program, or chase some cats around the desktop. Through chat and websites and play, you can get a glimpse into her feelings and who she is.
Secret Little Haven has players join Alex on her journey of self-discovery online. While the internet often feels like a toilet, for someone growing up feeling like the odd person in a small town, or within a family who can’t begin to understand or accept your feelings about yourself, it could also be the only place you could be your true self. Freed from your fleshy prison, or from having to deal the judgments of others once your truths become known, this digital world was somewhere that you could be who you dreamed of being. Online, you could finally become the self you hide for your own safety. The self that’s hidden even from you.
Secret Little Haven is a beautiful look into this journey. We follow Alex as she begins to question who she is, and is able to freely speak about her secret thoughts to her friends online. We watch as she starts to discover herself through play, forums, and private chats. We get to feel her fears ebbing away, and her confidence in herself growing throughout the game.
Our most vulnerable people often have no place to be themselves that’s safe. No place to find out about their feelings without risk. It’s dangerous to be queer or trans, however we may wish it otherwise. The internet is often the only place it can be safe to be yourself (and even that is far from safe) – the only place to even ask questions about it.
Secret Little Haven provides that internet framework, through its SanctuaryOS, that lets us settle into how many people are forced to find themselves. It recreates that online community and camaraderie that allows some people to let their guard down and feel safe in finding themselves. Through our online interactions as Alex, we get to join in the journey so many vulnerable people had to take to find who they are.
It’s both heart-wrenching and profoundly touching to see Alex finally find herself. To walk along this journey as she takes steps toward being happy with herself. These discoveries are only the beginning to becoming who she is inside, but being able to see that struggle and feel what she goes through helps create a deeper empathy for what she, and many others, have and will go through.
Secret Little Haven shows us the value of community and friendship online, as well as how far we still have to go in making people feel safe in who they are. It’s a reminder that we all need to do more for our LGBTQ friends and communities. It’s a beacon of hope for those who are forced to hide who they are, and an awakening for those of us who do not personally understand these feelings. It asks us to feel what some of us could not otherwise, and in embracing those emotions, care.
Secret Little Haven seeks to make us better than we were before, and to understand the pain of another so that we can all take steps to stop it. In promoting this understanding, and in striving to make the world a better, more hopeful place, it is our well-deserved Game of the Year.
Secret Little Haven is available on Itch.io and Steam.
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