Malindy’s GOTY List 2023

This is likely the only GOTY list you’ll read that doesn’t have Baldur’s Gate on it. I just want to put that out there. I haven’t played it. It’s a game that was so anticipated and has such an enormous size that I as a freelancer would never have gotten to review it, and then it just wasn’t in my budget. I admire it just as a project from afar, the immense dedication that must go into working on a project for so long without coming out on the other side hating it, the way it really is the kind of game with an unfathomable amount of interactive freedom that simply not everyone can make, both from a technical and economic standpoint. But I haven’t played it.

I don’t think I’ve played a lot of games this year. Every time the GOTY lists start dropping, I have to make a list of games I’ve played, because, like any normal person, I can’t actually remember which games came out this year. Time has a funny way of simultaneously stretching and contracting across a year, making me remember certain parts of it in excruciating detail, but most of it, actually…not at all.
I’ve played a lot fewer games this year, mostly because work was bad, because I don’t know when/why people who play games for a living then play games for fun. In an average year, I play around 55 games, this year I’ve played 35.

I’ve roughly tried to make this a ranking but please don’t take it too seriously.

GrimGrimoire Once More

I’m going to say it — I don’t think Vanillaware have so far made a single game I don’t like, and GrimGrimoire in particular doesn’t make itself easy to like. It’s the type of multitasking tower defence game that deals in overwhelm, and I already only played the initial release because I thought “eh, it’s Vanillaware”. But Vanillaware always end up doing something special that makes you want to tell people about their games, whether it’s the mystery in 13 Sentinels or the merging stories in odin’s Sphere, I just click with each of their games.

I usually don’t think Vanillaware games are written too well, but GrimGrimoire may actually have the best writing out of the lot, and there is such depth to its systems particularly in this new release. They really know how to do re-releases: Vanillaware never change too much to call their games full remakes, but they clearly identify past mistakes and work out the kinks, which I really appreciate.

Paranormasight

I initially bought Paranormasight because it’s a visual novel and with the launch discount it was just…seriously cheap. That’s how easy I am. I’ve become increasingly disenchanted with Kazutaka Kodaka games (I haven’t played Rain:Code, which people seemed to like) so when someone I trust on this said that this was like a Kodaka game but not by Kodaka, I heaved a long sigh and went okay, one last try.

Joke’s on me, Paranormasight is really good, it has a timeline system similar to Ai: The Sonmium files, and a plot that very vaguely gives me Death Note vibes, and everyone in it is a little bitch. I play a lot of VNs so it’s difficult to surprise me with plot developments, Paranormasight managed that without resorting to anime logic or macguffins.

Dave the Diver

Part of me wants to hate Dave the Diver, honestly. Two reasons — this is just an exercise in what any studio could do if you gave it a bajillion kajillion dollars. So everything you don’t expect to be as good as it is, or to be in this game at all, such as the impromptu mini-games or the way it fits in systems after ten hours that most other studios build a single game around, just shows that if people are given time and money to cook, they will.

At the heart of it Dave the Diver is absolute fetch quest hell, using the well-worn principle of “thanks for bringing me ten of this, now bring me 20”. It’s devoid of messaging and/or shame while it lets you aim a sniper rifle at fish. But it tickles the non-existent lizard brain by introducing you to new systems and segments gradually, and it lets me press buttons to make food.

I really love those terrible restaurant service mobile games, (or the cabaret club in Yakuza), and Dave the Diver is that without the constant pay-to-play prompt to use 5 gold coins now to unlock a new dish. It has incredible fun with caricatures, and while it will never be Stardew, because nothing will, I think it occupies a similar nice of seemingly simple things elevated by sheer love (and time, and money).

Firebird

I only discovered Firebird because the algorithm threw it at me during a Steam Next Fest — a beautifully hand-drawn visual novel with a story rooted in Russian folklore. I’m really into The Black Book, a game with a great sense of place that constantly fights its own wonky systems, and Firebird has the same sense of place (and borrows from the same folklore, incidentally! This is the kind of short indie game people always say they want to play and then…don’t, so I thought I’d draw your attention to it one more time. It sometimes just doles out absolute gut punches of sentences, too, such as “we’re not missing money, but everything it could bring us” which is a sentence that just kills capitalism in cold blood. In its sleep.

The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood

Deconstructeam’s The Red Strings Club was the second game I’d ever written about professionally, and I do think it set me on my path somewhat. Their statement of intent is to make “innovative narrative experiences”, and while everyone says that, I just feel that Deconstructeam actually do this, even at the risk of failing. Whether a mechanic works or not, you still immediately want to talk about it and you can be sure you haven’t seen it anywhere else.

Because of that I was immediately excited for The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood, which also combines two of my great loves in life: tarot (just like, er…every other narrative designer) and great worldbuilding. If TCWS had only been about making your own tarot cards, I would already have been happy, but the more behind every card and the story that develops just makes me want to look under the hood so badly.

Thirsty Suitors

Ok, so maybe I’m biased because I have great love for and trust in the people who made Thirsty Suitors and there was no way I wouldn’t have played it, but this game really is that good. I think it’s a perfect double bill with Venba, a beautiful game that I couldn’t identify with quite as much as this one, but which is just as important.

Thirsty Suitors is almost strange because it isn’t my experience, wrong diaspora for one, but it comes so close in so many ways that I’ve felt seen in a way that no other game has managed. No one’s ever been thirsty for me, but I (and likely a lot of people of my generation, especially POC) can relate to the feeling of being lost, of wanting to give things another go, and just of the issues, both big and small, that come with being queer and a family black sheep (heh) and the weight of expectation.

The writing in Thirsty Suitors just names so many anxieties I’ve experienced (and still experience), but it puts characters on the road of dealing with them at least, which convinced me that sometimes we just need to say what we feel.

Jusant

I’ve already yelled about Jusant plenty, but I just need to add that this is likely because it was such a huge surprise for me. I actually didn’t catch the trailer when it was announced, so it was genuinely Oscar asking if I wanted to cover it that made me pay attention at all. What a lucky coincidence, because I’m just really into the soft flow of it’s narration and the calm it imparts.

This is another game I really enjoyed for its worldbuilding, but I hope that in all the oh and ah prettiness of it we don’t forget that the overall game also has a dash of Everybody’s Gone To the Rapture grim — for a long time afterwards, I kept thinking about how humans just adapt to bad circumstances, instead of facing and solving root causes.

VIDEOVERSE

Obvious disclaimer preface: Lucy was probably the first dev who followed me on social media and thought I was cool, and we are both two weebs so I always thought she was cool (apart from the obvious cool of being a solo dev) I really jumped at the chance to help with Videoverse in a teeny tiny way, mostly because it would give me an opportunity to talk to Lucy for a bit. Hopefully see you this year, Lucy!

But Videoverse really worked for me because I was a msn messenger nerd as a teen, and Lucy really displayed an impeccable understanding of early to mid-2000s weeb internet culture (because she was also there). So there’s a heavy dose of nostalgia here (I came to know my first bf as…Laguna-kun), right before she hits you with the feels of what it means to have to mould your entire life around a disability all of a sudden. All of Videoverse’s characters really love their small corner of the internet, and they have a simple love for games that I miss as an adult. The attention to detail in Videoverse is astounding, and even within its internet messaging confines, the character writing is very enjoyable, which is always important to me.

And that’s it from me for this year! I’m considering a list of games I really tried to love but didn’t, but that may be too unnecessarily mean. Thank you for your support of me and my writing this year, here’s cautiously to 2024.