2024 has quietly become the year of cheap masterpieces
Nov. 20, 2024Opinion | If this was meant to be a quiet year for the industry, nobody told
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Ace(s) in the hole
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There was, of course, Balatro, a game that siphons time from me like a Vegas casino drains money. I put 100 hours into that game in just a few weeks, and I continue to go back to it. It’s the best deckbuilder since Monster Train, by far, and challenges Slay the Spire for the title of best deckbuilder, frankly, of all time. The weird wobbly music, the slightly unsettling grin of the game’s jokers, the thrill of utilizing maths to spin out combos that rack in millions of points, it all comes together to sing in synthesis and create a superb video game. It’s a truly unique game, meshing poker and deckbuilding together in a way that, retrospectively, seems obvious.
Now, Balatro alone would be enough for this year to hang its hat on, but that doesn’t even begin to cover the panoply of low-cost games that have hit our digital shelves, SSDs, and dopamine centers of our brains this year. Yet before Balatro was even a glint in a joker’s eye, we’d already been blessed with Home Safety Hotline. An unabashedly weird game that meshes 112 Operator and the SCP foundation. You are, as the title implies, a lowly worker for the Home Safety Hotline, and must instruct callers how to respond to various entities (as well as more benign issues) in their homes and gardens. Often creepy, sometimes funny, this little game is a short but wonderful experience that’s stayed with me throughout the year.
It was, however, not as creepy as the next game on my list: Buckshot Roulette. You know how Inscryption kind of trails off after Act 1? Buckshot Roulette is the tension of that game’s first act shoved into a shell atop a wad and some gunpowder then shot into your face. It, like Balatro, is simple. You play Russian roulette against some otherworldly monster thing, but with a shotgun, loaded with either blanks or buckshot. Items can assist you, but it’s mostly a game about probability. It costs £2.49, but I played it for hours. Then, rounding the year off, we have Halls of Torment. If, like me, you adore Vampire Survivors, and would like it to be more goth,you need to soak up Halls of Torment. It’s Vampire Survivors crossed with Diablo (original Diablo, at that): all shonky voice acting, basic but compelling graphics, and that same old sensation of being a sentient cloud of murder.
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Ever since getting a Mega Drive as a toddler, Joe has been fascinated by video games. After studying English Literature to M.A. level, he has worked as a freelance video games journalist, writing for PC Gamer, The Guardian, Metro, Techradar, and more. A huge fan of indies, grand strategy games, and RPGs of almost all flavors, when he’s not playing games or writing about them, you may find him in a park or walking trail near you, pretending to be a mischievous nature sprite, or evangelizing about folk music, hip hop, or the KLF to anyone who will give him a minute of their time.
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