Thread by @JohanSHolm

I'll try to tweet out every game I play and like in 2020. Rated out of 3: 1 is a bunch of neat and nice games but nothing too special; 2 is a decently long list of good games, lots of variety; 3 is my favorites, currently exactly 10 games so it's a rarity.

Touhou Luna Nights [⋆⋆]. Smooth movement and great fast-paced ranged combat. Time mechanics and grazing work great for bosses, though not so well for platforming/enemies so that gets a bit gimmicky/tedious later, and the structure is very basic too.

Snek [⋆]. My favorite from the @st33d library, neat little game with the frustrating controls being front-loaded as opposed to some other puzzlescript games with weird rules/movement where the further you get, the more weirdness is unravelled. Surprisingly simple by the end.

Sokoslam [⋆]. There's a lot of Sokoban here, as might be expected by the title. It doesn't overlap in the specifics, but if you take a step back it's a very similar play style. Nothing revolutionary but solid puzzle design and some proper head-scratchers.

Flying Kick [⋆]. Similar to Sokoslam, another fairly small twist on a beloved puzzle game with good level design. Drop Kick took the concept further, but I found its levels were harder to read (particularly with springboards) and occasionally too easily solved.

Princess Remedy in a Heap of Trouble [⋆]. Very charming little shmup, though very easy since it saves+heals between every battle and except for bosses each battle is like 30 seconds long. The dates are a bit awkward and there's not much going on in the overworld.

SELF [⋆⋆]. Great music, pacing and writing to convey the Kafka-esque narrative. Some very poignant moments and scenes that take full advantage of the surrealist setting. The avoidance minigame is less interesting, there's some repetition in chasing down the endings.

Beeswing [⋆⋆]. There's little in the game that isn't charming and interesting - my favorites were the television song and Vladimir but it's the entirety of the chaotic yet cohesive setting that really sells it, and lets the themes of grief and longing hit home.

SoBroken [⋆]. The rules are interesting, but when pushed I think the name is right that it kind of breaks. It's either about doing one box at a time which is pretty straight forward, or having doing everything at once which is basically like recorder puzzles.

Topsoil [⋆]. Like Threes, it is a perfect game. Unlike Threes, the theme amplifies the gameplay to create a relaxing experience even as the chaos of nature overwhelms you. The ultimate unsolvability of the game feels true to nature, rather than a mathematical anomaly.

Schwerkraftprojektionsgerät [⋆⋆]. Tetris is the quintessential perfect video game, and this beautifully denies that perfection. Someone eventually did get a 4 so it doesn't have as clear and achievable an end point as I thought, though the trip to 3 was enough for me.

Quantum Childminding [⋆]. The concept works well thematically and to challenge your navigation of the game's space. There's not much depth to it, but it's short and sweet.

Hoplite [⋆]. Smart little game, though chasing the proper challenges (speed run, pacifist, flawless etc.) I find it hard to locate my mistakes. Some rooms seem impossible to clear without taking damage, and it's very easy to lose a 30-minute run to a tiny mistake.

Song of Bloom [⋆⋆]. A supreme secret box. Zip Zap’s delightful interactions combined with incredible pace and variety. It does slow down a bit after the incredible start, and the clues are at times too obscure for me to get them (while the hints give away too much).

Arkanoid vs. Space Invaders [⋆]. I think these games are too chaotic to challenge your aim. The time limit here asking you to make chaos consistent just ends up frustrating. As a negative shmup, trying to hit every incoming bullet, it's still satisfying and exciting for a time.

Gestalt OS [⋆]. An enthralling problem solving adventure, mostly doing a great job of challenging you to experiment and learn about the tools. 49 is delightful, while 46 was a frustrating cycle, revealing my flawed first steps only at the very end and leaving me to re-do it all.

Sticky Terms [⋆]. A delightful exploration of language, though the interactive side plays second fiddle. Some surprises with words I didn't realize fit the bill (dygn, slydda), and similar to Supertype it plays a bit with the visual nature of our alphabet (a chat > aloha).

Jelly no Puzzle [⋆]. Simple and solid logic puzzler with a nice and high level of difficulty. Some hard limits with the rules (almost no moving upwards) and usually concise levels. Limited undos is annoying, especially in levels with a lot of back and forth (e.g. 34).

Pipe Push Paradise (iOS) [⋆]. Nice small variation on Sokoban, pits + height makes for some small adjustments in logic. The level select is a bit confusing (I did light blue last), and the height-focused puzzles (like the last one) are really hard to read and solve by planning.

Strange Keyworld [⋆⋆]. Genius little game. Despite so many novelties and surprises throughout, I still got completely blindsided by the final one. Never gets too obscure with the puzzly platforming, a bit slow at times but the finale makes me look back only fondly.

Music Catch 1-2 [⋆]. Nostalgia causes some bias because I haven't seen this game in about 10 years, but what a relaxing and beautiful music game. The sequel has some nice settings and more songs, though the classic in and out pattern of shapes is the only one for me.

Gel Gel Panic (ゲルゲルパニック) [⋆]. Really neat, simple but nuanced controls, slimes getting more dangerous as you shoot them and later "powerups" that remove all your powerups makes it quite deliberate. Unsure how the scoring works, but it was fun trying to figure it out.

Minemonsters [⋆]. Minesweeper with monsters. I like the low level strategies more, overlapping fields of possible monsters makes for some neat maths, though I'm not sure if it holds up beyond that. It's a bit unclear when you need to sacrifice health to continue solving.

Heroes of Sokoban [⋆]. Quite vanilla Sokoban but with a teleporting wizard to spice things up. The easy puzzles don't push the rules very far, but pretty nice and clean regardless.

After deliberation, Jelly is [⋆⋆]. The undo annoyances later on and gimmick levels don't take away from the majority of the puzzles being concise and challenging while exploring the full implications of the ruleset. Movement isn't as nuanced as Snakebird, but still very good.

Mirror Isles [⋆]. No level stumped me for long, but there's no filler and plenty of interesting solutions. Focus on visualizing the win condition and then figuring out the block pushing and slightly complicated movement to get to that state. The twists are brilliant too.

When Pigs Fly [⋆]. Neat little single-button flight platformer. Different things hurting different parts of you is cool, and I like the natural build-up of getting closer and closer to the end of an oppressive cave.

Sokobond [⋆⋆]. Fantastic sticky puzzler with a lot of potential that is realized towards the end. Sadly it's slow to get there: the first ~100 puzzles are mostly training for the last ~10, and a lot of those early levels are large + hard to read, harming the pacing further.

Elude [⋆]. Its metaphor is more effective than e.g. Depression Quest, where the mechanics only make a neat point in theory. Staying afloat up in the sky takes more effort than getting dragged down to the depths, and it's not exposition that brings the point home.

Elevator Orator [⋆]. Pretty cool concept and flow. Triple/quadruple vowels are insane, some starters are impossible, and it quickly becomes about falling back on a set of familiar words. Most of all I'm just bad, but I think that goes for most people which is neat.

Duplicators [⋆]. Simultaneous movement, duplication as the name implies, and enemy manipulation are all explored pretty well. The difficulty curve is a bit all over the place but it's a solid little puzzle game.

Galaga '88 [⋆]. I wasn't a fan of the ship capturing in Galaxian and its sequels, but this has enough besides that to compel. While the scoring has some farming problems, it makes for nuanced offensive rewards, and the varied set of levels and dimensions complement that well.

Helltaker [⋆]. Charming story and nice illustrations, though the gameplay is pretty lacking. It's basically about optimizing movement in simple Sokoban puzzles, with no undo and easy wasted moves since it lets you run into walls and such. The final level was pretty cool.

2000:1: A Space Felony [⋆]. Neat exploratory detective game. The pieces come together to form a narrative, but without spoonfeeding you the details and exact order of events. The resolution falls flat no matter how I read it, but getting there is nice.

A Short Hike [⋆]. Sweet exploratory 3D platformer, nice game feel with flying, and enough to the mechanics to keep it engaging for a while. I didn't find the narrative very interesting, but it's got a nice mood to it.

A Frog's Guide To Eating Flies [⋆]. Delightful theming of some neat mechanics, and the level design does pretty well to explore one side of that - namely, when combined with movable platforms that you must arrange correctly.

Matchstick Elegy [⋆]. Some overlap with The Flames, but with timers local to each object instead of global. As a result, there's a lot more walking and pushing, not as concise and direct, and a bit less intuitive in optimizing timers of two-sided logs (level 12 and 20 mainly).

Little Red Lie [⋆]. I like the white lies that pop up in every conversation and interaction, highlighted to give further insight into the characters and their mindsets. On the other hand, I don't care for its "real dystopia" and smothering nihilism, however relatable.

Xevious [⋆⋆]. Simple, but with a brilliant concept at its core. Like Ikaruga it has two fundamentally distinct enemy types for a constant dance of priorities and offense at two different levels, with plenty of pressure to perform and take risks while fighting for survival.

Owata 2 [⋆]. I'm not a big fan of the pure trolling in Owata 1 or IWBTG, but this focuses more on neat riddles and platforming to deliver its humor than trial and error. Especially from the boss onward it's a delightful, nostalgic tribute.

Mortal Shell [⋆]. Still unimpressed by the core mechanics as in the demo, but better bosses and some nice non-linear exploration go a long way to make it worthwhile.
I'm probably making a proper review of some sort, got a lot of notes. Pretty clearly a solid 5/10 though.

ELOH [⋆]. The puzzles are a distraction, busywork that once solved produce a neat, orderly, boring beat. What’s amazing is the music created live as you solve the simple puzzles. It gets old before too long, and isn’t the most consistent, but when it all lines up it’s magical.

Outer Wilds [⋆⋆]. A mysterious, beautiful and awesome world, with incredible variety and quality in things to explore, as well as freedom with which to do so. Twice near the end it breaks established rules to railroad the player into poor gameplay sequences, which sucks.

Ace Combat Zero: The Balkan War [⋆]. What a cool clunky thing. Really fun to control the plane, but the structure, objectives and combat don’t gel well, like when forced to re-do 20 minutes of slow and shallow bombing because I ran out of ammo or made a tiny maneuvering mistake.

Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader {co-op} [⋆]. Better controls than the first, better structure than Ace Combat, and co-op makes everything better. Still, some issues with feedback, visual clarity and camera, unpredictable AI, poor pacing, and vague objectives.

Mushroom 11 [⋆]. Really cool physics platformer of sorts. I don’t think there’s that much depth, the blob mass respawning being automatic and random prevents it from challenging you much despite the nuanced “movement”, and the structure is very straight forward.

Bloodborne {replay} [⋆⋆]. Small changes make for a pretty different experience, without much room for deviation. Strong neutral game and offensive depth, but side systems like healing and customisation are lacking. The content is consistent but not much stands out as great.

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves [⋆]. Too much climbing but otherwise well paced with a variety of settings and activities. Gameplay is still not worthwhile on its own but the context is, visually and narratively. Could use some breathing room with just walking around and exploring.

Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception [⋆]. Far less consistent without big overall improvements, and a mess of a story. The punching is boring, shooting can be overly long and strict, but it has less dedicated climbing, decent riddles, the best caravan set piece, and Charlie Cutter.

Uncharted 4: A Thief's End [⋆⋆]. Music, visuals, game feel, writing, exploration and climbing are on a higher level, they finally do justice to the lost city itself, Nate is never alone, and the story largely succeeds at concluding the series despite some contrived drama.

Prune [⋆]. Interactive naturalistic scenes of sights and sounds, beautiful moments to punctuate a serene looping structure. As variations on the same theme, there's not a lot of variety or longevity.

Uncharted: The Lost Legacy [⋆⋆]. Concise and consistent like the second game, while keeping 4’s improvements and beauty, though without the variety and scale. Navigation and slight non-linearity are a natural extension of 4’s open areas, and less focus on combat is nice.

Odin Sphere Leifthrasir [⋆]. Really fun to figure out combos and optimising encounters for s-ranks, but the difficulty curve is an S, there’s some real bad bosses / enemies, and each character stays too long; it repeats content despite being fairly shallow when you get familiar.

The Last of Us [⋆⋆]. Great storytelling execution, solid atmosphere and environmental storytelling, and a fantastic ending. The overall pacing is marred by tedious traversal, and the gameplay (experientially and systemically) is very mixed, some high points but a lot of issues.

The Last of Us: Left Behind [⋆⋆]. More intimate, not as hard hitting as the main game but solid storytelling and the arcade is brilliant. Gameplay isn’t as big a focus and lets you turn infected against other humans, but there’s still some bad sections.

Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance [⋆⋆]. Gimmicks like fog of war and not killing enemies are annoying, UX is awful without a wiki, and map design isn't too interesting (especially later). Bonus XP does make for nice dynamic optional objectives though, on top of the strong FE core.

Rymdkapsel [⋆]. Neat minimalistic RTS, tetronimo buildings making for cool base building and constant nuanced optimisation.

Demon’s Souls {replay} [⋆⋆]. It feels ancient. Dragons, lizards, dogs, tendency, fall physics, upgrade system, tunnels, etc. are awful but also charming in their own rough, convoluted, obscure, unfair ways. Strong neutral game and unmatched atmosphere, an enduring classic.

Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn [⋆]. Very mixed, solid core gameplay is betrayed by a structure that doesn’t fit with the progression systems, and a lot of boring maps. Part 2 and 3.5 are especially bad, and the story (which is to blame for much of that) is a mess too.

Un Pas Fragile [⋆]. Sweet vignettes of anxiety, friendship, and bravery. These kinds of games usually encourage meandering, but this asks no patience nor does it ever let you linger.

SMT: Digital Devil Saga [⋆]. Visual style and music are great, but it’s easy and has some problems (camera, random encounters, traversal). Good systems go a long way, but a better structure and difficulty curve than IV doesn’t make up for the loss in on-the-fly customisation.

Journey [⋆⋆]. Stunning audiovisuals and smooth game feel are nice as a witness, while genuine, playful interactions and cooperation make the journey personal.

And 2020 is over, at long last. Really enjoyed the challenge of these small reviews, 60 good games out of the total 150 games or so I played total. May do a blog post with highlights, unrolled thread is here:
threadreaderapp.com/thread/1235044…