Thread by @JohanSHolm

2024 games thread: a small review of every game I play and like. Ratings:
[★] Neat and worthwhile, but limited in scope / quality.
[★★] Stronger games falling short somewhat in concept, scope or execution.
[★★★] All-time greats.

Castaway on a Weird Island [★]. Cute puzzler, the weakest enemies are hard to tell apart (so many means fewer opportunities to experiment to find each one's traits) but otherwise each element adds something to the mix.

N Step Steve: Part 2 [★]. Decent puzzles to move through but got filtered by the secrets this time. Less fenagling cats across rooms and more entering rooms from odd spots and well, I'm not sure because I didn't grok them.

Monster Train [★★]. So many cool builds to find and combinations to explore, with immediate run variety and short length. One-floor set-ups are a lot less dynamic than res/spell oriented ones, a lot of champs kinda suck, and the dlc is pretty messy, but tends to work out.

Magicube [★★]. Quickly sets a standard for concise yet tricky levels, lots of little ideas and broader dynamics to explore. Some letdowns that solve too easily or don't introduce anything new, but those are rare. Particularly liked 9, 20, 37 and 44, but didn't get 43 or 17.

Sylvie Miniature [★]. I stumbled on the biggest piece of tech early on so didn't really engage with the careful progression in abilities, but still some cool platforming and physical maneuvering.

Sylvie RPG: 7 Elf Apocalypse [★]. Fun enemy design with knockback being really central. Secrets are a bit mixed and I don't think the economy adds a ton, but shield catching is neat.

Fez [★]. Cute with some fun ideas, but both the regular navigation and post-game secrets are repetitive. Few of them build upon each other, and as one-offs they can be pretty arbitrary and plain. Carried by its music mostly, great mystery vibes even if the substance is mixed.

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link [★]. Cool and bullshit enemies in roughly equal measure - normal knights are both, depending on if you cheese them. Good overworld progression despite a couple obscure bits, and dungeons work well built around the big walkbacks.

OutRun 2: Coast 2 Coast [★]. The new SP and meta progression is stupid, and it's definitely a lesser of the original aesthetically, but it's nice to be able to see the road and the driving is a big step up. Mainly that the drifting is fun while complicating optimisation.

Rena Game [★★]. I haven't played many fangames to compare but had a great journey of obsessive one-more-tries with this. So many good avoidance scenarios that perfectly mix its ingredients, plus some cool gimmicks. Yellows on hard are kinda evil but Rika + Satoko is perfect.

Strikers 1945-III [★]. So discouraging to get got by the same lv1 overlaps every time, needing bombs to clear consistently, maybe it's just the raw difficulty. Still solid though, cool patterns to figure out.

An Angel Dances in the Sparks of a Bonfire [★★]. Takes the most fundamentally compelling part of shmups and isolates it to display all the raw beauty within (i.e. routing bullet patterns without relying on memorisation).

Meowe [★]. So oddly dynamic for how little goes into it. I think it's down to the potent and funny central mechanic of enemies that act when you do. More roguelike than most roguelikes.

Women Puzzle [★★]. The panic and excitement of finally getting the puzzle and nothing happening; the dread of looking up the song and trying to survive for four and a half minutes; the revelation of finding and executing the proper win condition. Incredible experience.

Not that Common Egg-Eater Snake [★]. Optimization puzzler where it's not just basic corner-cutting but ties into a larger structural meta-puzzle, pretty cool.

Muraphilic Monophobic Multiban [★]. Funny twist even if it doesn't put up much of a real challenge.

Well that's that, 18 good games out of 87 I played. Hopefully the next is meatier.

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