Ninth Coint & Plick: The ~60 best games of 2015 according to ILX

Adam, "Lost Constellation" is brief and extremely simple in its mechanics (it's basically an adventure game without puzzles) but I found it funny and moving in a quiet, contemplative way. It can be downloaded for free here: https://finji.itch.io/lost-constellation

does minkomora have gameplay? i just wandered around a bunch but couldn't figure out how to actually do anything productive.

http://i.imgur.com/7o0GUnO.png
#50 - Renowned Explorers - Abbey Games
10 Points
1 Vote

one of my votes. really excellent game w/ deep/complex interlocking mechanics. i beat it w/ maybe 10 different teams before i got tired of it bc unfortunately there isn't a huge amount of variety in terms of places to go (you go to the same places over and over and eventually you know all the events + challenges you're going to see) but there is a lot of variety in how to build your team + maximize/exploit the various systems in play.

it's a very "gamey" game. really no storyline to speak of - no character development, etc. but very creative combat (you can resolve every combat w/ friendly, devious or aggressive maneuvers) which is nice since combat so often just means "aggressive." protip: anna is the most powerful leader in the game by far.

Wandering around is about the extent of the gameplay I could find in "Minkomora," but I found it compelling as an exploration game. On her website Soft Chambers, merritt kopas (who's now withdrawn from game design and criticism, apparently) described her intentions in this way: "soft chambers is bubbling excitedly about games which encourage us to set our own goals and terms of engagement rather than placing us into scenarios with clear conditions for success and failure, and hopes that such game experiences can begin to help us explore and unsettle our relationships to digital play."

i kept going back + forth over whether i preferred it to the curious expedition - but the latter, despite some troubling colonial/racist connotations, is really just so much more ambitious in really important ways. they're both roguelikes, and it makes sense to compare them to each other since thematically (tho not mechanically) they share so much in common. they both have between-stage areas where you can upgrade your team. the central structure in both is a series of different locations that you visit. they both involve collecting treasure, and they both involve scoring high enough points that you're the "greatest" adventurer. they're both roguelikes without saves (tho renowned has a lite non-achievement mode, don't remember if curious does as well). but other than that they are so totally different from one another in drastic + meaningful ways, mechanically, tonally, obv visually - that's what i like least about renowned. it looks like a cheap flash cartoon.

http://i.imgur.com/0U7fufZ.png
#50 - Saints Row: Gat Out Of Hell - Volition, High Voltage Software
10 Points
1 Vote

xxp i've become really judgy about non-gameplay games. i think there is a way to do player-driven goals (like cities: skylines) but you need interactive systems. ultimately this is what turned me off to Her as well (though that did some things very well). all you need is some level of challenging interaction: Brain Guzzlers like most IF does not have particularly complicated gameplay mechanics but it does have puzzles. i feel like games where you just wander around and the game serves the content to you without any work are not really games but maybe more like multimedia art installations? but at that pt you have to ask what you're gaining from placing it in the genre "games." like was Second Life a game really, or more like a virtual location where maybe games could occur within (but generally in my experience didn't).

Brain Guzzlers... really is a good little IF. Steph Cherrywell is great at characterisation and the games of hers I've played have all shared a fun youthful adventure vibe without being too childish. Midnight. Swordfight. on the other hand has a couple of o_O moments of very adult stuff, but its mechanics are brilliantly innovative and depending on your choices it can get extremely surreal.

Would very much like to play Keep Talking though I think I'm likely to be terrible at it.

Re: non-gameplay "games", I get what Mordy is saying but at the same time I don't think it hurts either the gaming community or the art games/walking simulators/whatever to call them games. The lack of clear ludic elements does mean they stand apart from puzzlers or shooters or [insert style of choice], but I feel like they're more in-between than simply an art installation or a non-game.

yes i feel more and more like what makes a game a game needs to be relaxed. if i get a game and just enjoy walking around, it is good enough for me, it serves its purpose. there is a tendency in modern games to make them goal-oriented and it's been disheartening to see people (not here but elsewhere) say that games are pointless unless there is something "real" to achieve for your efforts. ie. "is there any reason to keep playing this post-ending or is it pointless?" people are missing the entire purpose of PLAY. yeah games have these systems in place but i consider them just a rough guide. "here are some toys, do what you want with them".

I'm not really a genre stickler but I do think the term 'game' implies competitive/goal oriented elements in addition to free play ludic elements. It doesn't mean that games that don't involve competitive elements shouldn't be played, or voted for, etc just that there's an expectation I have when I sit down to play a game that lately has been thwarted/frustrated by games that don't have those elements.

*something something Wittgenstein mumble mumble*

i would like to like IF more than i do; there's something about updated choose your own adventure books where my attention wanders too fast.
i blame the internet

IF is a double whammy problem in the age of ADD internet use. Reading and puzzle solving. Both quiet, long processes.

Sorry all! Work :S I'm back

http://i.imgur.com/Mzmxmkh.png
#50 - Splatoon - Nintendo
10 Points
1 Vote

Splatoon looks fun but i will probably never get a chance to play it

http://i.imgur.com/khwJbpj.png
#50 - Talos Principle - Croteam
10 Points
1 Vote

I'm not big on competitive shooters in general but Splatoon was so cheerful and so damn fresh in style and execution I had to get into it. And the single player, while short, is a lot of fun and something I really hope they build on in future sequels. Like there were touches of Mario Galazy level ingenuity in platforming, boss fights etc - I think they could work with that foundation and end up with a masterful single playe rexperience.

Great looks
Great music
Great ink concept

http://i.imgur.com/5UdxC8f.png
#49 - Fran Bow - Killmonday Games
11 Points
1 Vote

http://i.imgur.com/r5R5j2m.png
#46 - Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions - Lucid Games
12 Points
1 Vote

Just started playing Geometry Wars 3 recently. Pretty badass and hard as hell. Like an ever-evolving Super Stardust.

They still make these huh

http://i.imgur.com/MDjJSbC.png
#46 - The Curious Expedition - Maschinen-Mensch
12 Points
1 Vote

http://i.imgur.com/iI1tGad.png
#46 - The Room 3 - Fireproof Games
12 Points
1 Vote

Don't know what curious expedition is

http://i.imgur.com/sHTZhn5.png
#45 - Pillars of Eternity - Obsidian Entertainment
12 Points
2 Votes

ah, my first vote. tbh i only played about 10 hours worth and then got distracted by life/another game and never came back. but i didn't play too many 2015 games, and i enjoyed my time with PoE, so i threw it on my ballot to pad it out a little. i imagine anyone with even a minor interest in games like Baldur's Gate would absolutely love it. for me, the idea of those kinds of old school western RPGs sounds better than the actual experience of playing them.

http://i.imgur.com/9rU8yqF.png
#44 - Invisible, Inc. - Klei Entertainment
13 Points
1 Vote

funny that my vote was the only one for Talos Principle, that's one i haven't played but enjoyed watching at a friend's place and really want to get to in 2016.

similar for Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, which i fully intend to ruin my relationship over, but so far i've only watched on Youtube.

Yeah I've watched quite a bit of Keep Talking.. on youtube. Not sure I'll play it but it's a great idea.

I sunk some time into Invisible Inc and enjoyed it quite a bit. I probably should have included it on my ballot. definitely worth the download, esp if the price has dropped since release.

http://i.imgur.com/hRMY5Zy.png
#42 - Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth - Nicalis, Inc., Edmund McMillen
14 Points
1 Vote

http://i.imgur.com/U48IkYI.png
#42 - Mad Max - Avalanche Studios
14 Points
1 Vote

^^^ the last game i ever did qa for (hopefully ever)

u guys are such weirdos how am i possibly the only votes for curious expedition, binding of isaac expansion, invisible inc and renowned explorers?!

http://i.imgur.com/b9T28vp.png
#41 - OlliOlli 2: Welcome to Olliwood - Roll7
14 Points
2 Votes

sell me on curious expedition and renowned explorers

That's it for today!

A fun bonus for today... some of you filled out your "disappointments of 2015" and here were the results:

Mentioned twice
Fallout 4
Star Wars Battlefront
Broken Age
Beginner's Guide
Not having time to play games/nobody playing games

Mentioned once
Tale of Tales quitting game design
Life is Strange Ep. 5
The slow death of the 7th generation of consoles
Telltale's Game of Thrones
Rayman Adventures
Her Story

u guys are such weirdos how am i possibly the only votes for curious expedition, binding of isaac expansion, invisible inc and renowned explorers?!

― Mordy, Wednesday, February 17, 2016 2:49 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Answer for me is that none of those are available for PS3 or Vita (aside from pre-expansion Binding Of Isaac). Plus that thing where I've still played very little that was released last year.

Broken Age
Beginner's Guide
Not having time to play games/nobody playing games
The slow death of the 7th generation of consoles
Telltale's Game of Thrones
Her Story

I've played more of Broken Age than I have of any other 2015 game that I didn't vote for. I'll keep on keepin' on but I'm not overly impressed thus far.

Wait, maybe I did vote for it. It wasn't very high on my ballot if I did.

lol @ three of my favourite games of last year being on the disappointments list.

em, will you rep for her story / beginners guide? or will anyone?
i found both to be clever, reasonably well executed failures.

i'm with you beginner's guide, emil.y (assuming that was one of your 3). i loved that game.

xpost we had a short discussion of beginner's guide here - The Stanley Parable - but i'm not sure it would change your mind

i liked her story! i found it fell squarely into the "nice surprise" department & not the "disappointment" one.

curious expedition is v evocative, w/ brutal mechanics (party wipes are super common), themes of colonization/exploitation (that are problematic in-as-far as they are a part of the game mechanics but never whitewashed - i'll talk more about these in a sec), weird supernatural elder gods type stuff, ok dice game combat mechanics. essentially each round you pick a place to go explore. you land your boat and there are various sites you need to find around the location. as you walk you lose sanity points. lose enough sanity points and terrible things start to happen to you including murder, cannibalism, theft, delusions, etc. you can regenerate your sanity by sleeping at various outdoor locations, or in a village. each location has villagers who represent the indigenous people. if they like you you can trade with them, rest at their village, recruit them (indigenous recruits generally will not move on w/ you since they want to stay home but you can convince them under some circumstances). you can also piss them off by killing local animals (who give trophies that can be traded for goods as well as meat that with a cook you can use to keep your sanity up), by stealing from their holy sites, raiding their crypts, etc. if you piss them off enough, they'll send out hunting parties to destroy you. yr party members can have various negative traits like racism, sexism, alcoholism, schizophrenia, kleptomania, pyromania that have various consequences. at the end of each location you pick a new perk, either donate your treasures and other finds for either cash (to buy supplies) or influence (the measure that ultimately determines if you win the game), and then recruit, get missions, etc, and repeat. each place gets increasingly more difficult. there's a lot of variety and all the places are procedurally generated. a v complex game w/ some problematic + provocative themes that acc to steam i've played 59 hours of this year [steam hours are always so embarrassing]

thanks for doing this! i'll try to post comments on some of my other top picks later -- looks like i was with the hivemind in the mobile space, basically.

Thanks Will! This was great. Wasted a lot of time this past month trying to catch up.

Yes, thanks, Will! I was not super active in this thread, but I appreciate the work you put into it and the poll, which should be a great resource if I ever find the means to play more of these games.

(My ballot, incidentally, was:

30 /// undertale
30 /// we know the devil
10 /// sunless sea
10 /// minkomora
10 /// neko atsume
10 /// lost constellation

Non-2015 GOTY: the longest journey
Disappointment: tale of tales having to quit game design (http://tale-of-tales.com/2015/))

111 - Karl Malone - orifex
111 - orifex - Karl Malone

high five!

20 Rocket League
15 Witcher 3
11 Agar.io
10 Beginner's Guide
10 Fallout 4
6 Cities: Skylines
6 Alto's Adventure
6 darkest dungeon
6 Neko Atsume
5 Star Wars Battlefront
5 pillars of eternity

i fully expect that if i would have played MGS5 it would be near the top, but i just haven't had a chance to try it yet (i just bought my PS4 in November or so)

Battlefront deserved to make the top 60, at least. yes, nearly all the modes are boring and the combat is thin and the controls aren't the best. but Walker Assault mode is an absolute gem - it's some of the very most fun you can have in the metaverse. i don't know if renting games is still a thing, but if so, i highly recommend renting Battlefront and binging on Walker Assault for a week to the point of nearly losing your job. at that point you'll finally be sick of the game and there'll be just enough time to calm your boss down

also my Darkest Dungeon vote is for the early release version of the game on steam. i haven't played the finished game that just came out.

also did any of you try Cities: Skylines? i mean this was basically the SimCity a lot of people have been waiting for since SimCity2000. it wasn't perfect but it moved the goalposts enough (god what a terrible phrase, sorry) that you can imagine another team perfecting it soon.

touchdown

yes - it just missed my ballot. i liked it a lot, though the game itself is pretty shallow and i exhausted most of the stuff to do in ~5 hours. the modding community is supposedly v good + add a bunch of replayability but i haven't explored it. one thing it was missing for me was a longer arc of unlocking things / accomplishing achievements / etc. very early on you pretty much unlock everything you need and then every few population markers you unlock a new iconic building or whatever to place. or at least that was my experience. like u said i think it's a great foundation. have u tried the dlc that just came out? the snow one?

see, i think the lack of a conventional sense of progression was part of why i liked it. all the important bits are unlocked early on, and once it becomes clear that the goal won't be to reach population X by time Z, it frees you up to just focus on the city itself, like the reward is in the fun of pretending to be really into city planning for an afternoon, just testing out different ways to connect districts and constructing ridiculous overpass systems. it's kind of a throwback to the basic sense of curiosity you'd get playing simcity in the windows 3.1 days. the old simcity had goals and progression and scenarios and all that, but i think the reason it became a megahit was because it let you briefly have sense of being a fake city planner, like it let you bring spreadsheets and charts and graphs and models to life for a little bit, and it did it such an intuitive way that it seemed like an obvious subject for a game, but i don't really think it was. anyway it's hard to explain for some reason, but cities: skylines kind of brings me back to that old SimCity feeling, only with all the modern conveniences and visual updates that come from the 20-ish years of gamemaking in the interim.

i only played like 3 eligible games (tho this morning gf and i finally played keep talking and nobody explodes -- rly fun and sui generis but wears off quickly i think, probably renewable through introducing people to it) but this thread made me wish i'd voted anyway; sorry will! and gr8 job.

so i've talked a bit about Life is Strange already, but something i haven't mentioned is how great it is to see a game with a strong focus on female friendships/relationships: not only chloe and max, but max and kate, chloe and rachel amber, chloe and her mom, etc. even victoria, the main female antagonist, can be interacted with in a thoughtful way, although since it's a choice game you can also take it full-tilt into bitchiness if you want. i also really appreciate that DONTNOD didn't reject the idea that chloe/max could turn romantic (and that even from the start, you could direct max to be like "uhhhhhhhhhhhh no" to warren).

― the jackal-snouted problem man (reddening), Friday, February 19, 2016 11:21 AM (12 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol in e1 i was as vengeful as possible to victoria, "hold that pose!" was sweeeeeeet. lil butterfly's like this will have consequences! i'm like shut up mom. anyway otm.

i'd almost bought sunless sea a while back but there are so many permadeath semiroguelikes these days i got choice paralysis and didn't (tho i have played the orig binding of isaac) -- mordy itt has made it my takeaway from this, gonna get it soon.

my steam hours hit three digits for fallout 4 :/ but i don't think i came close to the end of the main quest. i kind of squeezed the map dry tho, otherwise. at the time it seemed obviously better than f3 but rly i'd have to replay it; both games are kind of curiously ephemeral. for me really enjoying f4 required disobeying it more often than not, but people have said that about bethesda games forever.

will play witcher 3 someday but uh i just got witcher 1 working w the steam controller (surprisingly fluid) and i have witcher 2 unplayed in my library from like five years ago.

i liked pillars of eternity enough to buy a season pass, which fallout 4 never chiseled out of me. just installed white march 2 the other day. of course i never played white march 1 and soon it'll be awkward to go back to the game as i've already forgotten most of the nine million words i've put in so far.

for ppl curious about cities skylines it is free this weekend on steam. it's kinda a perfect game for only one weekend of play so i highly recommend checking it out. and if you're ready to mod it look for all the soviet era architecture (esp the tenements).

my ballot

25 /// The Executive
20 /// Downwell
20 /// Tales From The Borderlands
20 /// You Must Build A Boat
5 /// Landsliders
5 /// Pocket Mine 2
5 /// Blades of Brim

i couldn't vote for it in good conscience but i played a lot of pocket mine 2 last year

I honestly don't remember my ballot as I used the online form. I gave the most points to Jackbox Party Pack 2, Goat Simulator, and Q.U.B.E., and all of the ones with < 5 points are mine. Also htoL#NiQ and Heroes of Loot.

s.clover, a werewolf high-five to you for voting The Executive, that was definitely in my top 3 for the year

The Executive: a good game made great thanks to off-kilter artwork and story, and a difficulty curve that's just right for a long time until the upgrades peak out and you have to just have much better reflexes than I happen to.

Downwell: One of the nice things about mobile is the opportunity to revisit old genres and see what would happen if you mixed their sensibility with certain more modern notions of gameplay. Downwell is effectively a game that its shocking was never invented for the C64, but, which if it had been, would have been one of the great games of all time. Twitchy, with lots of subtle interaction complexities built on a fairly minimal set of objects and enemies, and an actual sense of progression and a go, albeit one that seems daunting to actually reach. And for all the tightened gameplay, an upgrade progression that only works per game and still makes sense.

YMBAB: Almost all other combat match-3 is effectively strategic, or at least provides lengthy move-counters. Here, every second lost matters as the screen ticks forward, whether you swipe or not. So gameplay moves from being primarily about the "best" thing than about doing something, anything, as quickly as possible, and occasionally looking for the match you actually need. There are a few other great mechanics here as well (but they're also effectively held-over from the prior game) -- in particular, picking the number of quests and tying them to variables in the difficulty level means that you get more interesting shake-ups in gameplay (with the modifiers _really_ changing the careful balance of the game) and also the ability to dial back "just a bit" when things seem impossible, to unlock one or two more upgrades, and then make a run at them again.

Landsliders: I voted crossy road as the 2014 game because it took me a year to realize just how influential its "actually free to play but pay to spin for characters" model would be, and landsliders, by a studio founded by people who had first been at crossy road's, is the best of this sort in this year. Novel gameplay interaction, huge variety in levels and potential challenges, the openness to play in a variety of styles, either racing to the top or trying for every last collectible, or just trying to unlock one or another particular cache for the hell of it.

Pocket Mine 2: A lottery ticket in a box with monetization on top. I probably played this more than anything else in the first chunk of the year, before I ran out of most of the not-impossibly-grindy-to-unlock content. The big thing you unlock as you go along is the ability to get longer games with more blocks destroyed before your pick breaks, feeding the "next time i can do a bit better" sensation. Eventually this backfires and games just feel they go on too long, and that's the end of that.

Blades of Brim: Another mobile grinder, this one probably played more than anything else in the second chunk of the year. By the Subway Surfers developers (SS by the way still being one of the games I see most played by other people on my daily commute) it takes 3d-lane-change-endless-runners about as far forward as i've seen -- from 3 lanes to a fairly arbitrary number, from a few levels (SS was one of the first to really open up the vertical space) to again lots and lots. And the combat mechanic -- not too challenging, but enough to transform swipe reflexes. You can't approach enemies directly without rolling, or but you can approach from the side. And then when you get a chain of flying ones and end up hopping between them slashing as you go! I think the devs are as confused as to why it didn't catch on as the next SS as I am, so they've rebalanced and changed core gameplay a number of times now. Hearts used to regenerate -- now they stay gone. Used to have three simultaneous quests -- now just one. I don't know if this is really that much better than other endless games. I know I get less bored of it, and that I bothered to get my skills up to a level where occasionally I pull off something just feels really fluid and nice, and technically well-executed, and where I had to think at least a few moves ahead to get there, and that that freedom compares positively to something like temple run where its much more "read the terrain, do the one possible correct thing." But I don't know if that's what too many other people want from and endless runner.

to the detriment of my mental health i'll probably give all those a try at some point

19 /// Ori and the Blind Forest
My computer exploded around 3/4ths into this but it was still amazing. This was a year where everyone made a Metroidvania, and this was by far the best.

13 /// Undertale
Possibly overrated at this point, but I still got a lot of enjoyment from it.

12 /// The Room 3
Great puzzles. Shame about the attempt at a story.

11 /// Grow Home
Great idea let down a bit by some fiddly controls.

10 /// Crank
An entertaining and short idler.

9 /// Dropsy
I need to finish this. First two hours were great.

8 /// Agar.io
Simplest waste of time of the year. Downside: memes, trolling encouraged.

7 /// Broken Age
Also my disappointment of the year. An acceptable adventure that seems stuck in the past.

6 /// Her Story
Hypertext fiction lives on, I guess? Probably the best of this limited type of storytelling.

5 /// Trimps
Avoid this game. But I got suckered into it, so it gets the minimum points.

Had a blast playing some Rocket League last night. There is a new free mode called Rocket Lab out now (which replaced the hockey-like Snow Day) and it is a couple of Tron-inspired tracks that are a whole ton of fun! One of them is designed like a horseshoe, with the whole field looping in on itself, so you can fly through your goal and end up coming out through the other side's. Total game-changer.

whoa, that's awesome! i didn't like Snow Day at all, but that sounds much more fun.

after playing exclusively 3v3 since i got it, i recently switched over to 2v2 and it's like a brand new game.

yeah Snow Day was a kind of a pain to get used to. this has the same physics but a totally new playing field.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3LS-8925xs

!! those maps look awesome

'that map' i mean, lol

PSN sale this week has Life is Strange complete for $10, will probably grab it.

oh hey that's a good price.

Super Mega Baseball and Towerfall are both listed as Free now. Not even discounted to free. Not sure if they implemented some sort of freemium model or not but those games are both so good.

they're not, it just shows up that way on the store when you already own a game on your account

oh. shouldn't it say Purchased?

they need to fix that, v confusing

yeah, it's ballsed

Their whole online presence is a disaster on a number of levels.

the psn store is so weird. some days it seems integrated into the ps4 os, and then other days it seems like it's like html or something

For instance, here's a helpful hint: game sales sometimes last longer than a week but they often disappear from the sale page after the first week. Why? Anybody's guess. You just have to trawl through all of their game listings to see hidden stuff that's discounted.

Sunless Sea part of a Humble Bundle at the moment: https://www.humblebundle.com/humble-indie-bundle-16

sold.

CPX - TENTH ANNUAL COINT & PLICK 2016 nomination thread