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

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