Remy's Top 24 of 2024 - Part 2 (#10 to #1)
This is part two of my ranking of every game I played in 2024, covering the top ten games of the list. If you missed the first part check out #24-#11 here!
Brief thoughts: this top 10 was so hard to rank. The whole top 10 is nothing but games I adore, but the top five in particular were enormously hard to pin down to the point where all of them spent periods at the number one spot in my head. It's also half the reason this is a written article and not a video like it normally would be (that, and crippling lack of motivation, and family stuff, and looking at pictures of cute critters, and... so on). But enough preamble, check out this good-ass list:
10) THANK GOODNESS YOU'RE HERE!
The world's cutest balding salesman has been sent to meet with the mayor of a Northern English town, but the mayor is quite busy. To pass the time while he waits, the salesman explores the town, only to be roped into helping with the townsfolk's various issues for two-to-three hours, with a plot that can be best described as "hilarity ensues."
As the video game industry has grown, many games - largely indies - have proven that the medium shouldn't just be an outlet for a "game," that is, a traditional game with a jump button or fail states or coins or skill trees or multiplayer lobbies with slur-flinging 13-year-olds. Thank Goodness You're Here! is yet another example of this, only having the bare necessities of interactivity - walk, slap, and very occasionally jump. That's it! And that's all it needs - it lets its incredible animation and absurd humour do all the talking.
If you're all good with no challenge and a pretty short runtime, you're gonna love this, especially if you have any prior love for old British sitcoms. Still on the fence? Matt Berry plays a gardner who gets swindled by a serial con artist that sells him a "watering can't." I needn't say more.
9) PARKING GARAGE RALLY CIRCUIT
There is a shocking lack of racing games in recent times, and the ones we do get are burdened by live service woes or are trying to be the next Forza Horizon. Once again, indie games are the ones to turn to.
Parking Garage Rally Circuit, shockingly, is exactly what it says on the tin: take an arcade rally racing game from the PlayStation and Sega Saturn era, then take the usual dirt trails and winding mountain paths and swap them out for the humble multistorey car park. It's a strange premise that only a passionate indie dev could really come up with, I reckon, and I'm so glad they did - this is a straight banger. Physics are tight, track design is pretty varied despite the seemingly limiting concept (it's got the best Rainbow Road not from a Mario Kart game), and there's a great boost mechanic where starting a drift before your boost ends will make your next boost faster and longer, with no speed cap. It's chaotic, it's fast, it's loose, it's occasionally a little funky with its physics but even that's part of its overwhelming charm. And that charm is bolstered even further by an absolute earworm of a pop-ska soundtrack - and I don't even like ska!
It's super short - eight tracks with three cars acting as separate difficulties, and two modes of play alongside asynchronous multiplayer - but more content is on the horizon, as is mod support for custom tracks. I'm super excited to see what Parking Garage Rally Circuit has in store, but even as is, you can find so many worse ways to spend a few hours.
8) DUNGEONS OF HINTERBERG
I kinda miss AA games. You know, those lower budget 6/10 games that try something unique and/or attempt to cram in a bit more than they can chew, but are nonetheless really earnest and hard not to love. Dungeons of Hinterberg kinda gives off that AA aura, which sounds like a backhanded compliment I suppose, but I didn't knock it out in a single week for no reason.
Dungeons of Hinterberg takes fairly recognisable bits of other games and does some cool stuff with them. Combat is like Final Fantasy XVI without the unnecessary 70 hour runtime tacked on to it and dungeons resemble a more linear version of dungeons found in 3D Legend of Zelda games, but it also has a Persona-style calendar and social system without the deadlines, and even goes for that cozy exploration game vibe with its hub worlds and visual style. That's a lot for a small dev team to take on, but not only is the vast majority of it really solid and polished, but they add their own fun gimmicks too, namely the spells system - each of the four hubs and the dungeons they contain give you a unique set of spells. One area has you forming blocks of slime and firing off balls of electricity to power objects, while another has a magic snowboard and a laser beam, for example, and they manage to get a lot out of all these spells both in and out of combat, helping each area feel fresh and distinct.
The story of commodifying magic dungeons in the Austrian Alps and letting regular ass people roam around in them is a bit silly at first, but in 2025 I wouldn't doubt people in power would leap at the chance to sell holidays where you can go and slay gooey kobolds, not for a second. I also wasn't a huge fan of having no deadline at first since it removes the urgency a game like Persona 5's calendar system has, but that ties into the game's themes of burnout and personal exploration, and I quickly grew to love what it was doing.
Dungeons of Hinterberg doesn't try to reinvent the wheel, but instead provides a really solid and surprisingly chunky experience to sink your teeth into, with almost all of its systems properly refined and engaging. There's a lot of content here especially for an indie game, but that length and scope doesn't come at much of a cost - if anything, it's kinda like a nearly perfect AA game.
Also, between this and Caravan SandWitch, if I had a dollar for every game in 2024 where I inexplicably played as Lois Griffin...
7) NEW STAR GP
I'm always on the lookout for the next racing game I can play on-and-off over a couple weeks inbetween other games and tasks, and again, the AAA industry really isn't cutting it in that field anymore. New Star GP not only filled that void, but this is some of the most exciting racing I've had in so, so long.
This is an arcade racer with some sim-lite aspects, where your decisions in the pit lane and off-track are just as important as how you drive on the track. Pit strategies can mean the difference between an easy first place and a pitiful tenth, not taking your engineer's advice might result in blown tires or mechanical failure, and choosing not to donate your race winnings to the local cat shelter along with everyone else will make fast rivals out of the grid. It's not particularly deep, but many racing games lack stuff to do or think about between the main attraction, so it's refreshing to see here, even if the dialogue and humour is a bit more miss than hit.
What's more, the racing itself is SO good. It's a great mix of snappy arcade handling and the depth of simcade, and track design only exemplifies this, taking real-world circuits and bashing them with a hammer until they're only just recognisable. Racing through cherry blossoms at legally distinct Suzuka is a real treat.
It's definitely a little repetitive, especially since there's not a huge difference between the starter machines of the 80's and those you get to drive in the 20's about 15 hours later, but as something I'd fire up for half an hour at a time, New Star GP scratched a fearsome itch. Don't let the mobile game-ass interface deter you, this is one of the best racing games in a long while.
6) NOVA DRIFT
Perhaps this is cheating a little bit. I actually played this back in 2020 when I received an early access review code (you're not allowed to see that video. My old branding is stinky.) but since it launched into version 1.0 this year, it counts just as much as any other game.
Nova Drift asks the question "what if Asteroids was a roguelike and also good?" It's not a twin-stick shooter as it may initially seem - you have to point your ship in the direction you want to fire or thrust forward. That seems a bit weird and awkward at first but part of the game's enjoyment is deciding when it's time to blast your foes to a bajillion smithereens or spin around and hightail it outta there.
What I really love about it is how quick and easy it is to form a good build. Minutes into any run, you've already got a solid foundation for an ass-kicking ship, and build quality is enormous. One of my favorites is picking the cluster bomb, having projectiles splinter off into more projectiles on impact, and increasing damage with travel speed, turning my little bio-construct into a veritable slingshot of explosive destruction. It's enormously satisfying.
Even though I'm not well versed in the roguelike space, Nova Drift is for sure one of the best I've played, and the 1.0 release has only further solidified that.
5) GARBANZO QUEST
A Steam review described Garbanzo Quest as "a retro platformer that has autism," and I don't think I've whipped out my wallet any faster in my life.
Garbanzo Quest is a challenging 2D platformer about a weird little thing (or a dog, if you like) that ventures to save their friends and home from the tyrannical Billi' Bones by doing a lot of jumping and spitting (this is where I'd insert a hawk tuah reference, if I had no dignity). It eschews some typical tropes of the genre - there are no lives, there are checkpoints at the start of every screen, and there's no minor collectible such as coins, only major ones like beans and yarn used to buy upgrades and cosmetics respectively. This puts the focus purely on the level design and guys? Guys. It's so good.
If you're the type of person who plays platformers but gets agitated when a cool gimmick or concept is used for a single level and promptly discarded, you're gonna love Garbanzo Quest. Just when you think a certain mechanic has reached its full potential, the game slaps it in another level and pushes it even further, or even combines it with something else. The game pushes every idea it has to its absolute extreme, and I've not played a game with such inventive and engaging level design in some time. Even boss encounters are thoughtful, and particularly tricky.
For lovers of Super Mario World, Celeste and Super Meat Boy, or just anyone who wants a new crash course on level design that isn't another rant about how World 1-1 directs players to jump on the goomba or whatever, this is a no-brainer.
4) ASTRO BOT
The PlayStation 5 finally has a game! ...Well, it did, until Concord got obliterated, so it cancels out. We're back to zero games again.
But oh, thank fucking God Sony wisened up and released something that isn't just a grizzly cis white person wading through a 4K Google Pixel 9 photo of long grass. Astro Bot is a love letter to PlayStation games both new and old, celebrating and pinching a bit of inspiration from what made them so beloved while taking full advantage of the powerful system it's found itself on.
Though Astro's movement options are sparse, he controls beautifully, and these simple but snappy controls allow effortless traversal through some seriously impressive worlds. They do largely adhere to tired old platformer tropes like jungles, deserts, ice levels et cetera, but they find all sorts of fun ways to turn these concepts on their head and make them feel new and fresh - a boring old level set in some boring old plains is suddenly exciting and joyous when you can do a spin attack to make piles of thousands of leaves scatter everywhere, and any level is immediately improved when you can shrink and regrow at will.
Boss fights are huge spectacles and the levels based on other PlayStation properties such as Ape Escape and Uncharted are a real treat, though that leads into why Astro Bot didn't take top spot for me. It might be petty, but it's hard not for me to feel bitter about a game Sony released as a big ol' pat on the back for itself and its new shiny console, despite not only barely using most of the IPs featured in the game, but delegating resources to safe experiences and needless remasters. In the moment, it's hard not to be charmed by watching Spyro fly around or WipEout pilots tending to their machines, but aside from Astro Bot, the only remotely colourful game Sony has published recently is Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart. And speaking of: why do Ratchet & Clank only get two cameos, meanwhile third party games like Resident Evil get way more? I'm biased but come on, now.
Don't get me wrong! Astro Bot deserves that Game of the Year award it got for sure. I just don't think Sony deserve a game like this, not in its current state.
3) 1000xRESIST
Six to one, sisters.
No, that's not a furry dogwhistle, I'm referencing what I think is and will certainly be remembered as a landmark title in the indie scene. 1000xRESIST is a beautiful and poignant story about a community of clones of a woman known as the Allmother, living in an underwater vessel, in a future where large red humanoid aliens have almost entirely eliminated the human race through a virus they prought with them. One of these clones, designated Watcher, is tasked with recording and interpreting the memories of the Allmother, one of the very few immune to the pandemic - but Watcher soon learns of troubling news that questions her loyalty and everything she's ever known.
Gameplay is mostly walking, choosing dialogue options and occasionally doing this thing where you jump between floating glyphs or whatever they are. The focus, then, is entirely on its story, one that is so masterfully told and confidently executed, one that is equal parts horrifying and darling. Though character models are static during most cutscenes, and even though they often wear masks, their expressions, body language, incredible voice acting and the game's shot composition conveys so much, more than even most movies can possibly muster.
It approaches things such as isolation during COVID and the stress and loneliness diaspara communities go through with a gentle, understanding touch and gives them immense emotional weight, even from the perspective of someone such as myself that couldn't call many of these themes lived experiences. And just when you think you've got it all figured it out, the halfway point sucker punches you, with a narrative beat that interjects classism politics into its cosmic horror world and not only gets away with it, but completely owns it.
The worst thing I can say about the game is that navigating the Orchard is a pain in the ass, but when that's the worst I can think of, it's hard to show anything but the utmost adoration. It only sits at third because I resonated with the following games a little more, but a game like 1000xRESIST only comes once in a generation.
2) ANOTHER CRAB'S TREASURE
Another Crab's Treasure is here for a lot of reasons. One of them, probably my favourite thing about it, is that it's definitive proof that you can add difficulty and accessibility options (and the ability to fucking pause) to a soulslike without undermining the original intended challenge, much to the chagrin of gamers everywhere.
I played the start of this with quite a few assists enabled so I could settle in gently, then started switching them off the more I played until eventually, by the final boss, I left myself only with Extra Shell Durability and Reduce Damage Taken set to low. This was enough to afford me a little bit of leniency while still allowing the game to hand me my crustaceous can on a silver platter many, many times. The important part here isn't that I made the game easy for myself - normal was a bit exhausting for me, so I brought the game down to a level of challenge comparable to that of others playing on normal. It's not about making the game a cakewalk (and even then, that's completely valid in my opinion), but finding my normal.
As such, this is the second soulslike I've actually finished beyond Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin. But Another Crab's Treasure isn't just an accessible soulslike, it holds its own in the genre in a lot of ways. Exploration feels a bit like a 3D platformer-lite and the colourful, cartoony visuals certainly help it stand out amongst the crowd of dilapidated castles and poison swamps, but the shell mechanic is debatably its coolest idea - you can find various objects such as empty cans, banana peels and dunny rolls to make your temporary home, each of which grants you one of a few dozen abilities from a basic uppercut and a temporary attack buff to electrifying your shell to damage enemies that touch it. Since your shell is also used for blocking and has its own durability meter, you have to effectively be aware of your surroundings so you can pop into another shell when your current one breaks. In a way, it kinda reminds me of Halo, where weapons have limited ammo so you have to regularly find new ones, and I love that frenetic energy found in combat.
Enemy design is excellent and boss encounters had me clenching my cheeks like nothing else. It's also got a really fun story with themes of crabitalism and pollution, where everyone swears in sea-based puns, except for when they don't (Kril, the main character, hilariously says "it's all a bunch of gullshit" late in the game), and I wasn't expecting the writing to blow me away but it really surprised me.
This is the most fun I've had with a soulslike so far. And keep in mind, I played Elden Ring not long after. I see why people love Elden Ring, and I still plan to dive back into it at some point since I did really enjoy it, but it was exhausting. With its difficulty options, I fear Another Crab's Treasure has spoiled me.
1) UNTIL THEN
The world hasn’t ended yet.
Grief and suffering are as ephemeral as life itself. We lose our loved ones, we mess up friendships, we squander our limited time on this stupid blue orb. We as a collective race are big bags of regret who have stark, irrefutable truths waved in our faces and we ignore them in favor of the awful feelings we almost like to bottle up inside ourselves and let define us. But there is always - always - the option to move on. To remember, to look back, but to keep taking that all-too-important step forward. We might like to fool ourselves into believing so, but the world hasn’t ended yet.
Until Then is a very special game to me. It follows Mark, a Filipino student navigating high school life after a series of natural disasters wreak havoc across Earth, while fellow students start disappearing without a trace. While it’s a supernatural mystery at the end of the day, Mark and his friends are such remarkably human characters that it was hard not to see myself in them, especially since the story leans towards exploration of grief and self-doubt, feelings I’m all too familiar with. It’s all told with a visual style that mixes 2D sprite work with 3D environments, and while the overwhelming majority of the game is reading dialogue, it’s occasionally broken up with low-stakes mini-games - if I also had a dollar for every time I played a Rhythm Heaven-style segment in a game in 2024, I’d be up to four dollars, after the whole Lois Griffin thing. There are other rhythm segments that play more like Dance Dance Revolution or Friday Night Funkin’, and there aren’t many of these, but incredibly, the developer still included an A/V offset setting in the options menu to accommodate for input lag. I don’t think I’ve seen any other game with minor rhythm elements incorporate this (Like a Dragon, I’m lookin’ at you, buster) and as a Rock Band and DJMAX enjoyer I just wanted to point out how cool that is.
To be more objective, Until Then - which I keep accidentally typing out as Until Dawn, whoops - is occasionally lacking in polish, with scenes where the lighting tanks the framerate, and some uneven audio design. But often I find the imperfect games are the ones with the most soul, the ones that have a meaningful story to tell and something of worth to say. “Just move on” is a very simple message portrayed by many a form of media prior, but the way it’s explored here feels so real it’s almost frightening. It’s not an easy thing to do, and the game understands this perfectly to a heart-wrenching degree. It’s never that easy. It shouldn’t be that easy. Why do characters in media always find it so easy? It always led me to believe that moving on was easy, but nearly five years on and I sure as shit ain’t over my own mother’s death. I’ve dealt with it, I’ve made peace with the fact I’ll never hear her voice again, but it still breaks my heart when I think of her, the life she was forced to give up, the role model I lost. To evoke those feelings from me and have me rolling the credits in happy tears is something I never expected. Until Then is one of if not the only game I’ve played that understands this part of the human condition, and as a result is probably the single most relatable game I’ve played at least in the past few years. Even if I’m not Filipino and don’t understand why carollers come to your door on Christmas and you have to give them candy or money like it’s frickin’ Halloween 2.
Yet another example of indie games challenging the public perception of what a game can be beyond conventional tropes and systems, Until Then is my game of the year. It, like 1000xRESIST and Thank Goodness You’re Here!, have me so excited for the future of storytelling in gaming, and I can't wait to see what talented folks get up to especially in the indie scene. But until then, we’d all do well to remember, in a time as turbulent and inching closer to the cusp of revolt and revolution as this, that the world hasn’t ended yet. And sometimes I wish it had, but I know those are silly impulsive feelings, and when I think of all the wonderful friends I’m surrounded by and the rad games waiting for me to stumble upon them, I’m really glad it hasn’t.
Anyway. If I were still in high school, I would have crushed on Cathy so bad.
——————
Apologies if that last bit was a little unfocused and sappy. Gotta say though, that was fun! It’s interesting writing something with people reading it and not hearing it come out of my stupid ass mouth in mind. I’m definitely interested in writing a bit more and seeing if this blog stuff is for me; I’ve been thinking about adapting my Racclog video series, where I talk about whatever games I’ve been knocking off my backlog, into a written format. Racclog rarely did all that well, and they were always kinda lower effort and less eccentric compared to my regular videos, so why not just have it be a written thing? I dunno, turning Racclog into a written format seems like a no-brainer, so I think I’m gonna give it a try for a while and see if I can make something of it (and if I do, I’ll probs move away from Blogspot. I hear it’s a bit shit. I also won't write such huge posts most of the time, don't worry!)
Anyway, as a fun little thing, I wanna list off some games I’m keen to get around to playing this year, and then when-slash-if I do another GOTY write-up for 2025, we can look back and see if I actually played the games I said I wanted to like a good boy:
- Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth - technically cheating since I’ve already started playing this but shush
- Granblue Fantasy Relink - the visuals sold me alone to be honest but god it looks sick.
- Hatsune Miku Project DIVA MegaMix+ - I’ve played a couple songs but I really wanna sink my teeth into it and see what people love about the series, even if I hear the charting’s quite a bit different and more contentious compared to earlier titles.
- Super Metroid - yes, I’m gonna play it ok!! shush!! You know who you are.
- Whiplash - I wanna play this for the channel mostly. It looks stupid.
- The Burnout series - again, this one's for the channel, but I love Burnout 3 and Dominator and I wanna return to them to see how well they hold up. I'm expecting the answer is "reallywell, you doubtful asshole."
- I Was a Teenage Exocolonist - partly cause I received it as a birthday gift and still haven’t touched it, partly cause it looks like exactly my kinda thing. Even if I have little experience with deck builders.
- Grapple Dog and Grapple Dogs: Cosmic Canines - I wanted to try to beat Grapple Dog so I could squeeze the sequel into this list but ran out of time. Currently playing the first as we speak!
- Super Lesbian Animal RPG - if I can get it to work without crashing!
- Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor - I watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy for the first time a little while ago and adored it. I then played The Third Age and kind of despised it. I’d love to see what a good LOTR game looks like.
- Darksiders - I’ve always been fascinated by its whole “we’re a really dark, gritty, post-apocalyptic 3D Zelda” vibe. Gotta see what it's all about.
- Cult of the Lamb - the lamb is kind of a gender...
- Wildermyth - it’s been installed on my PC ever since I bought it at launch in, what, 2021? And I still haven’t touched it. Literally, zero minutes of playtime. This backlog thing is hard.
- Sam & Max Save the World - if they don’t kiss I’m gonna be SO upset.
Anyway, that’s all from me for now! Thanks for reading, and I’ll hopefully see you here next time for Racclog #1 - BAJA: Edge of Control HD. Yeah. Not the most exciting first pick but this is my blog kiss my butt !!!!!!!!
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