The Shadies: The 10 best video games of 2022
Nobody asked for it, but the annual awards are back
This marks the time of year when I look back and reflect, and see what other people have made and put out into the world. All while I sit here on my couch, gobbling down all the content, like the little glutton I am.
Games have had a great year. I enjoyed a range of titles, ranging more indie than most years, even though I have a white behemoth that is the PlayStation 5, sitting right there under my TV.
You also won’t find Elden Ring on this list. Not because I’m better than anyone. Because I didn’t play it. Because FromSoftware Games intimidate me. There, I said it. Are you happy now? I don’t want to talk about how much I hate boss fights. The wounds are still fresh.
Completely unranked and in no particular order, here are 10 games I loved in 2022 (sorry for the clickbaity headline).
Immortality
Immortality is from the developer, Half Mermaid, and creator, Sam Barlow, director of Her Story and Telling Lies. Singlehandedly, they are making FMV (Full-Motion Videogames) cool again (FMV is where you have live actors on screen hamming it up).
Okay, so there are a bunch of developers still doing cool things with FMV. The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker is a recent example. But for Half Mermaid, instead of sticking to a classic point-and-click adventure or a choose-your-own-adventure, their games have you watching film clips out of order, and through dialogue or other means, forcing you to bridge connections to uncover new clips to piece together the story. It’s a terrible way to manage your video files but it’s a fantastic conceit for a game.
Marissa Marcel is an actress who mysteriously went missing. You have access to clips of her three unreleased films between 1968 and 1999 as well as interviews and behind-the-scenes footage. To uncover new clips in Immortality you click on an object or a character in a scene and the game will take you to a new clip featuring that same actor or object.
Sometimes the connections can be obscure and are more thematic, such as clicking on a man with blonde hair will take you to a dog sculpture wearing a wig (similar to that actor’s hairstyle). There is also a more metaphysical story layer to uncover in certain clips. Be warned, Immortality is an adult game. It goes to some dark places and it’s also not shy about nudity.
Now available on your phone through your Netflix subscription. Also available on Xbox GamePass. I’m not sure how well it plays on a phone. Playing with a game controller was key to accessing certain scenes through haptic feedback.
Return to Monkey Island
Well, they did it. They made a new Monkey Island. The Monkey Island series holds a lot of nostalgia for me. In preparation, I replayed the remakes of the first two games and also the third (which I still find delightful but is from other creators).
Ron Gilbert and Dave Grossman came back to the series all these years later, a sort of capper to the trilogy on the secret of Monkey Island, which was never revealed in the original two games. The humour is still there and it’s not cynical. Apart from hitting a few walls, the game was largely easy to get through thanks to simplified controls and a hotspot shortcut. There are no Push and Pull verbs to be found here. Let’s not even talk about Full Throttle’s mouth interactions!
The papercraft art style was offputting to some but I feel it stays closer to the original two games and you really need to see it in motion. My three-year-old liked playing the first section of the game with me before things opened up.
The biggest challenge for this game was concluding the story in a satisfying way. Fortunately, it succeeded. There’s no one true ending as there are multiple endings, all open to interpretation. As in true Monkey Island style, it’s a cheeky way of doing it, but I found the many endings sincere.
Now available on Xbox/PC Game Pass and all other consoles.
Stacklands
Stacklands is from Sokpop Collective, a unique indie studio in The Netherlands that puts games out every month, all funded through their Patreon. They also have these larger games, like Stacklands that they update to reach a wider audience. Stacklands is game #92 in their ouvre!
As my brain wants to put everything into categories, I came up with a crude comparison, where I feel like Stacklands is a cross between a crafting game like Minecraft and an incremental game like Cookie Clicker or Candy Box! You start off not knowing much, but as you play you discover new blueprints to learn how to combine certain cards to make new cards, and soon you’re setting sail to an island to catch fish and start a religion.
I’ve only really played the Peaceful mode but it still has a surprising amount of depth and I managed to sink a whole bunch of hours in. Now that I’ve got a hang of the systems I think I’ll brave the combat.
Available on PC.
Marvel Snap
Only recently released to the world, being in New Zealand I was able to hop on the Beta a few months early. Marvel Snap is a digital card game where you collect cards featuring Marvel characters from the comics, build a deck and battle live opponents (or in my case, a lot of bots).
I was big into Hearthstone in its early days. Some of the developers that worked on it are behind this game, and you can see it in its DNA. But this is more bite-sized and better suited to a mobile platform. Games are played in 6 rounds and you play your turn at the same time as your opponent. Instead of whittling down your opponent’s health, however, you have three locations, and your aim is to have the highest amount of power to own that location over your opponent.
Some cards have abilities that go in step with their character. Squirrel Girl adds a squirrel to each location, which can be a hinderance as well as a benefit. Nightcrawler teleports once between locations. Cards have abilities that work well together. My go-to is Moon Girl which duplicates your hand and Devil Dinosaur which gives you +2 power for each card in your hand.
As a free-to-play game, yes it tries to sink all those hooks into you to get you to spend your dosh. But this is better than most, and its mostly focused on variants, different artwork on cards you already own from playing the game.
Available for free on mobile and PC.
Knotwords
I got Wordle out of my system just as it took the world by storm. But I still had that itch for a thinky word game. Luckily, Zach Gage and Jack Schlesinger had just the ticket; Knot Words. My partner and I have been playing the three daily puzzles every night for most of this year. The Mini, the Classic and The Twist.
If you forget a day not all is lost, if you play for a week you can regain your streak. My Classic is sitting at a 217-day streak. We’re thinking of ending our streaks on 31 December so we can delve into the puzzle books when the mood strikes rather than grind out dailies out of obligation.
Knotwords is basically a crossword puzzle, but instead of giving you classic crossword hints, the crossword is broken up into sections showing the letters used in each section, so it’s more of a word scramble. If you really get stuck you can get hints that give you the dictionary definitions of a word.
Available on iOS, Android and PC.
Neon White
Ben Esposito of Donut County (my kid’s favourite game) started a new studio and together they made this anime-inspired, speed-run platformer. The anime visual novel is about a group of mask-wearing demon hunters from Hell, tasked to clean up Heaven. The platformer sections are first-person and have you collecting and using cards to activate powers that change your movement, or fire projectiles.
It’s all about replaying levels in different ways to achieve mastery. Your aim is to win medals for completing levels under a certain time. But to get the platinum there is a ‘golden path’, and the game gives you hints if you’re able to unlock the gold trophy on your own.
I’ve never been that into completing speed runs in videogames (there’s a massive community out there) but Neon White shows the appeal of speedruning is a fun and approachable way.
Available on PC and consoles.
Dreamlight Valley
Kingdom Hearts started a trend with Disney crossovers and now everything is a multiverse. Dreamlight Valley is no exception. Here you’ll find Ariel the Little Mermaid chatting up Wall-E or alarmingly, Ursula from The Little Mermaid schmeing with Scar from the Lion King.
Dreamlight Valley is like a Disneyfied Animal Crossing, with you farming and fishing, running around various biomes, harvesting crops to cook, and mining resources to craft, or selling it all at Goofy’s market stall for a profit.
Looking at it from the outside, Dreamlight Valley seems like another Disney cash grab, and it probably is designed to reach into the pockets of parents and nostalgia-filled Disney Adults. But the systems are so deep, a lot of care has gone into this game. I haven’t felt the need to spend any additional money on top of my original purchase, but for those into interior decorating, the siren’s call may be alluring.
And those systems are addictive. I couldn’t stop until I had reached the end of the quest lines of all of the available Disney characters in my village. Since then I’ve put it aside and my partner has taken over. I enjoyed my time but I feel like I got my fill. Though with many updates planned (a Toy Story update recently dropped) the game is continuing to bring us back for more.
Available on Xbox/PC GamePass and consoles. The game is available in Early Access (with a ‘founder’s pack’) but is going free-to-play sometime next year.
The Case of the Golden Idol
Made by Color Gray Games (no relation), playing The Case of the Golden Idol is like being in your own Agatha Christie or Sherlock Holmes murder mystery. Time is frozen and all the clues are available in front of you. It’s up to you to fill in the blanks (literally) and piece together the mystery.
Reminiscent of Return of the Obra Dinn which is a similar fill-in-the-blanks game, but in first-person and set aboard a pirate ship. The Case of the Golden Idol is more self-contained. While each chapter is continuing the story, for the most part, you can solve a puzzle by staying within that chapter. Even with that restriction, however, I found myself getting stuck, sometimes a little brute force trial and error might be all you need to solve those final pesky missing words.
The art style is grotesque which fits these slimy characters perfectly.
Available on PC.
Escape Academy
Escape Academy brings classic escape rooms into digital form. The puzzles are logic-based, no reflexes are required here apart from navigating in first-person with a mouse or controller. Tons of combination locks. You can play split-screen but my partner preferred to watch my screen and offer suggestions from the sidelines.
As with real-life escape rooms, there is a ticking clock. But you can ignore the countdown timer and keep going, although earning a lower grade. With only 1 or 2 people I feel it’s still a tense experience but not overwhelming like when escape rooms are played in large groups.
Available on Xbox/PC Game Pass and consoles.
God of War: Ragnarök
If I had to include one AAA big-budget game on this list, of course, it would be God of War: Ragnarök, which I’m still working my way through. I adored the 2018 reimagining of the classic PlayStation series, with its greater focus on cinematic storytelling. The god-killing Kratos moved from Greece over to the realm of Norse mythology for a new start, raising a son. This time around in 2022, I have a son of my own. I haven’t given him a bow and quiver of arrows just yet, as Ben Stiller would have wanted.
The game again takes place in one shot. The camera doesn’t cut away, and by switching between Kratos and Atreus for certain sections or having characters go to sleep (not staying awake for 24 hours, Jack Bauer style), it has some clever visual tricks to achieve this.
Ragnarök is a larger game than its predecessor, with more branching open-world opportunities for side quests. But I appreciate it still staying true to form with its linear “levels” retaining its focus on storytelling. Combat and puzzle-solving are the main gameplay loops and whereas in other open-world games I get paralysed by the sheer number and geographical distance between side quests, I’ve actually wanted to do some of these as they contribute to the larger story being told.
Available on PlayStation 4 and 5.