Rory’s 2024: Video games

A new tool

The year ended with a new tool in my video-game arsenal: a Steam Deck! (Basically, imagine a Switch, but it’s heavier and you can play a lot of your Steam library on it.) Still, almost none of what I’m going to talk about happened on the Steam Deck. The large share of this was on my desktop computer, with a little streamed/played on phone or tablet, and one notable game played on an Xbox.

 

Non-Steam highlights

1. The Sims 4 (but especially Life and Death), EA app: My complicated relationship with this game continues, but in all honesty, 2024 was a good year for The Sims 4. I liked the temporary events they built into the game, and the new Life and Death pack is one of my all-time favorites in the game, from any year! It changed death from a solid ending and into a transitional process, with a bunch of after-death gameplay and the potential for reincarnation. It’s a must-have for people who like to play with their Sims throughout a life, and even moreso if you play legacy saves with multiple generations. (Cemetery lots were also my number-one wishlist item, so of course I was happy!) I haven’t played with Lovestruck too much yet, but while I don’t like it as much as Life and Death, a lot of the date interactions are really fleshed out and fun. Still way too many kits I’m not buying, though.
2. PopCap Games (versions of Peggle and Zuma’s Revenge), Xbox and EA app: This one is entirely Jacob Gellar’s fault; he has a Nebula-exclusive video talking about how good Peggle is, which left me with the realization that I had never played it. So I did. (My dirty secret is that I often turn off sound/music on games, which does mess with the effect Jacob Gellar mentioned, so further experimentation might be in my future.) I also replayed some of Zuma’s Revenge while I was there; the aesthetics are a bit wince inducing, but the mechanics are rock solid.
3. The beginning of Kingdom Hearts 2, Epic Games: I bought this on deep sale from the Epic Games store because the Roxas opening is one of my all-time favorite game moments…and then the games went up on Steam, and I was mad that I had spent money on a platform I like significantly less and lost my momentum. The second this reaches a reasonable price on Steam, we’re so going back to Twilight Town.
4. Threes+, Apple Arcade: Remember 2048? Very similar. If my hands were free for a second in 2024, they were playing Threes. It’s more like a physical stim than a game, but I played so much, I have to count it.
5. Dress to Impress, Roblox: There was a good month in late summer/early fall where I did nothing but assemble outfits for bad scores on Roblox. I had a great time, though, and I think it helped me build on-theme outfits in The Sims, too. Did you know there was a Brat (like, Charli XCX Brat) promo period on Dress to Impress, a game ostensibly for children? I did because I’m a full-grown adult who plays on Roblox.
6. Speed Draw!, Roblox: Basically Dress to Impress, but with drawings instead. I liked the practice I got doing speed doodles in color, but I only played it for about a week before I got bored.
7. Epic Party, Roblox: I participated in several group plays on a private server with family. I wouldn’t call myself the biggest fan of this game, but playing on a digital gameboard with minigame breaks certainly does eat up a few hours, if that’s ever a problem.
8. Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Xbox: I’ve played this franchise ever since Origins first dropped, and despite serious misgivings about the art styles and Veilguard’s relationship to the franchise’s greater canon, I found myself deeply sucked in, to the point where I’m on my second playthrough on Steam Deck. The antagonist at the end of Inquisition took center stage for Veilguard, and delving into his psyche and making friends with your companions was oddly compelling, aided by really good combat if you’re playing as a rogue (although I will note, I was playing at the absolute easiest level so I could get through faster; the challenge dragons were the only real challenge for me). As the tags on this spoilery essay say, “datv is a good game but a bad dragon age game”.

 

Games I didn’t play (or play much) but that I heard about a lot

1. Starscape, Roblox: I’ve maybe played five seconds of Starscape, a space exploration sandbox kind of game, years ago, but I heard a lot about side quests and factions and so on in 2024. Would any of that translate to direct personal skill? Not remotely. But I would feel remiss not mentioning it on a list because its presence in my life is undeniable.
2. Factorio, Steam: Factorio released a giant DLC called Space Age later in 2024. The main game takes place on a single planet and ends when you launch a rocket off that planet. Space Age picks up after that point. I’ve played maybe an hour of Factorio and found it not to my tastes—I prefer a farming game to this kind of base building or resource management—but I will say, seeing a giant ship flying through space in a game previously unequipped to handle it was a delightful experience.
3. Doors (and similar games), Roblox: Doors is a survival horror escape kind of game, apparently inspired in part by Spooky’s Jump Scare Mansion (an indie game I have played a bit, if not for a long time). Very popular with the young horror-loving crowd in my household. I enjoy the fanart that serves as my lockscreens the most.
4. Among Us, various: Not just played by controversial figures currently in the media! (Which is why those stories were so funny.) I heard many a tale of group Among Us outings in 2024, played by nine years olds and people over sixty and by all ages in between. The diversity in map options, and different cosmetic options, keep this game fresh many years past its popularity peak. I hope it continues getting refreshes in 2025.
5. Baldur’s Gate 3, Steam: I spent late 2023-early 2024 trying to get hooked into this game and failing (which is really funny considering I’m on my second Veilguard playthrough, which is nowhere near as good). But others in my household had a great time with it and its many modding options. My favorite mod I saw over a family member’s shoulder allows you to fully customize your companions if you want! I enjoyed seeing Wyll with long locs.
6. Dwarf Fortress, Steam: I have never played Dwarf Fortress, but I find its depth surprising every time I come across it, and it’s come a long way since its humble ASCII beginnings. The score is really good, too; Craftsdwarfship is my favorite.
7. The Half Life franchise, Steam: Gordon Freeman lives! My household is more of a Portal household for sure, but there’s something about that crowbar that’s still irresistable, especially in Half Life 2.
8. Astro Bot, PS5: Game of the Year 2024 was not unheard of in my household! It sounded more difficult than Astro’s Playroom, and I’m never a platformer person, but it’s hard to deny those little robots are adorable, and the controller integration seems really fun.
9. Boyfriend Dungeon, Steam: I let a family member play this on my Steam account a couple months before I figured out the family sharing system, and lost the chance to get a bunch of the achievements myself. Whoops. Still, charming mix of dating sim and dungeon crawler.

 

Steam highlights

1. Dorfromantik (35% of total playtime, 423 sessions, 21-day streak): Speaking of games that are almost like stims, we come to long-time favorite Dorfromantik! It’s a tile-placement puzzle that’s easy to learn and difficult to master. I’m over 1000 hours in Steam total, and I still have four achievements left. I did get a couple achievements in 2024, which took a lot of time and effort, and I’m very pleased with my results. I’m also pleased that it’s a game that I still enjoy playing without the drive for achievements. Some of my gametime numbers are due to the fact that I play it when I’m likely to be interrupted, so I’ll walk away from the computer and leave it running accidentally. Considering I’m in an era of life where I get interrupted constantly, a game this easy to pick up and put down is a necessity.
2. Balatro (Started in April, 23% of total playtime, 171 sessions, 17-day streak…and also on Apple Arcade, with stats I’m ignoring for my own sanity): Easily my game of the year as far as 2024 releases go. Balatro is a poker-based deck-building roguelike, which is a gamer way of saying “I play a lot of two pairs and flushes and start over again when I inevitably die”. As with Dorfromantic, it’s easy to pick up and extremely hard to 100%. Unlike Dorfromantic, if I’m not careful, I can start a Balatro game, blink, and miss a week of my life completely with dozens of runs in my wake. When the time change and seasonal depression hit hard, I set a Balatro embargo for my basic wellness. I’ve started playing it again and have managed to keep a balance, thankfully, but that 100 million chips achievement isn’t getting any more achievable. I did manage to get the gold stake achievement in between starting and finishing this post, though!
3. Stardew Valley (10% of total playtime, 33 sessions, 8-day streak): Another all-timer! Stardew Valley is the indie farming sim of my heart, and another one where the last few achievements are super hard to get. I wasn’t pushing too hard for completion in 2024, though; I was exploring the new, free update that dropped and expanded the game even further, as well as doing my usual “I love finishing the community center in as close to the first year as possible” runs. I’ve also played on Apple Arcade and Switch in the past, but 2024 was solidly a desktop Steam year because it took the update so long to expand to other platforms.
4. Coral Island (9% of total playtime, 34 sessions, 9-day streak): I’m pretty sure I also played Coral Island through Xbox in 2023, but it’s not in my recap for last year. Oh well! I got it on Steam in 2024, and it was a delight to revisit. Coral Island is another farming/life/dating sim like Stardew Valley, but with its own unique identity. (Mermaids are a huge part of the game, for one!) I maybe like the characters in Coral Island better? Certainly, the art style that renders them is beautiful. I feel like there’s plenty of ground to cover in its dev cycle and plenty of game I haven’t played, so don’t be surprised to see Coral Island reappear in 2025.
5. Regency Solitaire II (3% of total playtime, 10 sessions played, 4-day streak, also paired with Regency Solitaire): The Regency Solitare games card-based play with an overarching narrative for structure. They’re short, sweet, and easy to 100%. I love a game where I have to think of strategy and gasp over people going to Scotland to elope. Eat your heart out, Bridgerton.
6. Immortal Life: A farming/life sim built around Chinese fantasy! I had a delightful time at the beginning of 2024 pretending I was an alternate version of Wei Wuxian in a different cultivation setting. (If this makes no sense to you, try searching MDZS or The Untamed.) Sadly, I hit a major game-breaking bug on my first playthrough, and I was frustrated enough that I put the game down for a while. Now that there have been a couple updates, and it’s Steam Deck playable, it might be time to give Immortal Life another try.
7. Lethal Company: I only played Lethal Company, a online co-op horror game with satirical/comedy elements, in January of 2024, but it left a huge impression. One of the monsters you encounter in a tougher part of the game kills party members and mimics them, including in voice chat, and it led to one of the scariest moments I’ve ever had in a game. It was also hilarious? It straddles the line between horror and comedy with deceptive ease. What a game.
8. Portal: Revolution (and Portal 1-2): Happy one year since Portal: Revolution’s release! (I was literally checking Steam to figure out how to describe Lethal Company when I saw that Portal: Revolution had a one-year anniversary update.) The original duo of Portal games are a household staple, and while I think Portal 2 especially holds up well to this day, Valve’s always encouraged fan games, and that’s been an important way to keep the legacy alive. I’ve played other fan games—Aperture Tag, Portal Stories: Mel, and Portal Reloaded, for instance—but Portal: Revolution is one of the better iterations of the puzzle-solving gameplay. I just wish fan games would get better voice actors.
9. Cult of the Lamb: Another not-new game with a decent update! Cult of the Lamb’s base-building action roguelike added a two-player option in 2024 that has decent couch co-op, a wildly undervalued option in modern gaming. Granted, couch co-op is better on a console than on PC (even with controllers), but even with a slight in-person clumsiness factor added, Cult of the Lamb is largely a better game with two people. This is true on a mechanical level—I find some of the gameplay clunky—but also because the humor’s irreverent, and it’s fun to laugh with someone else who’s right there.
10. Fields of Mistria (early access): I saw my friends were playing Fields of Mistria, a farming/dating sim with RPG elements, and gave it a try. I like what I’ve seen so far, but it entered early access in late summer 2024 and still has a pretty long way to go in development. I’m mostly putting this one aside until either it’s a little more fleshed out, or until I desperately need a game to play that won’t cost additional money. Still, promising!
11. Buckshot Roulette: My only real contender against Balatro in terms of 2024 game of the year. This was less true when it was a single-player game, where you were giving a digital gun and a certain amount of live and blank rounds, and it was all mental math to survive against an NPC. I certainly liked the combination of its mechanical simplicity and deliberately grungy vibe in single player, but adding multiplayer to the mix really kicked off what this game can do. Have you ever played a game with a child that involves shooting them and finding yourself hesitating? I certainly did! Adding a human element to your competitors gave the game an added dash of uncertainty that really took things to the next level. I imagine I’ll play more of this in 2025.
12. Lil Gator Game: It’s funny that I spent a lot of 2024 playing games with kiddos because, beyond the Roblox mentions, very little of my list would reflect that. Lil Gator Game is probably the only real kiddie game I played, and it was chill and adorable in exactly the ways you’d want in a game of this kind: easy puzzle solving, playful mechanics, general “I’m on break and want to play with my friends” vibes. The devs behind the game just announced a DLC as well, which I’ll almost certainly play when it comes out.
13. Disco Elysium: After years of on-and-off play, I finally got to one of Disco Elysium’s many endings. I can definitely tell why it’s one of the all-timers! Dense philosophy in an RPG format with a wicked sense of humor and zero interest in looking away from the harsh cruelties of life. Ultimately, the best review I’ve seen is one on Tumblr: “in another timeline, Disco Elysium was a completely untranslated Estonian Fallout 2 total overhaul mod that blew the minds of likes 12 communists on an forum that hasn’t updated visually since 2008”. If that sounds good to you and you’ve never played Disco Elysium, now is always a good time.
14. Hades II (early access): A game that doesn’t have an ending should not be this good and this playable. (My first playthrough had placeholder art, and I could barely tell!) I got it early so I could enjoy the vibes and see firsthand how development for the sequel to one of my all-time favorite games would look, and I never thought I would get as sucked in as I did. Supergiant’s done it again, folks. I’m a bit behind on updates, and I was mostly going to wait to start over until 1.0 launched, but…come on, of course I’m going to go through more of it now that I have the Steam Deck. Death to Kronos!
15. Little Kitty, Big City: Another indie game I enjoyed that also had a major game-breaking bug. Luckily, Little Kitty, Big City is contained enough (and cute enough) that restarting was painful but not a complete dealbreaker. As adorable as I found the cats, what really stuck with me was how effectively they captured the vibe of Tokyo as I remember it. Apparently, little kids and cats have a lot in common! I still have three achievements to unlock, so I will probably pop into this game again briefly in 2025.
16. The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood: This was a Halloween-season play for obvious reasons, but The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood is a really unique game in a way I find difficult to describe. Saying that it’s very story rich, character rich, and deep with worldbuilding doesn’t get it, you know? I could talk about other games that tick those boxes, but I can’t think of anything with a similar mood. (The closest comparison that comes to mind is Steven Universe, but even that is designed for a completely different age group.) One of the big mechanics is designing your own tarot cards, and you get into a groove once you figure out how that works, but it’s nothing like any tarot cards I own (and I have a collection of a dozen or so). I don’t often see singular games, but The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood might be one of them.
17. Paint it Back: I took this old nonagram game I’ve had around for a while and got 100% of the achievements in 2024. I love achievement hunting so much; not only is it a game within a game, getting trophies/badges/achievements helps provide structure and conclusion in spaces where those things might not otherwise exist. For Paint it Back, it would make more sense to probably have an achievement for 100% puzzle completion, but I’m glad there wasn’t one. I didn’t want to finish the 2016 election nonagrams.
18. Sudoku Universe: Another old puzzle game, but sudoku! I’m two achievements away from 100%. If Sudoku Universe had a slightly better interface, I’d probably have them already; sudoku is something I’ve been doing regularly since college, and I’m pretty good at it. Still, unless I forget, I should leave 2025 finished on this one.
19. Webfishing: This game is exactly what it sounds like: you fish online! Fishing minigames are my mortal foe in farming/life sims like Stardew Valley, but Webfishing is really online companionship paired with something to do with your hands when you’re waiting for a reply. I’ve only played in groups with my family, but it’s a nice way to inhabit digital space together.
20. Spirit City: Lofi Sessions: If you like the lofi girl on YouTube but wish there was more customization, Spirit City might be what you’re looking for. Unlocking the little creatures is delightful, as is making your own character, and I found the built-in productivity options really useful. Maybe it’s more of a glorified screensaver than a game, but like Wallpaper Engine, I got it through Steam, so what does it matter?

 

Steam stats (from Jan 1 through Dec 14)

• 47 games (+7 from 2023, Steam median was 4)
• 323 achievements unlocked (-446 from 2023, Steam median was 13)
• 192-day streak (+133 from 2023, Steam median was 6)
• 33% of games played were 2024 releases, 54% were released in the last 1-7 years, 37% were released 8+ years ago
• My busiest months were May (14% of gameplay), March and July (12% each), and August (11%)

 

Bonus!

If you like this post:

1. Consider subscribing to my Patreon for a bonus post on productivity tips and tricks in 2024
2. If paid content is beyond you right now, you can still join for free and read my upcoming off-the-cuff series, starting with my initial Oscar nominee reactions!
3. Catch up on my 2024-in-review series on Egregious and read my TV recap.

 

Stay tuned for more in the near future, including two movie posts, a look back at books, and more!