Howdy! If you know who I am, I’m sorry. If you don’t, my name is Ruby Innes and I’m one of the hosts of Back Pocket! I also used to write for Kotaku Australia for a period of time that everybody assumes was way longer than it actually was. I can only assume it because I was, and continue to be, extremely boisterous and obnoxious.
Normally, this whole end-o’-year thing that I do would be over on Kotaku AU. But if you’re no stranger to the world of Australian games journalism, you’re well aware that Daddy Warbucks simply had no choice but to take Orphan Annie around the back of the barn and 360 no-scope her right in the domepiece, along with the other adorable little orphans because something, something synergy. Strategic pivot? Suck a fat one, buddy! Apologies. I’m just fooling around. I don’t know what any of those words mean. I’m only 5 or 6 years old.
But hey, we’re not here to reflect on the stinkers of this year. We’re here to reflect on the DELIGHTFUL AROMAS of 2024, and by that I mean my favourite games that came out this year. Much like how a smell would tickle one’s nose, love for video games is subjective. These are the ones that I loved a lot and if they’re not the same as the ones that you loved from this year, I don’t really know what to tell you. Sorry? Uh oh? Womp womp? Bing bong? Take any of those if needed.
Before I jump into the big boys, it’s only fair that I hit a few quick honourable mentions. This website’s lovely editor Steph Panecasio was nice enough to let me have a top 7 (I’m more of a ‘kiss your darlings’ than ‘kill your darlings’ kinda freak), so it only makes sense that I test some boundaries here before I dive in.
[Editor’s note: I couldn’t have stopped her if I tried, but to be fair, I did not try]
The Ruby Game Award for Most Time Spent In This Game arguably goes to Zenless Zone Zero, a game that I have continuously gone back to for its sleek and aesthetically pleasing design, and its incredibly rewarding combat loop. Also need to pour two out for a couple of shorter games I really loved a la Clickholding and City of Piss, with the former being a surprisingly horrible experience that I didn’t regret sitting through for a second, and the latter being a really heartfelt and sincere look into the world of someone finding themselves through the many things they love and not just a city made of piss (to be clear, it is a city made of piss).
And finally, only because I’m currently getting through it now and loving it but haven’t played enough to safely call it one of my GOTYs, Animal Well. I’m wrapped up in the mystery of it all. Love being a blob guy. Now that that’s out of the way, here are my top 7 games of 2024 in no particular order, or The Games That Sucked Ruby Innes Off To Completion (my mum didn’t like that one).
Table of Contents
Infinity Nikki
I actually left this list to the last minute intentionally. It has nothing to do with my time management skills. I put this bad boy on hold because there was one game that I knew was coming out at some point that I needed just a taste of before I started writing. I needed to know if it would end up on this list. Obviously, it did.
Infinity Nikki is the fifth game in the Nikki series. This series has continuously evolved over the years, with the first three games being somewhat simple 2D dress-up games, and the fourth sharing the previous games’ mechanics of dress-up challenges but making the leap to 3D. All four of these games were mobile titles, so nobody was really expecting the Papergames team to go dummy hard and develop a giant open-world dress-up adventure title. And then they fucking did.
This game is magical. I grew up on Korean browser dress-up games and have spent hundreds of hours in Love Nikki, so it felt like this game was made for me, but holy shit. The gorgeous open world, the earworm soundtrack, the myriad of different puzzles and platforming challenges, the style challenges that encourage you to actually serve, the adorable interactions with literally everything, the ability outfits and fighting sequences that make you feel like Sailor Moon, and the CLOOOOOTHES?
I actually don’t know if we deserve a dress-up game worked on by Kentaro Tominaga, a former director on Breath of the Wild, but I’m so glad we got it.
Mouthwashing
I love horror movies. I didn’t always love horror movies, because I was a little baby who was afraid of everything. A few years ago, I delved into horror movies and now I can’t get enough of them. Body horror, psychological horror, I eat that shit up like a hungry baby who’s brave. Jumpscares, however? No, thank you. Yuck.
Horror games were a bit harder for me to get into. Sure, I dabbled in a bit here and there, but movies had a level of separation, whereas games aimed too close with interactivity and it was simply too spooky for poor Ruby. I’ve gotten better with them thanks to titles like Doki Doki Literature Club and such, which were stylised enough to not scare me too silly but still unnerve me, but I still struggle with the horror games that have a more hyper-realistic style.
To me, Mouthwashing has everything that I want in a horror game: a captivating story that masterfully throws you around a non-linear timeline similar to this year’s Strange Darling; graphics reminiscent of that good PS1 horror art style mixed with unexpected cinematic direction; a set of characters filled to the brims with flaws all slowly losing their minds on a spaceship going nowhere; and a supremely fucked-up looking guy that you are constantly having to interact with.
I’ve gotta give the Wrong Organ team extra props as well for their audio design too, which truly made feeding the severely maimed former captain his painkiller biccies an extra awful experience. Chef’s kiss.
Read: GamesHub’s Top 10 Best Games of 2024
The Rise of the Golden Idol
Now, if you know me at all, you’ll know that I talk a big game about not being able to read. “I’m illiterate as fuck, baby!” is a phrase I’ve said out loud before. I’m coming out of my shell to admit that that’s actually not entirely true. I do know how to read, and I actually love reading. In fact, I’m reading everything I’m writing right now. It’s really impressive if you’re somebody that thought I couldn’t do that before.
In saying that, The Rise of the Golden Idol is all about words. Reading words, collecting words, putting words together to make a sentence. It’s also so much more than that, and it’s a fucking masterpiece like the last one.
The new paint-like art style inspired by the first game’s highly-detailed ugly-but-not caricature stylings adds that extra level of detail and expression, making it even more rewarding to look real close to pick up clues and such. The new user interface is also gorgeous, and playing it on my tablet using an Apple Pencil through Netflix Games genuinely felt like the perfect way to play it.
Investigation games have long been a love in my life, from Ace Attorney to Return of the Obra Dinn. The Rise of the Golden Idol feels like the pinnacle of this genre, as it’s already working with a classic system of picking up all the pieces to fit them together, but then consistently experiments with this system to keep the gameplay experience fresh and keep you on the case.
I can’t stress enough how much I loved trawling through a video tape of a man doing a funny dance and using an ancient book to decode the message he was sending through his dance moves. Color Gray Games really cooked with that one, and I ate it up.
Conscript
Something that drew me towards Mouthwashing was the way it explores the concept of horror. On a surface level, it looks as if it’s going to be a mascot horror PS1-like but in reality is an exploration of the horrors of humanity. Conscript, on the other hand, makes no attempt to throw you off. It makes it abundantly clear from the start and throughout that you are experiencing the horrors of war.
Conscript’s setting of the Battle of Verdun during World War I feels lonely, claustrophobic, and depressing. It’s not entirely hopeless, but the sliver of hope you have is not to win, but to live through it. You do not prevail as a hero, but survive through the actions of a ‘coward’.
This being the debut title from solo developer Jordan Mochi after seven years of development is such an incredible feat, and all the flowers he has been getting for Conscript are infinitely deserved. This is a game built from a love of classic horror games and a desire to portray the horrific realities of war, and is a 2024 must-play in my eyes.
Dryft City Kyngs
When I first saw Dryft City Kyngs, it spoke to me on a deep, deep level. As someone that grew up playing flash games that look and play a hell of a lot like it, there was something deep within me that knew I would enjoy this game. Dryft City Kyngs has the energy and spirit of one of those old-school cult-classic Flash games, with the added bonus of being a fully fleshed out and lovingly crafted RPG racing title.
The setting of Dryft City Kyngs being an MS-Paintified Melbourne rocks so hard, your ‘office job’ essentially just being little bits of busywork is painfully accurate, and the writing is genuinely some of the funniest shit I’ve read in a video game. I really feel like a pathetic cog in the capitalist machine, desperate to get outta there and into my sweet ride to dryft.
Nonsense Machine not only nailed the ‘RPG racing game in a pseudo-Melbourne’ brief to a T, but their vibe as a team is also immaculate. If there were an award for most perfect video marketing for a game, they would win in my eyes. Please watch.
Thank Goodness You’re Here!
Let’s stay on the topic of funny games here with a game that perfectly mixes slapstick humour with the inherent comedy of Northern England. What are they like!
Thank Goodness You’re Here is one of the funniest games I’ve ever played. From start to finish, I found myself laughing at everything this game threw at me, like Roger’s tragic backstory of having a huge head that everyone made fun of, the concept of ‘Peans’ as pea-bean in-betweens, the ongoing bit of going down the chimney and ruining that guy’s house, and also literally anything that anybody says at any given point.
And then there’s just how the game looks. I’d already had a soft spot for Coal Supper’s art direction in the past with The Good Time Garden, the delightfully gross and squishy game they released prior to this one. However, Thank Goodness You’re Here’s art direction lovingly crafts a bright and poppy Northern English town with a cast of characters that somehow look like they’re from Yorkshire just as much as they sound like it.
Astro Bot
Here it is. The one you were all waiting for. The objectively best game of 2024, in my opinion.
When I first played Astro’s Playroom on the PS5, it was a non-stop, back-to-back joyful experience. The pinnacle of whimsy. I felt a kinship with Astro, a chipper little guy that loves his friends. I finished that game, like many other people, hungry for more.
There is not a single thing I don’t like about Astro Bot. The platforming is tight and challenging, and is constantly refreshing itself with every level within every world that you go to. Each level feels uniquely crafted, and every power-up fits perfectly with the level you find them in. I don’t know if I’ve ever experienced the kind of joy in a video game that I did when I played through the mouse level. I think about it often.
Astro Bot wears its Nintendo influences on its sleeve, but it also sets itself apart from them in its game design built lovingly around its sweet little protagonist. The nature of games nowadays is that no idea is truly original, but it’s how the new game builds on old ideas and modernises them that’s important. Astro Bot feels like the polished culmination of a history of fantastic platformers.
Read: Astro Bot is GamesHub’s Game of the Year 2024
And then there’s the levels themed around classic PlayStation titles. It would’ve been easy for Team Asobi to just go for the big modern icons a la God of War and Horizon, but the inclusion of earlier icons such as LocoRoco and Ape Escape not only feel like a heartwarming tribute to PlayStation’s experimental roots, but a celebration of Team Asobi’s original form, Japan Studio.
Japan Studio, under the watchful eye of Shuhei Yoshida, was largely responsible for the reputation that early PlayStation had for taking a chance on some truly special games. We wouldn’t have games like PaRappa the Rapper, Vib-Ribbon, and Boku no Natsuyasumi without Japan Studio taking a chance on them. While the studio’s dissolution was a huge loss in the games industry, Astro Bot’s spotlight on their history of games felt like Team Asobi’s heartfelt acknowledgement of where they came from.
Astro Bot was the only game that I platinumed this year, and I was smiling from ear to ear the whole time. It feels like a video game that loves video games, and loves being a video game. And me? I love video games. Thank you Team Asobi, please make a new Ape Escape.
And that’s all from me! Sorry for yapping, but I simply love to do it. There are a bunch more games that I wanted to put on this list that I ended up taking out for brevity, which is very funny considering this shit is long.
That being said, I’d like to say a big thank you to Steph and Leah for having me in their home, and a big thank you to all the developers that made the games I loved this year for making them. Despite any gas-leak garbage you may read online, it’s actually a fuckin’ sick time to play games.
Peace and love!
