Thumb Cramps is a weekly video game review podcast hosted by Joel Duscher and Jackson Baly as part of the Sanspants Radio network. It is a very normal listening experience and after countless episodes of reviewing games, this is their top 5 of 2024.
The Thumb Cramps Official GOTY List of 2024
5. HROT, by Spytihněv (Jackson)
Duke Nukem is sort of like if they needed to make a video game character to help America win the Cold War. Stick with me here. Stick with me for this alternative history where the Cold War is won using video game characters, because I need it for the next sentence. HROT by Spytihněv, is like the Soviet version of Duke Nukem. What do I mean by that? Hmm… Good question.
The year is 1986 and Czechoslovakia is full of monsters. Some kind of disaster has occurred and now it’s up to you to shoot your way through various brown and grey levels, killing bizarre enemies with a hammer, sickle and various soviet era firearms. It’s a classic Boomer Shooter, (you know find some keys, kill some guys, make it to the button at the end of the level), but goddamn. At one point I entered a gym and found myself fighting some kind of irradiated pommel-horse monster. That’s capital G Gaming as far as I’m concerned.
The game is separated into three parts and your reward for completing those parts is a real-life recipe you could cook at home in your real-life kitchen. To me, that is also gaming. Oh wait, I just realised this came out in 2023, whoops! Whatever, who cares, it’s a good game – you should play it.
4. I Am Your Beast, by Strange Scaffold (Joel)
What if John Wick, Hotline Miami and Neon White fused together to make an incredibly fast-paced first person shooter, all about revenge on a quest for peace? Well, turns out that game exists, and it’s called I Am Your Beast.
You’re a man who simply wants to retire to the woods and leave a violent life behind. Unfortunately your own special forces have decided that’s not allowed, and have killed a little bird you liked, so it’s time to end this once and for all. COOL PREMISE. COOLER GAMEPLAY.
The levels never feel repetitive and the multiple approaches to combat means it never gets old. Just a really, really satisfying experience – and probably the best time I’ve had on my Steam Deck so far. Not a super long game – but it’s not the length of a game, but how you use it that’s important. Trust me. I have a lot of experience with that.
3. Home Safety Hotline, by Night Signal Entertainment (Jackson)
I’ve been lucky enough to never have what you might call a real job, so as baffling as it sounds, the idea of working in a call centre has some kind of mysterious charm to me. Gossiping, slacking off and getting yelled at by customers all sounds great for some reason! Well, in Home Safety Hotline by Night Signal Entertainment, I can live that fantasy.
It’s an analogue horror puzzle telephone operator simulator with a crunchy Windows 95 aesthetic, and if that doesn’t get you interested… Well, frankly you can go straight to hell. Your job is to cross reference people’s household problems against a catalogue of potential hazards, and then issue the right advice.
The twist is that very quickly the answer stops being mould, and instead becomes basement slimes or toilet hobbs. Then suddenly you’re trying to figure out if the noises coming from the attic are bats or attic gnomes, and it only gets harder and stranger from there.
For me, the special magic of this game is when the bizarre entities become mundane, and you really settle into the call centre fantasy. “Classic toilet hobbs,” you mutter to yourself before the caller has even finished their sentence. “Can’t do nothing about those once they’ve nested.” That rocks. That’s so special. That’s gaming.
2. Balatro, by LocalThunk (Joel)
Balatro is a deck building poker game where you unlock multipliers and bonuses to try to score high enough to beat the house. Balatro is also a game that has actively ruined my life.
I don’t even like poker and this game got me so bad. I cannot stress enough how much Balatro I’ve played. I’ve got it on Switch and I’ve racked up enough hours that it’s my second most played game of all time and Balatro came out this year.
This game not only sucked me in, but frankly sucked me off. I’m recommending this game in the same way you’d recommend substance abuse – it feels good, but say goodbye to your life. Great game!
Read: GamesHub’s Top 10 Best Games of 2024
1. Fortnite, by Epic Games (Joel & Jackson)
Have you played Fortnite? It’s the best! You can be Alan Wake, Spiderman, Mr Beast or LeBron James, and you start the game by falling out of a flying bus with the mission of ending the lives of 99 other people. That is pure gaming.
It’s got everything you could possibly want. Every time you play, there is a chance you’ve made a child cry after you’ve wiped them off the map and hit the griddy on their grave. Games don’t get better than that.
“But Thumb Cramps, didn’t Fortnite come out in 2016 or some shit?” we hear you ask, and we’re here to say: there’s new Fortnite every year, so don’t even think about giving us that. Stop arguing with our GOTY, that’s not how this works. We’re right, and nothing can change that.
