After writing about my favourite games of 2023 on this blog last year I thought that would be a kick-start to get writing, actually making this blog a thing I used. Maybe more games writing, returning to my days writing for allaboutgames.co.uk between 1999 and 2014. Maybe some writing about programming, motorsport, or any other interests. I did do some blog posts for work, published on their site, based on things I’d developed, but on the whole I didn’t do the blogging I’d hoped for.

However, I’m here to try again, and we’ll see what happens in 2025. For now these are my favourite games that came out in 2024, games I actually played through to completion or considerably. There will be games I’ve missed out because I haven’t gotten around to playing them yet - that’s the balance of time with two young children, a job, an endless stream of good TV shows, and a desire to be away from the screen for a bit. But all of these I personally recommend, and match to my own tastes, such as they are. And in no particular order…

Tactical Breach Wizards (PC, Suspicious Developments)

There were many disappointing things about 2024, but I was very happy that after years of following Tom Francis’ social media posts and YouTube videos about Tactical Breach Wizards it absolutely lived up to expectations. I used to follow Tom’s work back in his PC Gamer writer days, and while I was sad to see him leave games journalism, I was delighted by Gunpoint (2013?!) and Heat Signature (2017). We’ve had to wait 7 years for the next game in the Defenestration Trilogy, aka getting to kick people through windows. But while the previous two were mechanically marvelous with humour-laden stories to take you through, Tactical Breach Wizards is deeper on both counts.

The turn-based tactics offers lots of options, where you’re encouraged to experiment thanks to a generous rewind, and each action feels satisfying, and sometimes has hilarious consequences. And the kicking enemies out of windows is as great as you’d hope - again. It’s all brought together by an exciting ensemble of characters whose back stories you care about, and who gradually come together despite their clashing personalities and interests. It cleverly subverts military and police tropes with the use of wizards, magic, and made-up countries with more complicated histories than you’d first expect.

It’s such a joy to play, and I hope that in 2025 it gets to reach a wider audience via a console release. It’d been a nice match for the Switch, having enjoyed a chunk of it on the Steam Deck.

Balatro (PC/PS5/PS4/Xbox Series/Xbox One/Switch/Android/iOS, LocalThunk)

I haven’t played Balatro in months, but there’s a good reason for that. Between it coming out in February and me stopping in about June I racked up 38 hours on the game, and I was concerned where that would escalate to. It is a captivating card-based roguelike, with a hypnotising musical theme, and satisfying mechanics and sounds as the scores rack up. It uses the language of poker as its basis but it’s not a gambling game, instead it’s more like assembling a numbers go up machine. I was absolutely hooked, working through 30 minute loops in any spare moment on the Steam Deck, finally breaking through to my first victory about 25 hours in, and then working through a string of them under the different conditions you can set up.

Then I hit a bit of a cliff for the later challenges, didn’t pick it up one day, and I’ve since stayed clear, knowing that it’s going to eat another 10 hours if I dare to dip in. I will one day, maybe on the even more dangerous medium of my phone, because I do also really miss it. So this is a game I can thoroughly recommend, a clear highlight of 2024, but also one that comes with a strong warning that your free time will disappear too!

An aside: a nice bonus for writing rather than talking about Balatro is I don’t have to figure out how to pronounce it. Ba-la-tro or bal-at-ro? It seems we get different answers every time, but I only have to type Balatro here.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown (PC/PS5/PS4/Xbox Series/Xbox One/Switch, Ubisoft Montpellier/Ubisoft)

Growing up as a PC gamer I don’t have the history with the classic 2D Marios and Sonics that many of my peers have, so my platforming skills have often been lacking. When something good comes along I will push past this, and can actually enjoy all the tricky jumping, as I did with Celeste. Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is another occasion where I got hooked on traversing the environment, hopping from pole to platform, dodging spikes, and sliding through gaps.

Aside from making the traversal so enjoyable, The Lost Crown appeals to me because it is also a Metroidvania. That is, it has a big world to explore, with a map, lots of secrets, and new exciting abilities to unlock. That includes some time warping capabilities that are a lot of fun. It tells an interesting story that compelled me to push through to the end, although I was also helped by the variable difficulty options, which allowed me to turn the damage in combat down without making the game too easy. It has a parry system which I’m sure is great to people who are good at that sort of timing, but I’m not. I am, however, (mostly) happy to pull off button combinations to fight, and it was nice to have this flexibility. There’s also options to skip difficult platforming sections which I expected to use, but to my surprise I only did this after encountering a bug which set me back before something tricky I’d already used. There’s also a lot more there for accessibility, which is why it won a 2024 Game Award for that.

I played this using a short period of having a Ubisoft+ subscription (playing it alongside Assassin’s Creed Mirage and The Crew Motorstorm), which meant I had access to the game on the Xbox and the PC. Or in fact, the Steam Deck, where it ran fine through the Ubisoft launcher (there is a native Steam version, but you don’t get to use that through the subscription). I regularly flipped between the platforms to whatever suited my available time, taking advantage of the built-in cross-platform cloud saving, which is a feature that Ubisoft doesn’t get enough credit for. While I don’t own the game right now, I expect to pick it up in future when I want to play again, and it won’t matter where as I’ll be able to resume that save.

Rise of the Golden Idol (PC/PS5/PS4/Xbox Series/Xbox One/Switch/Android/iOS, Color Grey Games/Playstack)

As noted in my 2023 list I didn’t end up publishing a list in 2022, but I did come up with a selection of my favourite games that year, and Case of the Golden Idol was high up there. It’s a game about solving murders which seem to be related to a mysterious artifact, as you click through static scenes to retrieve clues, and then put them together on a missing words page. It’s a fantastic concept, and the overall story told across the various scenes is intriguing, and all the more interesting when you see how it all comes together.

2024’s Rise of the Golden is all of that again, and while it’s more familiar, it’s still really good. The first game was set in the 18th Century but now we’re in the 1970s in a fictional country, but the Idol has been discovered again. The things you have to put together are more varied, and some scenes have complexities like different moments in time where you have to link the before and after. Towards the end it started to feel like it was running out of steam, but the interlinking story was even stronger here, so it’s worth getting to the end.

Since 2022 the developers have signed a deal with Netflix, so this launched there for Android and iOS (as well as the PC and consoles), making it more accessible and hopefully drawing more people into this type of game. I played it through on an iPad and can recommend that as a way to get drawn in.

Isles of Sea and Sky (PC, Cicada Games)

The game that helped break my Balatro habit is another title I associate strongly with my Steam Deck; Isles of Sea and Sky is a top-down open world puzzler, visually similar to an old Zelda. It has hints of a Metroidvania given you can explore, find bits you can’t quite get to yet and unlock new ways of getting to them. Like those games of old the world is split up into “screens” that you enter and leave via the edges, and you pan over to the next one. This is important here because puzzles exist in these to solve, when you move away and come back you reset them if they’re not completed, and all the steps exist solely on that screen. That helps you to focus on the block-pushing (aka sokoban) puzzles in front of you and worry less about the open world.

Pulling this all together, with a number of islands to explore, is quite the accomplishment, and it’s brought together with an overarching narrative. There’s also lots of secrets to find, so you’ll be absorbed for hours. It seems do have done fairly well, but I really hope it gets to reach a wider audience in 2025 as it aims to make its way to the Switch.

Astro Bot (PS5, Team Asobi/Sony)

While I might be making an effort to call more attention to Isles of Sea and Sky, this one needs no introduction, having picked up a number of Game of the Year awards in the last few weeks. It did, however, delight my family - and still does as my children still want to return to it despite beating the final boss over a month ago. It’s certainly something I don’t resist, in the way I might for something else I’d consider done; it’s so delightful to load up, so colourful and playful. Of course for me it has the added benefit of nostalgia for all things PlayStation having been on that train for most of its 30 year journey, but that also makes it a gateway for me introducing the children to some of that. Probably more Ape Escape than God of War, I should point out.

Flock (PC/PS5/Xbox Series, Hollow Ponds/Annapurna Interactive)

Another game that has equally delighted my children and me has been Flock. You get to float around on a sort of bird, scout out creatures, recover flying(?!) sheep, and find missing items. It comes from the mind of Richard Hogg, who made wonderful and mad Hohokum, although this has more of a structure and a story. My eldest child enjoyed reading the blurbs and identifying the creatures, and both children got a lot of pleasure out of flying around the map. There’s beautiful landscapes and little mysteries to uncover, and it’s just been such a delight for us all.

The rest are still to come

I’m still in the process of writing this, but wanted to actually publish something given I’d got the site fixed. The rest of my 10 favourites are:

  • Animal Well
  • I Am Your Beast
  • Indiana Jones and the Great Circle