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80 Days; Inkle proved their talent at making engaging and sprawling interactive fiction with Sorcery 1 and 2, but 80 Days was on another level. Forgot exploring the wilderness or a city; in 80 Days, the entire globe is waiting to be traversed, a 19th century steampunk world brought to vivid life through wonderful prose, teeming with whispers of revolution and warring nations and political tension. To be crossed by boat and train, by submersible railway and airship and even more exotic forms of travel, as you and your master circumnavigate the world. Mutinies, pirates, spies, murder, civil war, inclement weather, and so much more awaits, every city offering new stories, secrets, and possibilities. It's the kind of game you can play three, four times and have a totally different experience each time.
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Valiant Hearts; Valiant Hearts: The Great War masterfully blended the grime and grit of WWI with an intimate tale of four characters. Valiant Hearts presents its characters and wartorn world in a comic book-esque drawn style, brought to life with smooth animations. But despite that vibrant charming veneer, Valiant Hearts doesn't shy away from portraying the hellish meat grinder that was World War 1. Charges across no-man's land. Sneaking through muddy trenches. Corpses and wounded everywhere. A gutted ruined landscape, smoke and debris and explosions and the screams of the dying. Evading poison gas and avoiding machine gun fire. Valiant Hearts told an captivating story of warfare and friendship, and explored a period not often touched by the medium. An excellent experience that covered an entire gamut of tone and atmosphere, from charming and cute to depressing and grim.
3.
Monument Valley; when measuring a game's worth, some turn to length, others graphics and gameplay, or challenge. Monument Valley wasn't a lengthy experience or a particularly challenging one. This was an experience that put visual artistry and atmosphere first, a complete journey without filler or padding. Each chapter felt distinct, unique, special in its own way. A journey through an abstract world of long-abandoned structures, filled with impossible mechanisms and structures to push, pull, and rotate. The tactile, tangible gameplay fostered this intimate connection with the world as you manipulate the environment with your fingertips. Monument Valley was just a masterfully-crafted mix of wonderful artistry, fun engaging mechanics, and subtle narrative.
4.
Out There; It took a while for Out There to click with me. But when it did, I was hooked. Much like 80 Days, your goal is to reach home, but rather than the welcoming bustling cityscapes and countrysides of Earth, Out There casts you out into the empty, ruthless embrace of space, light years from home, alone. Every jump to a new planet, to a new system, costs precious resources. Your chances of suffocating or drifting listlessly through the void due to lack of fuel are much higher than ever reaching home. And yet, Out There is also a game of discovery. Discovering weird alien races, and learning their language. Discovering new ships and incredible technology. Discovering the wonders of interstellar space, from making that first leap through a black hole or encountering massive beasts with a nebula or finding some abandoned alien technology just daring you to touch it. Out There breathes life into journey with its fantastic art and the prose of its varied and interesting random events.
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Jet Car Stunts 2; The basic expectation of any sequel is "Bigger and better" and Jet Car Stunts 2 achieved just that. Taking what made the original so much fun, it expanded on every aspect: multiple vehicles each with their own handling and attributes, dozens of levels each with a extra difficult hard version that added more hazards and tougher tracks; new modes from Tony Hawk-esque stunt areas to racing against other cars, a track editor that was fun to play around with. All that, with the same tight tilt controls, precision-platformer-meets-arcade-racer gameplay, and colorful abstract visuals of the tracks, and Jet Car Stunts 2 excelled in every way, offering a wealth of fun challenging content.
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Zengrams; Zengrams excelled at taking a simple mechanic and exploring it in myriad challenging ways. 'Simple to understand, difficult to master' aptly described Zengrams' puzzles, as you used color to seamlessly combine and divide various shapes. You had to be mindful of both how and where you placed shapes, as well as each level's limited amount of moves. The early stages eased you in, but soon the challenge ramped up, due to shapes merged or offset in tricky ways or the number of moves you can perform. Zengrams was the kind of game where you'd spend 30 minutes on a puzzle, trying it this way and that way, and then come back an hour or a day later with a fresh approach and realize the solution was staring you in the face this whole time. The obvious solution wasn't always the correct one, forcing you to think of more concise and efficient ways to complete puzzles. Each new level invoked that sense of "Is this even possible...", and finally solving a particularly challenging level felt so rewarding.
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Wayward Souls; Comments
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Leo's Fortune; Comments
9.
Perfect Paths; Take Space Chem, distill it down to its core mechanics, and build the experience for touch screen, and you have Perfect Paths. The game is simple enough - construct complex chains of commands to guide blocks to like-colored tiles - but the challenge, the touch-friendly controls, and colorful aesthetic makes Perfect Path stand out.
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Heavy Metal Thunder; Comments
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Shadow Blade; fluid animations, great level design, and challenging gameplay made Shadow Blade one of the best platformers of 2014
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CLARC; you're CLARC, the picked-on maintenance robot, saving the day with his tractor beam. CLARC had tricky puzzles, a cute story, and nice visuals.
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Bug Heroes 2 - Foursaken does it again, delivering a fantastic sequel to the original Bug Heroes, with more heroes to choose from, better visuals and larger levels, and more intense strategic action.
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Inferno 2 - Excellent dual stick shooter action is what one comes to expect from Radiangames, and Inferno 2 provided just that, with bigger levels, a massive arsenal of weapons and upgrades to choose from, new enemies, and more of the awesome Gauntlet-style gameplay of the original Inferno.
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The Nightmare Cooperative; work together or die, that was the one rule of Nightmare Cooperative.
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Membrane; a simple but challenging puzzler, with varied mechanics and a clean minimalist aesthetic
