Some of the best games of the last 12 months: a two-button roguelite about the meta strategy of character progression a dungeon-crawler-meets-management-sim about organized religion and echo chambers a dice-based paean to the power of community that’s also a visual-novel lament to the things we lose in pursuit of wealth.įor me, it’s this erasure, reinterpretation, and reinforcement of genres that defines the list below. And in 2022, more so than any other year, I threw up my hands and allowed myself to revel in the chaos.

Like any worthy art form, they require constant categorization, re-categorization, and re-re-categorization, just to keep track of every twist and turn in their labyrinthine evolution. Even “Metroidvania,” a portmanteau created specifically to denote a certain set of design tenets, often comes with a cascade of asterisks, caveats, and parentheticals.īut of course, video games’ stubborn refusal to be pinned down is part of what makes them so damn fun. “Turn-based strategy” isn’t doing all that much work anymore.

Simple terms like “open world” and “first-person shooter” have lost much of their original meaning. It’s becoming increasingly difficult, as the years go by, to describe my favorite video games.

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