Arcade Pit is a weekly streaming gameshow in the spirit of Nick Arcade, but better! Brutal trivia and silly challenges, every Sunday at 8pm EDT! Since Arcade Pit is being represented by two people, this is a COMBO GOTY LIST. Emily’s top 5, plus Smight’s Top 5. Put ‘em together and, baby, that’s what I call ten. It’s Arcade Pit’s Top Ten Games of 2021!
Smight: This year has brought me even further into the realm of indie games; I played them almost exclusively. There were some tremendous releases that offered a lot of innovation and beautiful artwork. I also ran into some fresh roguelikes aiming to absorb hundreds of hours of my time.
Emily: 2021 was a hell of a year! Thankfully, part of what made the year was an absolutely great track of new releases. Even weirder was the number of highly anticipated sequels that were like… a decade in the making? NEO: The World Ends With You, New Pokemon Snap, No More Heroes 3, Metroid Dread- it’s like some kind of stars aligned just right to see people get exactly what they’d been asking for. Maybe it was the universe’s way of apologizing.
But regardless of why they happened, I’m here to talk about my personal favorite releases of 2021! (Things that didn’t make the list that I recommend checking out, by the way: Monster Hunter Rise, New Pokemon Snap, Inscryption, Loop Hero, Resident Evil 8.) Unlike Smight, I played a lot of mainline stuff this year and it definitely shows in my picks! Hopefully at least one of them might be new to you, because I recommend them all highly.
Smight’s #5: Nuclear Blaze
A firefighting platformer from the creator of Dead Cells?! My interest sparked up immediately. This game features some gorgeous pixel art. The fire and lighting effects do their job of making it clear where the water needs to be. Very nice controls too. The firefighter movement feels great, and there are new abilities to discover along the way. And cats! In trouble!! I wasn't about to leave one behind.
This one takes place almost entirely in some sort of underground facility, which happens to be ill-equipped for heat. Finding out more about this place is part of the journey. Aside from fire, which hurts quite a bit, there's electricity, backdrafts and explosions to worry about.
Nuclear Blaze features a lot of options for visuals to give you various degrees of the retro look. I also feel like this would be a good game for speedrunners to tackle. My main one criticism, the game might be a bit short. However, it was heartwarming to open up the bonus content and see a mode designed for children, with a note from the developer about wanteding their child to be able to play. The objective is to take your now-immortal firefighter through various areas to rescue all the kittens.
Emily’s #5: NEO: The World Ends With You
I found the original TWEWY a bit late into the game’s life cycle, when it had gone from niche release on the DS to having some growing amount of cult following. But what I did eventually find was an incredible experience that made me really reconsider how I thought about myself and others. The style was fantastic, the controls challenged me, and the music I still listen to today. One of my largest criticisms, and some of the highest praise I can give, is that it left me wanting more. So, could NEO capture the spark that made the original shine so brightly?
The answer, for me, was a resounding yes.
As someone that absolutely loves a smartly designed combat system, I want to praise this first and foremost: They somehow translated the feel of the combat from TWEWY into not only a different graphical style but a different control scheme entirely. The original’s two-screen dual-control scheme was appropriately mind-bending for the time, but given the lack of dual screen with the move to a console it wasn’t possible to translate it directly (though the remasters have tried to varying degrees of success). But the use of a single-button input for the team, with each button having a different method of input (hold and move, tap, timed hits, hold and channel, etc.) means that you still have to try and keep your different methods of attack straight in the heat of battle. The Beatdrop Gauge fills the same role as the old Light Puck used to, ensuring that your team is at their best when they all work together.
The music remains a highlight, with the entire soundtrack keeping the tradition of endless hits alive. Taking both from a wealth of new and classic bangers, there were only a few longer days where I ever found myself getting used to a song and not grooving along. Picking any favorites is a rough ask… but if I had to try, I’d say that Breaking Free, Scramble, and the evergreen TRANSFORMATION are all ones I keep coming back to.
As for the story- and I mean this in the kindest way- I don’t think I’m the target audience anymore.
It’s a bit bittersweet, but I always felt that TWEWY is a series that’s aimed at helping people find something in themselves, whether it’s the confidence to take the lead or the bravery to express yourself freely to others. And while I don’t think that I’m as strongly in need of its message anymore, I think that it accomplishes exactly what it came here to do.
The characters are all wonderful, and the collection of a larger party over the course of the game means that there’s more opportunity for all of them to bounce off of one another in fun and interesting ways. The hooded boy you keep seeing around, the one everyone calls Neku in hushed and slightly reverent voices, is a personal favorite and one I was overjoyed to see return. But the newcomers manage to not only hold their own but shine brightly as worthy successors, with Rindo/Fret/Nagi/Shoka all truly being brought to life by the incredible work of their VAs.
If you liked the original, I can’t recommend this one enough, yo!
Smight’s #4: One Hand Clapping
It was the absolutely fantastic artwork and concepts that made me want to give this one a shot. A puzzle/platformer that uses your voice as the key to progress. It seems like a perfect game for a streamer to embarrass themselves. I sure did, as I meandered through the intro stage, awkwardly humming some doors down. Getting used to the idea, I started shouting generators to life and clocks into position.
I wasn't able to get away with just white noise for long; pitch and rhythm quickly became part of my quest. One Hand Clapping will have you singing duets in tune with animal friends to navigate through desert ruins, and drumming the darkness away on top of the mountains. My favorite sections recorded short samples from me to use later as effects, which produced some stellar sound design.