Greg Kasavin is writer and creative director at Supergiant Games, the small independent studio behind Hades, Pyre, Transistor, and Bastion. Prior to Supergiant, Greg worked at 2K Games, Electronic Arts, and GameSpot. He’s @kasavin on Twitter.
It was a dizzying year. I was busy just trying to keep up, while counting my blessings. Hades, the latest game I worked on, launched back in the fall of 2020, though continued earning acclaim throughout this past year, including Giant Bomb’s own 2020 Game of the Year award. What an amazing and surreal honor! I’m incredibly grateful for the recognition, though I also couldn’t help but start thinking ahead at what might be next... and my process around that involves stepping away from games a bit to recharge my batteries and adjust my perspective, then coming to my senses and playing as much stuff as possible. Looking back, I sampled a ton of different games, played some in-depth, and finished out the year having experienced a few I expect will stick with me for a long time to come. I hope games have been a steady, reassuring presence for you, too.
As is my custom, let me first highlight some of the games I didn’t play enough before this writing, because they very well might have made my list otherwise; then get into my real Top 10 – including a number-one pick that I never would have expected even as early as the beginning of December.
My Top 10 Games I Didn’t Play Enough
I try not to let the concept of an ever-growing backlog of games weigh much on me, as we’ve reached a point where it’s temporally impossible to keep up with all the media that may be of interest to us, that we ‘should’ play/watch/read/listen to. Nevertheless there do tend to be some games I mean to get around to, or play more deeply, and these are the ones that most stood out by the end of 2021. It’s hard to limit this list to just 10 games, though here goes:
This game was love-at-first-sight for my kids at PAX West back in the bygone age of 2019, and I was happy to hear a lot of glowing praise about how it finally turned out. The coloring-book look is really well executed and the paint-themed puzzles and mechanics feel fresh and intriguing. I’m excited to play this more soon and share it with my family.
9. Unsighted
I played the demo for this 16-bit-style top-down action game and thought it was great – tight controls, crisp combat, interesting world-building, the works. I’m also really intrigued by the time pressure built into the design and story, where you’ll find yourself in tough situations where you can’t save all the characters you may care about. It’s amazing that this game was made by a core team of just two people.
I got my start as a game developer working on real-time strategy games, so this genre will always have a place in my heart. The classic Age of Empires II also happens to be one of my favorite games in this style, so I was excited to see a new full-on sequel all this time later, launching to what seemed like plenty of acclaim. Real-time strategy games can be very involved and I just haven’t set aside the time to dig into this one yet, though I’m looking forward to doing so, and am heartened to see new entries in this genre making a splash.
7. Unpacking
While this is presented as a chill, relaxing game about making neat little living spaces, as someone who hasn’t gotten around to unpacking some of my own stuff for years and years, there’s something oddly anxiety-inducing to me about this concept. Nonetheless, I need to play it, as I love whenever games can create narrative experiences without using words. Here, just by taking certain objects out of boxes and trying to put them in the right spots, you start to piece together stories of who might have just moved and why, and I think that’s brilliant.
Arc System Works has long since cemented itself as one of the most talented fighting game developers out there, and if nothing else, the sheer artistry of their games makes them a sight to behold. I played some of the open beta for Strive and followed its development pretty closely, but didn’t get around to playing the finished game just yet, something I’ve been meaning to rectify. This series keeps banging out some of the coolest, most imaginative character designs I’ve ever seen in this genre. Also, fighting games are the best, and I would just play them all day if I could.
5. It Takes Two
In recent years I’ve mostly enjoyed playing games on my own, though I wanted to make an exception for this one, what with the developer’s pedigree and all the awards It Takes Two has already racked up. So, my son and I have been taking the plunge, and it’s been a wild ride so far. I always love a good ‘you shrunk so everything looks huge’ premise, and this one has more going on with the central conflict between a husband and wife at the end of their rope. We’ve been enjoying the inventive co-op mechanics and I’m excited to see where the story goes.
4. Deathloop
While I’ve been pretty shootered-out these past few years and not felt too compelled to get into many of them, Deathloop’s fresh approach and structure that invites experimentation was really interesting. The ‘immersive sim’ subgenre of shooter I think has always struggled with a structure that theoretically invites you to approach situations in many ways, yet in practice punishes you for experimenting. Deathloop alleviates a lot of this by making dying and restarting part of the story and world, and giving you plenty of chances to improvise. I got a good chunk of the way through, though mean to press on.