As both a parent and the resident news lad here, I probably spend way more time talking and writing about games than getting hundreds of hours to actually play them. While most of the games I've snuck the odd minutes with – I hesitate to say hours – made it onto our Advent Calendar for Horace’s approval, the three below were a few that made me and my family smile at different points throughout 2022. Roll on 2023 - and even more games.
Possibly my most magical Christmas as a kid was in 1997, aged 12. I got a Saturn and an issue of the UK’s Official Sega Saturn Magazine that had a Christmas NiGHTS Into Dreams disc on the cover. I reckon that it was my favourite, most unabashedly fun time for gaming ever (outside my decades fiddling around on PC, obvs). Indie platformer Lunistice is a blatant love letter to the 32-bit era, and the kind of game that largely skipped the poor old Saturn.
You guide Hana the Tanuki about as she dreams, aiming to get her to the Moon. Hana properly speeds along, bouncing and spinning her tail to thwack enemies with a lovely splat effect. Devs A Grumpy Fox have really nailed the classic 90s platformer vibe, thanks to all the different dreamworlds that Hana gets to careen through. Don’t expect something open-world like Sonic Frontiers, because Lunistice is deliberately meant to be a linear, short experience. Good grief, could we use more of those.