Well, we’re coming to the end of the year. This year has gone by so fast. Like a blink of an eye, and it’s been the worst year of my life thus far. I lost my soul in February, and I have not gotten it back again. I keep on keeping on, but I feel empty inside.
I have never been in a less festive mood (even though I’m happy for those who celebrate), but I want to do my weird-ass end-of-the-year game awards, anyway. I want to remind everyone that this is not the best games of the years or anythin close to that. This is my list of games that I enjoyed the most this year. I thought there weren’t many games I played, but when I looked at my Steam library, there were more than I had remembered.
Today, I want to talk about three games that I quite enjoyed–and they all came in the second half of the year (for me). Two are indie games whilst one is Triple A. Let’s talk about them in the order that I played them. None of them are my game of the year, of course. There can only be one in that category, and that will be a post on a later date.
Let’s roll.
Best knock-off Hogwarts game with no awful transphobia clinging to its very marrow
Spells & Secrets (Alchemist Interactive).
This is an indie game made by two guys. That’s impressive given the scope of this game. It’s an RNG roguelite adventure tale set in a wizarding school, and that’s basically the gist of the story. In fact, the story is probably the weakest part of the game as it’s just you’re a novice wizard in your first day of wizarding school, and something is wrong with the school. That’s it. Nothing deeper than that. You have tons of classmates, but they’re just randomized characters. I do like the customization of my character and that I got to unlock clothing and a few pieces of jewelry for different achievements. And I could color my hair whenever I wanted. Although, for whatever reason, I could not make my hair true black–why is this a thing? I have found that to be true in more than one game. Black is more like dark brown.
Anyway, the layout of the rooms is procedurally generated, but there are a limited amount of rooms on each floor. Each room has a secret, but there is only one you can solve per floor (the others aren’t activated). I figured out maybe half on my own and had to look up the rest. Also, by the fiftieth time, the innovativeness wore off. I’m not complaining about that, by the way, but just noting it.
I really enjoyed learning the different spells and mixing and matching. However, and maybe this is just the way I play games, once I uncovered all the spells, there was one spell I stuck to the most–barrage. Each spell has eight artefacts you can fine that are modifiers for that spell. I used barrage, shield, and ascend roughly 80% of the time. There were some I never used, which I consider a weakness of the game. I get that different people like different builds (it’s like that in FromSoft games), but there are some spells that I completely ignore (unless I need them to solve a puzzle). I’m sad that the flame spell, bombard, just isn’t that viable for me because it takes f-o-r-e-v-e-r to cast.