I have one last really big award to give, but that is a post for tomorrow (or later). Yesterday, I gave out my game of the year to the best non-From (indie) game I played this year. I wanted to do a post about games I enjoyed, but didn’t quite make it to the ‘best of’ list, and then I remembered a game I played a ton of mid-year and quite enjoyed. I have to give it a lot of credit because it’s another smallish indie team (25 employees the Google tells me), and it made a game with a lot of heart. I actually enjoyed it more (at the time) than the two games I gave awards to in the post before yesterday’s.
I’ll talk about that first and then give out a bunch of honorable mentions to games that I enjoyed playing, but fell off of for whatever reason. Most of them are indie games, of course, and there are a lot of cats involved.
Best game in which you get to play as a cutely animated (but beleaugured) Death as he tidies up the underworld
Have a Nice Death (Magic Design Studios)
I played this in May, apparently. I completely forgot about it until I was thinking back on the games I’ve played this year. Then, I was confused as to whether I played it last year or this. I had to reinstall it on Xbox so I could see when I played it, and much to my surprise, it was June. I had thought it was late last year or if later than that, then in January or February of tihs year. But, no. It was June.
I had to play it on easy beacuse platforming is not my thing. At all. I have lousy reflex/reaction times, and I have no spatial assessment abilities. This has all gotten worse since my medical crisis, and I have to be realistic about what I can and can’t do. I tried to play the game on normal difficulty, but at a certain point, I realized that I had to knock it down in order to finish it.
Technically, I did not finish the game because even playing it on easy mode, I could not beat the real final boss. I could barely even unlock this boss, let alone do any real damage to the boss. I think in all my time playing the game, I only reached this boss once or twice? Hell, I don’t know if I’ve even reached the true final boss because the way to unlock them is very unforgiving, especially for soomeone like me with all my hidden issues.
I had fun with the game and was pleasantly surprised at how enjoyable it was. Again, platforming is not my thing, but there was enough here to keep me engaged. I will say that this game has less to offer than others of its ilk, but it’s still a good game. I liked the Twinsie as my main weapon, and there are plentiful cloak weapons (powerful, but with cooldowns), and spells with different abilities (statuses like bleed).