10 - Iconoclasts
9 - Donut County
8 - Assemblance: Oversight
“I think the reason why a lot of folks liked Assemblance, and why it became a minor streaming phenomenon a couple of years back, is the stream-friendly collective intelligence aspect of solving the game’s bigger puzzles. Much like PT in 2014, it took many people, playing with many variables, to find the “true” ending and the secret endings, and this stuff is catnip for some folks.
I resist at first, preferring the subtext to the meta-text. To get lost in all the environments. But then, I find myself looking up after hours of looking at the art assets for any tiny change—I was convinced for a bit that some scuff marks on a cabinet were a clear sign that something had been moved to hide an important secret. I can’t help myself: I need to track down message boards and read theories and watch the first fledgling streams of folks looking for the deepest secrets and now I’m in it.”
7 - Minit
“It’s important to note, though, that Minit never felt too stressful for me, despite the constant timer. I typically hate timers in games—and especially Zelda games, where that constant ticking of a flipped switch or opened eye panel means you need to haul Link’s ass to whatever door or second switch you just activated. Minit is fast-paced by nature, but I rarely, if ever, felt like a door got shut in my face. If something didn’t work on one sixty-second run, it was always ok to just try it again. I was never wasting time in Minit, and therein lies its core brilliance.”
6 - All Our Asias
5 - Hitman 2
4 - Dandara
3 - Life is Strange 2 episode 1
2 - Prey: Mooncrash
“And this is where Mooncrash shines the brightest (alongside its level design and story content, which are up to par with Prey). The tools at your disposal, spread across each character, are varied and incredibly fun to mess with. Just thinking about the possibilities makes my eyes go big with excitement. I can repair machinery with Joan, and make a small army of turrets to do enemies in with. I can use Riley Yu’s typhon abilities to turn into tiny objects and sneak through holes in walls as, say, a coffee cup or pair of headphones, or resurrect phantoms from dead bodies to do my bidding.
And just because you’re playing as five different characters with five general areas of specialization doesn’t mean you’re limited in your approach to problem-solving as any individual. No, I can’t do what the main game offered, and construct a super-powered Morgan Yu here, who can do literally everything the game has to offer at once (a small sampling: hacking, mega-strength, the full suite of typhon abilities, etc.). But being clever with the GLOO cannon or the Nerf-style gun will always go a long way. As in the main game, there are several valid approaches to any given problem, not just a couple of main tech trees, Deus Ex style.”