watch the new star dance upon the night sky

  • 27 Dec 2024

  • 10

the 5 best games i played in 2024

this is not a “top games of 2024” list, because, as always, i failed to play more than a handful of games that were released this year. instead, these are my favorites of the… 14 or so? games i beat for the first time this year. enjoy!

i tried to limit myself to putting one game per franchise on here. sorry, dark souls 3.

1. Dark Souls (2011)

dark souls screenshot. the player character stands next to the knight solaire. both of them are staring into the sun, which takes up most of the screen. solaire says: "The sun is a wondrous body. Like a magnificent father!"ALT

a game about being one little undead warrior in a big mean world <3

dark souls! what a game! though i technically started playing this in december 2023, i think i’m allowed to count it among my 2024 games.

moreover, this is definitely going on the “favorite games of all time” list. i adore dark souls. it’s rare that i start playing a game and instantly feel like we’re speaking the same language. i love the weirdness and awkwardness of it, i love the grungy medieval fantasy atmosphere, the great characters, the difficult but satisfying combat, the incredibly memorable environments… the list goes on. there’s a reason this is a classic. it’s a very silly game and also a very clever game. i am incredibly glad that i decided to give it a try.

2. Silent Hill 2 (2001)

silent hill 2 screenshot. james sunderland steps into a dark concrete chamber containing a drop down into blackness. a prompt reads: "will you go down?" with the options "yes" and "no."ALT

a game about a man who travels to a strange, empty town in search of his dead wife.

there was this one night in october in which i played through a frankly ridiculous chunk of this game in one sitting, and afterwards i felt completely insane in a way that i have very rarely experienced!!! what did they put in silent hill 2 to make it one of the most emotionally arresting game stories i’ve ever seen? i’m still trying to answer this one. add to that some top-notch atmosphere, excellent scares, and an environmental design philosophy that makes the world seem simultaneously more real and more surreal… and you get an incredibly tight, smart game where every part of it contributes to crafting the experience.

3. Inscryption (2021)

inscryption screenshot. a gloomy-eyed green goo in a bottle sits on the table in front of two easels. leshy, the gamemaster, says "you came across... a suspicious slime..."ALT

a game about playing a life-or-death game of cards in a spooky cabin with an old man who likes to cheat.

speaking of very clever video game stories!! inscryption is a fantastic addition to the metafictional games canon. of all of the games here, i think this one surprised me the most - it plays with your expectations so deftly, and all in service of a deliciously simple meta premise. helps that the core gameplay is extremely addictive, too. this was my balatro

4. The Beginner’s Guide (2015)

the beginner's guide screenshot. a large, white, strangely-shaped interior space containing dozens of small icons with a "..." symbol on them.ALT

a game about a guy showing you a few short games his friend made.

can i put a game on this list that i haven’t played myself? though i watched courtesy play it, it’s more or less a “walking simulator” sort of a game, so i got more or less the same experience. anyway, this is another metafictional game that subverts expectations in a major way that i am still thinking about nearly a year later. unfortunately, this is another one i shouldn’t talk too much about - it’s short, you should just play it yourself.

5. Lil Gator Game (2022)

lil gator game screenshot. roy, a raccoon kid, gives the protagonist a sticky hand toy and says, "I found a hundred of those things in a dumpster behind a defunct Rick E Rat's."ALT

a game about a lil gator trying to build the best playground game ever with their friends!

not only is this a very cute game about a cute gator exploring a big island, it is also a beautifully written game about games. not in the same way as inscryption or beginner’s guide - it’s about playground games! as someone who played a lot of those as a kid, this one struck a chord with me. it’s also very creative, consistently laugh-out-loud funny, and all around charming.

honorable mentions:

Sable (2021) - what a cool world. what a cool way (and cool reason) to explore a world. this one majorly scratched my “exploring and collecting things” itch.

Dark Souls 3 (2016) - dark souls 3 is just really good, guys.

and if you want to see a list of all the games i played/experienced this year, here it is!

your character designs are incredible! do you keep anything/any thought processes in mind as you draw fanart vs how you draw ocs?
notedchampagne

OOOOOO what a fun question…

I’d say my general thought process about how to build a new character– figuring out who they are and what they do and what they’re like– is all pretty much the same across the board. The main difference between designing fan characters vs original characters is how I answer those sorts of questions.

For original characters, it can be almost overwhelming because I get to choose everything. I can make everything perfectly suited to my own tastes, except I have a broad range of things I like, and my tastes change constantly FJHFHD so depending on the project, choosing a more specific direction helps narrow things down.

Here’s some old ocs I redrew recently. They’re from an old story I’m not planning on revisiting, but it was about an art student, her little brother, and some grim reapers. Can you tell who is who?

image

I wanted the alive characters to have a lot of Opposites from the reapers. Warm vs Cool colors. Round vs Angular shapes. I wanted the reapers to look skeletal and sickly looking, and it was important that they all had some kind of hood. They needed to wear black & grey, but their colors still needed to be interesting, so they’re all tinted with a color (one is sort-of blue, one is sort-of red, one is sort-of purple).

The story is more serious, so it felt appropriate that the characters were more realistically proportioned compared to some of the cartoonier designs I tend to do. They’re still heavily stylized, and I tried to push myself to go harder on the shape language and Appeal™.

For fan characters, it’s actually a lot of fun because so much of the work has been done for you. The more source material you have to work with, the less you have to come up with.

So, an example I’m going to use is Hugh Dini, a character I came up with as part of a fan concept for a new entry in the Ace Attorney series.

Phoenix Wright’s daughter, Trucy, is a magician. She was 17 in her last appearance, and my fan concept takes place 7 years later, so she’d be 24. I decided she’d have a boyfriend who is also her assistant, and went from there.

I knew Hugh was going to be a defendant, which according to Ace Attorney rules means that he’d be falsely accused of murder. I needed to create a guy who was sympathetic, someone that you’d WANT to help prove his innocence.

image

What I did was reference existing characters from the games who fit similar archetypes and took a lot of design cues from them. I also referenced characters like Fukuo from Kiki’s Delivery Service, who is a delightful himbo wifeguy that looks a little intimidating but is actually just kinda shy. And then I looked at actual photos of stage magician costumes for additional inspiration. THEN I go back to the source material to compare design details I want to add (ex, Hugh’s high collar, his cuffs, the collar, the cape being turned into fringe on his jacket) and see if it already exists somewhere. No point in reinventing the wheel if I don’t need to!

image

I wanted him to be like a “sexy magician’s assistant”, which I thought was a funny contrast to his restrained demeanor. He needed to be flashy, but not TOO flashy that he’d upstage Trucy. And additionally, since this is a game series where the characters are mostly seen from the waist up, I tried to keep his most interesting details in the top half of his design (but honestly in hindsight, I could have given him more. like Zak Gramarye’s thigh-strap belt bag, perhaps).

Some other things I like to do when creating fan designs is to “roleplay” being the designers of the source material. If concept art is available, I reference that. I like to find the design quirks the character designers favor, and use them to make my own designs more convincing. If I’m designing something for, say, a european tv show that came out in 2005, I’d refer to the fashion and design tendencies that were most prevalent in the culture then, because that’s what the actual character designers would have been most inspired by. But I’m not perfect, I’m gonna have the biases of an american lesbian living in 2025 no matter how hard I try LMAO

Hopefully I was able to answer your question!

sabertoothwalrus

tetrafelino:

rubbercasing:

m0thmancore:

rubbercasing:

spiribia:

we do need to revisit the wording of “you can’t have your cake and eat it too” because i don’t think it clearly enough conveys that it’s more that you can’t simultaneously retain a cake and also get to consume it (which would render you cakeless). for years i was like But why not….it’s my cake….?

this fucking problem is how they caught the unabomber

hey you should uh. elaborate. for my own personal satisfaction

the unabomber was pedantic about idiomatic phrases like “have your cake and eat it too” and rephrased it to “eat your cake and have it too” (which to be very fair makes sense). fast forward to when he starts writing manifestos. he uses the phrase word for word in his pedantic style and his brother (who has been keeping his eyes on the unabomber shit for obvious reasons) notices the phrase and is like “oh fuck that’s my fucking brother no one else fucking says that” and calls in an FBI tip

Well you can’t deliberately speak in a way nobody else does and also stay anonymous you know. Can’t eat your cake and have it too.

synthwizardromance:

Trying to start some toxic yuri shit with this mech pilot, but she’s well adjusted and happily married. I called her my loyal dog and she filed an HR report fuuuuuuuuck

lovelandresort:

gomjabbar:

been listening to the knuckles raps from sa2 while pretending to not know the music is from a video game and i highly recommend the experience. really good from the perspective of a normal rapper who talks about ghosts trying to kill him and his ability to telepathically detect gemstones in the earth

i did this once while driving a classmate who knew nothing about sonic to college and she said in full seriousness ‘it’s so sad that he feels like he can’t depend on anyone but himself’

teaboot:

niltia:

drjokes:

json-derulo:

assiraphales:

I don’t think we’re rick rolling each other enough anymore. 1. it CANNOT die out 2. this under saturated market is perfect for unsuspecting victims who’ve been lulled into a false sense of security. be the person you hate. bring back the dastardly link

someone actually studied the falling Rick Roll rate for their Ph.D dissertation recently and published the paper

okay but this made me wonder if there was actually any academic literature on rickrolling and YES THERE IS this is a paper about rickrolling WITHIN academic literature. As in, studies that attempt to rickroll the people reading them. Best part is no one is going to believe me and click that link even though it’s 100% true.

My friend’s book is mentioned in this paper!!

There is no earthy way of convincing anyone that the rickroll study link is real. But for what it’s worth. It is

reasonablywittyatbest:

moniquill:

image

Scrolled past this agakn and just can’t get over how much I love it. We need to make things beautiful again and this is such a wonderful example. The beadwork on the wires of a utitarian object, contrasted with the grey concrete.

lgbtransgirl:

Ice cold takes from a Transgender Woman:

  • Not all Men are evil
  • Everyone has the capacity for evil
  • Transgender Men are men
  • Transgender Women are women
  • Excluding Cisgender Men from your spaces requires Transgender Men to out themselves if they want to engage (Same for Women)
  • Anyone can be Non-Binary, there is no “look” or requirement
  • Non-binary masculine presenting people should be welcome in queer spaces, many are just treated as men and predators
  • Non-binary feminine presenting people should be welcome in queer spaces without being seen as “Woman-Lite”
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