Dann’s Must Plays of 2024 involve dangerous, precise undersea missions to haul resources and busybody clerics during elections.
End of year lists are always utterly terrifying because they demand that you look back over the entire year at all of the games that you have, and haven’t played.
That said, 2024 has been really exciting gaming year for me. I helped organise a 50-indie strong event (Brilliant Indie Treasures) with Jupiter and some others, IGPlus returned from hiatus, and other outlets that I’m attached to had some really cool opportunities arise (I’m keeping that one vague). I also played more games than ever, with about 800 games played for event judging. And that’s before ones I sought out to play in my spare time or through general curiosity.
When I started writing this I was originally going to do five games and five demos, however, I got too carried away and have trimmed this down to one of each, as well as a list of honourable mentions (In fact, the header image of this article is simply my honourable mentions).
Feed the Deep
When it comes to talking about independently developed games, we often talk about innovation rather than refinement. I think, at least in my case, that’s because the annual-release churn that took over AAA gaming created a situation where a new core mechanic (climb high, skill trees, collectibles) would appear and then immediately become duplicated into the next.
For me, taking something that’s commonplace or already been tried and tested and then building off of that, or tightening it all the way up, is far more forward-thinking. Iteration rather than Innovation, if you will.
Feed the Deep does exactly this. It feels incredibly familiar – and that’s because it is. We’ve all played Lunar Lander-like games where we have limited fuel and forces (gravity, drag) working against us; we’ve all played games where we link and tow objects; and we’ve all played against mysterious, deadly darkness and the creatures that loom within. Feed The Deep takes a simple 2D-exploration platformer, and sends you on short missions based around resource gathering and upgrades. The more you tow, the slower you move. But maybe you’ve upgraded your air, or got enough ammo to scare off anything that comes after, or maybe you’ve lit the whole area to keep the darkness at bay.
Sprinkled over the top of that is its story of feeding the beast to keep it away from the floating cities where humanity now dwells, but there’s also a surprising number of minigames for what is a one-man project. Minigames and mechanic/control flips are always a hallmark of quality for me, and make this game one of my Must Plays of 2024.
I’ve never quite figured that one out.
Feed the Deep is available now on Steam.
Esoteric Ebb (Demo)
Disco Elysium was a whole thing, a moment in time, a phenomenon. So much so that the brains behind it can’t seem to properly form up for their next game without suing each other (there’s a great piece on this by Ted Litchfield over on PC Gamer). Luckily, we’ve now got the bizarrely-named-out-of-context Disco-like subgenre, and chief among those, for me, is Esoteric Ebb.
Esoteric Ebb takes the Disco Elysium formula of ‘Dissociative Identity Disorder’-adjacent voiced attributes and sets you free in a world closer to D&D, with you taking on the role of a freshly revived cleric who ends up with their nose stuck right into the middle of a world-changing election. There’s humour, fantastic artwork, but critically, the writing is incredibly well done and provisions have been made for any befuddlingly broken mish-mash of attributes.
Esoteric Ebb is currently in development, but in the meantime, you can grab a demo on Steam.
Honorable Must Plays of 2024
ANTONBLAST, Balatro, Henry Halfhead (Demo), Holstin (Demo), Seafrog (Demo), SKALD: Against the Black Priory, ‘Sorry, We’re Closed’, SULFUR, and Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom.
And some games out of time that I’ve loved this year: Battle Brothers, Cassette Beasts, Clone Drone in the Danger Zone, House of the Dying Sun, Lil Gator Game, The Bookwalker, The Wandering Village, and Yoku’s Island Express.
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