20(20) Games You Should Have Played

2020 was an interesting year wasn't him we've had grand shifts in politics huge social movements natural disasters and i think something else happened oh i'm sure it wasn't important for whatever reason we've been stuck inside playing video games all year and a good thing too because the last 12 months have also been a very interesting time for games there was the grand rise of social titles like animal crossing lots of corporate drama with epic and apple picking a fight and microsoft buying bethesda and of course a few high-profile disasters with all that going on it's no surprise that a whole load of great games that got released in 2020 missed out on their opportunity to shine while we were all busy stabbing our friends and among us luckily that's where i come in instead of ranking the same 10 blockbusters that everyone else is every year i like to gather up 20 games that released in the last 365 days that you should have played but that you might have also missed focusing on smaller more interesting titles that are just as good if not better than their multi-million dollar rivals and deserve the same exposure to help you out i'll even put a little graphic in the corner for each game i talk about to show you the cheapest price you can get it during the obligatory end of year sales oh and by the way this list will be in broadly no particular order but i'm going to put my favorite games at the end sound good okay let's get the ball rolling with crumble grappling hooks are objectively the coolest way to get around and that's why lots of people have tried to make a platformer all about swinging away across massive gaps and momentum-based gameplay but none have truly succeeded until crumble came along crumble is a relentlessly entertaining platformer in a world of huge canyons collapsing structures and hyper-speed slides and you've got to navigate through its many levels with the help of your sticky grappling hook tongue the fundamental platforming of crumble feels amazing and there's so much scope for high level play with bunny hopping and insane skips but i feel like i've barely scratched the surface of its gameplay even after a few hours if like me you've always dreamed of the holy grail of platformer design then crumble finally delivers on that promise coffee talk is a strange game because there's not really that much to it you run a coffee shop people come in order drinks chat about their lives and that's basically it what coffee talk lacks in in-depth mechanics it makes up for with some of the chillest vibes i've ever had the pleasure of experiencing sticking it on auto mode listening to the lo-fi soundtrack which is in the background right now and just immersing myself in this urban fantasy world was a great way to wind down after a long day the characters are interesting too there's a vegan vampire an elf and a succubus trying to make their relationship work a regular cop caught in the middle of this weird fantasy world and more coffee talk even lets you do latte art and let me tell you that i am complete garbage at it next on the list is unrailed a game all about friendship trains and hating your stupid friends for ruining your awesome train in essence unrailed is a fast-paced resource management game your train keeps plowing relentlessly forwards and it's your team's job to harvest materials build tracks and clear obstacles in order to prevent the train from crashing this deceptively simple concept is elevated by some very cleverly designed upgrades and optional challenges that really push your team to survive as the train gets faster and faster with the only way to temporarily slow it down to advance to an even harder level like an ice world hell or even space each with their own hazards unrailed is rage inducing stressful friendship ruining and brilliant to play with your buddies so long as you don't mind chris not doing the water goddamn with the trains on fire oh my god moving on the pathless is the next game from giant squid who you might recognize better as the developers of the fantastic abzu and the pathless is just as good the game is all about running around a beautiful open world solving puzzles and generally exploring a really cool little fantasy universe i cannot oversay how sublime simply moving around feels in this game as you rack up hits on targets with your bow to fuel your dash and glide across huge stretches of terrain all while avoiding an ominous red clown full of badness each level culminates with a fantastic running battle against a huge boss monster that really puts all those fun movement systems to the test if that wasn't enough to sell you then consider that you also get an eagle friend and it is adorable terra neal is best described as sort of reverse factorio it's a logistics game where instead of starting you with a pristine natural wilderness to blunder you're given a post-industrial lifeless wasteland and told to return it to nature starting off with water grass then biomes of different types before finally reintroducing animals it's a very clever little resource management game that is oh so satisfying just to watch grow and change before your eyes made even better by the final stage of each level that sees you trying to delete your terraforming presence from the map entirely leaving it as if you were never there terra nil is a beautiful surprisingly challenging resource management balancing act and is a nice ray of sunshine in what's otherwise quite a cynical genre next up is water womb world a short sweet and utterly mind-boggling horror game by the legendary yams to avoid spoiling too much the game sees you playing as a catholic scientist diving deep under the ocean to investigate theories that the biblical garden of eden was actually underwater the whole time you'll catch weird fish dig up ancient artefacts and try to uncover the truth all while some very unsettling lovecraftian madness starts creeping in the deeper you dive aided by the chunky ms-dostar visuals and crackly sound design the game is about 15 minutes long and is free so if you like lovecraftian stuff and psychological surreal horror there's really no reason not to pick up water womb world water womb world water womb water water to continue the aquatic theme in other waters takes a look at the beauty of the ocean in a completely unique way because you never get to see it the entire game is displayed from the perspective of a diving suit's navigational ai as you guide a scientist across the ocean floor of an uncharted alien planet in spite of its basic visuals in other waters paints a hugely detailed ecological landscape of this underwater world and your human pal ellery's beautifully written logs are all the fuel your imagination needs the picture of fungal forests crabs that dive into sulfur and even whatever this is in other waters is a love letter to biology and the infinite complexity and adaptability of nature as well as where you humans fit in it's a great little story presented in a very clever way please pick it up the next game on the list uh well it doesn't exist it's not really a game but if it did exist it will be called there is no game wrong dimension and speaking purely hypothetically it would be a very creative meta fictional puzzle game that saw you warping between classic gaming genres solving mind-bending puzzles and listening to the heavily accented voice of the game itself as it tried to persuade you not to play now while of course this isn't a game were it to exist i'd say that behind the facade of a cute metaphysical puzzler there's some actual commentary on the struggle of being an indie dev here stemming from the game's failed kickstarter campaign luckily this non-game came out anyway and it's great so please support the developer and reward him for his passion ghost runner is the real best cyberpunk game of the year and it's 100 wall-to-wall power trippy awesomeness you play as a cyborg armed with nothing but a sword and a suite of special abilities and you need to run very fast through cool parkour levels killing baddies and feeling like a badass both you and all your enemies die in one hit meaning that the combat encounters tread this exhilarating line between success and failure as you matrix your way around bullets and pull crazy platforming stunts along the way ghost runner is pure adrenaline and has a stomach pounding electronic soundtrack that fits the mood perfectly great stuff one step from eden is a game that long time viewers of the channel may recognize as i got a chance to show it off way back a few years ago and it's been amazing to see how far the game has come put simply it's mega man battle network on crack you've got to dash around this grid casting spells from a deck you've built or while avoiding bullet hell patterns of enemy attacks one step takes the classic deadboarding vlog-like format and turns it into a fast-paced action game and the end result is great even if the game is super hard the feeling of getting into the zone and dancing around a boss's attacks while figuring out combos of your own is a white knuckle experience i won't soon forget and i have one step from eden to thank did you know that neuter means witch in finnish pretty interesting right and that's just the beginning of interesting things in noita whilst the game is obstinately about platforming through a randomly generated dungeon noita is actually a brutal playground for all sorts of really creative systemic mechanics gas can be ignited ice shatters on impact metal conducts electricity you can get covered in blood grime and potions the list is endless and you've got to use and avoid all of them to actually stand a chance in the progressively more out of control chain reaction that are neuters later levels if you're looking for a minimalist strategic experience then i'd give neuter a miss but if you want to fight a desperate battle against explosions of acid collapsing levels and lovecraftian beasties you can't go too far wrong with this as a palette cleanser let's look at fogs which may or may not be the single most sickeningly wholesome game i've ever played i mean just just look at it fox is a co-op game where each player controls one head of this weird snake dog and the game uses this interesting character dynamic for a bunch of great puzzles you can use your body like a hose you can swing from grappling points and even use your body to play golf on top of being lovely to look at fox is bursting with creativity and i was amazed to find just how much mileage the game gets out of its gimmick if you're looking for something to play with a kid significant other or family over the holidays then fongx is about 10 hours of pure joy that even managed to melt my metal heart spelunky 2 might be the most highly publicized game on my list but it's for a damn good reason spelunky 2 has the incredible honor of getting me to finally uninstall one of my favorite games of all time spelunky one spelunky 2 is arguably the most elegantly designed roguelike out there taking a simple platforming format and evolving it into this insanely deep unlayered adventure just bursting with secrets side quests and things to master i will never actually beat splunky 2 but it's really damn fun just running through its caves and getting obliterated over and over again by those bloody fire ladybirds derek you and the moss mouth team have knocked it out of the park yet again and i more than look forward to investing another 300 hours into their sophomore triumph okay so a small arachnophobia warning for this next game jump to this timestamp if you don't want to see it okay for everyone else kill it with fire is a game all about one thing and that is taking vengeance on all spider-kind for their crimes against humanity you've got bombs swords guns and a whole host of other different ways to kill these little bastards in a variety of environments what the game excels at is the panicky twitchy nature of hunting down a spider they're very hard to hit and love sneaking up on you so chasing one through your trail of destruction is great fun while spiders in real life might actually perform an important ecological role than mostly say out of our way if you've got a grocer that needs settling or you just want some cathartic carnage they might suggest molotoving an entire building and kill it with fire let's move on to lair of the clockwork god which is in equal parts platformer point-and-click and british comedy the game features dan a wannabe indie darling platformer and his mate ben a grumpy behind the times point-and-click protagonist and they've got to combine their skill sets to save the world classic video game stakes the game is a never-ending send-up of games from mockery to the designers themselves to some well-meaning jabs at the indie hits of the past 10 years all balanced out with some fantastic nonsense one early game puzzle sees you finding a toilet for ben to empty his bladder so he's light enough to be carried over a small gap he refuses to jump over and another sees you rolling a roll of duct tape through a duct that is the level of logic that the game is working on and i am all for it do you like goblins of course you do do you like tactics yeah probably do you like a feeling of constant visceral unease well then tenderfoot tactics might be for you it's a riff on the final fantasy tactic series but instead of playing as adventurous you control a band of tiny low poly goblins trying to escape from an evil fog the battles intended for are really interesting because not only can you slug it out with your enemies the world is a combatant too pits filled with water plants grow to block terrain fire rages and it's all simulated as you battle the overworld 2 is very interesting being a horrible upsetting dreamscape full of fog hallucinations and giant cat gods watching over the mortals with disinterest tenderfoot tactics is a very weird game but with a great evolution on an established format underneath the hood fantastic speaking of weird games paradise killer makes everything else look positively normal by comparison you play as a lady love dies an immortal investigator on an island paradise in a parallel dimension designed to bring alien gods back from the dead yep however the insane story gorgeous character designs and bonkers vaporwave fused with satanism aesthetic hide an incredibly well-written mystery game in a truly open world you can solve puzzles in any order talk to or ignore people whenever you like and even accuse anyone at any time of the final murder with many side mysteries and character supports that all pull you into different avenues of suspicion if you're in need of a breath of fresh air then i literally don't think you can get one much fresher than paradise killer we are 17 games down and we still haven't gotten to my favorite games you should have played of the year i basically can't decide between them these next three games are all fantastic and if you can only afford to play one game i've talked about from this whole video i highly recommend you make it one of these okay well i say one of these because there's really only one game that deserves the top spot it was many years in the making it takes heavy influence from seminal works like neuromancer and keanu reeves is in a starring role yes it's the cyberpunk sensation that is the matrix path of neo for the playstation 2. wait what do you mean it came out in 2005 ah [ __ ] uh okay i'll think of some other ones it's fine it's it's fine do you know what's cool monsters do you know what's even cooler trains monster train combines the two into a single strategy tour de force that i've just not been able to tear myself away from the game asks you to pick between two different factions of monsters from your traditional demons to these weird candle guys which you use to defend your train from hordes of angelic bad guys who want to ascend to the top to snuff out the last fire in hell forever the game plays almost like a cross between tactics games deck building and a little bit of tower defense and the semi-permanent flaws where your monsters live offer a lot of strategic depth that just can't be replicated in pure deck builders like slay the spire you can choose to specialize on a single kill floor or whittle enemies down over time or even bump key units back down the train so they can't support their allies anymore part of what i love about monster train is just how hard it commits to letting you break the game wide open you can stack a unit full of upgrades then duplicate it into an entire army you can create an unkillable monstrosity that attacks a million times a turn or truly broken combinations of spells that obliterate basically everything and learning these seemingly overpowered strategies is actually crucial for triumphing over the game's toughest difficulties monster train is so good that i even took a break midway through recording this to play a few rounds and if that's not a recommendation i don't know what is if you've watched this channel at all over the last year you're probably familiar with a little game called the longing which is genius in how it turns crushing boredom into one of the most evocative and unique video game themes i've ever seen the longing is all about babysitting this little creature called a shade who needs to wait around in this cave for 400 days while their creator can charge up enough power to wake up oh and by the way those 400 days pass in real time at least to start with all you get to do in the longing is very slowly explore a series of eerie caves and spruce up the shades home and over time you'll invariably fall in love with the little bastard will you try to make their stay in the caves more comfortable so they can fulfill their purpose will you try to help the shade escape to the surface or will you try to find another darker way to end the shades loneliness the longing asks basically nothing of the player you can literally not play it and wait for the timer to take down and you'll still be able to beat the game but it's in this open-ended minimalism that the game explores some really interesting questions why do we play games what's the best way to spend our limited time on the earth how long can it seriously take to open a door i mean come on shade the longing is the most thought-provoking game i played all year and the quintessential lockdown game you owe it to yourself to give it a try finally we have a game i've been waiting to put on an end-of-year list for years and finally it's actually come out might i present deep rock galactic ah how do i put it drg is the game you'd get if minecraft and left 4 dead had a baby abandoned it and then it got adopted by the dwarves of moria ninety percent of your time in deep rock galactic will be spent in alien infested caves with your fellow dwarfs fighting for your life while trying to complete your objectives and get home safe part of what i really love about this game is how all the classes play together the scout can zip around with his grappling hooks snagging hard to reach resources and sniping enemies the gunner gets a gliffy chewing chain gun the engineer has a suite of crazy aoe weapons and turrets to lock down an area and the driller has these two massive drills that he can use to make new channels and shortcuts no class is essential but they all bring incredibly useful utility to the table also the theme of deep rock galactic is great with all of you being expendable workers under the thumb of the drg mining corporation and that means that you really feel like you and your teammates can only rely on each other as you race back to the drop pod at the end of the mission before management leaves without you stranding you in the caves to get eaten oh in addition deep rock galactic has an unnecessarily complicated beer brewing meta game that allows you to go into missions absolutely wasted and it's the best thing ever if you're looking for the best co-op shooter of the last five years with both loads of content and a wicked sense of humor you just found it deep rock galactic rock and stone brothers and there we are 20 games that you should have played from 2020 from creative takes on narrative games to multiplayer smash hits to uh this the year has been a weird one for sure and unfortunately that's unlikely to change anytime soon so hopefully you've managed to find something that's gonna make the next few months a little bit more bearable let's hope 2021's a bit better hey but wait i'm not done yet i've still got to give a shout out to my lovely patrons who make stupid self-indulgent videos like this one possible if you fancy supporting the channel then feel free to send some of the few bugs you didn't spend on video games my way if you do you'll get an exclusive look at five extra games that didn't make it onto this year's list anyway here's a special shout out to my top tier patrons alex the launch andrew lebrano assaran ashley shade alsakav baxter hill big chess brian ortariani constantina punkt daniel medjaz david senser dirk jan karenbeld ekton edward franklin woods eugene bulkin evie philip magnus gaskell george sears greta hanerson jacob dylan riddle jesse rein joey bruno jordan gear joshua binswanger janos fekete it might be janos please tell me if it is i don't want to make that mistake again kai gillespie lee berman lucas slack lunar eagle 1996 mace window 54 max philippov nate graf nwdd patrick romberg philby the bilby redex regal regex rey's dad samuel vanderplatz sheldon hearn simon jacobson steve reilly strategy in ultima tom the fizz and chow that's it have a happy new year and have a great 2021 and if you're watching this from the future remember stay indoors and don't think about the event right i'm off to pass out bye

Channel: Adam Millard - The Architect of Games

Views: 296,913

Rating: 4.9229569 out of 5

Keywords: Games, Video Games, Gaming, PC Gaming, Adam, Adam Millard, Architect, AoG, Architect of Games, Review, Analysis, Game Design, Doom Eternal, Cyberpunk 2077, Cyberpunk, Best games of the year, 2020, best games, GOTY, Ghostrunner, Spelunky 2, Animal Crossing, Deep Rock Galactic, The Longing, Monster Train, One Step From Eden, Among Us, Hades, Paradise Killer, Water Womb World, In Other Waters, Unrailed, Coffee Talk, The Pathless, Phogs, Noita, There is No Game, Terra Nil

Id: _936J2pQk8U

Length: 20min 44sec (1244 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 31 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/ManateeofSteel]

Personally, Pathless was my second biggest disappointment of the year. I fell in love with it in the first area but by the second area it was clear that I had seen it all. And then it just repeats itself until the final boss. Very sad about that, because the art direction is strong and the setting is very original.

[u/Synavix]

Terra Nil is great if you're just looking for a free (pay what you want) game that'll last you a single afternoon. It's not very long, and it doesn't have a ton of mechanics, but every level introduces a new mechanic to play with so it feels rewarding to progress. The only real issue I had with the game when I played it a few months ago was that the balance seemed a little hit-or-miss depending on how your terrain was randomly generated. Sometimes restarting a level made the challenge feel 10x easier or harder than the previous attempt.

It sounds like the developer wants to still work on it, but I'm not sure where it's going with that.

[u/q1u2acker]

Good video. I’ve definitely overlooked The Pathless and Ghostrunner, which both seem great.

I second the recommendation for Unrailed. It’s a potentially chaotic coop game, very reminiscent of Overcooked.