Hell I didn't know there was a thread for this - will add in what I've got here tomorrow. Wasn't even going for the challenge but I'm doing well anyway so may as well
Started off the year with a bunch of quick games out of the backlog. Those first 5 I think I all finished in the first 2 weeks of January. Slowed down quite a bit after that... until recently after the summer sale and I beat 4 more so far
1.
Rituals - 1 hour
It's a neat little Myst-light. Not a whole lot to add. I think I got it from a bundle and I enjoyed my brief play.
2.
Tengami - 1 hour
Lovely presentation, pretty light on the puzzles but there are some. If it was longer it would oustay its welcome but was pleasant for what it was.
3.
Back to Bed - 1 hour
More of a serious puzzle game this time. The character auto-moves once you start the level so you have to move objects around to alter his path and get them to the goal. Some interesting mechanics, nothing mind blowing but a solid little puzzler.
4.
Out there Somewhere - 1.25 hours
A mini-metroidvania, kind of cute, kind of hard, mostly just fun for a bit of an afternoon.
5.
Corporate Lifestyle Simulator - 2 hours
It's a top-down-ish shmup that even at 2 hours short was too long. Kind of funny in parts but not really worth note in any way that I can think of.
6.
Empyrion: Galactic Survival - 22 hours
Played this with my brother about 5 months of patches ago. A kind of Minecraft-survival-sci-fi mashup, some rough edges but the basic game was plenty fun if you like that kind of creative survival game. It's EA and they've patched it a TON since I played so it's probably even more fun now. Plus you get to build your own ships and pew-pew drones with it.
7.
Viscera Cleanup Detail: Shadow Warrior - 1.5 hours
Meh. The concept is better than the realization of it in my opinion. I think maybe there could be a better game in this niche but a bunch of the "gameplay" just becomes incredibly tedious very quickly.
8.
Year Walk - 2 hours
One of my favorites of these shorter games, it's based on an old folk tradition and includes a bunch of lore-based characters and scenes. It's really well presented, has some interesting puzzles to piece together, and is creepy in a good way (except for the one dumb jump scare). I think I played through it twice actually to get the other ending. Highly recommend reading the journal and lore in-game as you are able.
9.
The Stanley Parable - 2 hours
Another really good short game, I spent entirely too long trying to get different reactions to things.
10.
Diablo 3 Season 5 & 6 (and soon 7 & 8) season journeys - ~30 hours
I was tracking each season separately in my own spreadsheet but that seems to be against the spirit of the thread so I'm lumping them all in here. I really enjoy what the seasons bring, even though I mostly just want to reroll Monk every time~
11.
Grim Dawn - 25 hours
I wanted to like this a lot more than I did. It just felt verrrrrryyyyyy grindy to get through, you dump a lot of "skill" points into raw stats, and there's no way to like "quick level" a character to try out different builds, at least not when I played it. If there ever is a character builder or something in-game I would mess with it for at least another 25 hours I imagine.
12.
Hyper Light Drifter - 13 hours
Maybe my GOTY so far. I backed it on Kickstarter and am glad I did. It has amazing aesthetics, sound design, music, atmosphere, the gameplay is very tight and rewarding. There came a room early on (because I went the hard way I guess) that killed me maybe 8-9 times but I just hopped back from the checkpoint and went at it each time. The checkpoints are pretty forgiving which makes the super hard rooms less frustrating and more fun. The boss fights range from smooth and easy to chaos and pain depending what you're good at doing. The world building is told through pictures and observation as you travel, which reminds me of SotC, another of my favorites. I have no problem recommending this even at full price. The only reason I don't have more hours (and 100%) is because I wanted to prioritize playing other games first.
13.
Rise of the Tomb Raider - 29
Felt like a direct improvement to Tomb Raider 2013 to me. The tombs are way more interesting, there's a lot more platforming and puzzling. The story is not great but honestly if you're exploring a lot the story is a small portion of the game.
14.
SUPERHOT - 1.8 hours
A first-person-action-puzzler, it is a really cool system. I'm curious if we'll see inspiration from this in more normal games, like an FPS where you can pause, queue up some actions, and unpause as a replacement to bullet time.
15.
Assassin's Creed: Syndicate - ~28 hours
I've only really played AC IV before this, but I heard decent things and I love the setting so I went for it. And indeed, I loved the setting, running around London and solving problems and generally being a badass. The DLC adds a preposterous amount of side missions, and I quite liked some of them (The Dreadful Crimes in particular).
16.
The Talos Principle - 19 hours
It was a lot more Portal-y than I expected, I hadn't looked at the game much and was thinking it was more of a Myst-style game. Still, I liked the presentation, the philosophical stuff that was built up as you play, the graphics + music combined to be just excellent. There were times when I literally just stopped and looked around and enjoyed the scenery and sounds. I liked the approach to the multiple endings, as well. There were 1 or 2 puzzles I just didn't have the mindset for and it sort of felt a little long by the end, but still a very excellent game.
17.
Axiom Verge - 9 hours
I have not played Super Metroid in years, but I can see where the comparison comes from. This is a great Metroidvania with all that genre usually entails. My only complaint is no fast travel between saves, which seems to be missing in a lot of Metroidvanias sadly. It's just an annoying omission in my opinion.
18.
Shadow Complex Remastered - 7 hours
Never played Shadow Complex: not remastered so no comparison there, but this was a fun kinda light metroidvania game. Again, no fast travel, which sucks. That is compounded by the fact that a lot of the upgrades are much more linear than it looks like, which means I got 95% of the way to one only to realize I needed a different one on the other end of the map first. That happened a couple times and it detracted a bit.
19.
HunieCam Studio - 4 hours
I enjoyed HuniePop a lot as a fairly interesting match-3 game, and it had boobs so hey bonus. For $2 I figured I'd dabble in the clicker genre as I've never played a clicker game before. There's not a lot to the game but there's different strategies that seem viable, and the different achievements can give you artificial goals to work towards if you want. I would have enjoyed more of the HuniePop style art but they clearly were going for something else here and that's fine.
20.
Apotheon - 8 hours
I don't think I appreciated this game as much as I should have. The graphics are gorgeous throughout, the style working shockingly well in-game the whole way. The hubs are much bigger than they need to be with side houses and secrets aplenty to explore. The combat is really weird at first but you get used to it and it's certainly novel (with some tuning I think it could be great). The story is basically God of War 1-3 except with a silent protagonist. It's not really a metroidvania as there's no upgrades that help you move around, but you do get better weapons and items as you explore. It's pretty enough and novel enough to recommend for like a sale price.
21.
Renowned Explorers: International Society - 4 hours
I only played through one game, but managed to eek out the win in the end through reloading the last fight a bunch of times basically. It's a neat game, but I feel like the rogue-like detracts from a game where the runs are this long. If there was a more stable core with the random elements being a little less impactful that'd be more enjoyable to me but I still may go play it again later.
22.
Ghost 1.0 - 13 hours
The third of the metroidvanias I bought during the summer sale, this was probably my favorite. It also has fast travel, so perhaps that's the key to my heart. I like the variety of weapons, the upgrades you can get, I enjoyed the story and character banter, and the "ghost" mechanic was fun. The one non-combat level was way way way too long (you CAN skip it but I wanted to play it out) but otherwise a great game.
More to come!