From epic political fantasy to haunted poker, here are some of 2024’s best video games

It was a strange year for the video games industry.

The deluge of layoffs of 2023 continued into 2024, with studios being shut down and publishers like Sony and Microsoft shedding hundreds of jobs or more.

While the gaming business continues to be risky — especially after the pandemic lockdown boom cooled — many critically acclaimed games big and small hit consoles, PCs and mobile.

Some of them, including Astro Bot and Balatro, were celebrated at The Game Awards in Los Angeles last night. (The CBC is a member on its jury that helps vote for the winners.)

Here are the best titles of 2024, as chosen by CBC gaming enthusiasts.

Animal Well

Nintendo Switch, Sony PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC

Animal Well is a 2D puzzle platformer where you control a tiny bouncing blob with eyes thrown into a mazelike world that evokes classic games like Metroid. It was lovingly crafted by a single developer, Billy Basso, over seven years. He created the beautiful art style, the music and, most importantly, the seemingly endless layers of puzzles sure to delight and confound you. This well goes much, much deeper than it first lets on.

Many of the puzzles don’t have one set way to solve them. Instead, the game gives you a suite of tools and leaves you to figure out how to use them to overcome what’s in front of you. It leads to moments where you feel like you’ve outsmarted the creator — an extremely satisfying and hard-to-pull-off design accomplishment. — Sean Trembath

Astro Bot

PlayStation 5

Almost no one makes 3D run-and-jump video games anymore, but Team Asobi’s latest proves that Nintendo isn’t the only one who can pull it off. The ingenious level designs flip expectations on your head as your chibi robot rockets across pits with a dog-slash-rocket pack, or shrinks to the size of an ant to view the world through a microscope.

It’s also a love letter to the history of PlayStation, with hundreds of Funko Pop-like representations of past characters. While it makes me want more actual follow-ups to Ape Escape or Jumping Flash, Astro Bot — this year’s game of the year at the Game Awards — is a breath of fresh air. — Jonathan Ore

Balatro

Switch, PlayStation 5, PC, Mobile

Balatro, a solitaire-like game with poker elements, appears deceptively simple at first: create poker hands out of a selection of cards to score points in the form of chips with increasingly large blinds. 

The genius of Canadian indie designer LocalThunk’s game comes in the hundreds of modifiers that can inflate and multiply your score, as special versions of playing cards, enchanted tarot cards and joker cards starring a creepy clown named Jimbo enter the fray.

Before long, you’re concocting multilayered schemes to score millions of points in one round, as real-time hours evaporate into the void. That secret sauce earned Balatro three Game awards, including best debut indie game. — Jonathan Ore

Dragon Age: The Veilguard

PlayStation 5, Xbox, PC

The veil holding magic and demons at bay is at threat of being torn down. In steps Rook, our unlikely hero, to unite factions and uncover secrets and prevent a penitent Elven god from wreaking havoc on the world. 

Dragon Age: The Veilguard is a fresh-faced revival for the decades-old franchise beloved by fantasy RPG players everywhere. Where older games were complicated and clunky, Veilguard streamlines and simplifies, while still crafting a compellingly rich cast of characters. With callbacks to old storylines and plenty of opportunities to learn the lore, this game will satisfy long-time fans and total newbs. — Danielle McCreadie

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

PlayStation 5

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth takes on the impossible task of revisiting and recontextualizing the most infamous character death in video game history. Square-Enix’s retelling of the seminal 1997 role-playing game stumbles in spots, as it blows up quiet moments into bombastic set pieces more often than needed.

But that doesn’t get in the way of the dozens of hours you’ll spend exploring the vibrant landscapes along the way, while encountering fantastical monsters and charming supporting characters. The new side stories featuring Cloud and his mercenaries will bring a smile to any fan’s face. Sometimes it all comes down to saving a neighbour’s dog, set to the nostalgia-tugging tunes that won best score and music at the Game Awards. — Jonathan Ore

Metaphor ReFantazio

PlayStation 4/5, Xbox, PC

Have you ever wanted to become king or queen? Metaphor gives you a window into a fantasy world where anyone can be royalty, as long as you win the people’s hearts in a tournament for the ages.

This turn-based RPG from the makers of the Persona series reinvents the genre by offering a mix of real-time action and turn-based combat. Where it really shines, though, is the incredible narrative it weaves, sold by its extremely talented voice actors in a heartfelt story with twists and turns aplenty.

It’s a game you’ll be thinking about long after the credits roll — it earned three Game awards, including best narrative and art direction. — Ryan Turford

Mouthwashing

PC

Mouthwashing is a strange experience, set on an interstellar delivery ship that is weeks away from a crash landing. The game follows the former and current captains and their crew, who are trying to make the best of their doomed voyage. Each sequence shows the crew getting more and more unhinged, as it becomes clear there’s no escaping their fate.

The gameplay is straightforward: you solve puzzles, escape looming, hallucinatory creatures, and talk to your shipmates. Yet whether it’s the giant text shrieking “TAKE RESPONSIBILITY” or the way the story slips between reality and dreams, developer Wrong Organ has figured out how to make sure its style and substance sing together. — Arman Aghbali

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown

Switch, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox, PC

If you’ve never played a Prince of Persia game before, here’s the gist: some mystery, some crossed swords, some time travel. What makes The Lost Crown special is that it can make you feel invincible — if you respect every parry, every jump and how many health potions you have.

A classic platformer role-playing game with a huge map designed for unravelling and revisiting, The Lost Crown throws you into the story and action, with strong voice acting and satisfying combat. Plan to spend hours executing the perfect leaps and spins to get all the hidden secrets. — Anand Ram

The Rise of the Golden Idol

Switch, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox, Mobile (via Netflix)

The sequel to 2022’s The Case of the Golden Idol continues Color Gray Games’ reinvention of the classic point-and-click adventure game genre with a series of delicious murder mysteries set in the 1970s.

Every level is a snapshot in time that depicts a tense scene, be it the moment a scientist spontaneously bursts into flames or the moment a couple discovers a fresh corpse in the snow.

Players will find themselves staring at a scene for half-hours at a time, wondering if they’ve missed a critical clue. But once the story fully reveals itself, you’ll feel like the world’s greatest detective. — Jonathan Ore

Silent Hill 2

PlayStation 5, PC

James Sunderland receives a letter from his wife, Mary, that claims she’s waiting for him in a town called Silent Hill. The only problem? Mary died three years ago.

Delightfully terrifying, this remake of the 2001 classic uses 3D audio and visual design to limit the player’s vision and evoke an overall sense of dread. It balances simple yet effective combat and an array of unique puzzles with options to adjust the difficulty of each separately. 

For fans of the series, there are many Easter eggs all through the town that gesture toward the original. While the eerie atmosphere of the game almost never let me feel safe, unravelling the mystery and learning more about James and Mary’s relationship was enough to pull me back in time, again and again. — Natasha Ramoutar

Tactical Breach Wizards

PC

This game puts you in command of a crack spec ops squad — except your crew features a wannabe detective-witch who can chain lightning between enemies and a “necro-medic” who resurrects her allies by shooting them in the head with a revolver.

While other tactics games can be unforgiving, Tactical Breach Wizards lets you rewind your turn over and over again until you get something that resembles perfection. It makes you feel like a genius, and the typically English humour of creator Tom Francis shines throughout this surprisingly poignant world-spanning story.

Thank Goodness You’re Here

Switch, PlayStation 4/5, PC, MacOS

Comedy is a tricky subject in video games, as the need for perfect timing is complicated by the player’s control potentially throwing everything off. TGYH fixes this by making the entire game a big box of jokes.

You play a repairman — who’s as tall as a pint glass with a lemon for a head — in the fictional northern English town of Barnsworth helping out residents with odd jobs. Humour varies wildly from dry British wit to absurdist gross-out gags, sort of like a cross between Black Adder and Rocko’s Modern Life.

Where most games elicit a chuckle at best, TGYH regularly summons raucous belly laughs. It’s the funniest video game in years. — Jonathan Ore