[Last December I did an end-of-year recap thing](https://lemmy.world/post/9684257) that got a lot of fun comments. Thought I'd do it again this year! What games did you complete (or just play a lot of)? What did you think about them? Highlights? Lowlights? Might be a good chance to find some hidden gems while the Steam sale is on too. I finished a surprisingly large number of games this year. Sorted by date completed, oldest first... **A Short Hike | 8/10** Cute, short, and fun. Perfect game to start the year. **Inside | 8/10** Limbo was the very last game I completed in '23, and I definitely preferred Inside overall. I liked the atmosphere, visuals, and puzzles more here. **Hook 2 | 7/10** **NABOKI | 6/10** **Up Left Out | 6/10** I bought these three as part of a bundle. Short and fun puzzle games, nothing super memorable. **Firewatch | 7/10** Definitely an enjoyable time, great voice acting, but the ending was kind of underwhelming. **Cyber Hook | 7/10** I really like this style of 3D platformer, but there aren't a lot of them. The only other one I can think of is Grapple, which was hugely underrated. **Lunistice | 6/10** Cute art style, but I remember the controls feeling a little bit janky. **Slay the Princess | 8/10** Fuckin' weird, I love it. **Unpacking | 6/10** I was disappointed that I didn't vibe with this one very much. Telling the story through the items you own is a super cool idea, but I just couldn't get myself to really care about where to place the items which is the entire gameplay loop. **Hades | 10/10** (Top 3 of the Year) I don't like roguelikes, so I skipped Hades for a long time, but I finally gave in. I LOVED my time with this. The meta progression was done well enough that I felt like I was still making progress overall so the roguelike-ness never bothered me, and every other aspect of this game is perfection. My highest rated game of the year because I cannot find a reason to take a point away. **Trail Out | 7/10** Something something imitation, something something flattery. This is a Flatout game, but it's honestly a pretty good one. I had a fun time with it, but I'd never take this over Flatout 2. **art of rally | 7/10** I'm not a huge fan of top-down racers but with some tweaks in the camera settings it's bearable. What really hurts this game is the penalty/recovery system, it's so eager to reset your car the moment you go off the track, even if only by a hair, it destroys the flow. Graphics are beautiful though. **Hot Wheels Unleashed | 6/10** It's fine. Super repetitive, lootbox-esque progression is stupid, but it's mechanically sound. I would only recommend if you're desperate for arcade racers like I am. **Loddlenaut | 7/10** I love how cleaning games have become a genre. This is a short and sweet game about cleaning the ocean, I had a good time with this one on the Steam Deck. **Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 | (the PS2 one) | 9/10** There's a decent chance this was the first video game I ever played. If not the first, it's at least among the first couple. I've started so many saves but never actually finished the career mode until now. Aside from the career structure being a bit boring, it's still a highlight of the franchise for me. Beautiful tracks, beautiful cars, top tier early '00s soundtrack, great handling, I love this game. **Gear.Club Unlimited 2 | 6/10** Look, I'm really desperate for arcade racers, okay? This one isn't a live service, isn't always online, no lootboxes, no battle passes, I'll take it. **Toem | 7/10** Cute, but there were several times throughout my playthrough where it felt like what should've been the solution wasn't, and the actual solution made less sense than what I was trying to do, which was a bit frustrating. **Hi-Fi Rush | 9/10** The score went up an entire point when The Prodigy - Invaders Must Die started playing. I really hope this gets a sequel. **Burnout Revenge | 9/10** Another game I've started many times and never finished. NFS:HP2 may have been a nostalgia-driven 9/10, but this is a genuine 9/10. Absolutely puts everything from the past 10 years of this genre to shame. **DiRT 4 | 6/10** Painfully dull. DiRT Rally is a way better sim, DiRT 2/3/5 are way better arcade racers, there is no reason to ever touch this. I finished it because I am desperate for racing games. **Ghostrunner II | 7/10** This one didn't vibe with me as much as the first, and I'm not really sure why. The bike levels were a bit janky but were still fun for variety, and I still liked the game overall, but I'm more likely to replay the first than this. **SPRAWL | 9/10** (Top 3 of the Year) If SPRAWL didn't have a soundtrack, it would be an 8/10, good time, recommend. However, [I have had this goddamn soundtrack on repeat since playing it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9f_YzULsmE). This is my favorite video game OST and it's not even remotely close. This is a neurofunk album with a video game tie-in. **Blur 8/10** The fact that when I first played this I instantly got a message from a friend I hadn't talked to in years asking "HOW DID YOU GET A STEAM KEY" says so much about the legacy of this game. It existed for such as short period of time and was horribly underrated. (I *wish* I owned this game on Steam, but it was a non-Steam copy.) **Webbed | 7/10** Cute platformer, don't really much about it at the moment besides skateboarding spiders. **Bastion | 8/10** Played after putting many more hours into Hades to see where Supergiant came from. I was impressed by how well it holds up, fun to see earlier concepts that Hades would perfect. **Old School Rally | ?/10** Technically an early access game, but I finished all the available career events. Very promising PS1-style rally game. **Stories: The Path Of Destinies | 8/10** You ever have one (or hundreds) of those games you got in a Humble Bundle 5 years ago and just never touched? This was one of those, I randomly decided to play it, and it was great! Fantastic voice acting, fun story, fun combat, I wish I played it sooner. **Exo One | ?/10** I don't know what's going on and at this point I'm too afraid to ask. I think I launched a marble at Jupiter? **Hardspace: Shipbreaker | 8/10** This was my podcast game for a while. Not very deep, but it's fun to gradually tear ships apart. Definitely recommend playing on the lower difficulty, having to worry about O2 and stuff kills the vibe. **To the Moon | 5/10** Explaining why I don't like this game involves major spoilers. To keep it vague, I really don't like how they handled one of the characters in the story. If you've played the game, you either understand or think I'm insane because apparently this is a masterpiece. **ExoCross | 6/10** Very basic offroad racer. Used to be named "DRAG" but then the developers were bought by iRacing. The game seems like it was frantically rushed out of early access after that. The native Linux port is excellent though. **RUINER | 7/10** 10/10 vibes, 5/10 gameplay. **Furi | 8/10** "That final boss sure was easy... oh? oh! OH FUCK!" followed by many deaths until I finally won. **Pseudoregalia | 8/10** 10/10 movement/controls, but the environments felt a little bland. There's an accessibility option to put pants on your character. **Guacamelee!: Super Turbo Championship Edition | 6/10** It's fine, but nothing especially noteworthy compared to other metroidvanias I've played. **Redout II | 9/10** (Top 3 of the Year) *(I played with the assists off because I am a stubborn bastard, I have no idea how the assists change the gameplay.)* Redout II will repeatedly punch you in the face until your brain wraps itself around controlling these 2700km/h deathtraps. But trust me, once you get good, it's euphoric. One of my favorite gaming experiences this year was missing out on a gold medal in a time trial by several seconds and thinking "how the fuck is this possible"? And then I tried again. And again. Going faster, and faster, until I had *beaten* the gold time by several seconds. Every time you think you can't go any faster, you're wrong, just be better. **Crayon Physics Deluxe | 5/10** Great idea for a puzzle game, but the janky physics made it more frustrating than fun. **The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim | 7/10** It's fine, but doesn't really feel like it lives up to the hype surrounding it. **Mini Motor Racing X | 6/10** Painfully dull career mode, but I'm desperate for arcade racers. **Parking Garage Rally Circuit | 7/10** Short but fun. **Minecraft | ?/10** I haven't beaten Minecraft in probably 10 years, so I started and new save and beat the game again for the hell of it. I'm not sure how to rate Minecraft out of 10 at this point. **Jusant | 9/10** Super beautiful and chill, I recommend avoiding spoilers and just playing it. **Dome Keeper | 7/10** Trying to keep the Hades "maybe I don't hate roguelikes" thing going, so I got Dome Keeper. I feel like it's too easy and there's not enough variety in runs, but I still had some fun with it. **Dead Cells | 8/10** And finally, one more roguelike. I've "beaten" the game, as in I've reached the credits, but only 0BC. Still playing it, but won't be chasing 5BC or anything like that. I do wish there was more meta progression with this one, a lot of runs feel like a complete waste of time which is my main problem with roguelikes, but the core gameplay is excellent.

Long story short: I don’t like iOS but have been using an iPhone for a couple years due to lack of personally viable hardware options on the Android side of things. I’ve gotten tired of waiting and found a good deal on an open box Pixel 8 Pro which arrives in a few days, I’ll be installing GrapheneOS on it. I’ve used GrapheneOS before on a Pixel 3a. I’m familiar with some must-haves like F-Droid+Aurora Store and AntennaPod, but are there any other apps I should check out once the phone gets here that I’ve been missing out on during my time on iOS? Or just any recommendations at all for cool/useful apps that most people wouldn’t think to search for? Bonus question for *sonic/Navidrome users, what’s your favorite Android client? I used Substacks last time I daily drove GrapheneOS, but it looks like it might not be actively maintained anymore.

Back on the other website, there used to be a sub called r/12in12 where people would try to beat 12, 24, 36+ games per year. I never really set myself any specific target like that, but the end of year reviews were always fun to read/write. Considering that I don't think a single game I beat came out this year, I think this is the right community to ask this. What games did you beat this year? What did you think of them? For me: *January:* Nothing! *February:* **Spider-Man: Miles Morales 7/10** When I first played Spider-Man on a PS4, I didn't like it. The 30fps cap made the swinging feel clunky and nothing about the rest of the game made up for it. The PC release finally comes around and at last I get the hype, the web swinging is so good. The combat is very Arkham and it's fine, the story is fine, but the web swinging is just so good. Spider-Man Miles Morales is just more of that. **The Zachtronics Solitaire Collection** ?/10 This game is responsible for Steam thinking that Solitaire is one of my favorite genres of games. There are multiple versions of the game here, most of them are fine but Fortune's Foundation is probably my new favorite version of Solitaire. I don't know what I'd rate this out of 10, but I got 90 hours of entertainment for my $10. *March:* **Split / Second** 8/10 The PC port sucks, you have to use a fan patch to remove the 30fps cap, the controller support is terrible, but there's nothing else like it. It's a fantastic arcade racer with a super unique premise. The rest of the industry seeing this and Blur bombing financially is probably why racing games are so goddamn anemic now which is such a shame. *April:* **Rakuen** 7/10 I've never really gotten into any RPG Maker games like this, but it had great reviews and I needed something battery-friendly to play on my Steam Deck. Rakuen was pretty darn good, the characters are well written and the environments outside of the hospital are pretty. The story is a little predictable, but I think that's fine what it wanted to tell. *May:* **Hotshot Racing** 6/10 What's here is fun, but there's almost nothing here. I beat the entire campaign in about an hour. The AI rubber-banding was a bit annoying at times. Also re-reading the Steam page, apparently it has always-online DRM? The fuck? *June:* **Universal Paperclips** ?/10 I was in the mood for a clicker game. I tried Cookie Clicker first but the pacing is just so slow. Universal Paperclips is a clicker game that can be completed in a reasonable amount of time, and it scratched the itch I was looking for. *July:* **Wilmot's Warehouse** 8/10 https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Ai4NZnjOdUE/maxresdefault.jpg **Super Meat Boy** 5/10 I've forced myself to start this game so many times over the years, I finally completed it and I just don't like it. Way too janky/buggy for a simple 2D platformer. I beat the final level 3 times and couldn't figure out what to do at the end, only for it to turn out that the final cutscene wasn't activating because my frame rate was too high. Ugh. It just made me want to play N++ again. **Ape Out** 9/10 Ahhh it's so good. The soundtrack and sound effects and visuals, it's just perfect. A little on the short side (only took 1:40 to beat), but it's pretty replayable. **Neodash** 7/10 It's basically Distance but worse. Distance is one of my favorite games of all time and is firmly a 10/10, so that's not necessarily a bad thing. Any levels that rely on the mid-air controls bring down the experience a bit, but luckily there aren't a ton of those. *August:* **CrossCode** 10/10 A top-down RPG with a ~50-hour story? I should hate this, but everything clicked into just the right place. The puzzles are fun (maybe a little too long), the combat is great, the characters are great, the story is great, I did not expect to love this game as much as I did. **Sayonara Wild Hearts** 6/10 It's basically a 1-hour music video. It's very pretty and the songs are good, but the gameplay just kind of... exists. **Mad Max** 6/10 It's a beautiful looking game and the vehicle combat is fun, but everything else is pure mid-2010s generic open world game, complete with Arkham combat. **Riptide GP2** 6/10 It's fine, but there's absolutely no reason to play this over Riptide GP Renegade unless you're really board and looking for a grindy podcast game like I was. Renegade is just this but better in every way. It is a bummer that there are so few boat (or boat-adjacent) racing games coming out these days. **WRC Powerslide** 4/10 It's insanely repetitive and the driving physics are really floaty. The power-ups are awful but luckily they can be turned off in settings. The damage model is actually really good though, which is bizarre for a top-down racer. This got delisted from Steam years ago, if I didn't already own it, I would not go out of my way to play it. **The Vanishing of Ethan Carter** 7/10 It's a fun little walking simulator mystery game, I don't remember much of the actual story right now lol. I played the remastered version which was very pretty though. **Quantum Conundrum** 7/10 It's a 6/10 puzzle game brought up by a full point because of John de Lancie's character. *September:* **Hotline Miami** 8/10 I know it's technically kind of a mess, but like everyone else I really loved it anyway. The soundtrack is excellent and clearing rooms is super satisfying. Raycevick's video really makes me want to play OXTO next. **PowerWash Simulator** 8/10 The perfect podcast game. *October:* **Cassette Beasts** 8/10 The Pokemon games have always sounded interesting to me, but I've just never been able to get into any of them as an adult. Cassette Beasts finally scratched that itch for me, and this works way better as a concept than the Pokemon games do for me. As a bonus, the story is surprisingly good as well. Also it's made in Godot! **Sonic Generations** 5/10 I don't like the Sonic games, but I've always heard this is one of the good ones so I decided to play it. A couple of the levels were fun, but most were just frustrating and/or buggy. For a character who's entire thing is going fast, the levels sure like constantly slowing you down with obstacles that cannot be seen coming. **The Witness** 6/10 90% of the levels in this game are good and clever, where finding the solution is fun and satisfying. The remaining 10% includes puzzles where the entire screen is flashing to make it hard to look at, puzzles where the answer still makes no sense even after googling it, and puzzles that cannot be solved unless you solve a different puzzle first with no indication of where that's the case. The story is also nonsense but luckily it's easily ignored. [This video was so cathartic after finishing the game.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZokQov_aH0) **Doom Eternal** (& The Ancient Gods) 8/10 ["Doom Eternal is a game with so much testosterone dripping from its orifices that it caused me to create a son via mitosis"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKPYOfZpegc) *November:* **Superliminal** 8/10 My primary complaint is that it isn't longer. It took a little over an hour and a half to reach the end, but what's here is fantastic. *December:* Nothing again, lol