Celine's Gameblogging Awards 2017

[kjorteo]

2017, in real life, was a year of major ups and major downs. I'll get more into that in my annual year-end post, which will happen closer to the end of the month.

2017 in gaming, though? Ups across the board. I played so many great things this year. Sure, the amount of games I played (24 complete and 5 abandoned, counting AM2R and Mega Man Unlimited twice each) pales in comparison to others in this whole Dreamwidth gameblogging circle we've established here, but the ones I played, I largely loved. I got some major ones that had been haunting me for years finally cleared, and I experienced some all new ones in which I fell deeply and instantly in love. I didn't play as many games but I played some amazing games, and I'm delighted to be honoring them.

So, let's get started, shall we?


Rita Repulsa award for Achievements in Backlog Liberation
Some games are long, some are hard, some have just been in the backlog forever. Whatever the reason, this award honors the games whose eventual completion made me say, "Finally! After ten thousand years, I'm free! It's time to conquer Earth!"

Nominees:
Adventures of Lolo 3
Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers
Solar 2
TIS-100

From the beginning, one of my goals with this category was that I wanted to keep it from being negative, or at least from being too negative. This is a celebration of an accomplishment, an award to honor the game that gave me the biggest sense of triumph and relief to have gone through it. It's not supposed to be to poke fun at the biggest "Oh thank God that's over and I never have to put up with it again" game this year, although there's always going to be at least a little of that, too.

PMD: Explorers definitely had its share of "Oh God please end already" moments, especially because I was playing Explorers of Darkness, so a lot of the quality of life improvements from Sky weren't available. The postgame drags until the Darkrai arc starts. Even after the plot picks up, Dark Crater is about the worst non-optional thing a PMD game has ever done to me. By the end, I was cheating with Wonder Mail missions to B1F of Beach Cave just to pass days because I didn't want to Mystery Dungeon anymore.

But then I saw the Sky special episodes, which brings us to the other side of this award.

After crying my eyes out over In the Future of Darkness, I fell hard into the PMD Explorers fandom. Once I had beaten the game and didn't have to worry about spoilers anymore, I was free to enjoy videos like [spoilers] this one. Or pictures like [spoilers] this one. Or like [spoilers] this one. Or like [spoilers] this one. Or like [spoilers] this one. Or like...

You get the idea. And far from being a mere consumer of fandom, this game even hit me so strongly that it inspired my own creative output. This is years down the line, don't hold your breath or anything, but I'm actually working on a PMD-inspired concept album with davidn. It has the tentative working title of Beyond Time and Darkness and currently has around 9 ideas for where X particular song will go, at various levels of completion. We even have a little WIP teaser from what we assume will be track four (counting the obligatory power metal intro track, so the third actual song,) called "So This Is the Sunrise".

I think you can see where I'm going with this. Yes, it was an immense relief to finally get that game finished already, since it had been haunting my to-do list basically since it came out, and since the postgame was such a slog. In addition to all of that, though, completing this game unlocked so much. I'm so glad to be at this point, because all the fanart and fan videos and my songs and everything couldn't have been in my life if I'd still been in "Can't look at that until I beat the game" mode. This is a celebration, not of "Oh thank God it's over," but of "Wow, the world post-completion has so much to offer." Less of the "After ten thousand years I'm free" part, more of the "It's time to conquer Earth" part. And, in celebration of everything this game has done for me, it is my pleasure--and much more of an honor than you probably initially expected--to name Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers as the inaugural winner in this category.



Crying Bulbasaur award for Achievements in Emotional Devastation
Whether it makes me cry, warms my heart, makes me think about my life, or otherwise makes me feel things, this award is to honor the games that took me on a journey through the strongest emotions.

Nominees:
A Bird Story
Night in the Woods
Ori and the Blind Forest Definitive Edition
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers
Star Billions Season 3

This was a much tougher choice than you would expect, but I played a lot of highly emotional games this year. You know you've set yourself up for heavy competition when a PMD game, anything from Freebird Games, and Ori are all challenging each other for biggest feel trip. You also know it's especially heavy competition when a Star Billions game didn't even make it into that previous example sentence. Star Billions.

That being said, I think we have to be honest, here. You read everything I said for the previous category, right? PMD destroyed me. I mean, I typically don't write entire concept albums about games I've beaten unless they were just that emotional. This is the game that had In the Future of Darkness and Igglybuff the Prodigy in it, and everything in the actual main game. I know we're off to a strong sweep of a start, here, but I really have to give Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers this one as well.



Hint Coin award for Most Puzzling Puzzler
This award celebrates the headaches, confusion, and eventual triumph and/or shame in using a walkthrough that come with the best puzzle games and puzzles in games.

Nominees:
Adventures of Lolo 3
Hanano Puzzle 2
Splice
TIS-100
Zen Puzzle Garden

I initially had some trouble defining this category. Are we honoring the hardest puzzle game I played this year, or my favorite? If there was a puzzle that was so hard that I got frustrated and passed my not-having-fun-anymore threshold, was that a good thing or a bad thing for the purposes of this category?

After spending the entire year dreading a Qrostar versus Zachtronics showdown for this category, xyzzysqrl made a very convincing argument for why Zen Puzzle Garden was the surprise underdog winner. It made a lot of sense... if you go by the interpretation that ZPG's heinous bullshit was a good thing.

However, I'm leaning toward the interpretation that this is about enjoyment. I enjoy a good puzzler, mind you, so something nice and challenging that breaks my brain in the good way is also going to score highly here. There's a line, though. If there wasn't, then Chromatron would have won, rather than being abandoned and not even making the nominees list. It's the difference between being tortured in the bedroom and being tortured in a military prison.

There is one game that easily and by far encapsulates the former. One that made me tear my hair out, but also that made me love every second of it. One that drew its difficulty not from being an incomprehensible puzzle style outside what I even enjoy, but from taking the exact kind of puzzle I like and cranking the difficulty of the level design up.

Hanano Puzzle 2 wins the Hint Coin award this year. Well done, Qrostar. You brilliant, devilish bastards. Thank you for the pain.



Wing of Wyvern award for Most Retro Nostalgia Trip
Whether it is an actual classic game or a modern pixel-fest reminiscent of one, this award honors the games that really take you back to Tantagel Castle.

Nominees:
Adventures of Lolo 3
AM2R
Mega Man Unlimited
Stair Quest SE
Zeux 2: Caverns of Zeux

This category had a varied competition regarding what type of nostalgia it was targeting, with a retro throwback to SNES-era Metroid, NES-era Mega Man, and ancient PC-era King's Quest versus an actual NES game and the founder of MegaZeux.

I felt like I had the best time playing AM2R or Mega Man Unlimited, so I looked more closely at those. Both are fantastic games, of course, and either could have won without it being a bad decision or a snub to the other. MMU even faced some adversarial odds, in that making a flawless and bug-free Classic Mega Man engine is apparently a lot harder than it looks (based on what a mess MaGMML looks like by comparison.)

However, no one faced more adversarial odds than AM2R, and no one did more even despite them. We're talking about a game that was shut down by Nintendo, and was then rescued, reverse-engineered, and recompiled under a new team when the original developer decided to play along with Nintendo's orders, and it still became something that captured two old loves by turning Metroid II into something that looks and plays like Super Metroid. For that feat of heroism, AM2R takes its hard-fought and well-deserved spot among this year's winners.



Little Cup award for Achievements in Fluff
Not every game needs to be a long and serious epic. This award honors the light and/or little palate cleansers, because games are fun.

Nominees:
A Bird Story
Kirby: Squeak Squad
Marvin's Mittens
Stair Quest SE
Thomas Was Alone

All of these games are either short, cute, or both. However, one title stands above all others in encapsulating and symbolizing what this category stands for, even moreso than the game that actually founded it.

Marvin's Mittens is fluff personified. If you want a cute, sweet game, Marvin is a cute, sweet kid on a cute, sweet romp through a cute, sweet setting to recover his stolen mitten from oh my God even the Mitten Thief is adorable. With a 3-4 hour length and an adversity-free exploration mechanic, this is a game about just going out and sightseeing in a gorgeous snow-covered landscape. There were a lot of hard decisions on this year's ballot, but if I can be honest here, giving Marvin's Mittens this category was not one of them.



Piece of Heart award for Warmest Fuzzy
Whether it's a short indie romp or a long epic, and whether heartwarming moments are in the plot directly or just as a project that feels like it was made with love, this award honors games that make players feel good inside.

Nominees:
Marvin's Mittens
Night in the Woods
Ori and the Blind Forest Definitive Edition
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers
Star Billions Season 3

This one, on the other hand, was. Marvin's Mittens was a heavy favorite for the reasons listed above, but xyzzysqrl made a very good point about Star Billions in her speculation, which got me to reexamine the two.

Marvin's Mittens is pure comfort food, a sweet and lovely little game for a cold snowy day, when you'd rather go on a delightful and literally magical sightseeing exploration than deal with the current state of the world. To this day, the soundtrack is something I put in as an emergency calm-down when my panic/anxiety issues are flaring up.

By contrast, Star Billions doesn't try to take your mind off how many or how severe the crew's current problems are, but it is an entire three-game series about how those problems can be overcome. It's about having faith in people and that any situation will or at least can turn out all right.

Heavy spoilers here, because this example really has to be cited but there's just no way to do it spoiler-free: The series' plot from the beginning was about the four-AI crew of the Little Brother, a ship tasked with shepherding the last survivors of a massive human extinction event toward eventual salvation. Humanity, they explain, more or less killed themselves off through a series of bad decisions and self-inflicted cataclysms. Earth became uninhabitable, and the entire human population fell to the one million or so that managed to secure passage on the Noah's Ark-like spaceship Big Brother. I'll be honest, the whole setup feels a bit too real when I say this right now and explain it like that, and I'm not sure if I'd have had the stomach to start playing this if it had just come out today.

The end of season three sees the crew making contact with a being who is essentially a lesser God, who provides each of them a vision of how they (with their respective personalities) would finally solve this whole "finding the now-missing Big Brother and saving the humans" dilemma. One of the crew sees themselves finding, thawing out, and building a new home for humanity if they can't find one, with the aid of the other species they'd befriended throughout the series. Another sees themselves running an artificial dream Utopia for the still-cryosleeping humans to live in happiness. Etc.

LACIE, the "We come in peace" communications officer, had a vision of traveling back in time to prevent the cataclysms, because saving the handful of survivors on the Big Brother wasn't enough.

The entities granting her wish specifically warned her this was a big gamble. Humanity did this to themselves once; could she really stop them from doing it again? Would they listen to her warning? Could the future really be changed?

Again, this hits uncomfortably close to home right now. It's very easy to look at the news these days and wish I'd made a different choice in this game. Trust humanity to do the right thing and avoid destoying themselves? Pff, that's almost immersion-breakingly unrealistic. No, I should have kept the survivors locked up in a harmless VR sim for their own good. Humans clearly can't be trusted with sharp objects, free will was a mistake.

And yet.

She believed.

As so often happened with this series, I made a decision based on my first impulse, and I've been grappling ever since with whatever it says about me that that was my first impulse. In this case, I--at least at one point--believed that humanity could save themselves. Now, there are times I honestly don't know if I can make that same decision again, if I have that kind of faith anymore. However, I still take comfort in the fact that she could, and she does.

This is important. LACIE knows what she's doing. By this point in the series, she's had three entire games' worth of character development re: her kindness and open heart in trying times. She is Peace Sheep, but that does not mean she's naive, or that she's some sort of gullible wide-eyed idealistic idiot. That distinction came to a head in season 2, when she outsmarted her own ruthlessly evil clone by pretending to fall back on "maybe the bad guy just needs a hug? :3" programming and to fall for the "if you surrender I won't harm the hostages" act. She is battle-hardened, pragmatic, and overall is one tough cookie, but she's a tough cookie who still, despite everything, remains optimistic.

In other words, I may sometimes have trouble believing humanity can be talked down from destroying themselves, but if she believes it, then I trust her. She is not one to make that judgment lightly.

And that is... something to cling to, I guess, even on the darkest of days. We can change. LACIE believed that, and sigh -fine- I guess I have to believe it too. No matter how far off the path we get, it's not too late to find our way back. We're still alive, and we still have hope.

Hope.

Star Billions, after three seasons and several emotional gut-punches, is a game about hope.

Wow I got carried away there. *Ahem* So anyway, my point is, Marvin's Mittens is a game about taking your mind off things right now, while Star Billions is a game about acknowledging those difficulties but believing strongly that problems can be solved and that we'll get through this. One is feeling better about today, and the other is feeling better about tomorrow. "It's okay" versus "It's going to be okay."

I'll be honest; in 2017, we really need both. Like, lots and lots and lots of both. Still, I have to pick one winner, and I kind of have to think long-term. I want to feel better about 2017, but I also want to feel about 2018, 2019....

Marvin's Mittens helps me take my mind off things and is sorely needed and appreciated for that, but Star Billions: Season 3 keeps me going, and so it earns this award.



Furry Little Body award for Achievements in Anthropomorphic Appeal
Because sometimes you just need a silly little award to acknowledge that one character you want to bang.

Nominees:
Kirby: Squeak Squad
Night in the Woods
Ori and the Blind Forest Definitive Edition
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers
Star Billions Season 3

After all that long-winded gushing in the previous category, this is a silly little category, so I'll try to be a bit more brisk.

PMD turned me into a die-hard shipper. Ask xyzzysqrl; I shipped (and still ship) everyone in that game. The player character x partner, of course. Player character x Grovyle, too. And Grovyle x partner, sure why not. And Grovyle x Celebi. Wigglytuff x Chatot. The Kecleon brothers x each other. Really, you name any character in this game, any character at all, and odds are very good that I've thought deeply about their sex life.

I mean, this game is the reason I have "Armaldo" as an active tag in the Telegram e621 search bot.

So, yes, I believe the mountains of Celevyle porn I've sifted through at this point can attest to Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers being the clear winner here. The only thing hard about this decision was me.



Golden Pheasant award for Artistic Achievement
Regardless of what the game actually does with them and whether it works overall, this award celebrates the truly outstanding and impressive feats in a game's assets, be the graphics, music, voice acting, game engine, or anything else.

Nominees:
A Bird Story
Marvin's Mittens
Metroid: Samus Returns
Mega Man Unlimited
Ori and the Blind Forest Definitive Edition

I played so many games with spectacular assets this year. I could have made this category for the soundtracks alone, and probably still found a way to justify every single entry on this list. Add in graphics, engine, etc....

After some soul searching, this one came down to Mega Man Unlimited versus Ori.

Ori feels like the correct choice here, as it is the most stunningly gorgeous game on the list. xyzzysqrl mentioned in her writeup how it took the tired "every frame is a painting" saying and made it true and worth using here. The music is phenomenal. Even the gameplay engine has impressively tight controls that make even the most impossible aerial nonsense an absolute delight to perform. Everything from graphics and sound even down to sound effects and the tech tree system is perfect.

Not so fast, though! Mega Man Unlimited, as I've mentioned before, made a flawless Classic Mega Man engine in a genre where that's apparently hard to do. The graphics do lose to Ori, but only because we're talking about comparing something that looks like an NES game to Ori. They're still more than impressive for what they're setting out to do. The soundtrack, meanwhile, is arguably even better. Some songs are better than others (there were two composers and it's pretty clear that one did all the good tracks) but the strongest ones stand out and stick in my mind far more than even my favorite Ori songs. It's a matter of singles versus the entire album, really: One is a more consistently high throughout, while the other has some highs and lows, but the highs are even higher (which is really saying something.)

I cannot stress enough just how tough a decision this is, and how great each game looked, sounded, and felt. Both of them absolutely deserve this award. I have to give it to Ori and the Blind Forest: Definitive Edition, though. It just has more of that "complete package" feeling.



Trap Devised by Satan award for Game Most Likely Not Done Yet
Backlogs are immense, time is finite, and most games can be crossed off the list and moved on from once completed. However, some games deserve a special mention for their lasting appeal and replay value. This award honors the ones that don't want to be over.

Nominees:
AM2R
Hanano Puzzle 2
Marvin's Mittens
Mega Man Unlimited
Metroid: Samus Returns

All of these have great reasons why I'd play them again. AM2R and Samus Returns are Metroid games, which are kind of designed to be replayed, and I even already did once in the former's case. Marvin's Mittens, with its short runtime and sweet and charming exploring-in-the-snow aesthetic, could very well become some sort of holiday tradition for me. Mega Man Unlimited has a REVENGE mode where you can tear through everything in the game that used to bother you with a blatantly overpowered character while cackling madly, and that kind of catharsis is fun to do and redo at any time. In fact, this is the third time in a row I almost, almost gave this one to MMU, but....

As I mentioned in the nominees post, Hanano Puzzle 2 is like a puzzle board that resets itself in my memory. It would be neat if there were a Hanano Puzzle 3 someday, but until then, I can just replay Hanano Puzzle 2 (or even Hanano Puzzle 1 or Jelly Puzzle) for the same experience. I cannot remember solutions to Qrostar levels. I just can't. I've solved every single board in all of them, but if I were to launch any of those games right now, I guarantee you that I would get stuck on every level all over again.

Hanano Puzzle 2 is the most replayable game this year, because it's one that may as well be something I've never played before.


Extra Life award for Most Deserving of a Second Chance
Not every played game is completed. Most of the abandoned ones were abandoned for a reason, and quickly forgotten. Could some of them find redemption and a path back onto the active to-do list, though? Maybe these ones could....

Nominees:
Broken Sword: Director's Cut
Chromatron
Last Dream
MANOS: The Hands of Fate
Thanatos Insignia

Obviously we can rule out Broken Sword and MANOS right away. Broken Sword is something I want to play again someday, but it would be the original version, which I consider to be a different game. I'm never touching Director's Cut again. And MANOS is MANOS.

I struggled a bit here, but eventually was able to rule out Last Dream as well. It's like a thousand hours long, World Unknown is out and Last Dream 2 is coming and I can just play those instead when the time comes, and I'd already let xyzzysqrl have free "Nah, I'm not gonna play this one, you can go ahead and spoil everything" reign when she played it.

So, Chromatron or Thanatos Insignia. Chromatron is a puzzle game that I quit because it was just too much. TI seemed easier (at least in the first few levels) but it just wasn't super interesting to me, and I forgot to save and couldn't be bothered to go through all that again.

I want to say that Chromatron is the better game, especially since it's a real game whereas TI was a quickie 24-hour MegaZeux game jam contest entry. But this isn't about which is the better game. This is about which one I'm more likely to try again.

The problem with Chromatron's impossibility is that would still be just as impossible even if I go back. TI was something I'd merely gotten tired of, and game fatigue can wear off over time. Furthermore, TI is shorter, easier (probably), and more likely to sneak in as an "I have an hour to kill and want a quick point to score for a COMPLETE entry" romp.

Bless this little Day of Zeux entry that probably even its own author didn't think about after churning it out, but if any of these games are ever going to get a second chance on my to-do list, Thanatos Insignia is the one most likely to make it.



Stan S. Stanman award for If You Only Buy One Game from This List....
Whether it's an overlooked indie gem or a well known game that deserves its reputation, this award honors the one game each year that everyone reading this really owes it to themselves to check out.

Nominees:
A Bird Story
Hanano Puzzle 2
Marvin's Mittens
Metroid: Samus Returns
Star Billions Season 3

There was a lot to balance with this choice. Popularity? No sense recommending a game that's already mainstream if there's a hidden gem I can push on people. Genre? If such and such game was the best XYZ ever made, that means nothing to someone who doesn't even like XYZs. Difficulty? I don't want to torture people by recommending something they want to get into but can't. (Sorry, Hanano 2.) The key is balancing universal accessibility with quality.

I thought this was going to be another tough one because of all of that, but in the end, it really wasn't.

Star Billions' gameplay is that of a very simple visual novel, if even that. It's a glorified multiple-choice personality test, wherein four characters argue in favor of their proposed solution to a problem and you pick the one you agree with. The only twitch-reflex-based moments in the series are ones you inflict on yourself for role-playing purposes. ("Oh God the missile will hit in ten seconds, we need a decision NOW!" still pauses while you make up your mind, like one of those house fires in a JRPG that won't actually burn down until the hero finishes their business. Do try it, though; you will expose and learn a lot about who you are in the dark if you play along.) It's also easily available on smartphones, very inexpensive (season 1 is free, even!) and the closest thing it has to any sort of barrier to entry is that the Android version is a bit crashy. And even that is more of a minor annoyance than an actual problem; it autosaves frequently and you don't miss anything.

It's easy to get into, and once you do, you'll find find a deep and engrossing story with endearing characters, a hopeful message, and something I feel so passionately about that I just went on for like ten pages of spoiler text earlier.

And, like, xyzzysqrl and I basically are the Star Billions fandom among people I know, and that is a goddamn crime. This series needs so much more love.

Star Billions Season 3 is a game that anyone can play, and that everyone should.



Sqrl's Choice award for XyzzySqrl's Favorite Game This Year
Another silly for-fun category. I pick the nominees for "what would XyzzySqrl's favorite game probably be" (excluding the obvious ones,) and then she picks a winner!

Nominees:
Kirby: Squeak Squad
Marvin's Mittens
Night in the Woods
Stair Quest SE
Thanatos Insignia

(Special guest xyzzysqrl writeup incoming!)

Good evening. As I happened to be in the neighborhood by purest act of coincidence and absolutely not because I accidentally stole this fine woodrat and needed to drop her off home again, I have been enlisted to provide you with the finest in awards: My personal pick for game of the year which I did not play but Celine did.

I have never played any of these candidates actually.

Had the timing worked out slightly differently my pick might have gone to Marvin's Mittens, which I understand is a marvelous snowscape full of delight. It might also have gone to Night in the Woods, which I believe to be some sort of furry-themed camping simulator. Instead I'm left with a single obvious choice:

How often, Celine's friends, do you think about stairs? Yes, stairs go up. However, sometimes they go down. They may move on their own to lift you to new heights or they may be static and demand you take your progress and destiny into your own hands. Every step up a staircase is a victory against the forces of gravity, every step down a staircase is a reclamation of territory.

This isn't just a game about stairs, however. It's also a game about freedom. A text parser interface is your gateway to a land of adventure, any action you can spell is yours to undertake if it's within the scope of gameplay. Dirt, cobblestone, ice, all available for you to virtually feel or touch or taste or ... well. I'm not here to judge you weirdo perverts.

So for these reasons and unspeakably many others, I give Stair Quest SE the coveted Sqrl's Choice award.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to nap in the trophy box. Back to you, Celine.


Celine's Choice award for Best Game Overall
The grand prize as well as the most personal one. After all the other categories, after honoring every game for whatever it does best and whatever other demographics that might appeal to, this is the one that I, Celine Kalante, found to be my personal favorite.

Nominees:
AM2R
Mega Man Unlimited
Metroid: Samus Returns
Ori and the Blind Forest Definitive Edition
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers

In the end, it all comes down to this. Going into the finale, AM2R has one win, Mega Man Unlimited and Samus Returns are both at zero but MMU came this close to winning three times, Ori has one, and PMD has three.

This award really could go to any of the five, especially when reevaluating how one defines the best game I played this year. Are we talking about the game that I had the most fun playing at the time, or the game that I consider the best in hindsight? Look at everything I said in the Rita category, for example, and PMD is either the favorite or completely out of the running for this one depending on how you answer that.

I was all set to give this one to PMD, actually, but xyzzysqrl made a very good point about how Mega Man Unlimited stood out as a game I never seemed hesitant to play, one that I'd simply disappear from IM for hours at a time because I'd fallen into again.

I rethought this category in light of that reminder, and believe me, every single nominee here almost got it at one point or another. Even up to when I was writing the text for this entry just now, I very nearly changed my mind last second and gave the whole thing to Samus Returns. And I don't think it would have been a wrong decision or gone to an undeserving champion if I had. Or if I'd given it to any of these, really. These were all such great games.

But in the end, again somehow, it came down to Mega Man Unlimited versus Ori.

Both were fantastic games that looked, sounded, and controlled like a dream, so much that they caused me a lot of problems deciding Golden Pheasant earlier. Neither felt like something I was working on to the extent that something like PMD did. Both were something I was delighted to play, and delighted to have experienced.

MMU is hard to the point of frustration at times, though, and I have to dock it a point or two for that. It should have had significantly more checkpoints, and the Omega challenges were just ridiculous. There were times I disappeared unannounced for hours at a time, yes, but that's because "let me just clear this one battle real quick" became hours of trying and trying again to beat this one stupid boss.

Ori is tough, but also merciful in its toughness, and has lots of anti-frustration features built in. You can make your own checkpoints at just about any time. Lives are infinite, and dying and respawning is near-instantaneous, to the point that death feels more like a quick "oops" than a meaningful failure to get upset over.

Let me put it this way: Ori took a look at its own gameplay and decided to include a death counter, just for fun. MMU took a look at its own gameplay and decided to put in an unlockable God Mode character so you can take your revenge on everything that ever made you cry. It's cathartic as hell, of course, but it's rather telling that Ori never felt like it needed a "no, fuck you, game" mode.

After a year of gaming (and what a year it's been,) several agonizing and painful decisions, and way too much typing even by my standards, Ori and the Blind Forest: Definitive Edition emerges as the best game I played in 2017. That is not to say anything against any of the others, who all could have won--God, picking winners and putting this all together was hard. But it says something about Ori that it was so good that it could stand above even that kind of competition. Congratulations, you little fluff.



And those are your winners for Celine's Gameblogging Awards 2017. Congratulations, all! As a reminder, I keep this spreadsheet to keep track of award nominations throughout the year. (You can even see a couple tentative 2018 entries already!) This is so that I won't forget anything by the time Celine's Gameblogging Awards 2018 come around, but it's also so that you the viewer have a convenient at-a-glance sheet see who won what every year.

I do hope you'll join me as we watch 2018's categories fill up throughout the year, with a megapost like this to pick winners at the end. This was really long and a lot of work, but it was also a lot of fun.

Games are great, you guys. And there's your takeaway.

And if you had so much fun that that entire mountain of text just wasn't enough for you, I highly encourage you to check out xyzzysqrl's awards here. She inspired a few of these categories, you know! Not to mention the entire gameblogging concept in general. This posts only exists because the COMPLETE and ABANDONED posts exist, and those only exist because she gave me the idea.

Meanwhile, take care, and thank you for the amazing year in games.

Comments

[xyzzysqrl]

*reads*
Oh geez you announced the album! Congratulations!

I'm not surprised ZPG didn't win. It was a brave attempt to come from behind, but yeah these are about pleasure for you.

God, you EMBRACED "Okay it's spoiler time in spoiler town" here. I respect that, I didn't have the guts to do it.

Yaaaay Star Billions, sweeping up at your show instead of mine, thank goodness. I'd have felt so bad if neither of us gave it anything.

Not a THING for MMU. Wow. I ... I did not see that coming.

And ha. Ori. Blessed little Ori. Of course. Of course it takes so many awards home it's going to need a bigger inventory. Bless you, Ori.

[kjorteo]

Every single category MMU was up for, it almost won. Almost, almost, almost won. I even had it penciled in as winning the majority of them before changing my mind at the very last second. The fact that it went 0 for 4 really does not accurately tell the tale of how great it was and how much it deserved to win something. I mean yeah it's the difference between losing by 2 points versus losing by 52, but I feel like that is a very important difference that I would really like to emphasize here.

I recall we actually had a talk when I first beat Ori and was adding it to my nominees at the time, like "Yeah this game didn't hit you as hard as it did me so it's probably not going to win anything on your end" "Yeah I know, I mean it's really good and it should but the competition is just too fierce" etc. And then it went on to not only win two awards, but one of them being the award. That... actually, that also goes to show just how close these were and how ever-changing my mind was right until the last second; I was dead sure for months that it was a foregone conclusion that PMD would take Celine's Choice, until you reminded me how much I loved MMU and never saw it as an obligation (unlike PMD,) which got me to rethink the whole thing to almost give it to MMU instead before Ori stole it. (And I really wasn't kidding about almost giving it to Samus Returns for a moment there, too.)

[xyzzysqrl]

I forgot to tally up MY guesses, reminded by checking your comment on my post so I came to your post to edit my comment and oops you replied to it so I couldn't edit so I cut and paste here instead.

On the Rita: I was ultra-wrong. I assumed actual nostalgia for a game gone by, coupled with "This was my childhood!" would carry it. Alas! It's a good pick anywa-- I'm gonna say that over and over so we can assume they are ALL good picks Bront and just get that out of the way.

Bulbasaur: Nailed it. Actual Bulbasaur wins Crying Bulbasaur, cries on stage presumably.

Hint Coin: Whiffed it by THAT much. *arms spread*

Wing of Wyvern: I cannot BELIEVE MMU took nothing. My jaw is dropped, my eyes are wide, I am doing that "wooga" wild-take. Yet... I can't argue? A2MR was a Thing, geez.

Little Cup: I should've called this, but didn't play Marvin until later. Now I understand why it gets this.

Piece of Heart: ...wow I was... I... wow. Wow. ...you wordrat, you. This is why I leave describing stuff like that to YOU.

Furry Little Body: *cackle*

Golden Pheasant: Y'know, this one genuinely shocks me a bit. I would have expected, with how strongly you emphasized "not just art and music but everything", that this was going to go to something else. So... this was a big surprise but not really a surprise because of course it wins here but... I'm still surprised.

Trap Devised By Satan: *fistpump* Yay, banking on your crappy memory paid off! I win all the virtual dollars for... wait, we didn't bet anything. ...dangit we should've bet something.

Extra Life: I really have to play the Megazeux games you played this year.

Stanman: *snap fingers* And I'm back to "missed it by that much" again. I thought with as enthused as you were to get people to play A2MR -and- Samus Returns... but nope.

Sqrl's Choice: Someone commission Celine 'entertaining' a staircase plz.

Celine's Choice: We REALLY fell for Ori so hard, huh.

Geez, what a year. What a year.

[kjorteo]

They were all good guesses, let's be honest. There wasn't a single nominee in any category that would have been a bad or undeserving choice for winner (except Extra Life.)

Rita: Like I said. That was a great pick. I even had to stop and think about it and you very nearly changed my mind. But... well. I just had too many feelings.

Wing of Wyvern: It was kind of down to AM2R vs. MMU for this one, and believe me (like every time MMU lost) it was really close. AM2R mostly carried it out of admiration for having done more with less against greater odds; MMU never had to worry about C&Ds from Capcom or anything like that, and AM2R has eight more bits.

Piece of Heart: I told you I was going to soapbox here. I mean, am I wrong, though?

Golden Pheasant: I emphasized the "not just art and music but everything" because I wanted to include really good well-designed engines, too. That's why I mentioned MMU as many times as I did; MaGMML is buggy in a way that MMU isn't and that makes MMU impressive. And speaking of things that are flawless, Ori's controls.

Stanman: I feel like AM2R and Samus Returns are a bit more mainstream and well-known enough that they don't need my help, especially compared to Star Billions. Which, you want to talk about me being enthused to get people to play something? Just imagine what I would have been like around you if you hadn't already bought S3 day one.

Sqrl's Coice: ... Yes.

Celine's Choice: ... Yes.

[swordianmaster]

May I suggest a "Mega Man Unlimited Award for Most Honorary Mention" next year? It seems a shame for a game to be second best in all things, ever.

[xyzzysqrl]

Honorariest Mentionings.

[kjorteo]

I'm not sure this will be happening consistently enough that it needs a category, especially because I'd have no earthly idea how to set the nominees up in advance. Believe me, MMU going 0 for 4 surprised me just as much as it surprised you; I had it penciled in for most of those right up until some last-second mind changes as I was writing the entry.

I think it can be pretty clear in hindsight to remark upon something like this happening after the fact, though, and we can all sort of unofficially agree on it in the comments. Like, everyone here expected MMU to get something (including me) so no objections to giving that one the official unofficial pizza trophy this year, right? Yeah? Okay we're good.

[chalcedony_starlings]

*belated cheering*