Woodrat Gameblogging Award Nominees 2018
Dec. 2nd, 2018 09:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kjorteoI was checking my archive posts to see what kind of timeframe the month of December looked like--I recall it being a busy month with the Gameblogging Award nominees post, the actual winners post, and of course the sentimental year in review thing, but which of those happened when again?
Turns out AAAA THE NOMINEES ARE TODAY AAAA
Okay. So. Gaming Year 2018 is officially closed, meaning even if I beat a new game tomorrow, that would count as 2019 for the purposes of next year's nominations and awards. (This also means that games from last December are included here.)
According to a quick rough count that may or may not be 100% accurate, in gaming year 2018 I completed 38 games and abandoned 5. (Note that these figures include one point each to Completed and Abandoned for Varenje and Escape the Game. The batch of 24 Hours of ZZT contest entries got lumped together and are only worth one Completed entry combined, but every IFComp game was counted separately.) In 2017, I completed 21-24 games depending on how strictly you want to count certain special cases, and abandoned 5. So, this was a good year for gaming.
This year, there is one major change to the format, which particularly eagle-eyed viewers might have noticed from the post title: It's not just Celine's Gameblogging Awards anymore. Sara wants to be involved! :3
Sara:
Hi! ^^
Celine:
And no, this isn't a way to cop out and split the votes on some of those really tough "pick your favorite child" decisions I had to make last year. We've already done some preliminary discussions and found a few cases where I would have picked two winners for a category if I could, because it was a really tough choice between several worthy contenders, but she's going to end up breaking the same way I probably eventually do. Likewise, there are a few cases I feel are the kind of slam-dunk obvious choices where I'd like to just vote for that one twice if I could, but she disagrees. :P No, we're both just approaching these independently, without worrying about how our picks look next to each other.
We keep an overall spreadsheet for at-a-glance info of this and previous years' nominees and winners all right here, if you're interested. Handy!
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 us say, "Finally! After ten thousand years, I'm free! It's time to conquer Earth!"
Nominees:
Flimsy's Town of ZZT
Professor Layton and the Unwound Future
Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP
Tadpole Treble
Toys: Let the Toy Wars Begin!
Honorable Mentions:
Monster Mind
Sixteen Easy Pieces
Thanatos Insignia 2
Celine:
I love this category, because just looking at every game here and knowing they're all completed now is always a good for a feel-good pick-me-up sense of accomplishment. As before, this almost sounds like a negative "thank God that's over" category at first, and yes, being like 90 hours long or I Wanna Be the Guy hard or etc. is a great way to find yourself on this list when I finally conquer you. However, it's more than that. This is a positive celebration of the triumph of clearing it. Remember, last year's winner was also a contender for overall GOTY, and won because of the the "Yay, now I can finally cannonball into the fandom and no longer have to worry about spoilers" factor.
Sara:
Admittedly my picks might veer more toward the "Oh good, we don't have to worry about that one anymore" side. :P But I'm trying! Celine is teaching me to be nice and appreciate things. :3
Celine:
You're doing fine, dear. :3
Flimsytown is an enigma that has haunted me for years, especially if you view it as some sort of cryptic riddle pertaining to the author and his eventual tragic death. It took bringing the entire Museum of ZZT community together to put this one to rest, and I can't wait for everyone else to finish their contributions to that overall collaborative article. The only thing holding it back is... well, is this one put to rest? There's still so much we don't know, even putting our heads together.
Professor Layton and the Unwound Future was a game I had to put on the shelf because it reminded me of my ex-girlfriend who had just dumped me right when I was in the middle of it. You can probably imagine how much of a relief it is to get that one dealt with.
Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP is this year's Solar 2: a game that has been on my phone pretty much ever since it came out because I don't exactly buckle down and work on my phone games very often. Now it's finally crossed off the list after years, and it was a weird as hell but not unpleasant overall experience that I consider worth the wait.
Tadpole Treble haunted me because I tried to call it over when I saw the credits and everything but there was always One More Achievement, which sent me straight into the kind of hell you face when you try to 101% a rhythm game. But then I got it! And man, is that an accomplishment.
Finally, we have Toys, the game that is the literal reason why I'm... well, a packrat about games these days. Never be a collector, but after this experience, I had little choice. It felt good to avenge myself on the game that young me never quite was able to clear.
Crying Bulbasaur award for Achievements in Emotional Devastation
Whether it makes us cry, warms our hearts, makes us think about our lives, or otherwise makes us feel things, this award is to honor the games that took us on a journey through the strongest emotions.
Nominees:
Can You Escape Fate?
Finding Paradise
Professor Layton and the Unwound Future
Shades of Gray
Monster Mind
Honorable Mentions:
Deltarune chapter 1
Emily is Away
Flimsy's Town of ZZT
A Raven Monologue
Tadpole Treble
Sara:
Ow.
Celine:
We really are emotional masochists, aren't we. ... Right, so, anyway:
Can You Escape Fate? looks at first glance like bootleg Undertale but is actually quite competent, and does a very good job capturing a lot of the things that made Undertale great. In this case, that means the crying.
Finding Paradise is the full-blown sequel to To the Moon. You probably know by now to take the Freebird Games logo as a built-in content warning, but even if you go into this one expecting To the Moon but More, you are still more than likely not ready for the punches this one will throw.
Professor Layton and the Unwound Future is a Layton game, with all the crying that always entails. In fact, it is by far the hardest-hitting of the first three games, and that is saying something. Oh, and this one had personal connotations for me. Not that the ending needed any help to reduce me to a sobbing wreck, but sure, let's sneak some low blows in there too.
Shades of Gray is Flimsy Parkins doing a melancholy deconstruction of the Town of ZZT. (As opposed to Flimsytown, which is Flimsy Parkins doing a dadaist surreal nonsense deconstruction of the Town of ZZT.) It's tragic to see the titular Town of ZZT reduced to such a neglected ruin, and even sadder when you remember that this is a Flimsy game and get those connotations in your head again.
Finally, Monster Mind is Pokemon porn that hides its actual plot to near the end, but trust me on this one: it gets emotional. It spends a good 80% of the game in a charming slice of life space where not only are you distributing free handjobs to every Pokemon in the house, but you're also getting to know them with character-driven dialogue that is every bit as good as the sex. You really end up falling in love with the Monster Mind crew, so when things get serious in the end... well. You care. A lot.
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:
Farnham Fables episode 3: Animals at School
Kitten Adventures in City Park
Monster Mind
Professor Layton and the Unwound Future
Sixteen Easy Pieces
Honorable mentions:
Basilica de Sangre
simian.interface++
Sprout
Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP
Varenje
Sara:
Ooh, strong contenders.
Celine:
Man, tell me about it. I played some good puzzle games this year.
Farnham Fables, if you give it an honest chance, is a short, sweet, and relatively simple first-person... almost MacVenture-like presentation, only without the dangers or dying or the puzzles being that hard. It's not much in the way of brain-melting puzzle madness, but it's cute and charming, even refreshing.
Kitten Adventures in City Park isn't much of a contender for most puzzling puzzle game, either, being a short and relatively easy one aimed at younger children. However, it is a strong contender for most enjoyable puzzle game this year, given how sweet and charming it is. Especially with the bonus content.
Monster Mind is Mastermind puzzles with Pokemon sex scenes and plot in between, so it kind of has the puzzling and enjoyable parts in balance.
Professor Layton and the Unwound Future is a Professor Layton game. That's so ur-example of the genre that it's what the Hint Coin category is named after.
Finally, Sixteen Easy Pieces is an oddball but surprisingly good, being a brutally hard ZZT-based puzzle game by Flimsy Parkins. (Man, he's coming up a lot this year, isn't he?) Nearly impenetrable to people who don't know ZZT, kind of a chaotic mess even to people who do, it is nevertheless an exploration of unrivaled brilliance in ZZT mechanics and how they can interact with each other to make puzzles.
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:
Colosseum: Quest for the 5 Runes
Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest Remastered
Flimsy's Town of ZZT
Shades of Gray
Toys: Let the Toy Wars Begin!
Honorable Mentions:
Autumn 2003 24HoZZT Contest Entries
Sixteen Easy Pieces
Return.
Thanatos Insignia
Sara:
Wow, lots of ZZT this year, huh.
Celine:
I was on a kick, I guess.
Sara:
A... ChocoboKick? :3
Celine:
... That's the QBasic one.
So, Colosseum: Quest for the 5 Runes is an ancient QBasic game my friend Atomos made back when we were still in contact (and back when we were both Final Fantasy teens.) It's... better than it probably should be given the circumstances, and includes some cameos from most of our squad at the time, fromxaq_the_aereon to people I don't even remember anymore.
Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest Remastered is the only retraux throwback in contention this year instead of an actual retro game, which gives it an angle if it wants to take the same path to victory that AM2R did last year. MQR... had some issues, such that it's the first game ever nominated to a category besides Extra Life that I didn't actually complete, but it did do a fantastic job of reminding me how much I love FFMQ after all, and possibly setting up for me to replay it sometime next year.
Flimsytown and Shades of Gray are both deconstructions of the Town of ZZT in their own way, which means each of them are both legitimately old retro games in their own right and nostalgic callbacks to something even older.
Toys goes all the way back to my childhood, with a somewhat turbulent road along the way that makes it even more storied in the end.
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:
Don't Make Love
Farnham Fables episode 3: Animals at School
Hiiro
Kitten Adventures in City Park
Princess Remedy in a World of Hurt
Honorable Mentions:
Embers of Magic
Five Nights of Love
Return.
simian.interface++
Sprout
Celine:
This was a crowded field for probably the same reason I ended up with so many more total games this year than last: I ended up playing a ton of light nibbly things. Which is good! If you're enjoying yourself, it's okay to like whatever games you like. :3
Don't Make Love is a five-minute conversation per run all about exploring the various ways mantis relationships can go right or wrong. It's meant to be taken one run at a time, while also maintaining the ability to get bittersweet and philosophical in each.
Farnham Fables is a fluffy setting where everyone is friendly and the peril is mild, and the game itself is short and simple to match--if all you cared about was seeing the ending, and if you knew all the puzzle solutions already, you could probably speedrun each episode in under two minutes. The exploration and side stuff is where it shines, and that's entirely up to your pace and interest level.
Hiiro is this year's Marvin's Mittens, which won last year, so it's already in a good starting position. A peaceful Seiklus-like explorathon, Hiiro ended up being such a fantastic game overall that you'll be seeing it again later down this post as well. Its sole flaw is a rather contrary-to-the-rest-of-the-game bullet hell bonus boss, but since that was intended to be an Easter egg, the rest of the game can be enjoyed on its own merits.
Kitten Adventures is another cutesy simplistic point-and-click. It is fluff personified.
I ended up sinking enough time and serious game feeling into Princess Remedy that I almost didn't count it in this category, but that's because I cranked up the difficulty and went for a Jealous Chest run. If Hiiro's bonus boss doesn't disqualify it, then that shouldn't disqualify this, either. Overall, this is a quick, breezy, and easily approachable game that gives you exactly as much resistance as you tell it to.
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:
Deltarune chapter 1
Farnham Fables episode 3: Animals at School
Kitten Adventures in City Park
Monster Mind
Tadpole Treble
Honorable Mentions:
Can You Escape Fate?
Don't Make Love
Finding Paradise
The Master
Princess Remedy in a World of Hurt
Celine:
God, this one's going to be tough. You could have called the Honorable Mentions field the nominees and that would have had enough heavyweights in it to make it a contest.
Sara:
Apparently you like sincerity and feel-good moments. Who knew? <3
Celine:
*blush* ... Anyway.
Deltarune, being the sort-of sequel to Undertale, is a mashup of memey shitposting, crying, and everything in between. When Toby Fox gets sincere, though, he gets really sincere.
Farnham Fables is, again, an entire series built on sweet "Awww" moments with a few not-really challenging MacVenture puzzles between them. It's also a game that was clearly made with love, given the quite frankly terrifying amounts of detail put into every random unrelated side thing you can examine if you so choose.
Kitten Adventures in City Park has an entire bonus content fan pack dedicated to the author showing off how much the locations, cats the characters were based off of, etc. all mean to her, and it is the sweetest and most wholesome thing.
Monster Mind's entire endgame, depending on how you handle a certain decision, is a life-affirming celebration of what you have and the people you have around you to share it with.
Tadpole Treble has all the "silly until it gets you right in the heart" moments you would expect from Matthew "Brawl in the Family" Taranto. It's a coming of age story disguised as a rhythm game.
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:
Deltarune chapter 1
Embers of Magic
Five Nights of Love
Parasite Infection
Monster Mind
Honorable Mentions:
Can You Escape Fate?
Don't Make Love
Farnham Fables episode 3: Animals at School
Reflection of a Fallen Feather
Tadpole Treble
Sara:
*Blush* Uh....
Celine:
You wanted to be involved in the awards, sweetie. :3
Sara:
... Fine. XD
Celine:
*Giggle, pat*
Deltarune, much like Undertale, took less than 24 hours for its hottest characters to completely take over e621. My friend Iron-K even wrote me a short NSFW fic about one of them, which was, uh, a very unexpected and pleasant surprise.
Embers of Magic probably would have, if people had actually heard of this game. It's an obscure kinetic novel, but the artwork is beautiful and holy hell I'll take just about everything presented. Seriously, they took a literal dragon skeleton, like straight up Bonetail from The Thousand-Year Door, and even made me look at that like "... would."
Five Nights of Love is an a game that is all about "what if FNAF but I want to smooch the robots."
And Parasite Infection and Monster Mind are both actual porn games. Monster Mind is a lot furrier (well, Pokemonier) and probably better suited to the strict definition of this category, but Parasite Infection may be better aimed at my specific fetish and is allowed in because it was that hot until the content ran out.
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:
Embers of Magic
Finding Paradise
Hiiro
Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP
Tadpole Treble
Honorable Mentions:
33 Grams
Don't Make Love
Farnham Fables episode 3: Animals at School
Sprout
Varenje
Celine:
Oh, uh....
Sara:
Hmm....
Celine:
... Yeah, this one's hard. I feel like I painted us into a corner here by including all types of assets, then inviting apples-to-oranges comparisons. Are Embers of Magic's graphics better than Hiiro's music? How do you even measure that?
Sara:
Whatever gives you the strongest "this X is beautiful" feeling overall, I guess.
Celine:
Yeah.
So, as mentioned above, Embers of Magic may be an obscure half-hour kinetic novel but it is gorgeous.
Finding Paradise is, like all Freebird games, a musical and graphical journey that really sets the bar for how good RPGMaker games can actually be. There's a reason this company is my first go-to when people start complaining about the reputation of, uh, basically every other RPGMaker game you see on Steam.
Hiiro has simplistic, Seiklus-like graphics, but the music is such gorgeous ambience that I put the OST on to relieve stress and anxiety. It's in just about the exact role Marvin's Mittens was in last year in that regard, and may even have surpassed it.
Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP is a weird artsy experimental film of a game, which I did end up enjoying quite a bit in retrospect even if I was iffy about it at the time, but man are its pixel art and soundtrack objectively outstanding.
Tadpole Treble is another entry here on the strength of its soundtrack. Asswordianmaster put it, rhythm games tend to live or die on how good their actual music is, and this one definitely lives.
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:
Animalia
Farnham Fables episode 3: Animals at School
Flimsy's Town of ZZT
Parasite Infection
Tadpole Treble
Honorable Mentions:
Colosseum: Quest for the 5 Runes
Don't Make Love
Hiiro
Monster Mind
Sixteen Easy Pieces
Celine:
In a bit of a departure this year, we have two games that are up for the "*Whew* It's Finally Over" award and the "... Or Is It?" award, though they each have special circumstances for that.
Animalia I only had time to play once, and I got a very bad ending. This absolutely needs to be revisited at some point. I can do better with a different squad and better choices, surely.
Farnham Fables I saw maybe a small fraction of the extra exploration side stuff, and I still need to go back and investigate the stuff I missed. There's a ton of it.
Flimsytown... does it really even have a win condition? It almost feels more like an interactive museum, where the player is meant to wander around the various rooms just to see what's there in each of them, even if navigating the pathways is as chaotic and confusing as possible. It's the sort of game where mapping it out took the entire Museum of ZZT community working together to sort out. Even though I'm now... maybe 80-90% confident that everything in the game has technically been seen, I know I sure as hell have only seen a fraction of it.
Parasite Infection is a blatantly unfinished game, and given how much I, er, enjoyed what was there, I of course will be back when there's more to see.
And Tadpole Treble... makes an interesting case about the scope of the category. By now, I have 100% completed this game. However, earlier in the year, there was a time where I declared the game finished after completing the main story, tried to move on, fell prey to the irresistible urge to go back, and did the 100% completion later. Right now, it probably has the weakest case of the four, since I don't need to replay it anymore... but you could argue that if a game needed to be replayed so bad that I already did, that should count for it, not against it. After all, if I'd finished the main story of Tadpole Treble last week instead of months ago, then the rest would still be gnawing at me now, and it would very easily be one of the favorites here. Maybe it still is? Who knows.
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:
Escape the Game
Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest Remastered
My master, the Parasite
Reflection of a Fallen Feather
Varenje
Sara:
......
Celine:
... Yeah, it's... look. Not every category is overflowing with classics. But hey, we're here to comb through this one and find the most-redeemable one, you know?
Escape the Game and Varenje are the only two I actually completed at the same time I abandoned them, in that both were cases where I beat episode 1 and decided not to continue the series because I wasn't enjoying them. That said, they are short and over quickly, and not terribly challenging. They kind of have a built-in advantage where I could pick them up again because they wouldn't be a commitment. Plus, hey, there was at least (barely) enough enjoyment there to get me through episode 1 of each.
Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest Remastered... I actually was enjoying it despite how awful it was, and the only reason I stopped was because my PC decided not to work with it anymore. Granted, I then found out how much worse it gets right after I involuntarily stopped, but still, maybe the fact that I would have kept going at least until then counts for something?
Reflection of a Fallen Feather is the opposite of Escape the Game and Varenje: probably the most actually-decent game on this list, and one I really wanted to like. The only reason I stopped was because I found the mechanics impenetrable, and kind of hit an "is this game really worth learning?" wall. It would be a much bigger commitment to pick this one up again. But I still enjoyed my first impressions of it, so maybe I might.
My master, the Parasite... uh... m-maybe the author will come back from the Internet grave and finish it someday?
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:
Embers of Magic
Finding Paradise
Kitten Adventures in City Park
Princess Remedy in a World of Hurt
Tadpole Treble
Honorable Mentions:
Can You Escape Fate?
Don't Make Love
Hiiro
Return.
Sprout
Sara:
*Vibrates*
Celine:
See, now there's a tough field.
Sara:
Another one where they're all good for different reasons, too.
Celine:
Yeah. There's a real struggle between safety of recommendations and our personal desires this year. If game A is completely free, accessible, and offers something for everyone, but game B is incredibly meaningful to us and we'd love to have you play so we can talk about it, even though it's more expensive, in kind of a niche genre that's not for everyone, and is several games deep into a series with prerequisites that make it harder to get into, then how do you weigh all that?xyzzysqrl had a similar contest between her head and her heart for this category last year, and her heart ultimately won, but who knows how this will go down for us. I will say this, though: These are all fantastic and playing any of them would make us very happy.
Embers of Magic is a free kinetic novel. It's short, it's barely interactive, it's just a neat story with really great visuals, and there's basically no reason not to check it out.
Finding Paradise would be the game B in my metaphor above. It's not free, it's an RPGMaker walking sim, and it has To the Moon, To the Moon's two minisode DLC episodes, and A Bird Story all as required reading beforehand. But... man. Man. This game is important.
Kitten Adventures in City Park is the exact opposite: It's a short free fluff piece that is cute and sweet.
Princess Remedy has a pretty firm lock on the game A column in my metaphor above. It's free, it's light and breezy or masocore depending on what difficulty level you select, it's fun and it's anything you want it to be.
Tadpole Treble is sort of in between the two extremes. It's harder to get into than all the free ones because it's not free, but it's easier than Finding Paradise because it doesn't have any prerequisites or required reading involved. As a cutesy obstacle-dodging rhythm game, the gameplay holds a lot more universal appeal, and of course the soundtrack is catchy as hell.
Sqrl's Choice award for XyzzySqrl's Favorite Game This Year
Another silly for-fun category. We pick the nominees for "what would XyzzySqrl's favorite game probably be" (excluding the obvious ones,) and then she picks a winner!
Nominees:
Animalia
Colosseum: Quest for the 5 Runes
Don't Make Love
Monster Mind
Kitten Adventures in City Park
Honorable Mentions:
Can You Escape Fate?
Embers of Magic
Five Nights of Love
Flimsy's Town of ZZT
Sprout
Celine:
The Calvinball of awards, we honestly have no idea what we're rewarding, here. The category saysxyzzysqrl's favorite game, but she's only even played two or three of these. It's mostly a silly for-fun pile of "saw this, thought of you" nonsense that we just kind of fling her way and make her pick one. Last year, she picked Stair Quest SE just to poke fun at the fact that I had sex with a staircase in that game. I managed to avoid doing that in any of these, so I'll leave it up to her to figure out what other criteria she can use for this highly serious and distinguished award.
Sara:
XyzzySqrl Award for Xyzziest Sqrl.
Celine:
Well that would be Xyzzy herself, obviously.
Woodrats' 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 we, Celine and Sara Kalante, found to be our personal favorites.
Nominees:
Finding Paradise
Hiiro
Princess Remedy in a World of Hurt
Sixteen Easy Pieces
Tadpole Treble
Honorable Mentions:
Can You Escape Fate?
Deltarune chapter 1
Farnham Fables episode 3: Animals at School
Monster Mind
Professor Layton and the Unwound Future
Celine:
Whew. What a year for games. This is another category where I can just look at everything here and feel good about the whole year. Games are great, actually.
Sara:
But now you have to pick a favorite. :P
Celine:
... Shh. >.>
Finding Paradise is To the Moon except even more To the Moon than To the Moon was and that is saying something.
Hiiro is a charming relaxathon that made me feel deeply at peace on every screen in the game except the one.
Princess Remedy was utterly fantastic at being cute/breezy and intense when I did the challenge run.
Sixteen Easy Pieces is easily the most brilliantly-designed ZZT puzzle game I've ever played and one of the better ones on any platform.
Tadpole Treble is a fun, sweet, charming rhythm game with adorable characters, surprise emotional moments, and a soundtrack that will never leave your head, ever.
Honestly, any one of these would make a fantastic and worthy choice for the best game I played this year. Hell, any of the honorable mentions could make a fine and legitimate case for deserving it. I played some really great games this year, and getting to celebrate that is why I put in the work to put all this together, even if it's a lot of writing. What a year, what a year.
Whew. And there you have it. So, as always, we strongly encourage you to speculate on the picks either of us are going to make, and to discuss the picks you would make. We each have pretty good ideas what we're picking for at least a few of these already, but not all of them are 100% decided yet. Crowd participation making really good points why one particular game deserved a particular category actually did sway a few of my picks last year!
But mainly, I just look forward to the participation because... you know. Games are fun. Responses and comments and discussions are fun. This is all a big party and I want everyone invited.
Sara:
Including me! :3
Celine:
Absolutely. <3
Turns out AAAA THE NOMINEES ARE TODAY AAAA
Okay. So. Gaming Year 2018 is officially closed, meaning even if I beat a new game tomorrow, that would count as 2019 for the purposes of next year's nominations and awards. (This also means that games from last December are included here.)
According to a quick rough count that may or may not be 100% accurate, in gaming year 2018 I completed 38 games and abandoned 5. (Note that these figures include one point each to Completed and Abandoned for Varenje and Escape the Game. The batch of 24 Hours of ZZT contest entries got lumped together and are only worth one Completed entry combined, but every IFComp game was counted separately.) In 2017, I completed 21-24 games depending on how strictly you want to count certain special cases, and abandoned 5. So, this was a good year for gaming.
This year, there is one major change to the format, which particularly eagle-eyed viewers might have noticed from the post title: It's not just Celine's Gameblogging Awards anymore. Sara wants to be involved! :3
Sara:
Hi! ^^
Celine:
And no, this isn't a way to cop out and split the votes on some of those really tough "pick your favorite child" decisions I had to make last year. We've already done some preliminary discussions and found a few cases where I would have picked two winners for a category if I could, because it was a really tough choice between several worthy contenders, but she's going to end up breaking the same way I probably eventually do. Likewise, there are a few cases I feel are the kind of slam-dunk obvious choices where I'd like to just vote for that one twice if I could, but she disagrees. :P No, we're both just approaching these independently, without worrying about how our picks look next to each other.
We keep an overall spreadsheet for at-a-glance info of this and previous years' nominees and winners all right here, if you're interested. Handy!
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 us say, "Finally! After ten thousand years, I'm free! It's time to conquer Earth!"
Nominees:
Flimsy's Town of ZZT
Professor Layton and the Unwound Future
Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP
Tadpole Treble
Toys: Let the Toy Wars Begin!
Honorable Mentions:
Monster Mind
Sixteen Easy Pieces
Thanatos Insignia 2
Celine:
I love this category, because just looking at every game here and knowing they're all completed now is always a good for a feel-good pick-me-up sense of accomplishment. As before, this almost sounds like a negative "thank God that's over" category at first, and yes, being like 90 hours long or I Wanna Be the Guy hard or etc. is a great way to find yourself on this list when I finally conquer you. However, it's more than that. This is a positive celebration of the triumph of clearing it. Remember, last year's winner was also a contender for overall GOTY, and won because of the the "Yay, now I can finally cannonball into the fandom and no longer have to worry about spoilers" factor.
Sara:
Admittedly my picks might veer more toward the "Oh good, we don't have to worry about that one anymore" side. :P But I'm trying! Celine is teaching me to be nice and appreciate things. :3
Celine:
You're doing fine, dear. :3
Flimsytown is an enigma that has haunted me for years, especially if you view it as some sort of cryptic riddle pertaining to the author and his eventual tragic death. It took bringing the entire Museum of ZZT community together to put this one to rest, and I can't wait for everyone else to finish their contributions to that overall collaborative article. The only thing holding it back is... well, is this one put to rest? There's still so much we don't know, even putting our heads together.
Professor Layton and the Unwound Future was a game I had to put on the shelf because it reminded me of my ex-girlfriend who had just dumped me right when I was in the middle of it. You can probably imagine how much of a relief it is to get that one dealt with.
Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP is this year's Solar 2: a game that has been on my phone pretty much ever since it came out because I don't exactly buckle down and work on my phone games very often. Now it's finally crossed off the list after years, and it was a weird as hell but not unpleasant overall experience that I consider worth the wait.
Tadpole Treble haunted me because I tried to call it over when I saw the credits and everything but there was always One More Achievement, which sent me straight into the kind of hell you face when you try to 101% a rhythm game. But then I got it! And man, is that an accomplishment.
Finally, we have Toys, the game that is the literal reason why I'm... well, a packrat about games these days. Never be a collector, but after this experience, I had little choice. It felt good to avenge myself on the game that young me never quite was able to clear.
Crying Bulbasaur award for Achievements in Emotional Devastation
Whether it makes us cry, warms our hearts, makes us think about our lives, or otherwise makes us feel things, this award is to honor the games that took us on a journey through the strongest emotions.
Nominees:
Can You Escape Fate?
Finding Paradise
Professor Layton and the Unwound Future
Shades of Gray
Monster Mind
Honorable Mentions:
Deltarune chapter 1
Emily is Away
Flimsy's Town of ZZT
A Raven Monologue
Tadpole Treble
Sara:
Ow.
Celine:
We really are emotional masochists, aren't we. ... Right, so, anyway:
Can You Escape Fate? looks at first glance like bootleg Undertale but is actually quite competent, and does a very good job capturing a lot of the things that made Undertale great. In this case, that means the crying.
Finding Paradise is the full-blown sequel to To the Moon. You probably know by now to take the Freebird Games logo as a built-in content warning, but even if you go into this one expecting To the Moon but More, you are still more than likely not ready for the punches this one will throw.
Professor Layton and the Unwound Future is a Layton game, with all the crying that always entails. In fact, it is by far the hardest-hitting of the first three games, and that is saying something. Oh, and this one had personal connotations for me. Not that the ending needed any help to reduce me to a sobbing wreck, but sure, let's sneak some low blows in there too.
Shades of Gray is Flimsy Parkins doing a melancholy deconstruction of the Town of ZZT. (As opposed to Flimsytown, which is Flimsy Parkins doing a dadaist surreal nonsense deconstruction of the Town of ZZT.) It's tragic to see the titular Town of ZZT reduced to such a neglected ruin, and even sadder when you remember that this is a Flimsy game and get those connotations in your head again.
Finally, Monster Mind is Pokemon porn that hides its actual plot to near the end, but trust me on this one: it gets emotional. It spends a good 80% of the game in a charming slice of life space where not only are you distributing free handjobs to every Pokemon in the house, but you're also getting to know them with character-driven dialogue that is every bit as good as the sex. You really end up falling in love with the Monster Mind crew, so when things get serious in the end... well. You care. A lot.
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:
Farnham Fables episode 3: Animals at School
Kitten Adventures in City Park
Monster Mind
Professor Layton and the Unwound Future
Sixteen Easy Pieces
Honorable mentions:
Basilica de Sangre
simian.interface++
Sprout
Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP
Varenje
Sara:
Ooh, strong contenders.
Celine:
Man, tell me about it. I played some good puzzle games this year.
Farnham Fables, if you give it an honest chance, is a short, sweet, and relatively simple first-person... almost MacVenture-like presentation, only without the dangers or dying or the puzzles being that hard. It's not much in the way of brain-melting puzzle madness, but it's cute and charming, even refreshing.
Kitten Adventures in City Park isn't much of a contender for most puzzling puzzle game, either, being a short and relatively easy one aimed at younger children. However, it is a strong contender for most enjoyable puzzle game this year, given how sweet and charming it is. Especially with the bonus content.
Monster Mind is Mastermind puzzles with Pokemon sex scenes and plot in between, so it kind of has the puzzling and enjoyable parts in balance.
Professor Layton and the Unwound Future is a Professor Layton game. That's so ur-example of the genre that it's what the Hint Coin category is named after.
Finally, Sixteen Easy Pieces is an oddball but surprisingly good, being a brutally hard ZZT-based puzzle game by Flimsy Parkins. (Man, he's coming up a lot this year, isn't he?) Nearly impenetrable to people who don't know ZZT, kind of a chaotic mess even to people who do, it is nevertheless an exploration of unrivaled brilliance in ZZT mechanics and how they can interact with each other to make puzzles.
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:
Colosseum: Quest for the 5 Runes
Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest Remastered
Flimsy's Town of ZZT
Shades of Gray
Toys: Let the Toy Wars Begin!
Honorable Mentions:
Autumn 2003 24HoZZT Contest Entries
Sixteen Easy Pieces
Return.
Thanatos Insignia
Sara:
Wow, lots of ZZT this year, huh.
Celine:
I was on a kick, I guess.
Sara:
A... ChocoboKick? :3
Celine:
... That's the QBasic one.
So, Colosseum: Quest for the 5 Runes is an ancient QBasic game my friend Atomos made back when we were still in contact (and back when we were both Final Fantasy teens.) It's... better than it probably should be given the circumstances, and includes some cameos from most of our squad at the time, from
xaq_the_aereon to people I don't even remember anymore.Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest Remastered is the only retraux throwback in contention this year instead of an actual retro game, which gives it an angle if it wants to take the same path to victory that AM2R did last year. MQR... had some issues, such that it's the first game ever nominated to a category besides Extra Life that I didn't actually complete, but it did do a fantastic job of reminding me how much I love FFMQ after all, and possibly setting up for me to replay it sometime next year.
Flimsytown and Shades of Gray are both deconstructions of the Town of ZZT in their own way, which means each of them are both legitimately old retro games in their own right and nostalgic callbacks to something even older.
Toys goes all the way back to my childhood, with a somewhat turbulent road along the way that makes it even more storied in the end.
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:
Don't Make Love
Farnham Fables episode 3: Animals at School
Hiiro
Kitten Adventures in City Park
Princess Remedy in a World of Hurt
Honorable Mentions:
Embers of Magic
Five Nights of Love
Return.
simian.interface++
Sprout
Celine:
This was a crowded field for probably the same reason I ended up with so many more total games this year than last: I ended up playing a ton of light nibbly things. Which is good! If you're enjoying yourself, it's okay to like whatever games you like. :3
Don't Make Love is a five-minute conversation per run all about exploring the various ways mantis relationships can go right or wrong. It's meant to be taken one run at a time, while also maintaining the ability to get bittersweet and philosophical in each.
Farnham Fables is a fluffy setting where everyone is friendly and the peril is mild, and the game itself is short and simple to match--if all you cared about was seeing the ending, and if you knew all the puzzle solutions already, you could probably speedrun each episode in under two minutes. The exploration and side stuff is where it shines, and that's entirely up to your pace and interest level.
Hiiro is this year's Marvin's Mittens, which won last year, so it's already in a good starting position. A peaceful Seiklus-like explorathon, Hiiro ended up being such a fantastic game overall that you'll be seeing it again later down this post as well. Its sole flaw is a rather contrary-to-the-rest-of-the-game bullet hell bonus boss, but since that was intended to be an Easter egg, the rest of the game can be enjoyed on its own merits.
Kitten Adventures is another cutesy simplistic point-and-click. It is fluff personified.
I ended up sinking enough time and serious game feeling into Princess Remedy that I almost didn't count it in this category, but that's because I cranked up the difficulty and went for a Jealous Chest run. If Hiiro's bonus boss doesn't disqualify it, then that shouldn't disqualify this, either. Overall, this is a quick, breezy, and easily approachable game that gives you exactly as much resistance as you tell it to.
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:
Deltarune chapter 1
Farnham Fables episode 3: Animals at School
Kitten Adventures in City Park
Monster Mind
Tadpole Treble
Honorable Mentions:
Can You Escape Fate?
Don't Make Love
Finding Paradise
The Master
Princess Remedy in a World of Hurt
Celine:
God, this one's going to be tough. You could have called the Honorable Mentions field the nominees and that would have had enough heavyweights in it to make it a contest.
Sara:
Apparently you like sincerity and feel-good moments. Who knew? <3
Celine:
*blush* ... Anyway.
Deltarune, being the sort-of sequel to Undertale, is a mashup of memey shitposting, crying, and everything in between. When Toby Fox gets sincere, though, he gets really sincere.
Farnham Fables is, again, an entire series built on sweet "Awww" moments with a few not-really challenging MacVenture puzzles between them. It's also a game that was clearly made with love, given the quite frankly terrifying amounts of detail put into every random unrelated side thing you can examine if you so choose.
Kitten Adventures in City Park has an entire bonus content fan pack dedicated to the author showing off how much the locations, cats the characters were based off of, etc. all mean to her, and it is the sweetest and most wholesome thing.
Monster Mind's entire endgame, depending on how you handle a certain decision, is a life-affirming celebration of what you have and the people you have around you to share it with.
Tadpole Treble has all the "silly until it gets you right in the heart" moments you would expect from Matthew "Brawl in the Family" Taranto. It's a coming of age story disguised as a rhythm game.
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:
Deltarune chapter 1
Embers of Magic
Five Nights of Love
Parasite Infection
Monster Mind
Honorable Mentions:
Can You Escape Fate?
Don't Make Love
Farnham Fables episode 3: Animals at School
Reflection of a Fallen Feather
Tadpole Treble
Sara:
*Blush* Uh....
Celine:
You wanted to be involved in the awards, sweetie. :3
Sara:
... Fine. XD
Celine:
*Giggle, pat*
Deltarune, much like Undertale, took less than 24 hours for its hottest characters to completely take over e621. My friend Iron-K even wrote me a short NSFW fic about one of them, which was, uh, a very unexpected and pleasant surprise.
Embers of Magic probably would have, if people had actually heard of this game. It's an obscure kinetic novel, but the artwork is beautiful and holy hell I'll take just about everything presented. Seriously, they took a literal dragon skeleton, like straight up Bonetail from The Thousand-Year Door, and even made me look at that like "... would."
Five Nights of Love is an a game that is all about "what if FNAF but I want to smooch the robots."
And Parasite Infection and Monster Mind are both actual porn games. Monster Mind is a lot furrier (well, Pokemonier) and probably better suited to the strict definition of this category, but Parasite Infection may be better aimed at my specific fetish and is allowed in because it was that hot until the content ran out.
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:
Embers of Magic
Finding Paradise
Hiiro
Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP
Tadpole Treble
Honorable Mentions:
33 Grams
Don't Make Love
Farnham Fables episode 3: Animals at School
Sprout
Varenje
Celine:
Oh, uh....
Sara:
Hmm....
Celine:
... Yeah, this one's hard. I feel like I painted us into a corner here by including all types of assets, then inviting apples-to-oranges comparisons. Are Embers of Magic's graphics better than Hiiro's music? How do you even measure that?
Sara:
Whatever gives you the strongest "this X is beautiful" feeling overall, I guess.
Celine:
Yeah.
So, as mentioned above, Embers of Magic may be an obscure half-hour kinetic novel but it is gorgeous.
Finding Paradise is, like all Freebird games, a musical and graphical journey that really sets the bar for how good RPGMaker games can actually be. There's a reason this company is my first go-to when people start complaining about the reputation of, uh, basically every other RPGMaker game you see on Steam.
Hiiro has simplistic, Seiklus-like graphics, but the music is such gorgeous ambience that I put the OST on to relieve stress and anxiety. It's in just about the exact role Marvin's Mittens was in last year in that regard, and may even have surpassed it.
Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP is a weird artsy experimental film of a game, which I did end up enjoying quite a bit in retrospect even if I was iffy about it at the time, but man are its pixel art and soundtrack objectively outstanding.
Tadpole Treble is another entry here on the strength of its soundtrack. As
swordianmaster put it, rhythm games tend to live or die on how good their actual music is, and this one definitely lives.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:
Animalia
Farnham Fables episode 3: Animals at School
Flimsy's Town of ZZT
Parasite Infection
Tadpole Treble
Honorable Mentions:
Colosseum: Quest for the 5 Runes
Don't Make Love
Hiiro
Monster Mind
Sixteen Easy Pieces
Celine:
In a bit of a departure this year, we have two games that are up for the "*Whew* It's Finally Over" award and the "... Or Is It?" award, though they each have special circumstances for that.
Animalia I only had time to play once, and I got a very bad ending. This absolutely needs to be revisited at some point. I can do better with a different squad and better choices, surely.
Farnham Fables I saw maybe a small fraction of the extra exploration side stuff, and I still need to go back and investigate the stuff I missed. There's a ton of it.
Flimsytown... does it really even have a win condition? It almost feels more like an interactive museum, where the player is meant to wander around the various rooms just to see what's there in each of them, even if navigating the pathways is as chaotic and confusing as possible. It's the sort of game where mapping it out took the entire Museum of ZZT community working together to sort out. Even though I'm now... maybe 80-90% confident that everything in the game has technically been seen, I know I sure as hell have only seen a fraction of it.
Parasite Infection is a blatantly unfinished game, and given how much I, er, enjoyed what was there, I of course will be back when there's more to see.
And Tadpole Treble... makes an interesting case about the scope of the category. By now, I have 100% completed this game. However, earlier in the year, there was a time where I declared the game finished after completing the main story, tried to move on, fell prey to the irresistible urge to go back, and did the 100% completion later. Right now, it probably has the weakest case of the four, since I don't need to replay it anymore... but you could argue that if a game needed to be replayed so bad that I already did, that should count for it, not against it. After all, if I'd finished the main story of Tadpole Treble last week instead of months ago, then the rest would still be gnawing at me now, and it would very easily be one of the favorites here. Maybe it still is? Who knows.
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:
Escape the Game
Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest Remastered
My master, the Parasite
Reflection of a Fallen Feather
Varenje
Sara:
......
Celine:
... Yeah, it's... look. Not every category is overflowing with classics. But hey, we're here to comb through this one and find the most-redeemable one, you know?
Escape the Game and Varenje are the only two I actually completed at the same time I abandoned them, in that both were cases where I beat episode 1 and decided not to continue the series because I wasn't enjoying them. That said, they are short and over quickly, and not terribly challenging. They kind of have a built-in advantage where I could pick them up again because they wouldn't be a commitment. Plus, hey, there was at least (barely) enough enjoyment there to get me through episode 1 of each.
Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest Remastered... I actually was enjoying it despite how awful it was, and the only reason I stopped was because my PC decided not to work with it anymore. Granted, I then found out how much worse it gets right after I involuntarily stopped, but still, maybe the fact that I would have kept going at least until then counts for something?
Reflection of a Fallen Feather is the opposite of Escape the Game and Varenje: probably the most actually-decent game on this list, and one I really wanted to like. The only reason I stopped was because I found the mechanics impenetrable, and kind of hit an "is this game really worth learning?" wall. It would be a much bigger commitment to pick this one up again. But I still enjoyed my first impressions of it, so maybe I might.
My master, the Parasite... uh... m-maybe the author will come back from the Internet grave and finish it someday?
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:
Embers of Magic
Finding Paradise
Kitten Adventures in City Park
Princess Remedy in a World of Hurt
Tadpole Treble
Honorable Mentions:
Can You Escape Fate?
Don't Make Love
Hiiro
Return.
Sprout
Sara:
*Vibrates*
Celine:
See, now there's a tough field.
Sara:
Another one where they're all good for different reasons, too.
Celine:
Yeah. There's a real struggle between safety of recommendations and our personal desires this year. If game A is completely free, accessible, and offers something for everyone, but game B is incredibly meaningful to us and we'd love to have you play so we can talk about it, even though it's more expensive, in kind of a niche genre that's not for everyone, and is several games deep into a series with prerequisites that make it harder to get into, then how do you weigh all that?
xyzzysqrl had a similar contest between her head and her heart for this category last year, and her heart ultimately won, but who knows how this will go down for us. I will say this, though: These are all fantastic and playing any of them would make us very happy.Embers of Magic is a free kinetic novel. It's short, it's barely interactive, it's just a neat story with really great visuals, and there's basically no reason not to check it out.
Finding Paradise would be the game B in my metaphor above. It's not free, it's an RPGMaker walking sim, and it has To the Moon, To the Moon's two minisode DLC episodes, and A Bird Story all as required reading beforehand. But... man. Man. This game is important.
Kitten Adventures in City Park is the exact opposite: It's a short free fluff piece that is cute and sweet.
Princess Remedy has a pretty firm lock on the game A column in my metaphor above. It's free, it's light and breezy or masocore depending on what difficulty level you select, it's fun and it's anything you want it to be.
Tadpole Treble is sort of in between the two extremes. It's harder to get into than all the free ones because it's not free, but it's easier than Finding Paradise because it doesn't have any prerequisites or required reading involved. As a cutesy obstacle-dodging rhythm game, the gameplay holds a lot more universal appeal, and of course the soundtrack is catchy as hell.
Sqrl's Choice award for XyzzySqrl's Favorite Game This Year
Another silly for-fun category. We pick the nominees for "what would XyzzySqrl's favorite game probably be" (excluding the obvious ones,) and then she picks a winner!
Nominees:
Animalia
Colosseum: Quest for the 5 Runes
Don't Make Love
Monster Mind
Kitten Adventures in City Park
Honorable Mentions:
Can You Escape Fate?
Embers of Magic
Five Nights of Love
Flimsy's Town of ZZT
Sprout
Celine:
The Calvinball of awards, we honestly have no idea what we're rewarding, here. The category says
xyzzysqrl's favorite game, but she's only even played two or three of these. It's mostly a silly for-fun pile of "saw this, thought of you" nonsense that we just kind of fling her way and make her pick one. Last year, she picked Stair Quest SE just to poke fun at the fact that I had sex with a staircase in that game. I managed to avoid doing that in any of these, so I'll leave it up to her to figure out what other criteria she can use for this highly serious and distinguished award.Sara:
XyzzySqrl Award for Xyzziest Sqrl.
Celine:
Well that would be Xyzzy herself, obviously.
Woodrats' 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 we, Celine and Sara Kalante, found to be our personal favorites.
Nominees:
Finding Paradise
Hiiro
Princess Remedy in a World of Hurt
Sixteen Easy Pieces
Tadpole Treble
Honorable Mentions:
Can You Escape Fate?
Deltarune chapter 1
Farnham Fables episode 3: Animals at School
Monster Mind
Professor Layton and the Unwound Future
Celine:
Whew. What a year for games. This is another category where I can just look at everything here and feel good about the whole year. Games are great, actually.
Sara:
But now you have to pick a favorite. :P
Celine:
... Shh. >.>
Finding Paradise is To the Moon except even more To the Moon than To the Moon was and that is saying something.
Hiiro is a charming relaxathon that made me feel deeply at peace on every screen in the game except the one.
Princess Remedy was utterly fantastic at being cute/breezy and intense when I did the challenge run.
Sixteen Easy Pieces is easily the most brilliantly-designed ZZT puzzle game I've ever played and one of the better ones on any platform.
Tadpole Treble is a fun, sweet, charming rhythm game with adorable characters, surprise emotional moments, and a soundtrack that will never leave your head, ever.
Honestly, any one of these would make a fantastic and worthy choice for the best game I played this year. Hell, any of the honorable mentions could make a fine and legitimate case for deserving it. I played some really great games this year, and getting to celebrate that is why I put in the work to put all this together, even if it's a lot of writing. What a year, what a year.
Whew. And there you have it. So, as always, we strongly encourage you to speculate on the picks either of us are going to make, and to discuss the picks you would make. We each have pretty good ideas what we're picking for at least a few of these already, but not all of them are 100% decided yet. Crowd participation making really good points why one particular game deserved a particular category actually did sway a few of my picks last year!
But mainly, I just look forward to the participation because... you know. Games are fun. Responses and comments and discussions are fun. This is all a big party and I want everyone invited.
Sara:
Including me! :3
Celine:
Absolutely. <3
no subject
Date: 2018-12-02 11:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-02 11:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-03 01:31 am (UTC)α I think we're going to have to think about this a little, and then post precommit hashes of our predictions which can be revealed and judged afterwards without potentially biasing you. ^..^
no subject
Date: 2018-12-03 02:35 am (UTC)...
wrong kind? okay
no subject
Date: 2018-12-03 05:16 pm (UTC)β Precommitment for Metiagon Jade's predictions for the Woodrat Gameblogging Award Nominees 2018: SHA-512 = 3918462ab767ade5 92b88093b725bfb3 bbbeb1a4a64fba21 d48c2d8c16da077c 79109cb78d33c1b1 3df68546d17c0137 ab99a819ffdd806f d2cce382cc2d8752, UTF-8 plain text with Unix newlines, 2198 characters.
I put in a first and second guess for each category, mainly guessing for Celine because I don't have enough to extrapolate from about Sara's mindset. I'll probably give myself, like, 4 points for a correct first guess, 2 points for a correct second guess, maybe 1 point if neither wins but either one gets specifically mentioned as particularly strong (I'll evaluate whether to use the third criterion based on what the next-best stuff looks like in the final post). c..c
I decided to go with my intuition and not spend too much time on it, rather than agonizing over the details of the posts and flip-flopping all over the place. We'll see what Quartzy thinks when she gets up to this too…
no subject
Date: 2018-12-03 05:51 pm (UTC)β “But my doctor says I'm not supposed to eat salt! What can I do? Will you take out the salt for me?” “I would be glad to do that; my fee is only $50,000.”
Fortunately, these ones (see below) start out unsalted. Unfortunately, you can't add any salt until after the source document is revealed. Fortunately, there's probably no need for it; strings of hexadecimal make people salty enough already. :-9
no subject
Date: 2018-12-06 11:58 am (UTC)The Rita:
I absolutely think Toys is the pick here. It's, like... legitimately part of your actual backstory. It has Plot and History with you. It's not some random-come-lately, like Superbrothers, this one sat around for decades AND defeated you several times before you could take a swing and knock it off. Yeah, this is a sure thing, I feel like.
The Crying Bulbasaur:
Oh, is it the bathtub full of tears that is Finding Paradise, or the personal ice-cube to the gut of Unwound Future? Those are the obvious picks, but given that you personally spearheaded an initiative to look into the guy's other works, I'm going to say that Shades of Gray affected you more than anything else on this list.
The Hint Coin:
My heart says you're going to go for Monster Mind, but my head says you're going to go for Layton. My heart thinks my head is an idiot because have ANY of these awards named for a specific thing ever won in the field they created? So I'm gonna pick Monster Mind and watch you try to explain the ~mysterious puzzle~ of groping a pokemon that isn't Magnezone.
The Wing of Wyvern:
THERE ARE TWO ZZT GAMES AND AN ACTUAL QBASIC GAME IN HERE THIS IS NOT FAIR. Which I see is the same conclusion you two reached. Pft.
Insofar as 'retro' goes, I'm going to say you can't get more retro than personally participating in the creation of a thing and then playing the thing and dissecting the thing and so I'm saying Colosseum: Quest for the 5 Runes here. But it's a tight battle.
The Little Cup:
It LOOKS like Kitten Adventures in City Park is a lockdown here, and then I remember that you are the primary champion of the Farnham Fables series. Do I think you can pass up the chance to praise those some more? I do not in fact think so.
The Piece of Heart:
I think it would be really funny if Monster Mind won two whole awards and you had to talk about the pokestroking game some more.
The Furry Little Body:
I think it would be really funny if Monster Mind won three whole awards and you had to talk about the pokestroking game some more.
The Golden Pheasent:
I'm going to say Tadpole Treble here because man, that art and that music and... it's just a great, great, magical little game, isn't it? You had to 100% it. I've been thinking of going back now and again.
The Trap Devised by Satan:
For some reason, maybe the article that's being written about it or maybe your own desire to keep poking at a mystery... For some reason I see Flimsy's Town of ZZT in your future. You're gonna keep looking for some route that makes sense, some route that tells you More Stuff, seeking genius in a ball of string.
The Extra Life:
...is like, "none of these" an option? Can I abstain?
uhh. mmhf. Uh. ... mrgglf. If you beat Reflections of a Fallen Feather that's 2/3rds of our exploratory group that finishes it and that will mean I have a moral imperative to do so as well. I don't know, you could do that as part of some kind of revenge plot against me in the future?
The Stan S. Stanman:
TECHNICALLY you can't actually PURCHASE Embers of Magic, Kitten Adventures, or Princess Remedy. Clutching my semantics to my chest, I thrust out my hand and point at uhhhh you're gonna tell people to buy Tadpole Treble because you're not gonna advise people buy an entire game SERIES probably maybe.
The Sqrl's Choice:
Excuse me a moment.
You rolled 1d5, result: 4.
Pfft. Yes. YES.
I think it would be REALLY REALLY FUNNY if Monster Mind won FOUR whole awards and you had to talk about the pokestroking game for an UNCOMFORTABLY LONG TIME and THEN I talked about it FOR you for a while just to drive home the punchline.
Is that gonna happen? Sore wa himitsu desu.
The Woodrats' Choice:
The obvious choice is Monster M... no bold text? Oh, that's not on the list. Damnit.
Okay, for real? Hmm. You played the HECK out of Princess Remedy and Tadpole Treble, both of which are absolutely fantastic, but you didn't make a video series out of those. You made a video series out of Finding Paradise. You wouldn't do that unless you loved this thing to death. I'm going with Finding Paradise. Yes.
Good year for games, I'd say. You'd say. We'd all say.
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Date: 2018-12-06 02:49 pm (UTC)Explorers took Crying Bulbasaur last year with relative ease because it's fucking Explorers. (It also took Furry Little Body with relative ease because it's Explorers fucking.)