The Pits: Best in Video Games 2024

Merve

1 year ago

Editor’s Note: Feel free to post as big or as small of a list as you would like below but please keep your lists contained to these posts and do not make your own post or fill up the OT with them. The winners will be announced alongside the other winners of The Pits on December 30th and will be calculated by adding up your lists (10 points for first, 9 for second, etc. with 5 per awarded for unranked Top 10 lists). The preference is for ranked lists to aid in determining a winner, but you are not required to rank them.

Welcome to the voting thread for the 2024 Pits’ best in video games! Like last year, you’ll be voting on two awards: the Best Game of 2024 Award, for the best video game released this year, i.e. between January 1st, 2024 and now; and the Retrospective Best Game of 2023 Award, for the best video game released last year, i.e. between January 1st, 2023 and December 31st, 2023. I’m not going to be ultra-strict about this, but as a general rule, you should go by release date in whichever country you live in. You can vote for remasters or re-releases; just be aware that those have historically not garnered a lot of votes.

Feel free to get creative with your submissions. You can merely post your top 10 lists, you can pen a little blurb for each entry, or you can post a screenshot and an essay for each one. It’s really up to you. Whatever you choose, just make sure to get it done by noon EST on December 28th so I have time to count it. If you edit your ballot after posting it any time between now and December 28th, please include the date and time at which you edited it so that I count your updated ballot.

Below, I’ve included my own submissions for the 2024 and 2023 Awards. I should emphasize: this is not The Avocado’s official top 10. The Avocado’s official game of the year is chosen by you, the community, through this voting process. Consider my post inspiration for your submissions, an invitation for discussion, and a celebration of some of the best the industry had to offer in 2024.

Top 10 of 2024

All screenshots are my own.

My selections

Before I present my list, a short disclaimer: More so than previous years, this list is a snapshot of where I’m at on the day I wrote it. I will finish Echo Point Nova and Lorelei and the Laser Eyes before the end of the year, and both will almost certainly have a berth in my top 10. I won’t be able to finish Dragon Age: The Veilguard or Metaphor: ReFantazio before the end of the year. Squirrel with a Gun and Bears in Space are sitting in my Steam library unplayed. And I never even got around to buying Indiana Jones and the Great Circle or Mouthwashing. You can expect that my retrospective list next year will look substantially different from this one.

10. Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes

A charming throwback RPG with a lot of imagination and even more heart. The perfect antidote to AAAA cinematic bombast.

9. Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club

Deeper, darker, and more personal than the Famicom Detective Club series has ever previously been, this visual novel enthralls from start to finish.

8. Animal Well

A masterclass in game design that works both as an aesthetically singular Metroidvania and as an endlessly intricate puzzle box with secrets galore.

7. individualism in the dead-internet age: an anti-big tech asset flip shovelware rant manifesto

It’s free. You can go download and play it right now. Natalie Lawhead’s individualism in the dead-internet age is an elegy not just for the Internet we used to have, but also for the Internet that could have been.

6. I Am Your Beast

A desperate, violent first-person parkour shooter with bite-sized levels, set in the Alaskan wilderness. 50% adrenaline, 50% improvisation, 100% badass.

5. 20 Small Mazes

Exactly what it says on the tin. FLEB’s free puzzle game only takes a couple of hours to clear, but each of its mazes is both clever and an absolute joy.

4. Children of the Sun

You are assassin. You are bullet. You are angel of vengeance. Enemy not human. Enemy is prey. Enemy must die.

3. Dungeons of Hinterberg

What if Persona were a European action-RPG? It would look a lot like Dungeons of Hinterberg, a game that not only makes good on its title by having lots of dungeons, but also boasts an aesthetically striking, comic-book art style and tackles issues of labour, tourism, and environmentalism.

2. Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth

How do you even begin to summarize a 150-hour behemoth like this? Infinite Wealth is a turn-based RPG, an open-world city exploration game, a collection of dozens of mini-games, an Animal Crossing clone, a Pokémon clone, a Crazy Taxi clone, a visually stunning tourism simulator, a rumination on religion and faith, and a cautionary tale about the modern legacy of colonial exploitation. It’s also a game where you can beat up thugs with surfboards and pepper grinders, and one of your most powerful summons is your pet crawfish and her hermit crab lover. Video games are great.

1. 1000xRESIST

With an Edith Finchian display of mastery of form, 1000xRESIST weaves together disparate gameplay styles and threads of a nonlinear narrative to create one of the most spellbinding and enthralling titles of the decade. Each twist resolves a previous mystery while raising a dozen new questions. Each shot is meticulously composed for maximum impact. Each line of dialogue is carefully worded to have two or three meanings. The game wears its influences — The Giver, NieR: Automata, and Arrival, to name a few — on its sleeve, but blends and shapes them into a compelling sci-fi tale that feels utterly alien yet strikingly familiar. 1000xRESIST is an absolute must-play and the best game of 2024.

Honourable mentions: Hell of an Office; Nottolot

Revisiting 2023