Hi, these are ten of the best video games that released in 2021. All screenshots captured in-game.

BOWSER’S FURY 

Nintendo EPD

Open World Mario seemed like an idea too radical for Nintendo to take seriously. In three dimensional space, Mario has either been coupled to meticulously designed courses or, when allowed some level agency and exploration, confined to themed levels masquerading as larger worlds. Bowser’s Fury—with its twelve distinct islands and myriad distractions tucked between them—carries the looming threat of a constant antagonist menacing throughout its connected zones. Bowser’s Fury feels like a wild experiment that escaped a lab and inadvertently proved, even with recycled assets and uneven pacing, Mario can thrive against yet another approach to 3D space. 

EXO ONE

Exbleative

After Marble Madness’ eerily accurate physics system antagonized my six year old mind, I never expected to find joy in piloting a sphere across any more threatening tracts of land. Then Exo One comes along and can instantly morph its own mad marble between states of delicate buoyancy and brutal density. It blasts across gorgeous alien landscapes under the direction of a physics system that creates kinetic joy through its basic operation. The product is a kaleidoscopic assault on the senses and leaves an impression so intense that I wished I knew how to get ahold of mild hallucinogens. Exo One is a god damn trip and unlike anything else from 2021. 

SABLE

Shedworks

As designed, Sable is a freeform journey across gorgeous landscapes in pursuit of self-discovery. Agency is at a premium and the player can go as far as their initiative can take them. As executed on an Xbox One, Sable is a devastating technical calamity unfit for basic service. It was a cruelty to observe the heights Sable was capable of reaching and yet not be able to experience them for myself. As the months have passed, Sable’s highs have stayed with me while its frustrations have faded. With more time, maybe I’ll find a better version on more competent hardware. My review.

RETURNAL

Housemarque 

My connection to Housemarque’s work is not unlike my relationship with wine. I’ve played Resogun and Nex Machina, and I’ve even finished Super Stardust HD, Dead Nation, and Outland. I buy wine sometimes too, but I don’t understand why people pour it in special cups, swirl it around, smell it, and pretend to understand befouled grapes on a philosophical level. Returnal turned the corner for me. I bought it because I needed to justify the existence of a PlayStation 5, but I stuck with it because I was driven to overcome the fundamental challenges established through its levels and tested in its boss fights. Returnal is just Housemarque’s (sorry) house style, but finally expressed in the third dimensional. Spatial awareness, patience, execution—it shouldn’t work in 3D, but it does. It’s the same blueprint found in every Housemarque game, but engineered in a way—probably the glittery presentation but also, maybe, the despairing ambiance—that finally allows me to appreciate the wine and sense the craft behind its creation. Nathan Stevens’ review. 

GENESIS NOIR

Feral Cat Den 

Genesis Noir is genre fiction that slow burns from a hard-boiled detective mystery to a cosmic exploration of potential and possibility. It showcases a form of storytelling exclusive to an interactive medium, not only immersing the player in rhapsodic visual landscapes, but expecting them to find tactile interpretations from its collection of curiosities. Genesis Noir doesn’t position chaos as a subject for control, only an objective to be experienced and appreciated. My review.

SOLAR ASH

Heart Machine

Solar Ash follows Haven and The Pathless by executing its premise in the simple joy of movement. It’s fun to skate around pastel cloud worlds in search of secrets. It allows the player to freely develop the demanding skill set to effectively and efficiently take down its collection of colossal monsters. Solar Ash certainly could have done more by saying less, letting environments like Mirrorsea and Luminous Peak communicate place and presence in ways its dialogue couldn’t. The prevailing sense of place, aided by the wall-of-sound synths, stands as Solar Ash’s identity.  Ben Sheene’s review. 

NIER REPLICANT VER. 1.22474487139…

Cavia + ToyLogic 

Nier presented as an action role-playing game. Nier was actually a controlled demolition of genre conventions driven by a taste for subversion and a desire to explore emotional boundaries between mild sorrow and hysterical despair. Replicant ver. 1.22474487139… keeps Nier intact with distinct improvements to its operation and accessibility. It remains an eccentric, effective, and occasionally inhospitable member of its medium. My review. 

THE ARTFUL ESCAPE 

Beethoven & Dinosaur

I know nothing about folk music and almost nothing about rock music. I have no idea what it’s like to live in the shadow of Bob Dylan, or to come from a small town. I do know, however, that shredding guitar in outer space against an increasingly ethereal succession of backdrops feels invigorating. The Artful Escape won me over because it has a button completely dedicated to a guitar. Allowing the player to push it (almost) whenever they want, regardless of its mechanical function, is apparently a shortcut to my top ten list. I’ll wait and see if this can come true for any  year in the future. Nathan Stevens’ review. 

THE FORGOTTEN CITY 

Modern Storyteller 

After Paradise Killer, all I wanted was another modest open world filled with eccentric characters and loaded with mystery and intrigue. I’m not aware of many other games in genre but The Forgotten City fits most of the criteria. Its vaguely Roman world resets every time one of its residents sins, testing moral and philosophical boundaries through its dialogue and environments. There’s also a bunch of weird stuff. The Forgotten World is a bit clunky, but I’m a sucker for this exact level of agency and exploration. I need more games like this to exist. 

CYBER SHADOW 

Aarne “MekaSkull” Hunziker

An hour of Cyber Shadow reveals a principled take on Ninja Gaiden smoothed over with progression mechanics and small amenities to ease its paradigm into the modern era. It never breaks its promise and only amplifies its finer principles through each level. Cyber Shadow ascended to something I knew I had to finish once it started letting me parry bullets and break the game, or rather, make me feel like I was breaking the game. Each level is turned for a variety of approaches and carries a degree of restraint and refinement uncommon in single-developer projects. It’s difficult to finish, sure, but patience and a moderate reaction times were all I needed to see it through. Steven McGehee’s review.

Past top ten lists: 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020

Other 2021 games I greatly enjoyed:

The Gunk – The first two hours of The Gunk were an ethereal wonderland that could have been mistaken for a new Nintendo IP. The final two were bogged down in dark and dreary (but serviceable) puzzle rooms. The Gunk is a better argument for Game Pass as a viable service than a standalone game. Hopefully its position, more than its performance, signals the beginning of a new trend. 

Fatam Betula – There is an expanding wave of low-poly, PlayStation-style revivals filling digital marketplaces. Fatam Betula happens to be the only one I’ve spent real time with, but it accurately reproduced not only the PS1’s visual presentation, but the design ethos that powered that generation of games. The question of the quality of games from that era is subjective, but it’s also irrelevant. Fatam Betula and its peers exist to remind us of what it was like (especially when Sega and Sony are reluctant to bring the Saturn and PlayStation’s best back to market). My review. 

Lake – Do you have any idea what I would give to be a burned out software programmer in 1986 named Meredith who returns to her quiet small town to fill in for her dad, for two weeks, as a postal worker? Do you know how badly I want to live out the mundane existence of befriending mostly normal characters around town? Did you know that I would want those two weeks to dictate the direction of the rest of my life? Lake did, and it let me live that fantasy of driving a shitty mail truck around and talking to people with medium levels of excitement for four hours. 

It Takes Two – The two hours we played of It Takes Two felt like a natural follow up to the wild, weird time we spent with A Way Out. It shines any time it calls for both players to collaborate on the same task, simultaneously (rather than the more stunted, “you do your part, then I’ll do mine” platforming sequences). It also, obviously, calls for two players at the same time, which was increasingly hard to coordinate. Ben Sheene’s review.

Shin Megami Tensei V – Shin Megami Tensei III was a revelation. Shin Megami Tensei IV was a disappointment. Shin Megami Tensei V is somewhere in between. It drives the player to constantly reshuffle their party, centralizing combat as its dynamic hook. This cycle functions adequately enough, but it’s too familiar to systems in Persona and other SMT-related games. I’ve done all of this before, but I also can’t deny the compulsion to scour scorched wastelands while listening to Ryota Kozuka and Toshiki Konishi shred every available guitar string. It’s my favorite game to play while simultaneously watching professional football. 

Axiom Verge 2 – Axiom Verge may have been the finest metroidvania from 2010-2020. Its sequel took it in directions that were both predictable (layered worlds) and unexpected (a complete shift in combat mechanics). Its soundtrack also went harder and weirder than anticipated. The product was a game that, while not soaring close to the heights of its predecessor, still flies above most of its contemporaries. It’s a bit like how Nintendo continues to still make Zelda games after A Link to the Past perfected its own template. 

Narita Boy – I admire Narita Boy more than I actually like playing it. The sheen of its retro aesthetic has been worn down by dozens of games that came before it. There are too many doors and keys, and not enough direction. Jumping around never feels right. Its story is mercilessly self indulgent and outrageously verbose. But it feels like the small team at Studio Koba made exactly the game they wanted to make. Narita Boy blurs the line between a personal story and an empowered fantasy so well that it was tough to tell the difference between its narrative fiction and its creator’s reality. Neat boss fights, too. Ben Sheene’s review.

Persona 5 Strikers – Strikers captures the affable singularity of Persona 5 while shifting its perspective from a turn-based slow burn to an action-focused escapade. At the same time, Strikers’ devotion to its source material succeeds in keeping the player active and invested amid the turbulence of its strained support structure. It’s a summer vacation masquerading as a sequel, and that seems to suit the Phantom Thieves just fine. My review. 

Unpacking – I really enjoy organizing things. My shelves for games and books are alphabetized. My folders on my PC are meticulously categorized. I have spreadsheets for all of the games and vinyl records in my collection. I own a filing cabinet. Unpacking, through its bright pixel art and myriad pitch-perfect sound effects, perfectly captured the kinetic joy of placing objects on shelves in their proper place. It also, for the first time, made me realize not everyone has a bathroom mug or chooses the coffee table as the best place for game controllers and remote controls. Tucked inside that process is an incidental and yet powerful story of the person you’re moving around through a decade of their life. Unpacking suggests that, even in the most mundane or circumstances, there’s a story worth telling through a normal living space. And it didn’t need bloody text screeds on the wall or other lurid shortcuts to get its point across. 

Bulk Slash – Bulk Slash released for the Saturn in the summer of 1997. It was only released in Japan, as most consumers (and Sega) had given up on the Saturn by that point. Bulk Slash was never localized into another language. In 2022, a small team came together and performed a labor of love. Through a patch, Bulk Slash now has a complete english script, full voice acting, and the addition of support for Virtual On’s twin stick controller. This is an incredible amount of attention for a Saturn game from a quarter century ago without much public interest.

And yes, Bulk Slash is an attractive game worthy of the recognition. The player controls a military robot through seven small city-size open levels. The robot can morph into a jet at any time. Objectives and targets are all over the levels, with the voice cast acting as navigators to point the player in the right direction. It’s almost like an open world (ish) Burning Rangers. Bulk Slash is obviously a bit crude by today’s standards, but it’s a sight to behold on a platform (and in a generation) that rarely featured games of its scale. Its localization sets a new standard for unofficial projects and I wish there were a legal way to monetarily reward the folks who made it happen. 

Racing Lagoon – Racing Lagoon released for the original PlayStation in the summer of 1999. It was only released in Japan, as most of Squaresoft thought it was too weird to localize into any other language. While Squaresoft took some risks in the North American market (Bushido Blade, Einhander, Chocobo’s Dungeon 2), Racing Lagoon was cast into the ether with Internal Section, Cyber Org, and Soukaigi. In 2022, a small team led by Hilltop came together and performed a labor of love. Through a patch, Racing Lagoon is now playable with a complete english script.  

Racing Lagoon is an RPG where the main character is your car and statistical upgrades are car parts. Random battles on the world map are actually short races around a city. Elaborately decorated  all stars from the late 90’s tuner scene in Japan compose the cast of characters. The player character has retrograde amnesia. The actual racing is…actually not bad! ThorHighHeels lays out a case for Racing Lagoon better than I ever could, but I encourage everyone with a copy of the game to download the patch and give it a shot. 

I Can’t Play Inscryption. I understand Inscryption to be significantly more than the card game that it initially presents. I also understand Inscryption to be a card game, which is repellent to my tastes and sensibilities. I tried to overcome this, and maybe if I weren’t so stubborn and/or my brain matter weren’t the consistency of concrete, I could have. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. I look forward to spoiling myself on everything people with patience found inside Inscryption.

I Wish Annapurna Interactive Would Stop Spending Money On Celebrity Voice Work. Annapurna (and Devolver Digital) are the premier publishers of smaller or otherwise independent games. Gorogoa, What Remains of Edith Finch, Outer Wilds, and Donut County are among my favorite games ever made. With increasing frequency, however, the publisher has used its Hollywood connections to tie voice roles in games like Maquette, Twelve Minutes, and The Artful Escape to actors with recognizable names. I don’t think this adds anything of substance and, especially after the performance of both Maquette and Twelve Minutes, suggests that money may have been better spent improving the game. I am sure some chart, somewhere, says the numbers go up if a player sees Lena Headey’s name in a tweet about The Artful Escape, but (to me!) it all seems like a waste of resources. 

Wish I had time for: Boomerang X, The Art of Rally, Road 96, Deathloop, Metroid Dread, Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, Chicory: A Colorful Tale, Loop Hero, Scarlet Nexus, Before Your Eyes, Neo: The World Ends with You, Chorus, Hitman 3, Ys IX: Monstrum Nox, Oddworld: Soulstorm, SaGa Frontier Remastered, The Ascent, The Good Life, R-Type Final 2, Death’s Door, WarioWare: Get It Together!, Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye, Jett: The Far Shore, ElecHead, and Heavenly Bodies.

Looking forward to in 2022: Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, Elden Ring, Sonic Frontiers, GhostWire: Tokyo, Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, Weird West, Sol Cresta, A Plague Tale: Requiem, Bayonetta 3, Salt and Sacrifice, and Neon White

These are (maybe) never coming out: UFO 50, Dead Static Drive, Humanity, and Drift Stage.