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And you know what? Although an indie game What Remains of Edith Finch won our Game of the Year prize, it was one of the few to make the list.

And yet in , our ten-game list has nine indie games. Only one big-budget game made the cut. But indies showed up in a big way for , putting out creative and emotionally rich experiences that reminded us why the indie scene thrived in the first place.

As always, our list is in no particular order, with the exception of our first-place Game of the Year pick. The rest are all tied for second place. Stick around afterwards for a few honorable mentions as well—expansions ineligible for our official Game of the Year list but still worth recognizing. Except where XCOM rigidly locks the player to its grid at all times, Mutant Year Zero lets you roam its maps in real-time, and then drop into turn-based tactical combat on command.

Based on a tabletop RPG, the post-apocalypse of Mutant Year Zero is charming and unique in a way you rarely expect with post-apocalyptic settings these days. As an invasion of giant bugs swarms across the planet, three pilots are sent back in time to try and stave off the threat. Using whatever machines you can commandeer, you must turn back the enemy tide and hopefully wipe them out completely—or lose, and start the process all over again. When you pull it off, saving humanity with smart maneuvering, you feel like a genius.

A three-part experience, Cube Escape: Paradox free on Steam begins and ends with the same sort of macabre room-escape puzzlers the series is known for.

The first is pretty rote, easing you in with a familiar array of locked boxes, arcane symbols, and scrawled notes. For a minute I was worried. The only question now is how the team can possibly top itself again. The premise is familiar as always: You navigate a maze-like, interconnected world that opens up more and more pathways as you acquire new abilities.

So far, so Symphony of the Night. Bounce off bumpers, ride ramps, collect fruit—Mokumana Island is essentially one enormous and elaborate pinball table, dotted with characters and a fair number of quests as well. Few genre mashups feel as effortless. The early hours are pure frantic survivalism. You crash-land on an alien planet, adrift in what seems like a world-encompassing ocean.

Like any survival game, your first order of business is collecting enough food and water to live. Soon you start to feel comfortable though, and the ocean feels less foreign. You start to recognize the alien fish on-sight, even stockpiling a healthy supply in case of disaster. You roam further afield, swim out away from your base or maybe a bit deeper under the waves—and then it all starts to look alien again.

Its trail of story bread crumbs is a model the genre should follow more often, leading players to the coolest bits while still leaving plenty to explore and experiment with. In a year full of iterative sequels, Hitman 2 is the most iterative. That reductionist framing undercuts how damn great Hitman 2 is though.

The previous iteration stumbled on an ingenious way to blend the sandbox fun of Blood Money with a friendlier, more guided experience. Hitman 2 continues pursuing those ideas while making some of the most complicated and ambitious levels of the entire series. The third, you throw your briefcase at her head and walk away dressed as a flamingo mascot. And to this foundation Hitman 2 adds a few more tricks, like hiding in foliage, or allowing the enemy to spot you in mirrors. What a story, though.

The Gwent aspect is often just as inspired, though. Important characters often correspond to cards, and alienating someone in the story might lead to them leaving your party—and your deck as well. It moves like Quake or Doom or Hexen or any of a dozen other obvious inspirations.

It also has a story worth caring about. The Obra Dinn embarked with more than 60 people aboard. Now the once-bustling ship drifts towards shore, empty. What happened? Luckily you have one remarkable tool in your inventory, a magic compass that allows you to relive the last moments of any corpse you can find. Or moment, really.

Each is frozen in time, a still-life that you can walk around—and usually a few snippets of dialogue to go with it. Through these piecemeal conversations and context clues, you must determine three pieces of information for each member of the crew: Their name, how they died, and who if anyone killed them.

Some are easy. Cause of death? Those are usually pretty obvious. And some of the identities are easily discerned as well. But who is the captain shooting? And why? And it is fantastic. If it is, then good. Go buy it. Stop reading and just go buy it. Better for you to just play it than to experience it secondhand. Sometimes you play the right game at the right time. No need to delve into details, but I spent much of the year struggling against depression and burnout.

And somewhere in there I played Celeste. It looked charming. The controls were tight. Celeste Mountain is a metaphor—for depression, for anxiety, for self-loathing, for all the various demons people fight day-to-day, often behind the scenes. Celeste believes in you. It is earnest and honest about its subject matter in a way few games even attempt, and never have I felt so certain a game deserves our Game of the Year prize. Again: Sometimes you play the right game at the right time.

For those in a dark place, I hope Celeste can help. You can climb Celeste Mountain, even if you die a thousand—hell, ten thousand—deaths on the way to the top. Just keep trying. The goal is to use the tools available to make it out alive.

Then it resets though, and now you have access to more parts of the base—and two characters to shepherd out. The catch: Whatever items you use as the first character will still be gone when you play as the second character.

Attempts can feel a bit too long by the end, especially as you get more familiar with the levels and start going through the motions again. Mooncrash is a truly special experience though, and had it been given a standalone release it would absolutely be in our top 10 instead of relegated to the honorable mentions. Waaaay too long, but good. It was the second Origins expansion that impressed me though.

Set four years after the events of Origins , Bayek travels to Thebes to investigate the presence of a Piece of Eden. There, he finds the resurrected spirits of ancient Egyptian rulers terrorizing the city. Ramesses II presides over the long-silent battlefields of his greatest triumph, Kadesh.

Akhenaten sits beneath an enormous sun, representing his belief in the monotheistic reign of the sun-god Aten. Aaru is dotted with towering statues of Nefertiti, regal beneath the pale light of an eclipse. Curse of the Pharaohs proved this series could do so much more though, given the freedom to try—and then Odyssey built on these ideas as well, introducing mythological creatures like the minotaur and Medusa. Destiny 2 had…a rough first year. But then we had two thoroughly mediocre expansions, first Curse of Osiris and then the somehow-even-worse Warmind.