The End of 2020, Or, a GOTY / Game Diary Wrap Up Post

… Well. 2020 hey.

(This is going to be a bit of a navel gazey blog, so, just, FYI. Still games focused though, so, if you do or don’t want to keep reading, well, you do you.)

In the last couple of weeks, my mind turned to the first entry of this 2020 Game Diary, on the struggles of Celeste. It as pretty deeply personal. Of all the places to be, I wasn’t overly in a good one. But, with the help of a video game, I felt like I was getting passed the worst of it - getting over the hump, as it were.

Then along came 2020.

Raging bushfires, police brutality, politics. A once in a hundred year global pandemic. All the repercussions that come with every single one of those world altering, seemingly never ending, events.

It’s been a hard one for a lot of people. So much anguish across the entire planet for so many avoidable reasons.

I… feel a little guilty here, actually. Because, well, as horrific as the goings of the world has been, while I look back on the year and the path I walked from Jan 1 to Dec 31, I’ve ended up in a much better space.

It was still bloody hard, no doubt. April 13th was the date I dreamed of a year ago, where I could finally be free to search for a new way to spend 40 hours a week. That idea fell away pretty heavily in March. I ended up playing a single video game for 850 hours across about four months, and didn’t even write about it. I took the entire month of June off to just detach a bit from a horror workplace - and finished that up with my general manager bent the law to breaking point in regards to my leave, knowing I was powerless to do anything about it.

So, that was the straw. It took four months and dozens upon dozens of applications, but I finally, finally broke free of that place. A weight was lifted and a light at the end of a tunnel was reached, and it felt incredible.

Despite the pain, the year brought some good as well. Our Feb engagement party was definitely a highlight. A new addition to the family, our puppy Willow. A new job that seems pretty great. After years of writing here on my own, somehow landing two writing gigs at the same time. Life changed fairly drastically all at once.

And, of course, the one constant we all share and rely upon was with us through it all. The video games continued to be released. Some of them were pretty great too.

I thought about writing up a top 10, but it didn’t feel overly appropriate. This year’s project was about digging into each game I played and writing something interesting about them, and I think I accomplished that (sans time-sink MMO).

The focus on this site dried up a bit from September onward, because now all of a sudden I was reviewing new releases for both Player 2 and Vooks (you should definitely check out my work at each site!) which still, honestly, kind of blows me away. Being able to have a platform bigger than this little slice of internet I’ve carved out to talk about these games has been just a pure joy.

While a formal list feels unsuitable, I’d still just like to highlight a few I touched through this year that should be on your radar.

Hades was, by all accounts, the exact perfect game to be my first article published outside of this site. It was a game that kind of took many gaming spheres by storm, with it’s ever rewarding loops, incredibly hot yet touching characters and pure joy in game feel. No run feels wasted - every run feels fun, no matter the combination of abilities you collect. Rogue likes in general tend to be pretty fickle to my personal tastes; I bounce off so many of them, but there are a select few that just grab hold. Hades certainly fit that bill to a T.

In the same vein, Unexplored is quite incredible for its visual simplicity. It’s lock and key dungeon design, plethora of mechanical options and it’s endearing giggles and exclamations all pool together to create an awesome take on the classic rogue formula. Chronicling one particularly joyful run through was a great creative flex of the ol’ brain muscle. The sequel, still in development, is one of my most anticipated games coming some time in the future.

To round out the rogue like trio, one surprise of the year was how much I ended up appreciating Descenders. This was quite a personal story, but even though it was only a few hours of game time, it looms large over the year for me. It’s one of the few games I’ve got code for this year that I returned to after submitting the review.

In a further personal vein, Doom 64 of all things was a great nostalgia trip. It was a long piece in the end, but turned out to be one of the easiest to write, because the words just flowed. Still prefer it over the original and its sequel.

Red Dead Redemption may be 10 years old, but boy does that game hold up. It hearkens to a simpler time in open worlds, when maps weren’t littered with hashtag content and the game would just let you be in open space without much happening. The story was still surprisingly affecting, despite having known how it ended before even starting - a good sign that a story is well worth your time.

Finally, my GOTY, Umurangi Generation. What can I even say that I haven’t already said. Well, a lot actually, funnily enough. There’s still at least one more piece that I’d love to write, time permitting - once that Switch port is out, you might see more words from me on that game yet. Suffice it to say that this photography game is right up there as one of my favourites of all time.

Thinking back at where I was at 365 days ago, it’s so hard to believe I’m at where I am now. It’s still only part of the way along the path I want to take, but importantly, it’s several steps in the right direction. Moving along that path has helped me feel, for the first time in such a long time on a personal level, actually happy with myself.

If there’s one thing I want to leave off on from the end of 2020, it’s this. Things can and do get better. It takes work, it takes time, and it isn’t easy. But change can happen. It feels good to be optimistic about the future again.

There’s a lot to look forward to this year too. It’s the big three zero for my partner and I. We’re both probably going to be spending time on further study. We’re getting fricken married! That’s nuts!

On the game front, I’ve already got a big project in the works - details coming soon. I’m putting this out into the world to try and will it into existence: one thing that would be pretty cool is to get a piece published somewhere on the internet and get paid for it (hit me up with the opportunities yo, get my words on your site!)

As far as this website goes, I tend to shift focus each year on how I write about the games I play, so here’s 2021’s theme: honestly, not all that much. My focus will be elsewhere on these here interwebs, so any posting here will likely be things I wanted to write that just didn’t fit elsewhere, probably at a pretty sporadic pace.

So, with that, it’s official - Game Diary 2020 comes to a close. May 2021 bring us good tidings, improvements in all aspects of life, and as always, great video games.