I really struggled to find a GOTY nominee, and I even ended up going thru the SteamDB release calendar. While there have been quite a lot of good games released this year, there wasn’t really any one game that stood out above the rest. And weirdly I think that’s a good thing this year. I would much rather have 10 games that are so good that I can’t say any any one of them deserves GOTY over the other, than to have one clear winner and nine meh games. (I ended up nominating Selaco btw)

I feel like I mostly played old games this year, at least it helped me to pick Labor of Love: Cassette Beasts.

Cassette Beasts is made with Godot, devs are still releasing content, and they just added support for steam workshop.

There were so many good games for this category that it was hard to choose. e.g. I learned from Lemmy about Shattered Pixel Dungeon, that is open source and has been receiving updates for almost 10 years.

My other picks are: Shadows of Doubt, Tactical Breach Wizards, All Quiet in the Trenches, and Tiny Glade.

I also liked Star Fetchers : Escape from Pork Belly, but they released it as DLC rather than its own game.

I was thinking about Keep Driving, and Dice Gambit for the soundtrack, that was also when I thought about Cassette Beasts. But they are not from 2024. I will probably vote for the abbot rapping in Esperanto from Metaphor.

Personally, the only games I’ve found that Im esspecially comfortable to “lock-in” are:

Factorio for Labour of Love, as its an absolute gem of a game that has continued to receive significant improvements even after launch and not even all bundled in to the (itself amazing) expansion. I also considered Stardew Valley or Dota, both of which are great for this, but Factorio really deserves it for Space Age and the updates that have come with it.

Balatro for Best Game on Steam Deck, for its addicting, fun gameplay, good for longer sessions or pick-up and put-down play.

Tactical Breach Wizards for Outstanding Visual Style. There are other games that might have pulled off their themes better, but the mix of military and magical is so cool and charming and unique, that its my absolute favorite right now.

And Balatro again for Sit Back and Relax, for the same reasons I gave for Steam Deck, and just how chill it can be once you’ve learned the basics.

VR game of the year is gonna end up being Gorilla Tag. Literally the only thing recently that got any attention at all. VR is kinda stagnating rn and it’s sad.

I struggled this year to find some proper nominees.

My favorite game this year isn’t on Steam, the World of Warcraft Pandaria Remix mode, which was some of the most fun I’ve had with WoW and gaming in general in a long time. The rest of WoW was also pretty good and the game just dominated almost half of this year for me.

Other games I really enjoyed were not from 2024, so I can’t nominate them for most cateegories. Baldurs Gate 3, Solasta, Lies of P, or the latest Doom re-releases.

I have watched a bunch of streams of 2024 releases though, so I managed to scrap some stuff together, although I’m not really happy with everything.