Top Ten Games of 2011

Dome Keeper is an excellent little spin on the tower defense game, in which you play the role of a jetpacking miner defending his base from swarms of aliens, whilst searching for a hidden relic buried somewhere beneath him. And now, with this huge free update, you can play it with friends.

I want to talk about Cloudpunk, a game where you get to be a flying-car delivery driver in a futuristic cyberpunk city. Its world is an incredible achievement of environmental design, and while the gameplay itself may be basic, the city of Nivalis is a thing of beauty to behold. Nivalis is built out of hundreds of hand-modelled cuboid buildings; there’s nothing procedural about it. Apparently it took 3 years for the devs to design the city, and it really shows.

I do love me some quality pixel art, and it doesn’t get much better than this. Cast n Chill is a cozy side-scrolling fishing game by small indie dev team Wombat Brawler, with absolutely gorgeous visuals. It’s simple to play, and you you can dip in and out of it at your leisure, making it a fine addition to our collection of coffee break games.

Format: PC
Release date: 1993

I have 2 memories of this game that are separated by over 20 years.

WoW consumed my life for almost the entirety of 2004/05, when I was studying for my A-levels, and was probably a key contributor to my D-grades. I’m probably not the only person who would admit to daydreaming of roaming through Elwynn Forest, even many years after I stopped playing. I just spent so much time there, and other places of that world, sometimes roleplaying, always questing, but best of all simply exploring an unknown land. Even though I LOVE what Blizzard did in Cataclysm, my favourite memories all come from what they call Vanilla WoW, the original version of the game.

There’s not a lot I can say about Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 that hasn’t already been said, but here’s my take anyway. The game deservedly garnered a heap of attention when it came out for being a fantastic example of a JRPG, that happened to be made in France. Technically, ignoring the fact that the team includes a bunch of ex-Ubisoft veterans, it’s the debut title from developers Sandfall. And what a debut game it is.