Chase Koeneke’s Top 10 Games of 2022

I think in general, I found myself wanting in 2022. While new games in some of my favorite franchises saw releases, very few lived up to the expectations I had for them. I also just completely missed games that would almost assuredly make this list (Hardspace Shipbreaker, Immortality, Pentiment, Coromon, Chained Echoes, the list goes on). But what did make the list? Let’s find out.

10. Digimon Survive

Look, I promised myself this would be my token tenth slot, and it’s not because it deserves it. Digimon Survive isn’t very good. Its strategy parts are thin and tedious, plagued by low movement ranges and bad maps. And its visual novel parts go on way too long, yet rarely offer much depth. 

But dammit, there’s something here, and with some adjustments, a sequel to Digimon Survive could be really good (though I’m not sure it’ll get that chance.) The art style is excellent, the writing is solid (again, it’s an issue of quantity and redundancy, not necessarily quality) and outside of one or two of them, I ended up really connecting to both the characters and the Digimon. Other games deserve this slot more, but there was no other game I wanted to like more than this, and I think that accounts for something.

9. Platformer Toolkit

I love playing games, but I think I love analyzing them even more, which is probably why Mark Brown’s video-essay-inside-a-video-game appealed to me so much. Mark Brown’s YouTube channel, Game Maker’s Toolkit breaks down game mechanics, theory and psychology, and after he taught himself Unity this year (documenting his progress on the channel), he built a game that gave a tiny window into the the minds of game developers. 

Platformer Toolkit is a simple browser-based 2D platformer, but it controls like garbage. This is by design though! Mark walks and talks you through the physics of character movement, unlocks sliders and panels in a Mario Maker style design that lets you tweak everything from jump height and run speed to squash frames and coyote time. And once you’ve finished the short and free experience, Mark opens up a number of presets that lets you toggle through a group of classic platformer physics setups (Mario, Sonic, Celeste, Meat Boy, etc.) so you can compare and gain a greater appreciation for why those characters control the way they do. It was really compelling and I felt like a learned a ton.

8. Marvel’s Midnight Suns

I’ve felt this way for years and I haven’t been shy in saying it: I’m fucking tired of superheroes. Throw them all in the bin right next to zombies and let’s find a new thing to obsess over please. But I do love me a turn-based strategy game, so when the makers of XCOM: Enemy Unknown announced they were making a game based on Marvel heroes, the pros outweighed the cons, and I checked it out. And while I’m not back on the MCU train (in fact, the writing is so, so, so Marveliciously awful, that I’ve started skipping cutscenes whole cloth), I’m finding myself addicted to the game parts of this game. 

Midnight Suns does not play like XCOM. At all. It’s an entirely new, card-based system, played in very small arenas. You’re always outnumbered and you always have a very limited numbered of actions available to you each turn. To overcome this, you have to employ clever strategy to make the most of every move, using attacks to bounce enemies off each other or parts of the environment, disabling the most vicious threats and finding the perfect opportunity to burn an action on achieving an objective. And while I never could thematically wrap my head around why these larger than life super-beings were all fighting in these cramped little spaces, the fact is, it’s just a really fun system to play around in. 

7. Vampire Survivors

More than any other game this year, Vampire Survivors justified my purchase of a Steam Deck. That sounds weird, right? I spent over $500 on a thing just to play a $5 game on it most of the time? But, uh, Vampire Survivors really is that good. This horde mode meets roguelike with a thick coat of Castlevania paint and a sprinkle of idle game sensibilities just kept sucking the hours right out of me. 

While the game on its own is fun enough, the real secret to the game’s success is, well, it’s the secrets. Finding the right combination of active and passive power-ups leads to special ultimate upgrades that turn you into an absolute buzzsaw of destruction against screen-filling masses of enemies. The more you play, the more fun, new toys you unlock, compelling you to try just one more run. A compulsion I would often give into. 

6. Citizen Sleeper

I was so hot on Citizen Sleeper when I first loaded it up. I’ve followed Guillaume “blackysan” Singelin’s work for awhile now, and seeing their work translated to a video game was really exciting. And the writing, my god, the writing! I hung on most every word. And its dice-heavy tabletop game mechanics and extremely limited resources brought in a satisfying combo of luck and desperation that gave me a real sense of scrounging and stretching for survival. 

And then I realized that the game rarely allows the player to fail, almost always throwing them a bone at the last minute, never fully committing to the survival tale the story would have you believe. And about two-thirds of the way through the game, the economy just falls apart completely, as any reasonably competent player can amass more than enough resources to live comfortably, even while the story tries to convince you otherwise. 

It was a real heartbreaker to me, one that partially led to me taking the first potential ending the game presented. But the more distance I get from it, the less I think about the busted economy and the more I think about my sleeper, and the choices and friends she made along the way. And thinking about that makes me smile.

5. Live A Live

Man, I wish Live A Live had gotten a western release back on the Super Nintendo. I know young Chase would’ve loved the JRPG-meets-turn-based-strategy combat, the amazing music and the fragmented story that stars multiple protagonists in different time periods. I know this because current Chase loved it, especially with this HD 2D touchup it got on the Nintendo Switch. Is it better than Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy? I mean…maybe? The fact that it’s even a question at all speaks to how good Live A Live is. 

It’s so inventive for its era. Heck, it’s still inventive today, playing with both genre and expectations to create something unique while wearing its influences proudly on its sleeve. More RPGs should’ve taken cues from Live A Live. And they still should. 

4. Triangle Strategy

Oh look, another turn-based strategy game. Oh, and it’s HD 2D too? Yup, I have a type, and Triangle Strategy almost fits it to a t. The game tells a grand story that genuinely gripped me (even though the voice acting often didn’t), and offered real, tangible choice leading to different story paths, character recruitments and endings. 

And while the battle mechanics weren’t perfect, there was enough depth and variety from the different characters that I took great pleasure in building each soldier up, unlocking new skills and equipping with new gear, looking for synergistic combinations. I love tactics games that make me care about my characters, and I fell hard for this cast of knuckleheads.

3. Tinykin

One of my favorite gimmicks in media is shrinking down and exploring a normal-sized space as a tiny character. I love the MacGuyverness of recontextualizing modern household objects as buildings, tools and transportation. And Tinykin has this in spades. In this miniature adventure, you explore kitchens, bedrooms, bathrooms and greenhouses as you collect Pikmin-like Tinykin — creatures that help you navigate the world and solve its objective-based puzzles. 

Tinykin has no combat, just chill, puzzling vibes that allow for curiosity and coziness to walk hand in hand. And as your posse of Tinykin grows, you roll deeper and deeper with your crew, until you are masterfully climbing, gliding and sliding about these creative spaces. It’s the perfect game to wind down with, and one I’d happily return to if another room got added as DLC.

2. Pokemon Legends: Arceus

Coming into 2022, this is not the Pokemon game I expected to make this list. Legends: Arceus looked awful in trailers: Empty worlds, lifeless combat, no real multiplayer to speak of. And none of those things changed once I got my hands on the final product. What did change though, was my perspective of the game in the first place. 

Legends: Arceus has you exploring an ancient Sinnoh region, in a world where the concept of Pokeballs and capturing Pokemon is just being discovered. Battling Pokemon isn’t all that fun with the new speed and strong style mechanics, but there’s hardly any battling in the game at all. Instead, Legends: Arceus is about the thrill of catching and collecting. It’s the first game in a while that makes “catching them all” feel like a relevant goal again. And the arrival of Alpha Pokemon (which are essentially bigger and rarer versions of their normal counterparts) added yet another layer of collection on top. In a year where Scarlet and Violet mostly disappointed me, Legends: Arceus is what kept me carrying a torch for my beloved pocket monsters.

No other game made me feel as smooth, as cool, as fast and as clever as Neon White. Traversing this deadly parkour demon hunting time trial was my favorite experience of the year. I loved parsing out the fastest route through a level, discovering shortcuts and time saves along the way, before spotting a collectible and slowing down to a puzzling crawl to work my way up to where it was hiding. I loved taking on the challenge rooms that require precise and inventive ways of using your arsenal, not just for killing, but for traversal purposes as well, and then taking that knowledge back to the main game and seeing how i could implement it into my runs. 

Just about the only thing I dislike about the game is some of its writing and voice acting. Spike Spiegel himself, Steve Blum does a great job, but very little else of the cast is pulling their weight. 

But when a game makes you feel this damn cool, it just doesn’t matter what little hiccups you encounter. It’s my favorite game of the year, and one I’d probably love even more if I had a dedicated crew on my platform of choice to compete for the best level times. Neon White is a kinetic experience that turned me into a speed runner with every level.