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It was supposed to be a sleepy year for the video game industry. Then came surprise hits like Balatro, Animal Well and Astro Bot.
Published Dec. 5, 2024Updated Dec. 6, 2024, 8:30 a.m. ET
Last year was particularly strong for the video game industry. Several major releases found critical and commercial success, including Baldur’s Gate 3 and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, while smaller indie puzzlers like Chants of Sennaar also delighted audiences.
This year, the environment has not been nearly as kind. The rising cost of game development has hurt the bottom line for many studios. Thousands lost their jobs as executives attempted to streamline operations. Despite those challenges, there were many new games filled with creative vision and thought-provoking stories.
Here, in alphabetical order, are some of the best releases of 2024.
Animal Well
A single play-through of Animal Well is enjoyable enough. The game presents itself as a pixelated throwback to Metroidvania puzzlers, where players traverse a complicated labyrinth of rooms in search of power-ups that will open new paths and secrets. But in Animal Well there are secrets beyond those secrets. Players needed to convene in online forums and YouTube comment sections to figure them all out.
That kind of social experiment made a splash when Animal Well was first released, but even a later play-through can rekindle the joy of a game that is constantly — and at just the right moments — revealing that it has more tricks up its sleeves. (PC, PlayStation 5, Switch, Xbox Series X|S)
Astro Bot
Sony executives have never committed to a single mascot for their PlayStation brand. They flirted with characters like Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon through the early 2000s before adopting grittier personas in the 2010s like Kratos from the God of War series and Aloy from the Horizon franchise.
Astro Bot, the protagonist of several tech demos, barely registered until the 2020 release of Astro’s Playroom, a free game packaged with PlayStation 5 consoles. It became so popular that developers at Team Asobi created a full platformer that gives the little blue robot planets to explore and coins to collect in a celebration of Sony’s history. The result is a quirky and lighthearted adventure that feels like a spiritual successor to Nintendo’s Super Mario Galaxy games. (PS5)
