This video and more writing at https://MattHorton.live

My podcast https://cantletitgo.gay

0:00 - Marvel's Midnight Suns

4:12 - What is Midnight Suns?

4:38 - Hero and Ability Management

7:14 - Combat

12:25 - Superhero Social Sim

17:19 - Abbey Grounds Exploration

18:37 - The Loop that keeps me playing

20:17 - The Problems with Midnight Suns

31:31 - This game deserves a sequel

At Gamescom 2021, Firaxis Games and 2K announced Marvel’s Midnight Suns with a trailer featuring a bunch of Marvel characters you know and a bunch that you might not. There was Doctor Strange, Iron Man, Wolverine, Captain America, Captain Marvel, and Blade, but there was also Magik, Robbie Reyes’ Ghost Rider, Nico Minoru, a brand new, unnamed player character, and her mother, Lilith, the mother of demons. The trailer was set to a cover of Enter Sandman by Alessia Cara & The Warning, and ended with all of the heroes in these black and gold costumes walking away from a giant ring filled with fire.

If you talk to most people who have played Midnight Suns, they’ll tell you that the game is a card-based tactics game during the day and a superhero social sim at night. That assessment isn’t wrong, but I think it misses out on 2 other pretty critical aspects of what this game has going on.

I think there are actually 4 main elements to this game:

Hero Management and Upgrades

Combat

Superhero Social Sim

Exploration of the Abbey

So let's break each of those down.

0:00 - The Game Awards

1:25 - A sequel that outdid its predecessor

3:26 - A beautiful, smart puzzler

5:12 - The indie that surprised me

6:33 - Rethinking an earlier video

8:07 - A game DEMO?!

More writing at https://MattHorton.live

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I enjoy the Game Awards. It's often a great show.

I enjoy what Geoff Keighley is trying to do for the games industry, and honestly, the orchestra is what keeps me coming back every year, ever since their rendition of the Animal Crossing New Horizons theme made me cry back in 2020. But I have to admit that the choices, both for nominees and for winners, often leave me scratching my head.

Video games like any art form are subjective. You have your opinions, I have mine, and the people nominating things for the Game Awards clearly have theirs. For example, they seem to hold the opinion that the 12th biggest games publisher in the world can have a game nominated for best independent game.

But precisely because art is subjective, and because the Game Awards makes strange decisions basically every year, I think to culturally cede the title of Game of the Year to Keighley's list of games that had big marketing budgets is weak of us. Our opinions are just as valid as those of the nominating committee and the people who voted for the Game Awards. And that goes for you too. Your opinions are just as valid as mine. I mean, you know, I don't really know enough about your opinion to say that, but the spirit of it is right.

The only thing that can make a game the Game of the Year is whether or not you thought it was the best game you played that year.

So here's my personal list of my favorite games from 2023.

0:00 - I love broken games

0:41 - The game I can't quit playing

3:00 - The game that taught me imbalance is good

6:30 - Making games FEEL great

9:32 - Balance feels bad

I have a thing for broken games, not the glitchy Cyberpunk kind, but the ones that let me go absolutely overpowered and tear through every challenge with a wild flair. In my view, "balance" often kills the fun. I'd rather see everything amped up than nerfed.

Take Balatro, for example, a poker roguelike deckbuilder that's got me hooked. It lets you play with jokers that have insane abilities, leading to some crazy combos and high scores. Then there's Inscryption, a narrative-driven deckbuilder that actively encourages breaking its rules to progress. Sacrificial stones and death cards are just some of the ways it lets you shake things up.

What makes these games truly exciting is their "juice" — the visual and auditory elements that make every move feel like a triumph. However, games like Marvel Snap tend to prioritize balance over fun, which, in my opinion, ruins the experience. I prefer games that let me break boundaries and feel like a gaming god, much like the baton pass in Persona 5.

Multiplayer games, often too focused on balance, leave little room for the wild excitement I crave. Instead, I appreciate single-player games like Balatro and Inscryption, where the fun is about breaking limits and creating awe-inspiring moments. If you're looking for a taste of that, check out Balatro on Steam.

0:00 - Cassette Beasts really works for me

1:04 - The vibe

3:58 - Cassette Beasts is Pokémon for adults

6:42 - It's not that deep

10:40 - Great battles

13:06 - Killer music

14:14 - Well-written characters

17:12 - Letting go

🔗 All my links @ https://matthorton.live

Kyle Labriola's Sea of Stars Review - https://cohost.org/kylelabriola/post/2762235-thoughts-on-sea-of-s

The Pre-Order Bonus podcast episode with Jay Baylis - https://www.buzzsprout.com/747596/12421340

The Back Page podcast episode with Jay Baylis - https://shows.acast.com/the-back-page-a-video-games-podcast/episodes/episode-126-how-to-make-a-video-game-with-jay-baylis

There's a new game that has consumed my time and thoughts over the past few weeks. I just can't get it out of my head, because it's working for me. Like really, really working for me. But I couldn't figure out why.

Cassette Beasts is a fresh indie take on the monster taming formula. Think Pokemon, but more complex, in a meaningful way. If you grew up on Pokemon but maybe felt that those games didn't grow with you, Cassette Beasts might make you feel like you did when you were a kid.

This is a game clearly made by people who love Pokemon, but know what that series is lacking. They know the little things that grate on you, and they've played the other monster taming games and found all the best mechanics that Pokemon's never explored. They know what makes a monster design enjoyable, and they have their own unique twist on that formula. And most importantly, they know all the parts of a game that often get ignored, like writing, music, and visual juice, and they've elevated cassette beasts in ways that you might not expect.

If you've been looking for a game like that, I think this one might be for you. It certainly is for me, and I think I finally know why that is.

0:00 - A great game

1:50 - The expert

2:59 - What games work on Steam

4:21 - Where Season did well

6:01 - Why talk about Steam?

7:38 - Marketing doesn't mean success

8:20 - DATA

8:44 - A secret formula

9:32 - What games don't work

10:53 - What about Steam Deck?

12:11 - A buzzy game you might know

14:48 - Ways to make a game work

15:36 - What about cozy games?

17:16 - Sports games do bad on Steam

18:22 - Pokémon-likes, on the other hand...

19:38 - Something doesn't add up...

22:11 - This is like software design

23:24 - Twitter is not real life

24:25 - NBZ helps me

26:04 - What people read on a Steam page

28:01 - The false door test

At the end of January, a game released that changed how I think of games completely. Season A Letter to the Future had been building hype through multiple trailers during PlayStation events. Season, at its simplest, is a game about riding a bike, taking pictures, and recording audio. Call it wholesome or cozy, but Season fits nicely into this extremely popular niche of games whose goals are not to best an opponent or kill an enemy. In Season, Estelle's goal is simply to document her world and its culture before that culture comes to an end. Season's first trailer drew a lot of interest. It looked beautiful and contemplative and like a game I was going to devour. It was rather big news when word came out that the game's director and Scavenger Studios co-founder Simon Darvaux had harassed staff working on the game and had a toxic management style. It was a little quieter news when an investigation found that Scavenger Studios had dealt with Darveau's toxicity appropriately and that he would return to the studio in a more isolated role working on a different game. But perhaps the most shocking news came months after Season's release in June, when Scavenger Studios laid off half of their staff due to the game's extremely poor performance. After a strong indie game hype cycle and being featured in multiple PlayStation events, Season only sold around 60,000 copies across PS5 and Steam. The game underperformed what was expected in sales, and very likely, I think, underperformed what was necessary to make up the costs of development. When this news came out, I put a link to the gamesindustry.biz story in a Discord server that I frequent. The series of responses that I got from today's guest are what completely changed how I think about games, or at least how those games are marketed.

In this video, NBZ walks me through the ways that indie games are marketed and why some great games fail when others don't.

MY LINKS

Find MY Discord, Twitter, Instagram, and Twitch at https://matthorton.live

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These are all the games I played in June and July.

0:00 - Card games

2:22 - Steam sale pickups

4:01 - Turn-based RPGs

4:57 - Everything else

MY LINKS

Find MY Discord, Twitter, Instagram, and Twitch at https://matthorton.live

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A little bit about every video game I've played in 2023. All of them.

0:00 - All of the games

0:23 - Fire Emblem Engage

1:28 - Season: A Letter to the Future

2:48 - Hi-Fi Rush

3:35 - Terra Nil

4:04 - The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog

4:31 - Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle

5:15 - Fire Emblem Awakening

5:45 - Wildfrost

6:20 - Dungeon Drafters

7:19 - Avengers

8:17 - Teamfight Tactics

9:09 - Magic Spellslingers

9:32 - Magic the Gathering Arena

10:19 - Summon Quest

10:39 - Genshin Impact

11:05 - Scarlet Hollow

11:46 - The Last Spell

12:37 - Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo

13:06 - Papers Please

13:36 - Strange Horticulture

13:57 - Disco Elysium

14:57 - Across the Obelisk

15:38 - Star Wars Jedi: Survivor

16:05 - My Dream Setup

16:25 - Demonschool Demo

MY LINKS

Find MY Discord, Twitter, Instagram, and Twitch at https://matthorton.live

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2023 is full of upcoming releases I can't wait to play, but these 5 indie games (and a couple bonus games at the end) are very high on that list. There's unexpected sequels as well as fully original new ideas that sound like exactly my kind of game.

These are the 5 indie games I can't wait to play.

0:00 - Indie games rule

0:34 - A sequel?!

1:31 - Spooky tactics

2:29 - A spooky sequel

3:23 - Tony Hawk in hell

3:51 - Eerie space story

4:26 - Bonus games!

MY LINKS

Find MY Discord, Twitter, Instagram, and Twitch at https://matthorton.live

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🔗 ALL of my links - https://MattHorton.live

Welcome to Terra Nil, the unique city-builder game that challenges you to restore a barren planet rather than exploit it for resources. In this game, you're not the typical city-builder where you bulldoze forests, pollute rivers and strip-mine mountains to build your metropolis. Instead, you must work with nature to heal the planet and create a thriving ecosystem.

And it's the first game this year to truly blow me away.

0:00 - What is Terra Nil

1:03 - This is Devolver game?

1:24 - How Free Lives make games

2:08 - How I found the game

2:56 - Playing Terra Nil

3:54 - It's a power fantasy

4:47 - Recycling difficulty

5:16 - The first game to grip me this year

🔗 ALL of my links - https://MattHorton.live

In Papers, Please, you take the role of a citizen of the fictional nation Arstotzka, modeled after Cold War totalitarian Eastern European nations. The government of Arstotzka has just ended a war with the neighboring country of Kolechia, and the player character has been appointed as an immigration inspector as the tensions from that recent war continue.

Papers, Please is also a game that reminded me too much of my real life.

0:00 - This makes me uncomfortable

0:03 - Papers, Please

1:28 - When I finally played it

1:53 - Too close to home

2:55 - No wrong way to be an immigrant

3:46 - I'l never finish this game