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 Mercy to a memory can be cruelty to the living.

Clair Obscur makes you choose which you’re willing to be.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a waltz painted in grief.

Brass and velvet backdrops, 
                parries that feel like holding your breath 
                                                                     until the downbeat lands. 

It’s gorgeous — on purpose, because beauty is a believable anesthetic.

You stride through a Belle Époque dream where timing is salvation and the city looks finished — sealed under varnish. And then the brush lifts… the streets are not streets, but strokes; the heroes are not people, but preservation.

The game’s true boss isn’t a monster — it’s the temptation to keep the frame intact.

What moved me isn’t the twist so much as the posture that it demands.

Do you protect the immaculate picture that makes you feel whole?
Or do you step into the unflattering light where scars and air and time exist?

One path honors fantasy and the other honors future.

I felt that in my bones — the pastor in me who curates comforting narratives versus the human in me who knows healing only starts after we stop pretending.

Clair Obscur argues with the elegance of a perfect perry that waking up hurts.

But it is holy. The canvas is lovely. Life is heavy.

But the games says: you must choose.

It’s been about a month since I posted here. Oops.

Life got busy. Not in a dramatic way. Just in the way life sometimes does. I traveled. I got sick. There’s been a lot of single-parenting time while my wife is in grad school. My kids are getting older, which somehow means more moving parts instead of fewer. The weather here in the eastern U.S. has been strange too—snow showing up when it wasn’t supposed to.

None of it was catastrophic. Just… a lot.

Somewhere in the middle of that month, I realized something odd. I hadn’t really been playing games.

Which felt strange, because I love games. I love stories. I love experiences. My games library is full of things that matter to me. Worlds I’ve been eager to visit. Games I’ve been excited about.

But whenever I opened the library, the feeling was always the same:
I should play something, but I don’t know what.

It wasn’t exhaustion. It didn’t feel like homework. It wasn’t even that the desire was gone. I wouldn’t call it anhedonia. The desire to play was still there.

It was more like choice paralysis.

There were so many games. So many good ones. So many things that should have been speaking to me. And yet none of them were jumping off the page.

So the library would close again. And the month kept moving.

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The Game That Broke Through

Then Pokopia showed up.

Everyone seemed to be having a good time with it. Screenshots. Clips. People wandering around, building things, catching Pokémon, and just having good old-fashioned fun.

More than anything, it was just nice to see people enjoying a world that I knew I would enjoy too.

That’s what pulled me in.

It reminded me a little of Animal Crossing in 2020. Not because the games are identical, but because there are moments when a particular kind of game arrives at exactly the right time culturally. Something gentle. Something shared. Something that lets people exist somewhere together.

So I booted it up.

And the first thing that hit wasn’t the world.

It was the music.

Lo-fi renditions of songs I’ve known since I was a kid. Instantly nostalgic. Instantly recognizable. Before anything else had time to register, the soundtrack was already doing something emotional.

To be honest, the world itself didn’t immediately click.

There was something familiar about it, but I couldn’t quite place it. It wasn’t until I reached Bleak Beach that the feeling started to sharpen. Then the realization crept in slowly. By the time Pallette Town showed up as the third sandbox area, the game wasn’t being subtle anymore.

This was Kanto.

Wandering

What I’ve mostly been doing in Pokopia is wandering. Just walking around and discovering things.

Cleaning up an area because it bothers me that it isn’t tidy yet. Finding little hidden details that the developers tucked away. Catching something interesting because it happened to wander by.

There have been moments when I’ve realized I could technically move the story forward, but I don’t want to yet. I just want to keep exploring the area I’m in.

The game doesn’t seem bothered by that. Which is nice.

At the same time, I’ve still been playing another game called Paranormasight. It’s a visual novel on my phone. Very story-heavy. Very good.

But it requires energy.

Every piece of progress depends on me. I’m the one pushing the story forward. I’m the one driving the machine.

Pokopia feels different. Instead of driving the machine, it feels like I’m stepping into something that’s already moving.

A Place Called Home

At some point, I realized Pokopia doesn’t feel like an activity so much as a place.

The closest comparison I can think of is a hometown.

Not your hometown as it exists now, but the hometown you remember from when you were younger.

For me, that’s something like Hanes Mall in Winston-Salem.

Not the mall that exists today. The mall that existed when I was growing up. The stores that were there back then. The layout that felt enormous when I was a kid.

Pokopia feels a little like being transported back into that body.

Not literally the past, but a version of it. Familiar enough to recognize. Different enough to still feel like something new.

A kind of childishness.

A kind of hometown familiarity.

And because of that, it’s not something I feel like I have to take too seriously. I can wander. Sandbox my way through things. Discover little bits of wonder tucked around the world.

There’s no pressure to be profound.

The Strange Power of Cozy Games

People have been talking about cozy games for a long time now. Probably since Stardew Valley kicked off the current wave. Over the past decade they’ve quietly exploded in popularity.

I’m not sure I can fully explain why.

Maybe they offer stability. Maybe they offer escapism. Maybe they offer both. Maybe they’re filling some kind of emotional gap. Or maybe they’re just giving people something that feels a little like contemplative practice.

A rhythm.
A space to wander.
A place where nothing terrible is about to happen if you take your time.

Whatever the reason, they seem to arrive during moments when people need them.

Animal Crossing in 2020. Pokéopia now, during another strange stretch of cultural noise and political tremoring.

I don’t think that timing is accidental.

Resonance

One of the things I keep coming back to while playing is this thought:
I don’t know if games can do anything but resonate.

Whether they are simple or repetitive or don’t feel like they have any depth, it doesn’t really seem to matter. Games just resonate.

Sometimes they resonate deeply and wreck you emotionally. Games like Undertale or Until Then that open something up inside you.

Other times, they resonate quietly. They show up during a chaotic month when nothing else is clicking, offering a place to wander for a while.

Pokopia probably would have resonated with me six months ago too, but the timing matters.

Right now it feels less like starting a new game and more like returning somewhere.

A warm hug.

Something familiar and adventurous at the same time. Something that speaks to me without demanding too much from me. I believe that’s enough.

Because if this blog has a thesis, it’s that games matter.

Not because every game changes your life, but because sometimes a game shows up at exactly the right moment and meets you where you are.

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 The best video games don’t just tell you a story, they hand you a mirror, and Until Then is one of those.

The coming-of-age story is one of my very favorites.

I find myself seeking out any story that I can that might bring me back to a childhood that I long for every day… one that I see reflected in the starlight of my daughters’ eyes.

I think this is why I seek out the Games for Impact category of The Game Awards so fervently.

Considering this, Until Then was a logical pick one that I had to experience.

But what I wasn’t ready for was that it didn’t let me off the hook of just “kids doing kid things” and making kid mistakes.

It does begin humdrum enough.

Our protagonist is cramming for school, doomscrolling on his phone, fumbling through piano lessons, surrounded by friends—both good and not so good.

But the deeper that you dive, the more you begin to realize that everything is not okay.

Beneath the surface beats a story. 
     about time loops, 
          about guilt, regret, selfishness, 
                the cost of burying things too deep.

What Until Then does so well is that it refuses to let you hide.

It insists that being human means making mistakes, sometimes deeply selfish ones, and then learning that burying doesn’t erase them. They just wait for you.

And then woven into all of that heaviness there’s a certain kind of grace, the possibility of closure, of listening, of choosing again, but better this time.

That’s why it hit me so hard. Because beneath the time loops and the heartbreak, the game is asking the same question that all of us are.

Can we really change even after everything?

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Catherine is a game that says it’s about choosing between two women, but is actually asking what kind of life you think you’re even allowed to want.

What hooked me wasn’t the fanservice or even the nightmare towers—it was that little meter I ignored for hours.

At first, it looks like a basic morality bar, another angel/devil cosplay for your dating decisions. But then the game quietly renames it: not good vs. evil, but Freedom vs. Order.

Suddenly, all those weird confessional questions—about marriage, cheating, dumb hypotheticals—snap into focus.

They’re not really about Vincent at all; they’re about you.

Do you instinctively lean toward the comfort of promises or the thrill of escape? Do you think stability is a trap, or do you secretly crave someone bolting the world down around you?

The cruel genius of Catherine is that neither side feels clean.

“Freedom” often looks selfish and childish;
“Order” often feels suffocating and hollow.

You keep climbing because the tower is literally falling apart under your feet, 
but also because adulthood kind of feels like that anyway: 
     texts you don’t answer, 
          choices you don’t make, 
                and a life that keeps moving 
                      whether you’re ready 
or not. 

By the end, the game isn’t really asking “Who will you date?” It’s asking, “Who already has your yes—your habits, your fears, your desire to not rock the boat?”

Catherine lingers because it makes you sit with a nasty little thought: maybe the scariest commitment isn’t to another person, but to finally admitting what you actually want from your one, messy life.

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Life is Strange is a game about the superpower every anxious person thinks they want—and the slow-motion disaster that follows when we actually get it.

Max Caulfield can rewind time.

But she doesn’t just rewind time; she rewinds responsibility.

That first bathroom scene with the gun and the blue hair is framed like a miracle, but, the longer you play, the clearer it gets that the among the obvious villains of Nathan, or Jefferson, or even the looming storm…

There is a secret actor in Max’s refusal to let any moment stay real.

Every rewind is a regret, a belief that if she just tweaks the dialogue tree perfectly, no one gets hurt, and she never has to grieve.

The hurricane is like the world finally cashing the check written by a thousand little do-overs.

That’s why the Bay vs Bae choice hits so hard: not because it’s a clean morality puzzle, but because it asks whether Max will keep feeding her addiction to control or finally accept that love and loss live in the same timeline.

The game keeps giving you quiet scenes—sitting in Chloe’s room, strumming a guitar, reminiscing through Polaroids—as evidence that life only has meaning when it’s allowed to move on.

I see way too much of myself in Max’s instinct to fix, to rewind the awkward sentence, the failed friendship, instead of putting my hand to the plow and actually pushing forward.

Life is Strange matters because it doesn’t just let you fantasize about rewriting your past.

It gently, brutally insists that holiness 
     might look more like staying put in the present 
          and trusting that even the storms you can’t undo 
are not the end of your story.

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Some games ask you to save the world; Moon asks you to clean up the “hero’s” wreckage.

Moon: Remix RPG Adventure is like walking into a JRPG after the credits roll and realizing the town NPCs still have to live there.

The muscle-bound protagonist has already done what we’re trained to call “progress”—slain monsters, looted houses, ground XP—and the land is littered with the collateral damage of that kind of play.

Souls hover where bodies used to be.
Harm has become background décor.
And then the game hands you a kid who can’t fight at all, and quietly dares you to call that weakness what it really is: freedom.

Because your “leveling” isn’t conquest—it’s attention. You notice what everyone has normalized.

The game revolves around you listening long enough to learn what a restless spirit actually needs. You repair instead of dominate, and the world brightens in small, almost embarrassing increments.

Moon is a goofy, tender rebuke wrapped in hundreds of stellar songs: maybe the truest power fantasy isn’t being unstoppable—it’s being the kind of person who leaves a place better than they found it.

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 The strangest thing about OneShot is how 
            it makes you feel 
                like you are an intruder 
                    inside your own computer. 

Most games invite you in politely.

You press start.
Here’s the world.
Here’s the hero.

One Shot stares straight through the screen and says, “I know you’re in there.”

It doesn’t stop at asking you to guide Niko, the small, fragile cat child wandering a broken sunless world. It asks you to bear the weight of being their God.

Suddenly, the puzzles don’t feel like puzzles.
They are responsibility.

When Niko looks up at you and asks if they’re gonna get to go home, it’s not a dialogue option; it’s a question that sticks to your ribs like grief.

What moved me most is that One Shot isn’t really about power; it’s about limits.

You can’t fix everything, can’t save everyone. You only get one shot.

And that truth echoes beyond the monitor.

Life itself is fragile, 
        and the people we love 
                 are always asking 
                          in a thousand small ways 
                                   if they’re gonna be okay. 

The game doesn’t let you look away.
It makes you answer.

And in doing so, it reminds us that our presence… our attention is holy.

Over the past week, I’ve been trying to figure out how I feel about the new Sony patent sweeping headlines—a proposed AI “Ghost” that can literally take the controller from your hands and finish a segment of a game if you get stuck.

On one hand, I am unabashedly pro-accessibility in gaming. The better we can make access to good stories and art, the more on board I am.

On the other hand, in the AI exhaustion of everything ever adding new components in technology that are “AI-powered

” — whatever that actually means — and this feels at first blush like an overstep on the agency of the player.

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Less concerning myself with Sony’s role in this, I am more apt to consider my own involvement in using this tool or not.

As a lifelong gamer grown into an exhausted parent, I’ve realized I have a dangerous habit of treating my favorite hobby like a to-do list.

I clear backlogs.
I grind for XP.
I talk about beating a game as if it were an opponent I needed to subdue so I could move on to the next task.

If we accept the conviction that video games are art, full stop, then beating a game is a strange, almost violent concept.

You don’t conquer a Caravaggio.
You don’t finish a poem just to check it off a list.
Art is meant to be sat with; it’s meant to move something deep in us.

When we let an AI ghost play for us, are we only skipping a frustrating jumping puzzle or a difficult boss, or are we skipping the intentional engagement that comes with the struggle? I worry we are trading a soul-level experience for the dopamine hit of a completed objective.

The irritation of being a parent who just wants to see the story is real.

Our time is scarce, and we are worthy of care and rest. But if the goal is just to reach the end, are we actually playing, or are we just consuming?

Underneath this patent is a simple, uncomfortable question:
Is the emotional wake a game leaves in you worth the time it takes to feel it?

I suspect that the moments I spent being hopelessly, frustratingly stuck are actually the moments where the art was doing its heaviest work—forcing me to pay deep attention to a world that wasn’t designed to be efficient.

Maybe finishing a game doesn’t matter as much as we think.
Maybe being stuck is just evidence that we are still here, still feeling, and still alive in the art.

ZeroRanger is a one-of-a-kind experience: 
Impeccable mechanics, 
     polished maps, 
          unique enemies, 
               weapon pairings, 
and literal Gundam suits.

I have never really cared for shmups1… until this game.

I gave it a try after having my mind blown by Void Stranger, a game that was cruel and yet enticing.

And ZeroRanger is the same, if not worse.

It’s story whispers enlightenment… and despair.

And then at the last possible moment, it erases your progress for even daring to finish.

Yes, erases your progress.

Not hyperbolically.
Literally starting over from scratch.
This is intentional.

The save wipe is vicious. Absolution.

You’re cleansed, but scarred.

After I beat despair, I felt awe, betrayal, exhaustion… all at one moment.
A trifecta that felt bizarrely spiritual.

This game doesn’t love you back.
But it also doesn’t insult you.

It demands and rewards total surrender.

Now, whether that’s holiness or masochism is left to you, the player.
Will you become the ZeroRanger?

1.

As a sort of goal for myself in 2026, I want to explore what this space called Games That Matter is supposed to be. In that vein, I am setting up a two-week routine.

Tuesdays:
- A log/diary for myself (that’s what you’re reading presently)
- An article of sorts

Fridays:
- When A Game _____
- Something else creative

I’m not sure if I’ll be able to honor two posts a week. And that’s okay. But it’s at least a place to point towards.

What I think will really make or break this routine will be how much I feel I need to say and how much I think that I have to say. The latter is the more challenging.

Fortunately, I’m not tying this space to my well-being. I have subscriptions enabled, but I’m seeing them as a sort of tip jar if you like my work—not a compulsion.

2.

One way I hope to use this space, as mentioned previously, is selfishly.

So these diary posts can serve my own interests as a check-in on my current gaming habits and practices.

In so many words, I have positioned myself as a professional player of video games. As in, I literally must play them in order to sufficiently do my job. This has its perks and its challenges, as anyone who has positioned themselves in such a way will confess.

Over the Christmas and end-of-year holiday season, I often find myself with a bit of a breather from the latest-and-greatest in video games. I am always playing some kind of game (and I do love that), but it can get tiresome to move on from things or feel that I can’t return to an old friend.

So, in the lull of the season, I did exactly that.

I played Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life. And it was, appropriately, wonderful.

I only logged the first year, just long enough to get hitched to my long-time waifu Cecilia (or Celia as the OGs know her).

I made quite a bit of financial headway. I know my way around that game forward and back. And shook off just enough dust to appreciate the game before feeling content to call it a day and begin again with the pursuit of the next great game.

3.

One thing I’ve been reflecting on in this vein since December is the revelation that most Steam players played an average of 4 games in 2025. I’m no elitist when it comes to playing, reading, watching more things, so I have no harsh words about this number… it just surprised me.

But it shouldn’t.

I pastor a community of thousands of gamers, most of whom play only a game or two a year.

Even the most active in our community don’t participate in our monthly game club, which would at least bring their total to 12 per year.

It’s further evidence of the vast divide in perception between those who consider themselves ‘professional gamers’ and hobbyists, and ordinary people living ordinary lives who want to queue up whatever their buddies are playing at the time.

Should I play fewer games? Maybe. Do I even want to?

The thief of joy, as they say, is comparison. And that should go towards feeling guilty over doing more than the norm, too. As long as it isn’t doing harm to others, the comparison isn’t relevant. Didn’t I forge my life into this exact thing? Indeed — and I love it.

Even still, a nice reprieve is welcome. What better place to have had that moment than Forget-Me-Not Valley?

In 2025, I played 83 games released that year.

Of these 83:

• 30 were demos

• 40 were completed

• 10 were either DNF’ed or don’t have a traditional ending

An interesting component of this year has been a constant discussion on the worth of games. I suppose this isn’t dramatically different from any year, but this feels like the first year where we’ve introduced AI into the equation of perceived value.

In the lineup of my top ten games, which will soon follow, there has been much debate over where or not episodic games should be considered (Dispatch), whether turn-based games should still be relevant (Clair Obscur), or whether games should have goals (Wanderstop), or whether or not we should consider a game-in-progress (Deltarune).

This has been a source of some hesitation for me in even creating a ‘top ten’ list on a space called Games That Matter. Is the implication that these are the ten that matter the most?

Eventually, I got tired of thinking about it. I decided that lists shouldn’t be taken too seriously and that most people aren’t reading the text in this portion of the thing anyway, and that most will comb through the list, nod their heads in approval or disgust, and then move on with their day.

If you’re someone who actually reads this part and cares to know my actual thoughts or the order of the games I played this year, I always create a ranked list of games on my Backloggd that I roll credits on. You can find that here, if you’re curious. It’s not just games from 2025, but it should give you an idea of what I’m working with here. Also, if you’re actually reading, I think you should consider subscribing. I like writing for people who actually want to read this part.

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So, in alphabetical order to avoid overthinking the order, here are the top ten games from 2025 that I played during the year 2025.

Blue Prince

Blue Prince is that kind of puzzle game that makes you feel both brilliant and deeply humbled in the span of ten minutes—every run is you trying to outsmart a house that’s clearly been outsmarting people for years. It’s eerie, elegant, and obsessively replayable, turning “just one more room” into a whole spiritual discipline of curiosity, patience, and learning to live with what you don’t know yet.

The thing that I can never seem to quite put into words with this game is that I’ve never really played anything else like it. It perfectly captures elements of so many of its inspirations. It’s a masterful mystery that keeps offering breadcrumbs. The puzzle is all once tactile, memorable, and infinitely repeatable. There is a faux ending to the game that allows players to feel accomplished, but still tap out if they’ve had their fill. Artistically, it feels fully fleshed out without being overwhelming, since you’ll be staring at it for a while.

Truthfully, I think it’s a marvel of a game and arguably the best puzzle game ever made. It feels like the quintessential note-taking game—and I mean that in the best way.

Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector

Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector takes everything that worked about the first game—dice-driven tension, quiet desperation, chosen-family warmth—and throws it into a wider, messier galaxy where every job feels like a risk. It’s still all about scraping by with your body and your time on the line, but now the horizon is bigger, the stakes are sharper, and the hope hits harder because you keep choosing it anyway.

I honestly believe that Gareth is the best games-writer that we have. I’m not sure what they do so correctly, but the way that characters speak and settings are described—it’s just flawless. For instance, they made a Substack that led up to the release of this game, and the writing was so good that it felt like the Substack itself wasn’t just marketing, but a fully realized episode in the adventure. That kind of thoughtful care is something we need more of, in my opinion.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 looks like a gorgeous dream painted in grief—turn-based combat with real bite, wrapped in a world that feels like it’s dissolving in front of you on purpose. It’s the kind of fantasy where every victory tastes a little like loss, and the whole expedition feels like a stubborn act of love: keep moving, keep remembering, keep fighting for a tomorrow that might not be promised.

I admit I have mixed opinions on this game, but I am trying to stay as positive as possible in this post. One of the kindest things I can perhaps offer this game and its creative team is that I went on a deep dive trying to discover if Esquie and Monoco were some form of traditional French lore elements. The way these two characters were so fleshed out felt like the very best of ancient creature design. To be able to whip up a character as iconic as one made by Homer or Ovid is quite an accomplishment.

Consume Me

Consume Me is a love letter that is only sort of lovely. A game developer spent 10 years crafting a game about their life, captured in silly minigames and chaos. But what I found most captivating was how it never passed a guilty conscience onto the player.

As the title implies, this is a game that begins with a focus on disordered eating. But it doesn’t really ever dwell there. It’s also a game about anxiety, but—again—it never truly dwells there. All of the rich themes: school life, migrant families, angsty relationships, college, and, yes, even religion; they are all presented as a form of autobiography that invites the player into them for exploration, but never insists they are more than the capturing of a moment.

Many games present religion in a negative light, but Consume Me poignantly pokes fun at the megachurch-ification outreach to college kids without really being mean about it or cruel in a rebuke. I’m not sure I’ve ever really experienced a story that quite so perfectly captures the concept of ‘not punching down.’

Deltarune, Ch 3 & 4

What is there to say about Deltarune? Undertale has long been in my top five video games ever made, so it’s almost impossible to try to capture the importance of a game like this one to me.

But here’s why Toby Fox, the game developer, managed to pull one over on me yet again. In chapter 1, we explore the dark world equivalent of games. In chapter 2, we explore the dark world equivalent of the Internet. In chapter 3, we explore the dark world equivalent of television.

So, it makes sense that chapter 4 would explore another digital-age 90s-kid element of everyday life, right?

Bzzt. Wrong. Toby says, “We going to church.” The entirety of chapter 4 explores my literal profession. What more is there to say? It’s the developer of one of the most important games to me talking about what I am quite literally a professional at talking about. Match made in heaven.

Despelote

The funniest part of Despelote is trying to describe it to someone. Is this a game about soccer? Yes. But is it a soccer game? Oh, not at all. This is a game about an Ecuadoran childhood, but also about every childhood. Every time I try to sum up one thing that this game is actually about, I realize that there is a hyper-attentive nature to this game: it’s very much about a specific thing, but also about everything.

Dispatch

Dispatch is an interesting one. There is no reason that this game should have worked for me. I’m pretty fair over superhero tropes at this point. And I have no nostalgia for the Telltale era of gaming; it missed me entirely.

But for whatever reason, this game just clicked. The characters, the writing, the voice-acting—even the simulator elements where I was a dispatcher; all of these various elements were exactly what I needed at the time. Even the lacking romance was enough to satisfy my taste, which I credit to the immensely talented actors.

I can only hope we get more adventures in this world, because I’m here for it. Heck— I’d even go for a roguelike dispatching DLC.

Everhood 2

Everhood 2 didn’t work for many fans of the first entry. I am a diehard fan of the original game and personally found the story it was presenting to be exceptional. Plus—the music. I love the soundtrack and style behind these games. While I acknowledge that there is a fair bit of criticism (they probably shouldn’t have messed with the first game at all) of how this game presented itself, I think Everhood 2 was given a harsher sentence than it deserved. One accusation that absolutely cannot be lobbed at this team is that they didn’t absolutely go for it. This game was a bold swing for the fences, and it’s really up to the eye of the beholder whether it was a foul ball or a home run.

The thing that seemed to whiff the most for fans of the former game was the lack of closure in this sequel, and it was, ironically enough, exactly that reaction that made me love this game. An adequate exploration of absurdism and nihilism is one that shocks the system. We shouldn’t be able to empathize with the violence of Clockwork Orange. Meursault is meant to be revolting in the way his apathy builds tension in The Stranger. Good absurdist art isn’t really supposed to be appealing.

The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy

I could say a lot of things about this game. But there is one point that stands above the rest:

You cannot convince me that this isn’t a narrative achievement leagues better than most narrative award winners in any year of gaming, not just 2025.

Kodaka and Uchikoshi are two developers I have so much admiration for as creators; that’s no mystery. But this is truly magnum opus-level commitment—Uchikoshi wrote 100 different endings for a visual novel. Even by the standards of Umineko and Fata Morgana, this is a testament to a narrative that deserves so much more recognition than it’s getting.

Wanderstop

I think I first played The Stanley Parable in 2013, when it was released standalone and was pushed by many of the Let's Play channels that I watched.

Admittedly, I found it funny, finished it, and then moved on.

If you’d told me then that over ten years later, I’d be actively experiencing a transcendental breakdown of the risks and processing of burnout and hustle culture in a game by the same guy—I’m not sure I’d have believed you. If you told me that it would happen twice when I played through The Beginner’s Guide in a single sitting, I don’t know what I’d have done.

Davey Wreden is a mind that impresses to no end. His vulnerability in games like these is astonishing. He is so willing to lay on the table exactly how it feels to not feel okay, and then gives us permission to work through it with him. Wanderstop has had plenty of fingers pointed at it being ‘not enough of a game,’ but I don’t see how anyone who has experienced real struggles in life can’t at least be moved to feel something in the verbs of play in this experience.

So that’s it. Ten games. Were they your favorites? Did you add any of these to your list after reading my thoughts?

I don’t expect I’ll do many of this type of post on this Substack, but it felt right to offer this one up. I hope you enjoyed it!

Remember,

Video games matter
And so do you

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Despelote is the sound of a nation changing,
heard through a scuffed soccer ball on concrete.

What struck me most about Despelote is how small it’s willing to be.

This is a game about Ecuador chasing the World Cup, 
but you never sit in a boardroom or a locker room speech—
you’re just a kid, 
     bouncing a ball off walls, 
          annoying adults, 
               weaving through markets, 
                    hearing the country hum in the background. 

The politics and pressure live in overheard conversations, in the way grown-ups talk when they think the kids aren’t listening.

It’s not a story about soccer so much as a story about the way a ball gives shape to a childhood, and how a childhood gives shape to a country’s memory.

The kids feel gloriously real: sweet, chaotic, occasionally mean, spinning entire worlds out of nothing on the walk home.

The art leans into that feeling—soft edges, grounded textures, a world that looks less like a photograph and more like a remembered afternoon.

In under two hours, Despelote never wastes your time or your trust.

It doesn’t lecture, it doesn’t grandstand; it just lets you be there long enough for the quiet to sink in.

By the time the credits roll, it doesn’t feel like you played some big “issue game.”

It feels like you briefly lived in someone else’s neighborhood, 
and walked away with the strange, holy realization that 
their ordinary life matters 
                                  just as much as yours.

Since 2020, I’ve hosted a Game Awards watch party with the community I pastor.

Almost all of those who join in share a similar kind of ennui for the discomfort that an award show can inhabit.

And yet — it’s one of my favorite times that we share together each year.

We laugh until we’re in tears. We cheer for the underdogs and celebrate when they win. We even cheer for them being in the running at all, if they don’t take the award home. We share memories of the games we actually played that year. We offer one another excitement — genuine excitement — whenever a game trailer drops for something any one of us has been anticipating or is completely blindsided by. We give bad trailers a hard time with loving cajoling. We make memes, memories, and moments together around a shared YouTube tab.

If everything else were put to the side, this is what The Game Awards can actually do. It can bring people together around a shared enthusiasm for something that matters to us all individually and collectively.

It’s a third space. It’s a nineteenth hole — the place golfers go after the course just to be together. It’s a reason to do anything at all in the world, especially in a world with so many things that it can be paralyzing.

But that’s just one way I’m doing this with a particular awards show.
It doesn’t have to be The Game Awards, but for me, it is.
In the same way, it doesn’t have to be Games for Impact, but for me, it is.

This isn’t about convincing you to like The Game Awards. It’s about being honest that this weird, corporate show has become a tender, communal ritual.

If these nights didn’t exist, some of us wouldn’t have this ritual of shared joy in December. That’s impact.

2.

There is plenty of discourse around the global gaming event, The Game Awards. This show has a fascinating and nuanced history, but it’s fairly clear it wants to present itself as an Oscars-like awards show for the video game industry.

I would go so far as to say I’m a fan of the show.

That being said, I’m very aware of its flaws:

Like any award show, it’s more of a popularity contest.
It’s a shame that not all categories are given a speech.
The industry's lobbying for game trailers is overwhelming.
An underlying tension with all things Nintendo.

But this year, I’ve seen a particular rise in the questioning of the categories themselves, which I think is fair.

Should Sports/Racing share a category?
What’s the difference between an ongoing game and community support?
Why is there a best eSports game — isn’t that like voting on the best sport?

But my favorite category has been catching strays — it seems like people don’t love the Games for Impact category.

According to their website, The Game Awards defines these games as,

“For a thought-provoking game with a pro-social meaning or message.”

Admittedly, this is a weirdly worded category.

Often, this gets called the ‘woke’ award. Or it gets questioned with the silly provocation, “Does that mean every other game *isn’t* for impact?”1

Look — I get it.

It’s a weird award. It’s a weird prompt. But here’s the thing…

The video game industry is weird.

Like, the whole thing. Not just this one awards category. Pick any show. All the categories could be interrogated this way, and we would find a string to pull.

But what if that’s the whole point? What if we’re interrogating the wrong thing?

The real point I want to drive home here isn’t that we’re taking The Game Awards too seriously. It’s that we’re taking them seriously the wrong way.

3.

A vulnerable confession: I love the Games for Impact category.

Every single year, I wait with bated breath to see what games will show up on the panel, and I add any unplayed entries to my wishlist right away. When I was still streaming, I would pick them all up when the nominations list dropped and play them literally on the next available stream date.

I’ve found some of my favorite games ever made from tracking this category: Neva, A Space for the Unbound, Citizen Sleeper, I Was A Teenage Exocolonist, Before Your Eyes, Spiritfarer, and the list goes on and on.

I think the reason I am becoming an advocate for this category specifically is that it feels like it is being custom-made for me.

And that sentiment — dear reader — is precisely what I am getting at.

The Games for Impact category is made for me. That really is how it feels.

Are these games actually impactful?
Are these games actually pro-social (whatever that means)?
Are these games actually thought-provoking?

Who cares? I just need a list of games that I know will reliably make the cut for my specific tastes.

That’s what The Game Awards (and arguably any awards show) is actually doing. It’s marketing.

I often hear pushback about the show being 3 hours of inflated video game trailers with World Premiere slapped on the front of them.

And yes — exactly. That’s precisely what an awards show is.

This isn’t an actual presentation of merit performed through a rigorous approval process. There is no thesis being defended before a panel of highly trained scholars.

The Game Awards is exactly the same thing as my being crowned Most Likely to be a Comedian by my high school senior class. It’s a popularity contest used to boost game sales or Steam wishlists.

I do still love comedy and have become a comedian in many ways I couldn’t have expected — my peers’ perception of me did impact me in a subversive way. In the same way, the marketing of The Game Awards still shapes what we play, who we gather with, and what we remember. That’s meaning.

And we can view that with nihilism, or we can embrace that for what it is: I can now have games added to my wishlist that will speak to me directly, because I know myself, and I know that the Games for Impact is made for me.

4.

To be clear, I want to make sure I write out what I am not saying:

1. I am not suggesting The Game Awards are perfect, or even good.

   1. But I don’t need a perfect or good show to be entertained.

2. I am not suggesting that Games for Impact is well-defined.

   1. But the definition hasn’t changed my love for the games that land here.

3. I am not suggesting that award shows themselves are beneficial.

   1. But the conversation they inspire can be.

4. I am not suggesting that I am infallible in this.

   1. But I am allowed to express how something has impacted my personal experience.

I’m not saying The Game Awards are good or that their categories are well-defined or that awards shows are inherently beneficial. I’m just saying: they’ve genuinely given me games and moments that matter

If I really had to sum up my argument here, it’s that I am exhausted by people trying to yuck my yum. I wanted to speak into the void of the Internet, offering a perspective on why something has mattered so profoundly to me that others find upsetting.

To answer my hypothetical above, maybe we are overthinking this category—but we’re overthinking the wrong parts. I’d rather spend that energy enjoying the gift of sharing these moments with the people around me.

The Games for Impact category at The Game Awards isn’t an objective statement about which games ‘matter most’; it’s a flawed marketing label that, in practice, has given me some of the most meaningful games and communal moments of my life—and that’s all the justification I need.

Whatever category they fall under,
Video games matter.
And so do you.

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take
respons ibil ity

The scariest thing about Mouthwashing isn’t the eldritch whispers or the PS1 static haze—it’s how ordinary apathy can rot a community from the inside out.

Sometimes a game is important not because it draws out the best in us but because it warns us about the worst in us.

This game hides its horror not in jump scares but in the way each crewmember’s silence, guilt, or distraction cascades into tragedy.

A medic ignored. 
                         An intern forgotten. 
A captain who looks away                                                                                       tak e
                                  until looking away                                                      respo nsibili ty
                                                      is impossible. 

It’s less about haunted mouthwash and more about what happens when compassion is rinsed out of the system.

And that’s why it lingers: 
because the monsters here aren’t beyond us—
                                                                   they are us, 
                                                                           when we let neglect become normal. 

Mouthwashing is a reminder that horror is often just humanity stripped bare, asking us the quietest, most terrifying question:

What’s festering inside me that might spill out next?

                                           y t i l i b i s n o p s e r e k a t
Or quite the opposite…                                                 how can I never be like that and speak up in the face of atrocity?

Do we really need another place to read about video games? Aren’t there enough people out there waxing poetic about their backlog? Least of all — another white, male Nintendo-loving 90s kid who still unironically loves Pokémon? Isn’t that just what pops up when you google ‘YouTuber?’

First off, rude.

Second, fair.

I’ve been sitting on this idea for quite some time. I’m of two minds when it comes to content creation. On one hand, there is no denying that there is simply too much Internet. On the other hand, we’re in a drought of creative inspiration; addicted to doomscrolling and consumption. Am I adding to the problem, or am I solving my own?

These are two sides of the same vicious coin. By creating, I am finding space beyond my own doomscroll. But also, I am potentially adding to another’s scroll. How do we justify this cycle?

For this reason, this space is specifically mine.

It isn’t often I get to selfishly echo the words of a toddler, but that is what I am doing here. I’m sure I will care whether anyone reads this or not — that’s just human nature. But I am not going to strive to create for anyone else here. Like the vicious coin above, this too is a sort of paradox; I am striving for ego-death by, well, assuaging my ego.

This is not to say that this space is not welcoming to others, but just that the work I plan to create here is an outpouring of a very self-centered expression of art and exploration. You may find yourself relating to the work I make — and I love that — but the goal is to put pen to page, or e-ink to e-paper.

But enough about the why, let’s talk more about the what.

2.

The results of this space are very simple, yet expansive.

I believe that video games are art.
And I believe that art matters.
And I believe that that makes gamers consumers of art.
And I believe that means that gamers need a space that affirms that their art matters; that they matter.

With that line of thought, I want to talk about how a game matters. Sometimes, that will need to be more like a game review. Other times it might be a kind of poem. Still others might be a screenshot, a doodle, or an inspired fan art.

The rules don’t matter here, the art does.

Indelibly connected to that sentiment is another that I bring to this space: because video games matter, so do you.

I can imagine you’d expect it to be the other way around: Because people matter, video games matter. Not untrue, but distinctly not what I’m arguing.

Art is the thing that evokes. It is the catalyst of catharsis. It is the verb of matter-ing.

We matter because of the way that art moves in our souls and our deeper beings. Art is an echo of the imbued trait of humanity that is creation. It speaks to a deeper part of our Self.

Because of the way that video games have mattered to you, that is a sort of proof that you, too, matter.

While to some this may read as a journey through semantics, I feel it to the core of my very being… art is that which reminds me of my own alive-ness. And video games are art. And that reminds me that I am here.

Ha — isn’t it funny that this was supposed to be the what of this thing?

3.

So, then, what ought you expect from this place? Will all of these posts be long and rambling thinkpieces with heavy weight?

Well, some will be long.
Some will be rambling.
Some will be thinkpieces.
Some will be heavy.

Yet again — the rules don’t matter here. Video games do. And thus, you do. And I do. We’re here to explore art. And be as pretentious and cringy as we’d like to be along the way.

I mean, couldn’t we use a bit more cringe in our lives? Art is meant to embarrass. And challenge. And convict. And disturb. But it is also meant to delight. And affirm. And lift up. And comfort.

So, shouldn’t we at least try? Isn’t it worth attempting to find some truth in the art that we consume? Even if we fall on our faces, is it not better to have lost ourselves in the busy waters of good art?

If I may be so bold, I am less interested in your expectations for this space and more in what you expect of yourself in it.

Will you be open to the art that I share with you?
Will you explore video games that you play on your own time with art in mind?
Will you let yourself be challenged and delighted?
Will you engage in the comments or lurk in the shadows?
Will you share our discussions with others, or keep them to yourself?

I encourage you to set some expectations for yourself. Instead of mindlessly consuming, will you engage—on purpose—with the art before your eyes?

I wonder if you’re willing to give it a try.

4.

That’s more than enough for today, I think.

I don’t believe I’ve solved the problem of the Internet in our short time together. I’m still the same rubber-stamped content creator that has cornered the Internet since 2006. I’m still wrestling with whether or not this thing needs to exist or not, whether it needs to be another thing to be consumed or not, whether it needs to be expressed from my brain or not.

But I’m here nonetheless.
And so are you.
Isn’t that a beautiful thing?

Whether we meet again in the next post or if this is our one and only time together, I hope that you’ll hear these words and believe them to be true until the next time we’re together:

Video games matter.
And so do you.