My Favorite Design Ideas from My Favorite Games of 2022

With my head down in production at work, I found myself spending 2022 in a lot more games than I’m used to. In the past, I’ve tried to stick through one game until then end before moving on. However, as a designer, it’s helpful to try a lot of games versus digging deep into a few, as you’ll have a deeper well to pull from when solving problems on your own projects. Sometimes I’d be researching a game for work, while other times I’d simply have been driven by nostalgia or a random YouTube video, but I found myself at the whim of my mood a lot more than ever before.

Even so, 2022 was full of unique releases. The indie scene continues to boom while a lot of the heavy hitters were delayed into 2022. The list of notable releases is long this year, and as such this piece covers more of them than I have in the past. It took me until February just to get my thoughts down for all of them! But I felt challenged to learn something from each of them, even as I abandoned some new releases and dug into older ones.

Splatoon 3, Overwatch 2, and The Games-as-a-Service Bubble

For the last few years, a large share of the biggest console games and a vast majority of successful mobile titles have been released under the games-as-a-service model. They all hope to foster a dedicated playerbase by offering a game that grows and adapts over time. Though I usually find myself drawn to one-time-purchase games, every so often a live service game will pique the interest of me and my friends. I’ve played Smite and Rocket League since high school, but the smart and creative design of the Splatoon and Overwatch series are my favorites. Thanks to spending time with Splatoon 3 and Overwatch 2 and working on a live service game, my eyes have been opened to the intricacies of these ever-evolving experiences.

All of the benefits, problems, and motivations of games-as-a-service are laid bare in these titles. Playing Splatoon 3 is like visiting Disney World right after COVID restrictions lifted, with a vibrancy that entertains but can’t shake free the baggage. It strengthens its innovative gameplay with lessons learned from other live service games, all without microtransactions. And yet, playing it is soured by the typical tricks found in Overwatch 2 and the rest of the market. For all of the unique opportunities that these living games have, they are unsustainable, often predatory, and oversaturated. The bubble is about to pop.

My Favorite Design Ideas from My Favorite Games of 2021

With no clear frontrunners for Game of the Year, 2021 has offered a lot for those that don’t like sticking to one type of game. It’s been a blast seeing the wide array of games ranking highly on lists, so much so that it was impossible to catch up on all of them. This is the year I finally stopped caring about being up to date on all of the newest games. I went back to old games just as often as new ones. I busted out the older generations of consoles to replay some favorites, and I even downloaded a Sega CD emulator just to play Hideo Kojima’s Snatcher from 1988. As such, a few games from last year slipped onto the list.

Instead of ranking the games numerically, I want to group them more generally. None of these games are necessarily better or worse, I just enjoyed them at different levels.

My Favorite Design Ideas from My Favorite Games of 2020

It isn’t bold to say that this year sucked, but it’s equally as played out to say that video games have helped people get through things a little easier. In a year where some of the best games of the generation were released, I found my play habits changing. Games that I used to finish in days took me weeks or months, and far fewer games appealed to me enough to commit to them. Nights that used to be for continuing a single-player adventure were taken over by connecting with friends in multiplayer. I even fell in love with an open-world game; shocking, I know! But even as I grow older and the way I play shifts and reforms, I still can’t help but appreciate the decisions that go into making an experience come to fruition.

So as has become tradition, I want to discuss the pieces of design that stuck out to me in my favorite games of the year. 2020 brought a lot of the innovation from genre mixing. While there were three incredible examples of unconventional narrative structures, most of the list leaned heavily on tested ideas from new angles. While we often fixate on the groundbreaking design ideas, it’s the constant improvements and reinventions of these that push the field of game design forward. I talk about these not necessarily to sell you on them, but to allow myself to dig into why they stuck out in the first place.

Paradise Killer and Nonlinear/Choice-Based Storytelling

I’ve spoken extensively about detective games on this blog, even going as far as to say Return of the Obra Dinn is the best detective game I’ve played. Since then, the idea of a hands-off approach to the genre has been expanded in games like Outer Wilds and Telling Lies. These games thrive when they trust the player enough to figure things out on their own, rather than the player being along for the ride. The fact that these highlights are also experimenting with nonlinear structures further expands the player freedom that fans of the genre are looking for.

Paradise Killer fits snuggly into those recent releases. The games give clear goals and are designed to get out of the player’s way, which allow their unique structures to work. However, Paradise Killer takes a step towards what I’d consider the next evolution in nonlinear and choice-based narratives by removing the fail state. The game stumbles a bit when it comes to the minute-to-minute exploration, but uncovering secrets at my own pace and letting the story play out how I believe it should shows a promising future for game narratives.

Ori and the Will of the Wisps and Strength in Traversal

During my junior year, I took a course called Applied Ludology which required a semester-long research project into an aspect of game design that I wanted to dive deep into. What I ended up looking into over the course of four months was how unique movement options and a focus on traversal fit extremely well into the Metroidvania formula. I’m planning on eventually transcribing my three presentations to this blog in some form down the line, but I bring it up because there was a single game that was the perfect example that I’d always tie back to. Ori and the Blind Forest is one of my top Metroidvania games because its movement is satisfying and engaging in every moment of playing. The game isn’t just a showcase of animation, composing, and art direction; it gets to the core of Metroidvania design. With Ori and the Will of the Wisps, it’s clear that Moon Studios understood what made the original so enticing and capitalized upon it to yet again keep the entire Metroidvania experience cohesive.

My Favorite Design Ideas from My Favorite Games of 2019

We’re back once again at the end of the year, and what a strange year it’s been for gaming. As a designer, I finally got the chance to put my skills on display with my production courses where I designed and programmed a VR yoyo combat adventure and a fighting game where the goal is to die instead of kill the enemy. However, that’s just a shameless plug because I’m proud of what I’ve made and what I’ve learned. In terms of the general gaming industry, though, the heavy hitters of the generation were all pushed back to the first half of 2020 and the next console generation is coming soon after. This left us with a year of great games, but no game that stood out as the clear Game of the Year like with God of War or Breath of the Wild.

While I personally didn’t play as many games as last year that blew me out of the water, I found this year to be extremely refreshing because of the innovative and risky ideas that developers presented to us. Last year, instead of just talking about my favorite games, I discussed my favorite design ideas behind them. This year, I’m continuing that trend to look deeper into why a game hit me so hard. These aren’t always going to be the most innovative or creative ideas, but they’re the aspects of each game that brought the entire experience together for me.

Pokemon: Sword and Shield and Redefining the Player Experience

Like millions of other kids, I grew up with an obsession for Pokemon. It’s the largest media franchise out there, and it’s impossible to avoid on the playground, whether it’s a friend telling you about the anime or two kids showing of their holographics from the card game. My introduction was with a copy of Pokemon Gold that had a dead save battery, which meant I played up until the first gym of that game many times before my parents bought me Pokemon Silver. Besides generation 3, my entire life can be tracked by my interest in each generational entry in the franchise.

However, the tedium of Pokemon Sun and Moon in 2016 burned me and kept my interest in the newest entries, Pokemon Sword and Shield, fairly low. I used to scour the internet for every bit of information about the games, from the gym types to the differences between the games, but this time I largely ignored the buildup. I even told myself I was going to wait a few months to play the games. However, I purchased Pokemon Shield on a whim the night of release after my friends had said they were getting together to play it. What I was shocked to find, amidst the sea of online hate for the game’s cut roster and graphics, was a game that really hooked me from the get-go.

Throughout its history, Pokemon has really been about mastery. The games had players set lofty aspirations, asking them to catch every Pokemon in the region and become the champion. For all of its missteps (and there are many) the most interesting force behind Sword and Shield is its interest in shifting away from mastery into more of a focus on experimentation and player stories. Previous games in the series had players’ minds on the destination, but removing major frustrations through small quality of life improvements, the Wild Area, and Max Raids put the journey itself on full display.

My Favorite Design Ideas from My Favorite Games of 2018

The year of 2018 felt strange for me as a gamer and a designer. This year was undeniably great in terms of the games that came out, but I for some reason felt like I was not as wowed by the games I anticipated as I thought I would be. However, when writing this list, I found that this year gave me tons to pick apart design-wise, as well as many games that gave experiences unlike anything I’d had before. I was blown away while playing some, actually thinking to myself about how much I loved the design.

Last year, I made two separate posts about my favorite aspects of design of that year, followed by my actual favorite games of the year. However, this year I wanted to unify things and dig deep into why I chose to put these games on my list. I’m definitely going to be overlooking some amazing ideas, but I feel like this list encompasses a lot about what I loved about 2018, so I’m sticking to it. I hope you give these games a try, and I hope you were able to appreciate the games you played this year as much as I did.

Hades and Incentivizing Death

I’ve made it clear to everyone who knows me, but Supergiant Games are quite easily my favorite indie developers out there. Their games have consistently surprised and engaged me with their eye-catching visual direction, masterful and diverse soundtracks, intriguing stories, and exciting gameplay. Something I’ve written about before is my love of the company’s ability to meld their gameplay and narrative together to create experiences that really couldn’t be made in other mediums. This month, the studio released their latest offering, Hades, on early access, so I’ve been taking breaks from the new Smash Bros to get some runs in. I was worried that Supergiant’s fantastic storytelling was going to take a backseat this time around when I saw the game was a roguelike, but of course that was naive of me. Hades, even in its early stages, impresses as a roguelike that not only guides the player into that “just one more run” mentality, but also finds the rare treasure of making me slightly excited about dying.