Last year, my personal GOTY was tied between Void Stranger and Pizza Tower. I eventually decided to get behind Void Stranger because it was more important to me to tell people to play it and how fuckin impossible great it is. Pure mechanics though? Pizza Tower in a walk. This year, Pizza Tower is threatening to do it a-fucking-gain with a free update that adds a new playable character that plays so differently that all these stages look and act differently now. They also added a secret third mode that I think could possibly get someone killed! What a great game!

I remember when yahoo first introduced virtual chatrooms, which you could try for free but needed to host them to get people to join, and, well, this was at a point where I didn't know anyone with both The Internet and Any Desire To Do This. Anyways, one of their visual chatrooms was a weird skatepark that in my mind's eye has the same color scheme as the original Half-Life 2 trailer on that pier going into early Ravenholm. Using my formless avatar I ran up and down the half pipe, pretending I was skateboarding.

About 25 years later, the other kid who did that probably released this. I wish I could tell them I understand what they mean.

The introduction of Early Access Games was a neat development in the game industry, as a direct counterattack to the industry's love affair with never admitting anything is happening in their games until they have to either apologize or promote something new. Nuclear Throne introduced to me a brand new downside: The Desire They'd Stop Working On The Game, It's Fine The Way It Is. There's a Nuclear Throne that exists a few versions before launch that I would kill to get back, because the thing it is now cares too much about the interstitial and not just hitting the button to fuckin deploy the asskicking. In many ways, this is the story of Vlambeer: violent action that couldn't get out of their own fuckin way. Seeing their blueprints aped so poorly is worse, but not an unfamiliar bummer for anyone who likes The Jesus Lizard and then hears 90% of noise rock bands.

I mainly remember the person I played this game with, who among stories I have of them will only recite the time that he was convinced that you needed to pop the stovetop popcorn with the paper on top of the foil, and only let the smoke alarm and his furious aerobic teacher mother waking up to a smokefilled house convince him this was not the case. We played this game in that kitchen sometimes because they were that well off, to have a TV with AV hookups in the kitchen. I occasionally dream of that house. Weird kid.