A mobile game, Homescapes has completely consumed by spare time, eating away at it until all that remains is a surprisingly dense match 3 game skinned with the story of a man unwilling to deal with his parents moving on. The premise, that Austin's parents could be ready to move out of his childhood home, is the driving force for hours of match 3 moments where your benevolent sky dictator helps Austin reapportion the home to his tastes so that his parents will decide to stay rather than move on to a smaller, more reasonable home.

This was my GOTY for 2019.

That might sound silly, since it's a web browser game from itch.io and it's deceptively simple. Based on pen and paper card games, Tiny Islands is a game I play literally every day. I sit down at work, I open a slack channel I've had open since 2019 where a new thread is ready and waiting with the daily challenge, and I play until I get at least over 60 points and then I post a screenshot of my scores and see if any of my peers in my friend group can beat me. It's one of those "simple to play/difficult to master" games and I love it, and a play through is just the right thing to get me into the mood for sitting down for a day at the office.