In the name of Hades!

Creating a story-based game around roguelike gameplay is certainly a challenging task, but Supergiant did a fantastic job with the ludonarrative consistency throughout the game. The insane amount of (voiced!) dialogue really make you connect with Zagreus' journey through his eyes and all the various highs and lows he's going through. Also the gameplay is great, no wonder Zagreus is always going through those same chambers again and again!

Now about the cast, they're all great and unique and the artstyle paired with the designs really brings them to life. The friendship system and occasional encounters really help them flesh out their personalities. In my opinion the developers really did a great job on depicting Greek mythology in the way they did.

I should've mentioned this earlier, but the game is very casual-friendly for a roguelike and definitely worth looking into, even if you're not into these kind of games normally. Because of the sheer amount of dialogue and permanent upgrades the games presents you between your runs, you always have something new and fun to look forward to. It also has an easy mode, which still lets you experience the same journey with less stress - don't feel ashamed to use it!

Give Hades a shot if you love mythology or roguelikes, or the artstyle or anything! This journey has been truly unique, and I've hardly ever seen a gameplay loop integrated so well into a story. Can't wait for the sequel!

The stagnation brought about by trends is an illness you can only truly see when you manage to get your hands on something unique and fresh, a moment that I gladly experienced when I first played Devil Daggers all the way back in 2016. The simplicity of its unachievable taunting goal and its hellish display of lovecraftian inevitability did more to revitalize a genre in less than 30 seconds than what a decade+ of modern console First Person Shooters failed to do.

Sorath's audacious nonchalant drop of its spiritual sequel Hyper Demon is somehow even better than Devil Daggers. Watching the stroboscopic migraine inducing trailer, it doesn't really manage to convey the sense of presence and awareness Hyper Demon puts you in until you are the one actually holding the mouse and keyboard inside its hellish prism of anxiety.

While at first glance not doing much to differenciate itself from its predecessor, the brilliance of Hyper Demon only reveals itself when you start fighting against the real innovation and evolution of this project: the score. Constantly ticking down beyond the zero digit, the challenge of Hyper Demon revolves around outrunning an indifferent ever reversed clock that assaults you with endless pursuing, screen filling and noise making nightmare projections inside a kaleidoscopic void.

Getting a high score in Devil Daggers was a curse disguised as a blessing that further extended downtime and proportionally decreased your engagement with it, a design flaw that the dev team picked up on and cleverly exploited in Hyper Demon to constantly force you into the frying pan of death, and the added versatility of its new combo stringing mechanics, power ups and enemies instill a level of verticality and speed that far outmatches its now tamer older sibling.

The arcade-y nature of Hyper Demon is a trait that inevitably puts it into a niche that will understandably discourage some players off who require more tangible and extrinsic rewards than a high score like narrative and progression, but you will be hard pressed to find this year another experience that in the span of a couple of seconds consumes your senses with a level of clarity that has you ignoring every survival instinct and throwing yourself into death, grasping at an always escaping victory while skulls from hell spell your misfortune through ghastly red premonitions.

What stays is the terrifying image of me sitting alone in front of a computer screen in the corner of a dark room at 1 am, in a daze of lunacy and caffeine while I witness my name toppling hundreds of poor souls while ascending a ladder that further demands more of my sanity. This is my GOTY, and I don't see it being topped.