Ive been spending a few hours on Elin lately. It's like a JRPG version of Stardew Valley, with lots of dungeons to explore, recipes to craft, and crops to harvest.
I also played Dead Cells this year, which is a very fun sidescrolling roguelike with a good selection of different weapons to come across, with a variety of different playstyles depending on what you find.
This one is pretty obvious, but I had a blast with Persona 5 Royal this year. An excellent, extremely stylish JRPG that I (and everyone else) recommend highly.
As I have in multiple years past, I again highly recommend Noita. A very deep roguelike where you play a wizard delving into the earth, finding more magic wands and spells that you can mix and match to make the perfect wand. Additionally, every pixel in the game is made out of materials like flammable Oil, fire-quenching Water, dangerous Acid, and so forth, leading to many interesting interactions.
Another re-recommendation from me is DAVE THE DIVER. A beautiful, colorful pixel world in which you scuba dive for fish by day, and serve them in your sushi restaurant at night.
If you haven't played RimWorld yet, I don't know what you're doing. An exceptional base builder, and in my opinion, one of the best games on Steam. It's also actually on a minor sale right now, which hasn't happened in years past.
Finally, perhaps my favorite couch coop game on Steam is Plate Up!. Up to four players cooperate to run a restaurant. Every few days, you will have to pick a complication, like adding a new dish to the menu, or breaking the parties down into parties of one (so it's the same amount of guests using many more tables). I've busted this out multiple times now at couch parties, and it's always a ton of fun.
What about you? What do you recommend?
Ended up getting three things in this run:
This is the Police: A strategy, narrative based game where you are the chief of police for a city, and you have to deal with reaching your retirement in the near future. It is up to you to decide exactly how far you will go, how much corruption in the force you are willing to tolerate, and how likely you are to obey corruption from city officials . The company that made it (Weappy Studios) is also pretty good, and I am looking forward to their new game they are coming out with next year called Hollywood Animals (which is you in charge of a film studio starting in the 1920's, but it doesnt exactly shy away from how filthy and degenerate Hollywood is behind the scenes and you have to deal with that).
Arms Trade Tycoon: Tanks: Still in early access at the moment, but it is a very traditional tycoon game. You are in charge of a business producing tanks for the militaries of the world, at the moment with the only option being the British starting in WW1 (but the plan is to eventually have the major players up to modern day). Pretty straight forward, nothing too different.
Laysara: Summit Kingdom: A city builder and resource management game. In terms of actual gameplay, it doesnt exactly reinvent the wheel. But the twist is that you are, like the IRL Tibetan cultures it is based on, building on a mountain side, and elevation has a lot to do with how you handle situations (ie: certain resources either grow better at different elevations, or are completely locked out of some). And of course, you have to plan around and be prepared for avalanches.
And finally, on the note of recommendations, for any RTS fans here, I am once again recommending Last Train Home. You play as a commander in the Czechoslovakian Legion on the last train out of Russia during their legendary run up the length of the Trans-Siberian Railroad to Vladivostok. It has a great blend of RTS gameplay in actual battles with resource management and survival aspects on the main screen when you are controlling your train. And the game is absolutely not shy as showing that the Communist were evil, brutal thugs who were arguably worse for Russia than the Tsar ever was, which is something of a rare message in modern gaming.
I loved This is The Police.
Played it years ago on console.
It's too bad that the crime elements are scripted, meaning the same calls always come at the same times on the same days, reducing replayability (and making memorization and savescumming the best options).
There's still enough RNG to make it interesting (there's permadeath and it's devastating when multiple cops get wiped out on a call).
There's also some strange mechanics where the game is tougher in the early midgame when resources are low but the game gets too easy once you learn the tricks to have a massive staff that reduces the tough decisions later on.
The game also has a strange design choice where the final stage changes game genre completely becoming X-com lite (IIRC, I had to look up walkthroughs and savescum because the new mechanics aren't well explained).
I can't even remember if I eventually bought This is the Police 2 on sale or not. I never played it, but apparently it got woker as the main character became female and the main game play element became the X-com missions.
I dont know if I would agree to that for This is the Police 2. At least from what I saw of the trailer for it (since I was interested but decided I would get it later if at all), the female chief of police admits that she is in over her head and effectively pawned off to you (still the guy from the first game) to be the chief behind the scenes while she is still the official one. Which would absolutely break a ton of the rules that the Woke demand for games. But that is just my own opinion at least.
You may be right.
I never actually played 2.
The first one had a Film Noir storyline centered around a male old school uncouth police chief past his prime but with some goodness left.
There were also based elements, such as the ability to instruct your officers to beat the shit out of the feminist protest.
As soon as I saw a complete gameplay change and a woman on the cover of the sequel, I lost interest.