2016, 2017, 2018… now it’s time to discuss 2019.

Okay, let’s see: I went into 2018 with 1,114 hours on Steam — having logged about 200 hours throughout the year — and ended with 1,566 hours, about 450 hours… and nearly 400 of those were attributable to a rather unhealthy obsession with an odd little game called They Are Billions. This blows past my previous #1 Steam game (Defense Grid, which took me many, many years of playtime to reach just 325 hours). When framed that way, the rest of this list seems pretty negligible in terms of total playtime. Billions probably warrants a separate blog post regarding my personal struggle with video gaming addiction.

As I resolved at the start of the year, I did eventually get a 4K monitor in May (long, 6-month upgrade project as I gradually upgraded the PSU, then the GPU, and then finally bought the monitor). It was always a trial to find out which games don’t reliably support 4K, normally in the form of a UI that doesn’t scale.

I also got a Steam Controller near the end of the year since Steam was clearing out the last of their inventory. I still haven’t found a good use for it, but I haven’t given up on it yet. At least it only cost US$5 (plus US$14 S&H).

Over at MobyGames, I managed to finish out the year with exactly 20,000 contribution points. All but one of the 172 points I earned were due to my new hobby of scavenging old promo art for games.

On to the list…

1. Defense Grid: The Awakening: Starting the year off strong (or lazily?) with a game that has 294 hours invested into it at the start of the year.
2. Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon: This is a retro NES-style game that is strongly inspired by Castlevania. Actually, “inspired” is too generous of a word– this is primarily Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse with the serial numbers filed off. Gameplay characteristics are extremely similar; the music seems to be just a few notes removed from the classics. But I guess that’s okay with me. There are also a fair number of improvements, such as the obvious graphical improvement of parallax backgrounds; heart powerups recovered from lamps actually restore health; lamps that yield new weapons are a different color so it’s harder to screw oneself out of a preferred special weapon; there is a configurable difficulty, which allows me to run through it on an easier sightseeing-tour sort of difficulty; configurable knock-back which alleviates a huge frustration of the traditional Castlevania gameplay.
3. Syder Arcade: Good action game to play while on the exercise bike. I finally finished the main campaign. The boss I was stuck on for a long time turned out to be the final boss. Now I get to play it again and with different difficulty levels. I’m really appreciating this game more thoroughly, just for its graphics and music. I must be really into it because I’ve gotten to the point where I am trying to obtain all of the achievements (the reasonable ones– there are 3 that revolve around being tops in the leaderboards). Later in the year, I upgraded to a 4K setup. Rather than playing games in 4K and 60fps, I often just look on YouTube for captures if the same. I noticed that Syder Arcade had no such captures. So I endeavored to fill the gap. Enjoy.
4. X-Morph Defense: A tower defense game that has been on my wish list for awhile. During a sale, I noticed that it has a demo. So I elected to try that first. It has an interesting inversion of the traditional TD model, in that you play as the invading alien force. But I had trouble adapting to the overall control scheme.
5. Galak-Z: After getting back into Syder Arcade in a big way, I got an itch to play another space action game with awesome graphics and sound. I really want to enjoy this Galak-Z game (possibly because every single character and vehicle reminds me fondly of Robotech/Macross, to the point of making me wonder how the creators avoided a lawsuit by the notably litigious Harmony Gold) but the core gameplay just isn’t grabbing me.
6. The Disney Afternoon Collection: Darkwing Duck: I was enjoying this OCRemix of a Darkwing Duck NES tune and I realized I have never actually played that particular title. I have it easily playable, courtesy of the Steam release of the Disney Afternoon Collection. Just another game that reminds me how bad I am at old NES action games. I can’t get past the first bridge level, and I’m really trying, too!
7. Battletech: This game had a free weekend in February. Ever in search of a turn-based strategy game that will engross me as XCOM once did, I gave it a whirl. I knew that this has a massive pile of lore and I worried that I might have felt locked out of the story, the same way I felt as I played a Halo or Warhammer 40000 game. But this actually has a great, simple intro that quickly brings you up to speed on the overall concept of the Battletech universe. Regrettably, the game crashed after I completed the tutorial. I gave it another try a little later during free weekend, but couldn’t even begin to get into it. Yep, I’m feeling the effect of story lockout– I just don’t understand what all the characters are going on about, and I’m not versed in which giant robots are good for what. And all the giant robot combat just looks incredibly goofy.
8. Kingdom Rush Origins: I only got about 40% through this game last year. I’m supposed to love this series and this genre of game, so I’m pushing back into it.
9. Mortal Kombat X: Free weekend, so why not check it out? I’ll tell you why not– 35 GB download for one thing. And the game is just weird. It makes you pick from among 5 factions (I chose Special Forces) and then walks you through a story mode featuring the most absurd action cinematics I have witnessed in a long time. I keep expecting alternate game modes to break out, and indeed, there are some QTE-laden segments. But eventually, some well-known MK characters show up to square off with series mainstay Johnny Cage who is the character I must play as. I managed to get through Scorpion and Sub-Zero before Jax got the better of me. That’s when I decided I had seen enough. I’ll stick with Mortal Kombat Armageddon on the original Xbox if I need an MK fix.
10. Bad ass Babes: This is a video game art style I never thought I would encounter again– filmed actors performing action, a la (original) Mortal Kombat, Pit Fighter, and Lethal Enforcers. But I guess nothing is too sacred or cheesy that it can’t be revived as retro-kitsch 2 decades after its prime. I have since been informed that there are actually more games which ape this particular retro-aesthetic. I gave this game a whirl (on International Women’s Day, incidentally) and it’s… well, it’s juvenile– let’s just get that out of the way up front. Still, thought went into the game design and the challenge does ramp up. You can’t rely on 1 or 2 moves throughout the game. You keep meeting more enemies that require different strategies. The game technically supports controllers, but it’s hugely frustrating to set it up. Also, it lacks Steam achievements but features “Fake Trophies” internally.
11. Ultra Street Fighter IV: Playing Mortal Kombat just made me want to play Street Fighter instead (much like any other RTS just makes me want to boot up StarCraft II). So I fired this up after a few rounds of MK-X frustration and confusion.
12. Parcel: I sometimes try to get back into this puzzle game but it never quite clicks for me.
13. They Are Billions: I normally eschew early access Steam games. But I have watched a bunch of They Are Billions gameplay via Twitch. I sort of got the impression that it was like the ultimate tower defense game. Truthfully, it’s mechanically a proper RTS (at least if the UI is anything to go by), but I’m still glad I jumped in. The voice acting leaves much to be desired, but I already knew that from the Twitch streams. Progress report: 36 hours in and I just earned my first achievement, finally! 57 hours and I still can’t get enough. I figure out something new about this game every time I play. After 126 hours of play time spread across nearly 2 months, I finally managed to win my first survival game. Granted, it was with a score factor of 22%, but I had to start somewhere. I eventually deleted the game deliberately after about 140 hours because it was too easy to just get sucked back into playing it. I reinstalled it for one more round as soon as I got my 4K monitor, though. After 161 hours, I have finally completed my second game (score factor of 75%). After 185 hours, they finally released v1.0, leaving Early Access. At 208 hours, I won my 3rd survival game (score factor of 95%). At 212 hours, I won my 4th survival game and my first game at 100% score factor. By the end of the year, the best I had done was completing a survival game at 170% score factor. Pertaining to v1.0, the game got a proper release mode with a full campaign story mode. I tried to play this. But since it follows the pattern of “single player campaign as extended tutorial”, it was extremely dull to play since I had more or less mastered all the basics of the game on my own. So I gave up on the campaign pretty quickly.
14. Pembrey: How did this game end up in my Steam library? Oh, now I remember: out of those hundreds of trading cards that Steam randomly gives me, I realized that I actually had a complete set for one game (Ball of Wonder). So I got to redeem it for a prize pack that contained, among other items, a copy of this game. I think this is what the kids these days are calling a “visual novel”. It’s not so much a game as it is a piece of 2D, SNES-style machinima, with a mild amount of token interactivity. I keep wondering how it might have gone over in the SNES days, if the audiences would have demanded a bit more gameplay elements and replayability (I haven’t finished the game yet but I suspect that it’s the type of game you can only really play once).
15. Monument Valley (Android): Since Chromebooks can run Android apps, I rediscovered this Escher-inspired puzzle game.
16. Stellaris: A popular 4X game from a few years ago which had a free weekend on Steam in May. Normally, 4X games intimidate me. But I’m feeling a bit more bold after figuring out They Are Billions all on my own (yeah, that’s of the RTS genre, but still complex by my standards). I’ll see if I can work through the entire tutorial before the free weekend is up. I decided to play a metagame of how long I could play it before the siren song of Billions calls me back. I played for about 20 minutes, getting my surveying ship to Alpha Centauri, before the game glitched and froze on me, thus making my decision to go back to Billions much easier.
17. Quake II RTX/Vulkan Edition: I procured an NVIDIA RTX 2070 card recently and am still looking for things to do with it. I heard that there was a newly re-engineered version of Quake II available which takes advantage of the hardware ray-tracing features. If I max out the game’s settings at 1920x1200x60fps (pre-4K monitor acquisition), I can indeed peg my card’s GPU meter, so that’s something, I guess. The experience is lost on me, though. I’m still no good at FPS games. Also, it seems to be impossible to invert the mouse, which is something I require in this type of game. Further, whenever a new 3D tech shows up, one of the Quake games seems to get an upgrade in order to show off the tech. But since I have no memory of how it originally looked, I have no appreciation of the graphical upgrades.
18. Capcom Beat ‘Em Up Bundle: Final Fight: This is the point when I deleted They Are Billions to keep myself from mindlessly drifting back into playing. The Capcom Beat Em Up Bundle has 7 old Capcom arcade brawlers. I was most familiar with Final Fight since I surely pumped $100 in quarters and tokens into that machine circa 1990.
19. Basingstoke: A new game from Puppygames, a developer with a very distinct style. I have put an inordinate number of hours into their Space Invaders clone Titan Attacks and I decided to try this one when it dropped (I had a signifcant coupon). It didn’t grab me. I actually opted to return it to the Steam Store, which is the first time I have exercised that feature after more than 200 games procured through the service.
20. Nights Into Dreams: A classic title from Sega that is on Steam now. I remember this being a big deal for the Sega Saturn. I am also fairly familiar with the soundtrack thanks to numerous remixes/alternate arrangements of the game’s music on OCRemix. My cursory impression of the actual game, however, is that it was designed to be a graphical extravaganza for the Saturn, rather than offering any major gameplay innovations.
21. Iron Marines: A new title from Ironhide studios, who make the various Kingdom Rush tower defense games that I adore. This one has a similar art style but set in a sci-fi universe rather than a fantasy one. Also, it’s trying to be more of an RTS rather than a TD game. I’m learning that the key to really getting into a TD game is to learn the hotkeys. Fortunately, this one has them and they are customizable.
22. Grim Dawn: I played this because it was free for the Memorial Day Weekend Spring Cleaning event on Steam. I have seen this advertised on the store and I always mistook it for being in the Warhammer 40,000 universe (due to the pilgrim hat seen in the cover art for this game, compared to this inquisitor character from 40K). Nope, it’s its own thing. It’s a hack-n-slash RPG affair, much in the vein of Diablo and friends. The only other game of this sort that I have played is Diablo III, which didn’t impress me much. The core gameplay of this type of title seems to just be clicking on enemies until either they fall over, or until you do. If they fall over, scavenge for loot and then sort through it. That presented a new problem that I expect to see more and more frequently with my new 4K monitor: UIs that aren’t aware of 4K resolution and don’t provide appropriate scaling.
23. Kingdom Rush: Played briefly for the Steam Spring Cleaning event. Didn’t get hooked, though; got too many other games that are drawing me in now.
24. Assetto Corsa: Free for the Steam Spring Cleaning Event. Another itty bitty UI for my new 4K monitor to chew on. The download for this was something like 10 GB and I couldn’t figure out how to even start playing. I wish these “serious” racers would have a simple arcade mode for the uninitiated.
25. Master Spy: I think this might be the last of the 7 games I bought during the Steam summer sale nearly 2 years ago (I always remember that since it was the first sale after I started using my wish list feature extensively in order to track games that looked interesting; when the sale came, I just purchased everything on the list that cost less than $5). It turns out to be a novel little puzzle game that reminds me vaguely of Gunpoint (but much simpler).
26. The Final Station: I think I procured this via a Humble Bundle last year. It was this year’s Steam Spring Cleaning event which induced me to give it a try. I knew the game had something to do with conducting a train during the collapse of civilization. The game doesn’t give you much to go on in the beginning, just encouraging you to figure things out as you go along. I found it strangely engrossing as I gave it about an hour before the gameplay got too frustrating for me. Then I looked up the plot synopsis on Wikipedia. I may track down a full-length Let’s Play/Long Play on YouTube sometime to watch it play out. Also, this game is another member of the “screw u and ur new 4k monitor lol!” club. I can set the resolution to 4k but most of the relevant graphics are rendered on the bottom 3rd of the screen. Fortunately, it renders at lower resolutions without switching the video mode.
27. Endless Space 2: Another 4X game, and space-based, to boot! It was free to play on Memorial Day weekend for the Steam Spring Cleaning event and I was induced to try it because the system was rewarding playtime with digital Tchotchkes. This was the last of the 7 free-weekend games that looked interesting to me. It’s almost like I’m hoping that if I try enough 4X games that one will finally click for me. Out of all the 4X games I have tried, I think this one actually might have the potential to get me interested in the genre. The interface seems a bit friendlier, at least in comparison to Stellaris, the free-weekend, space-based 4X from a few weeks ago. And it renders beautifully at 4K resolution.
28. Frostpunk: This is another post-apocalyptic city-building game. I figured it might speak to me the same way that They Are Billions does. It was a little tough for me to figure out at first but I eventually started climbing that tech tree and progressing in the game. This thing is bleak in a way that Billions could only dream. I’m trying to figure out the difference. I suppose it’s because in Billions, you’re fighting an opponent you can actually beat. In Frostpunk, it’s the oppressive force of the unrelenting cold weather. It’s also rather pretty, art-wise, and pegs my GPU meter at 100% using my new 4K monitor.
29. Anomaly: Warzone Earth: After playing Frostpunk for a few hours, I browsed what other games were developed or published by 11 bit Studios. They have put out a whole series of Anomaly titles which are tagged as “tower defense”. There is a bundle of 5 items in the whole series which was deeply discounted for the Steam Summer Sale. First off, this first title messes with the video mode in a really strange way. Also, the highest video mode in offered me was 1920×1209 (?!). All of the video modes listed really strange resolutions. The gameplay didn’t do much for me as it’s supposed to be some kind of reverse TD (you’re attacking the tower defense’d position). I finished the first mission but don’t have a strong desire to see what comes next. The control scheme seemed wonky and limited, but maybe that’s because I was using a mouse and keyboard. I could tell from the UI that a game controller must be supported and this turns out to be correct. Perhaps it’s more comfortable to play that way.
30. Dungeon Warfare 2: I heard about this game a full year after its Steam release date, and I learned of its existence thanks to an iOS games forum. This strikes me as a stunning failure of Steam’s recommendation system since the original Dungeon Warfare is my 5th most played game on the Steam platform (#4 before They Are Billions got its hooks into me recently). When I played it, I decided that either it’s much tougher than the original game, or I am losing my touch at TD games.
31. Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II: Retribution: I wish I could understand why I keep coming back to this game and trying to make a go of it. Maybe it’s sentimentality due to it being one of the first games I ever added to my Steam library (I bought a boxed copy of the game during a Christmas auction in 2011, a few months after I got on Steam and well before I got into the Steam collector’s mindset). I decided that perhaps my mistake was trying to digest the tutorial. Tutorials are a delicate thing and can easily bore the player to tears (especially if that player is me) if they are too slow and hand-holdy. Instead, I decided to devour the proper manual and jump right into the campaign, especially since I am well familiar with this type of game’s controls. Being an older game, it still runs fine on my new 4K setup at maxed out graphical settings. Unfortunately, it’s another member of the itty bitty UI club. And it still didn’t grab me.
32. Street Fighter V: This game was free for a week in August, which is significantly longer than the normal free weekend that a lot of games will offer. The experience of trying the game turned into an “everything wrong with video games today”-type of ordeal. First, it was nearly 30 GB to download (perhaps that’s why they made the trial period so long?). When I finally get to launch it, of course it messes with my video resolution, messing up all my desktop windows across 3 monitors (happens with a lot of games). I was eager to jump straight to the configuration and drive the resolution up to 4K, but the game first wants to hold my hand through a basic tutorial on gameplay featuring Ryu and Ken. It’s a Street Fighter game! Everyone already knows their way around a basic fight. When I finally skip past all the tutorial battles, I get a EULA and a privacy policy agreement that I have to scroll through using a controller. Then I have to select a country and register a user ID. Urrgh… I just want to play a little Street Fighter! When I finally get to the menu, I am bombarded by about 23 different dialogs about different things happening in the game, from different objectives and events to DLC and trinkets to purchase. At long last, I can access the configuration settings and change the resolution. However, the only way to change the rez is to use the controller to cycle through other resolutions, and the game thinks it’s a good idea to immediately switch to each candidate rez, forcing the process to take much longer than necessary. Anyway, I finally got 4K set and maxed out all the settings. And it actually was worth it because the game is breathtakingly beautiful and runs smoothly at 4K with maxed out settings on my new RTX 2070. Indeed, I would often rather watch the action in the background setpieces rather than focus on the fights.
33. Deus Ex GO (Android): I loaded this back onto my phone in preparation for a long plane trip. On the ride, I eventually arrived at a point where I just wanted to chill with a game so I gave this another spin. I got stuck pretty early on, just like the last time I tried it.
34. Human Resource Machine (Android): I loaded this onto my phone for the same plane trip. Both games came from a Humble Bundle pack of Android puzzle games a long time ago. I’m glad I finally got around to playing this game. I thought it was supposed to be some sort of tower defense game. Instead, it’s a straight-up programming game, though in disguise. I immediately recognized it as a simulation of programming assembly language. And I love it. I wish I had gotten to play it ~30 years ago when I was first trying to comprehend ASM programming. I eventually bought the game on Steam when it went on sale so that I could enjoy it in 4K and harvest Steam achievements.
35. Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2: Another Warhammer 40K game, this time a space RTS, and was free for a weekend (and another monster download). The tutorial didn’t grab me at all. Still, I’m always impressed by the diversity of game types which occur in the WH40K universe.
36. 198X: I’m getting rather bored of all the nostalgia pandering of the past few years, but the screenshots on this one still tempted me. This is kind of a “Nothing But Hits” cover of late 1980s/early 1990s arcade games (sort of the Stranger Things of video games) against the backdrop of a brooding teenager contemplating the meaninglessness of being a teenager. The games are quite polished retro affairs– a Final Fight homage, a Gradius/R-type clone, an OutRun tribute, and a game I couldn’t quite peg– I think maybe it was a cross between Shinobi and Strider. The cutscenes between arcade games depicting “Kid’s” melancholy were painfully slow, but perhaps the creators wanted us to share in her pain. I could do without the schmaltzy romanticization of arcade denizens as “the coolest uncool outsiders, rebels, and misfits.” Hey, I was there. But there are many tiny details to admire and appreciate in this game, and the tiniest detail I appreciated was that the racing game had a speedometer that topped out at 255 distance units/hour, just as I noted 12 years ago when I was playing a bunch of old NES racing games.
37. Steampunk Tower 2: It’s a tower defense game and it came up cheap during a Steam sale, so you know I can’t resist. It’s a curious game that boasts a unique art style and a slight variation on the TD mechanic. It also has a small base-building mechanic. The music is rather incongruous with a lazy jazz theme for base-building portion, while something considerably more orchestral plays for the main battle. The upgrade paths are bonkers which makes this feel like it started life as a freemium mobile game, though I can’t find any evidence of that.
38. Prime Mover: Another science-type game (I have been trying to get more into these, probably for the cover of being able to say I’m sharpening some skill or another). I understand how pixel art is a popular aesthetic but I feel that this game takes it way too far.
39. Sine Mora EX: Sine Mora is Latin for “without delay” (recording this here for my own benefit because I can never remember). This shmup was on sale and it looked pretty. So, due to my fondness for the experience of playing Syder Arcade for its graphical glory, I picked this up as well. I’m becoming very appreciative of games that know how to launch at fullscreen 4K without ever touching the video resolution, and that have a UI which scales appropriately (and runs great at 4K, Ultra settings on my RTX 2070). It is indeed a graphical feast, but a little difficult to place– it reminds me of the “World War II-era futuristic” technology on display in Wolfenstein: The New Order (I have since learned that this aesthetic is called Diesel Punk). Oh, and with anthropomorphised animals. Trying to follow the story and decode the jargon and proper nouns in the game makes me feel like I’m missing some language skills. And it’s the first shmup I have played which boasts some type of bullet-time mechanic (called time capsules in this game). Also, there is a timer that gets replenished by destroying enemies. So I guess a pacifist run is out of the question.
40. Seasons After Fall: Look, it’s beautiful. What else needs to be said about it? It runs spectacularly on my new 4K setup, which makes it a graphical treat. It reminds me fondly of Astal. Not sure how deep of a game it is.
41. Super Impossible Road (iOS): This frenetic racer was my first foray into using Apple Arcade.
42. Grindstone (iOS): Another Apple Arcade item– I was searching for some decent puzzle games and this has an interesting angle.
43. Patterned (iOS): Apple Arcade game that didn’t really make a good impression on me. Manually pattern-matching 2-dimensional image blocks turned out to be not my cup of tea.
44. Word Laces (iOS): An Apple Arcade title that has a tiny amount of educational value.
45. Tint (iOS): This is the point when I got a little bored of the Apple Arcade offerings.
46. Rise To Ruins: This is another of those games that I really, really want to like and that I keep on trying repeatedly, but it simply never clicks for me. It reminds me of trying to jump into a complicated software programming IDE and I just can’t make heads or tails of the myriad tools laid before me.
47. Devil May Cry (From the HD Collection on Steam): This is my first exposure to the franchise. The game won’t let me use my keyboard’s volume control buttons in game, which is weird. Also, its max resolution is 1080p, but I guess it’s upscaling to fill 4K since it doesn’t reset the monitor settings, which I appreciate. I suppose there is only so much “HD remastering” you can do for a game like this. I’m just glad that it is widescreen since some of the earlier screens in the game implied a 4:3 aspect ratio. There is something distinctly Resident Evil-ish about the game, which makes sense since it’s my understanding that this was a revamp of an abortive attempt at producing Resident Evil 4. Frustratingly, my internet was down while I played this game. Even though the game still played fine, it still annoys me slightly that I didn’t get “credit” in Steam’s time tracking for the hour or so that I put into it.
48. Mark of the Ninja Remastered: This game was a key title that made me want to upgrade to 4K last year. Towards the end of the year, I realized that I hadn’t touched this 4K Remastered upgrade yet.
49. Banished: I’ve had this for awhile but finally got around to playing it near the end of the year. Unfortunately, I got bored about 3 minutes into the tutorial. I appreciated that it had UI scaling for 4K. However, it didn’t seem to work everywhere. I.e., some menus were upscaled, but the in-game control icons and tooltips remained tiny.
50. Phantom Doctrine: Yet another turn-based strategy game. I keep buying these in the hope that one of them will grab me in the same way that XCOM did. This one is a cold war, stealth-themed affair which is a setting that I tend to enjoy. I can’t help but notice that all of these turn-based strategy games feel like re-skins of XCOM (I can’t wait to learn that there are earlier examples of the same type of interface), but this is a good deal more complicated than XCOM, based on my cursory gameplay. Still, the commonalities of the different games’ interfaces make me wonder if there is a Unity template.
51. Planet X3 (MS-DOS): This is a full DOS game created in 2018 by YouTuber The 8-Bit Guy. I supported the effort via Kickstarter and the game came out on Christmas Eve 2018. I figured I should give it a whirl some time during this calendar year.

Resolution for next year: play less Billions! I’ve also gotten a good start with MobyGames contributions. I’m hoping this will be the year that I finally learn to properly upload items to The Internet Archive. I’m finally going through storage boxes, trying to organize a lot of random optical discs that I’ve accumulated over the years.