Poker, Hedgehogs, and Phones, Oh My: The Best Video Games of 2024
By Pierce Trakas ’27, Contributor; Edited by Kat Willson ‘26, Editor-in-Chief
If any of you remember my Personal Project, where I attempted to make my very own video game within the Unity engine, you may presume that I really like video games (and you’re absolutely right). With the announcement of the Nintendo Switch 2 as well as the massive cultural presence of “A Minecraft Movie”, 2025 is shaping up to be an interesting year in the gaming scene. More specifically, I am really excited for Mario Kart World (the first open-world Mario Kart game) and Donkey Kong Bananza (a new DK platformer where you can destroy and use terrain).
However, I would like to recap 2024 and talk about some of my favourite games that came out last year, as well as some not-so-hidden gems that you should check out if you have the time, money, and hardware over this summer.
In my opinion, one of the best indie games of 2024 was Balatro (made by anonymous Canadian developer LocalThunk), a Poker-inspired (there is no gambling involved) roguelike game where you rig the odds to keep moving forward by adding cards to your deck and using permanently kept Jokers to gain loads of chips. Fun fact: Balatro is the Latin word for “jester” or “buffoon”. The idea of the game is simple: survive an oncoming onslaught of Blinds where you have to achieve a chip quota to survive, which gets larger in every round.
The main theme, while being the only musical piece in the game with slight variations, still manages to be really catchy and doesn’t drag on.
Some of my favourite jokers in the game to use are Four Fingers (great for strategies built around Flushes), Cavendish (unlock method is a fun reference to the history of bananas), Supernova (great if you reuse specific hand types a lot), and Hologram (rewards playing card collectors). Balatro became popular enough to surpass 5 million units in sales, collaborate with Among Us, and be nominated for Game of the Year at the Game Awards last year.
This game’s quirky take on poker and addicting gameplay loop make it an amazing pick. It is available for around $19 CAD practically everywhere, including Apple Arcade, Steam, Xbox One/Series X, PlayStation 4/5, and the Switch (1 or 2).
Another one of the best games of 2024 was Sonic X Shadow Generations, which includes a remake of one of the best Sonic the Hedgehog games of all time and an entirely new campaign featuring the character Shadow. In the game, you can run, jump, attack, and use brand-new Doom Powers to rush through a wide variety of stages from previous games in the series as fast as possible. The music, as always in this series, is phenomenal; these amazing new remixes of classic tracks like City Escape, Planet Wisp, and Sunset Heights fit the atmosphere and can even be listened to on Apple Music and Spotify if you’re in the mood to.
The boss battles also give new takes on series classics like the Death Egg Robot from Sonic 2 or Mephiles from Sonic ’06. I won’t spoil the story, but it is a treat for longtime fans of the series and acts as a great culmination to Shadow’s story thus far in the games. Its new mechanics, high-octane gameplay, and extensive amounts of nostalgia pandering make this a perfect pick for both current enthusiasts and newcomers to the series. The game has received almost universal praise, being truly deserving of its $67 CAD price tag. Like Balatro, it is available on every major platform.
The games are designed to encourage your friends to be the main source of humour, which makes them really unique and sets them apart from most other comedy-adjacent games. The constant creativity and masterful design in each entry make these games extremely satisfying to play. On another note, the Jackbox Party Pack 11 and Trivia Murder Party 3 (the latter of which is a standalone game) are coming out later this year. The entire Jackbox Party Pack series is also available on every major platform.
To conclude, these developers have found a way to master their craft and create some amazing works in the world’s largest (larger than film and music’s revenue combined) arts industry.
I was not even able to scratch the surface of the best games of the year, with other notable mentions being Astro Bot, Black Myth: Wukong, Helldivers 2, and Splatoon 3. From my experience in developing games in the Personal Project, game development is an extremely time-consuming and sometimes confusing experience that results in an amazing product that is worth the effort tenfold. Thus, I encourage you to experience these games and, most of all, support the creators behind them to give them compensation for their hard work and effort.
