Favorite Things Winter 2026

SWIRLED 'ROUND A BOWL, SHOT THROUGH A HOLE

Breaking Bad

Who would've thought the critically acclaimed and massively popular TV series would be good? Breaking Bad is top to bottom excellent but the thing that makes it stand out the most to me is it's creativity. A lot of the situations characters find themselves in and solutions they come up with are things I would've never imagined. The writing team is INSPIRED and that inspiration extends to Better Call Saul (which I haven't finished yet but is even more incredibly creative)

Bravo Vince.

Denshattack Demo

Tony Hawk Pro Conductor

Feels like that "double track drifting" meme was the motivation to make this entire game but that's simply the beginning. What Denshattack takes away in decision making of choosing where to go (being on rails and all) it replaces it having a TON of stuff you can do while on the train. SNK pretzel motion tricks on the right stick while maintaining a balance bar with the left stick. This is probably my most anticipated video game at the moment, will smoke a whole lot of this when it's out.

Also has the goat Tee Lopes and EVERYONE else (except the funky uncle himself) on the OST.

Neverway Prolouge

In a world where narrative indie games exist on a sliding scale of Depression or Gay, Neverway challenges things by being both Gay and Depressed. The Prologue was a strange and interesting, farming sims aren't a genre I usually vibe with (I don't like most gameplay genres under the "cozy" umbrella) but this one has interesting enough mechanics and story stuff to make me want to check it out when it releases. The music and art are great, and the marketing will be the first people to tell you about the work Pedro and Disasterpiece have done before (Celeste and Hyper Light Drifter respectively), but everyone ignores the programming! Isadora Sophia has been doing amazing work on the Murder game engine that powers Neverway and nobody talks about it! Give her work more attention!

The Eternal Life of Goldman Demo

The Eternal life of Goldman is so passionately and expertly crafted frame-by-frame animation that it makes me concerned about the many neglected spouses and children of the animators who dedicated their entire lives to the craft. Work like this and other pieces of art which are in a medium that take a lot of dedication/time/skill to put out always make me think about the amount of pressure that must go into deciding what to make the art about. Like how does Laika decide what to stop motion animate? (they're making the Piranesi movie btw, hyped abt that.) Cuphead's meticulously detailed re-creation of 30's rubberhose animation could've been used in any gameplay genre, why did studio MDHR decide to make a gunstar heroes boss rush game? (Happy they did, Cuphead RULES).

I ask this because despite Goldman having incredible 2D animation, and a surprisingly engaging princess-bridesque meta-narrative going on, the actual gameplay is an... alright Ducktales-like? It would really suck if so much effort went into making the game look the way it does but the game design simply leaves them with a middling playing game. With such a large amount of effort being put into the art you'd hope that all other aspects of the game would be uniformly excellent, especially the moment to moment gameplay, so I hope the full thing is more engaging then what the demo showed.

Witch Hat Atelier

It's like Fullmetal Alchemist if Himoru Arakawa was a part of CLAMP. For a while I found Witch Hat Atelier's "gaggle of preteen girls" main cast to be kinda mellow-dramatic and the plot very slow to move, the interesting world building and gorgeous art carried me though regardless (it won an Eisner award for a reason). The story starts picking up around the Silvers Eve arc, and a lot of the themes and concepts they've been setting up actually start to get used in the conflicts and solutions within the plot. The rules and structures witch society are quite fragile and contrived, It would be very cathartic to see the crumbling of these structures within the plot (eventually).

The magic system is significantly more fleshed out and explained compared to most, which is really neat and an appealing part of the manga, although I think all the extra information we've gotten has only given me more questions about the very specifics of how it works. Just wait until my magical girl manga where they write their spells in arm assembly... on Raspberry Pis... in their pockets...

Mewgenics

ALIEN CRATER 👽🔥, FELINE INVADER 😼🗣️

This is a game made by a veteran designer and you can feel it. Mewgenics' moment to moment gameplay isn't anything incredibly novel but it's the amount of interconnected systems at play and how well they interact with each other that makes it all work.

If video games exist on a sliding scale of Parkour to Spreadsheet, this is THE spreadsheet, Issac was practice for this.

Probably game of the year? Mina the Hollower is sick though (but a discussion of that is for next season)

Ultrakill: FRAUD Update

People sing the praises of weapon design in Ultrakill (because it's really good and deserves praise) but I think Ultrakill also has the best cast of enemies in any action game. Weapon design and player functions are only as interesting as the contexts and environments you give the player to use those functions within. Ultrakill has tremendously fun and interesting things to kill.

FRAUD's gimmick is "illusions". This leads to some of the most interesting and inventive level design I've seen in any video game ever.

It is quite FOR REAL though. Had to do an entire re-play of the game on Brutal to warm up beforehand.

Marty Supreme

Marty Mauser like any dude in his 20s is willing to lie and sabotage every personal relationship in his life to take a trip to japan. Marty is objectively a terrible person but he has a mission, he feels like a parody of the "Insecure but strong male protagonist" we see in a movies often. I will become the Marty Mauser of Game Dev (if he was like, not horrible).

Demonschool

Demonschool has really good interesting combat that is strategic and lateral. It's all the things I've thought about for widening an decision space a player has in a JRPG to avoid the solution to a problem simply being to grind more and get bigger number. It's like the polar opposite of a traditional JRPG. The game has no level ups and you can actually take the default party with default gear all the way to the end of the game, so you can always simply re-think what you're doing instead of trying to "get stronger"

The actual game itself it quite small in scope and can feel quite repetitive, there are no dungeons/areas to navigate, and not much to break the pace of cutscene -> fight -> repeat. The game is best enjoyed in small sessions, and would've benefited from more pace breaking activities? When I think of other very focused JRPGs with a specific scope like Expedition 33 or Indivisible they still had more to allow you to break up the pacing. E33 had full dungeons to walk around in instead of just encounters, and Indivisible had platforming I guess. I'm not a big fan of the writing either? The game isn't perfect but it's interesting. I recommend you check it out if you're interested in turn based combat.

Bonus Stage

Bonus State is a monthly Toronto game developer meetup. I gave a talk at their February event! It was a abridged version of my post about game engines. Met cool people! If you're in the area, you should show up!