"The thing that surprises me most about these personal GOTY lists, which I've been doing most years since I started working at Kotaku (including in the delivery room for my third child), is just how little I remember them after they go up. I could guess what was on the 2020 list, or the 2018 one, or my very first one from 2016, but I would probably get half of them wrong."
"The dirty little secret about these lists, at least for me, is how fluid and ephemeral they are. What was in my top 10 shifted throughout the year and that variance didn't stop once the list was published. I lock in my choice but always harbor doubts, not just about the games themselves but most of all about my own ambivalent feelings toward them. Those change, evolve, and usually just get more complicated over time."
"A beautifully elegant mash-up of minimalist tower defense strategy and roguelike deckbuilding, 9 Kings is still in Early Access and already pretty much everything I want it to be. The introduction of a quest mode late in the year basically added an entire second game. Nothing brought me more joy this year than snuggling up on the couch and watching my brain-dead synergies scale in unexpectedly deadly ways."
Personal GOTY lists often become quickly forgotten despite time invested in making them. Choices shift throughout the year and continue to evolve after publication, generating doubts and ambivalent feelings about both games and the compiler's reactions. Lists serve as temporal snapshots reflecting feelings at a specific moment and can clarify others' opinions or introduce new games. 9 Kings stands out as a minimalist tower-defense and roguelike deckbuilding hybrid that gained a quest mode, creating emergent, scaling synergies. Arc Raiders prompted social engagement by leading players to break a personal 'no mic with randos' rule, rewarding cooperative play.
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