HELLO. AND WELCOME TO VIDEO GAMES POLLS. Fourteenth Coint and Plick results (best games of 2020)

eat it Birdie! eat it in honor of the non-gamer cowards who refused to participate in this wonderful celebration! eat it so that we can move on!!!!

Birdie does not look impressed.

i passed that on to bird, but, uh,

https://i.imgur.com/7pRrXt5.jpg

i love this poll. i love the header. i voted early. i am a gamer.

*checks...*

this seems right, good name, yes, checks out

you done fucked up, KM

I was the one who nominated The Impossible Bottle then didn't vote on it -- because I hadn't gotten very far in it.
I also nominated & voted for the crossword puzzle and the virtual tour.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajhfn4E1cxo

this was all me btw

52 - Evan Birnholz’s December 27, 2020 Washington Post crossword, “5×5” - 5 points / 1 Vote
52 - Haunted PS1 Demo Disc 2020 - 5 points / 1 Vote
37 - The Prestige Tree - 10 points / 1 Vote
37 - Synergism - 10 points / 1 Vote
37 - Speaking Simulator - 10 points / 1 Vote
37 - Ordinal Markup - 10 points / 1 Vote
37 - Lair of the Clockwork God - 10 points / 1 Vote
37 - 8800 Blue Lick Rd. Virtual Tour - 10 points / 1 Vote

In every P&C poll there's a part when I go "Oh shit that's right, I did play one current game last year", still (like NV) it'd feel weird to just go 1000 points for this one game. That game was Origami King

And also Murder by Numbers.

37 - Ori and the Will of the Wisps - 10 points / 1 Vote
52 - Genshin Impact - 5 points / 1 Vote

voted for these

Ori and the Will of the Wisps is a very very good metroidvania - if you like the genre at all you absolutely need to play it. not quite a Hollow Knight-level masterpiece but still so much better than 90% of what's out there. absolutely gorgeous too

Genshin Impact is a free-to-play action RPG that I definitely spent too much time with last year. it has remarkably interesting combat for its genre, all about rapidly switching between characters to do elaborate combos with abilities on cooldowns, similar to FF7R but much better realised. the world design is the real mvp though, it's very much ripping off Breath of the Wild with its climbing + gliding mechanics and does a great job at it. exploration is a similar joy to BotW as a result, with the world being dense with things to discover

irl lols @ Karl's call-out post and the burnt pizza aftermath. I am taking the mailman's words to heart and striving to be a better poster one day at a time.

I'm actually just finishing the first Ori this week - scribbling on the back of bills to get the sub-3-hour game - delighted but not surprised to hear that the sequel's good too.

It's incredibly fluid, both in the design and the play - coming back to an early section on a second playthrough, my speed was definitely increased by familiarity, but coming back later with all the skills, you flow through it like water.

HELLO AND WELCOME TO MORE VIDEO GAMES

https://i.imgur.com/8v7G81m.png
33 - Umurangi Generation - 11 points / 1 Vote

oh nice, this was one of my votes. This is a photography game with dreamcast aesthetics and good politics that is basically a masterclass in environmental world-building.

https://i.imgur.com/OPp1E9D.png
33 - Post-Void - 11 points / 1 Vote

another one of my votes, this combines the surreal neon vomit art style of a Hotline Miami with the nails hard FPS endurance runs of a Devil Daggers quite beautifully, plus it only costs 3 bucks on steam (i got it for 2 bucks on sale).

abanana, I like your gaming style.

Not sure either of these today seem that up my street - I always like the idea of photography games but end up not getting into them, and I'm just not into FPS generally.

of course i had an unplanned work zoom the second i posted the first game of the day

im done now tho ready to kinda work but mostly do this

https://i.imgur.com/jSO59HW.png
32 - Spelunky 2 - 12 points / 1 Vote

i didn't play this but i was surprised it ranked so low given the fervor for the first one here -- but i didn't see it on the disappointment lists either, so maybe just nobody played it?

i voted for it! if you like spelunky, you will like spelunky 2, and for people who have played the first, that's probably enough. it's still fundamentally the same, but with additions. like the original, i struggle to even get through 3-4 levels. it's fucking hard.

sadly, i bought this game on the same day i purchased Hades. i played spelunky for a few hours, then proceeded to play Hades day and night for a very long time, and totally forgot about this until coint and plick

xps methanie, glad you lol'd! when i started typing that i was trying to be funny, and then looked back at it after posting and thought i may have been a little too dry with my sarcasm there - stuff gets mixed up on the internet, especially when i have a night like that. but yeah, glad it came out ok! <3

abanana your votes so far have been phenomenal

I am also surprised at only one vote for Spelunky 2, I figured it would be really popular.

Now KM has mentioned it, I wonder if Hades will top the charts? I feel like I've seen multiple ilx people talk about it (I never got it but was tempted).

https://i.imgur.com/eTZBzii.png
31 - Sludge Life - 14 points / 1 Vote

sludge life looks... amazing? i need to know more

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9AVCaTob3g

OK, another one of my votes. In this one you run around doing graffiti tags all over a small but dense open world that is filled with the 90s ugly vomit look I seemingly can't get enough of with some blunt dumb satire thrown in as well. It's short enough that I played through it twice last year and it is still free on the Epic store for another two months if you want to give it a whirl.

Wow @ that trailer.

And free?? That's my favourite price!

https://i.imgur.com/laLxTkE.png
25 - Death & Taxes - 15 points / 1 Vote

Oh yeah, this was a write-in from me. Kind of a Papers, Please type game but you play a Grim Reaper. Deciding who lives and who dies has an effect on the world as a whole, and you can get a bunch of different endings. It's v cool, and I played through a lot of times.

ooh, I haven't played this one yet, but it was in the Itch.io racial justice bundle so I imagine a number of us own it already without even knowing it.

https://i.imgur.com/dkIdqw5.png
25 - Kentucky Route Zero - 15 points / 1 Vote

Another one of mine - I know it suffers from being slowly released over a number of years so it's not *strictly* a 2020 game, but it was eligible and I've been loving playing it (I've been doing a chapter every couple of weekends as my BF wanted to play it with me so I'm not done yet).

https://i.imgur.com/hRTO02t.png
25 - Magic the Gathering: Arena - 15 points / 1 Vote

i'm looking forward to a Kentucky Route Zero playthrough soon! i've been waiting for the whole thing to come out, so now's the time i suppose. how long would you reckon that each chapter takes?

https://i.imgur.com/JGTMqhw.png
25 - Trials of Mana - 15 points / 1 Vote

Oh, I think not that long if you're playing through on your own. Our pace is really glacial as we're constantly consulting on what option to choose even when it really doesn't matter that much. I think going slow kind of suits the mood of the game but if it was just me I'd totally be all "click, click, choice choice" so much faster.

xp

https://i.imgur.com/R0CQn4P.png
25 - War of the Visions: Final Fantasy Brave Exvius - 15 points / 1 Vote

i'll cop to being the mark who plays and enjoys this gacha nightmare. it's just a really fucking good gacha that's also basically final fantasy tactics! they just had they 1 year anniversary this week so if it sounds good to you, it'sa good time to jump in, lots of freebies. an absurd number of freebies

https://i.imgur.com/ZMcMy3V.png
23 - Wide Ocean, Big Jacket - 16 points / 0.5 First-place votes / 1 Vote

UGH i missed a 25! will post it in a few mins

This was my co-number one vote. It's a cozy, sweet, and concise game about a middle schooler going on a camping trip with her uncle and aunt and her "boyfriend." The writing is very strong and does a great job exploring the rarely explored in gaming depths of niece/uncle relationships and of chaste middle school romances. It was in the Itch.io bundle so a bunch of you already probably own it and there's also a free demo on steam that serves as a standalone prequel to the main game if you didn't get the bundle.

https://i.imgur.com/pnBRAhm.png
25 - Vain Empires - 15 points / 1 Vote

damn a lot of games I haven't heard of in this stretch

Spelunky 2 just absolutely wiped me out. I don't think I ever got to 1-3.