I also planned to play games that I haven't had time to yet — and Oxenfree and Kentucky Route Zero are also on my list. I guess I should try some more Devil's Daggers as well (considering that it'll probably be Rockpapershotgun's game of the year), but it's just too scary and brutal for me. Inside and Salt&Sanctuary…

I apologize for spreading misinformation: I just checked, and it's not only pigeons, but a broader variety of birds. Seems like my memory played me a trick, and Hatoful Boyfriend certainly played its part there. But I guess that birds and bird people just make for very versatile characters (due to their expressive…

I'm in the middle of part 2 right now, and I'm loving it — and, according to most sources, the best is yet to come. After this and 80 Days, I seriously can't wait to find out where Inkle is going to take interaction fiction next.

Since I this is a pretty comprehensive list and many of the games I spent time with in 2016 (Hyper Light Drifter, Owlboy, Firewatch, XCOM2) have already been discussed, I'll mention three games that are a bit more obscure. Not necessarily my ultimate games of 2016, but games that I liked well enough this year.

I can't argue with that.
The fact that I basically had forgotten about it when writing my comment tells me that it was not enough to spoil the experience, though.

…that would have been my second pick.
A movie so carefully crafted and so in love with the wonder of animation that it made visiting the most egregiously commercialized cinema I ever had to sit in bearable. (They were showing trailers during the ad block, during the break, on the bathroom — the trailers were coming out…

For me, it has to be Swiss Army Man. There was no way that I would have passed on watching it on the annual Fantasy Film Festival that I frequent, since it sounded just like the kind of absurd cringe-comedy that you wouldn't necessarily watch at home, but goes down well with a (slightly intoxicated) crowd.

Having finished the game, I think that that's a fair assessment. Even though I'd still say that the visuals and the music are above 'pretty good' — they're lush, I'd say, in a good way.

Reddit seems to agree with you — it was an update. Well, at least I can feel less stupid now for not having figured it out on my own on my first playthrough.

It's a small symbol on the floor — you can use google image search looking for "hyper light drifter secret symbol" if you want to know what it looks like but don't want to spoil too much other than that. Actually, it doesn't look like much when you don't know what you're looking for, but you'll be surprised by how…

I chose a somewhat weird order for tackling them: I started with the Western boss, who is, it seems, considered to be the toughest one by some. I wasn't really frustrated by it, though, because the cost for dying is minimal and I could feel getting better with each try. After that, I stomped the Eastern boss with…

That's a good question, although a tricky one, I guess. I wouldn't be surprised if there are a few historic outliers, but by and large, I'd say that it's something that came with the 'indie revolution' that kicked in around 2007/08. The thing is, though, that necessity and aesthetic choice do almost always overlap in…

And yes, while I was too young to see Terminator 2 in any other form than a crumbling VHR tape (come to think of it, I have never seen it in something resembling proper image quality), I had the great pleasure of seeing Riki-Oh — of course many years later — in a midnight special on the big screen. It's possible that…

That running actually scared and scarred me more than the gorier scenes of the movie. So much so that I (and a couple of friends) were positively freaked out by a janitor of a building in town which just so happened to have a perfectly skate-able curb in front of it. I mean, as a skater, you're used to having to pack…

Also, Owlboy is probably a late runner-up for 'game that transcends the possiblities of pixel art while not over-stepping its vaguely-definied limits'. But while it's without a doubt extremely beautiful as well (and has also one my favorite scores of the year), ultimately, it's a bit too conventional to take away Hype…

I wasn't sure what to make of Hyper Light Drifter at first — I had kickstarted it and finished it in the first week or so after its release. I enjoyed it, but I didn't like the somewhat robotic behavior I adapted in the later parts of the game: I had gotten aware of how many mysteries and secret passages the game hid…

Thanks for your explanation — I can sign all of that in a heartbeat.

I think it's interesting that both you and Gerardi call the Amanita games 'extremely traditional'. I would rather argue that they are indeed not traditional/classical Point&Click adventures, at least not of the kind that most people might think about when they hear the term — that is 90s Lucasarts and Sierra games.…

No books published in 2016, but it's extremely rare that I read books when they come out, anyway. I guess what I enjoyed most this year was reading some fairly big novels, as a semi-conscious counterpoint to my quavering online reading-habits. I went to Melk this summer, which lead to me reading The Name of The Rose;…

He could be the actual Uncle Who Works for Nintendo!