I'll share my top games from 2016, as I think they are still tremendous games:
COPY KITTY
Copy Kitty is an absolute gem. This is the one of the few games that actually feels like an evolution of the old video game concepts that dominated the 90s. Not an imitation or an attempt at a "retro feel", this is the real damn business. The game melds Kirby, Megaman, and Treasure games together, as you can absorb enemy powers and COMBINE them up to 3 times, which results in hundreds of different weapons. There are lots of bosses, great level design, and an extremely funky aesthetic that reminds me of Super Paper Mario's villain's world.
WUPPO
I think about games that hit the closest to real, honest classic gaming. Authentic and not forced or fabricated. For example, I think Bleed is the closest an indie game has gotten to a legitimate Gunstar Heroes successor. With Wuppo, I think this is the first indie game I've played to feel, in its presentation, with its cast of quirky characters, with its music, its gameplay systems, etc. like a Nintendo-made game. It may not LOOK like one (The art is more like a very cute spin on An Untitled Story), but it sounds, acts and feels like one in just about every way. If you don't like the direction the Paper Mario series has gone, this game is not Paper Mario, but it has that same kind of writing, and worldbuilding, and overall fun and adorability.
There is a huge amount of bosses (17!!), a theme park with rides you can ride on, an underground city with jobs (we'll get to that), an apartment complex full of nutty people, a forest tribe of flower people, islands in the sea to find, another dimension entirely-- the world of Wuppo is enormous. Not quite the size of a game like Opoona (another similarly quirky and wonderful game), but much larger than you'd expect on first playing the game.
The combat and general interface are relatively simple. Point and click to fire, WASD to move. You can throw items on pedestals and give items and money to people for trade. Part of the fun of the game is finding things in shops that you have no idea what they are, and sometimes you might need them. Why does a city sell a diving helmet? Why does an apartment sell rocks? You'll find out!
Wuppo is a fabulous game. It's so weird, so wild, so wonderful, so witty, so silly, that it kept me smiling all the way to the end.
KHIMERA
Khimera is a melee-focused Megaman style game with a Mario 3-style world map where you can befriend the bosses you beat, acquire their powers in a Metroidvania style, and revisit stages to find secrets! It's a FREEWARE game on Steam, but the developer absolutely should have charged for it. There is a lot of effort and love put into this. Great music too.
THOTH
THOTH is a oppressive twin-stick shooter with dissonant Kubrick-esque music, levels as short as a Warioware microgame, and unnrelenting design variety that will constantly keep you on your toes.
That sounds like such a magazine quote, I'm the worst. Listen, the most important things about a game that goes for simplicity and minimalism in its design is that (1) the abstract symbols are easy to read, and (2) each level brings a new idea. And THOTH does both really well. When you see a line of dots, you'll always know what it means based on where the dots are arranged. You'll know what a square inside of a square means.
Simplicity extends to the controls. Left stick moves, right stick shoots. You move faster when not shooting. Patience is key to the gameplay, but the music is so stifling and unsettling that it is difficult to hold on to your nerves as 6 or 7 boxes are chasing you. This is the most stressed out you'll ever get looking at shapes.
FULL BORE
If you miss Fez and you like block puzzlers like Sokoban or digging games like Boulderdash, this may be just up your alley. It's an open-world non-linear puzzle game where you are a boar and you're solving puzzles to get gems and trying to get yourself out of debt. Can't solve a current puzzle? You can move on to the next room, or maybe leave that area and go to another area. Like Fez, there are rooms within rooms. You can rewind time if you screw up a move. Also like Fez, there are areas with cryptic solutions, and QR codes. Full Bore is STILL an underrated game that most people haven't heard of, which makes me sad because it's now 4 years old, and the game only has 45 reviews on Steam.
