You’re all bestest bests in my heart

Much to enjoy in Hayden’s piece about how his zombie-apocalypse survivalist dreams hit the wall ofProject Zomboid. Both funny and well considered. CORALLL! (That’s the only Walking Dead joke I know).

Apparently Brendygot a jobor something, so isn’t contributing as much at the moment, but this is my favourite thing he did for us this year because it made me laugh a lot.

Rebecca has done a buncha good stuff for us (I point you tothe Stephen King piecelast Halloween, but this year I especially enjoyed her heartfelt article about Life Is Strange and the Remastered Collection.

Gaben doesn’t make terrestrial contact very often, but I think hardware ed. James smashed it out of the park with this interview, touching on a lot of different topics around talking about the Steam Deck.

Belter interview with Dan Pinchbeck, by Jay Castello, looking at the 10th birthday of one of the original and most famous walking simulators. It’s weird to thinkDear Estheris both that old and that young.

I like seeing I have an email from Nic Rueben, because he’s always pitching me something as silly as it is interesting. This one has the benefit of applying actual expert analysis to Pot Boy, a walking meme. Good stuff.

Paradise Killeris a singular game, both in style and substance. It was interesting talking to the bods at Kaizen, not least because they are all in on being weird (and, as noted, I have never heard someone say “normie” in an interview before).

Rymarr’s discussion of his experience withEastshade, a quiet game about life and self and art, is honestly kind of zen in how ruminative it is. A real tonic after a tough couple of years.

It was hard to pick from the work Edwin Evans-Thirlwell has done for us, but this article about workers rights and unionisation as depicted inHardspace: Shipbreakeris both fascinating and timely.

Siobhán Casey wrote us a fabulous, dreamy, unreal piece about going as high as you can go in Cyberpunk 2077 - and then even higher than that.

This is cheating because it’s a video, and Liam has done avideo round-upseparately, but I found this look at the Pinny Arcade collectors absolutely bloody fascinating.

Rick Lane has done a few deep dive articles for us this year, but for my money this look at the development PC gaming’s most favourite weird medieval war simulator, after the failure of Mirage, is the best.

James’s job is often an invisible one, but he spends alotof time benchmarking. This will give you a glimpse into his life as a hardware ed (and also it is funny).

Guides editor Ollie is sometimes given to message me saying “could you please check this article for me” and omitting “it is five thousand words long”. In this case I don’t mind. It’s typically Ollie, by which I mean thorough and worthwhile.

Rachel hadn’t been with us long at this point, but her piece on the feels that she got from Dead Pets Unleashed was funny and fresh, so I was like “Ah yes, good.”.

Alicia Haddick did some great coverage of BitSummit for us this year, but I think this interview with npckc on telling kinder LGBTQ+ stories is my favourite

Katharine became something of a preview specialist this year, especially the preview interview. This one on Flat Eye is super interesting.

It is very hard to pick one of Sin’s Rally Point strategy gaming columns, but if it must be one then let it be this.

This is about why games get delisted from Steam. It’s sometimes by choice and sometimes necessity, and sometimes by force. One of the most interesting things we’ve run.

This is a companion piece to Ed and Liam’s excellent Inventory Space on WOW. Lord knows Ed has done many excellent articles and reviews this year, but this strikes a great note between nostalgia and practicality.

It was either this or the one about not having trousers in Lost Ark that made so many people mad at me for no rationally explicable reason, so count yourselves lucky.

CJ is our news bud, but this rare foray into feature territory produced a very interesting interview that goes into how alpha players have changed Nightingale during development.

Daniel Lipscombe turned in this candid interview with Dan Douglas, about how Douglas’s now-famous Duke Smoochem mod has helped his own mental health over the last few years.