Here it is, the post everyone’s been waiting for. It’s my Top 10 Games of the Decade as decided solely by me. It was actually a pretty tough list to make, and I changed the ordering several times. In fact, even I am a little surprised by how it eventually shook out. But I think I am actually at peace with it.

# 10 – Trials Evolution

It’s an honor to make the list, right? And even though it’s squeaking in at #10, Trials Evolution is an incredible game. Very few games have managed to make the line between the thrill of victory and the misery of defeat a tenth of a second difference in holding a button while also never feeling unfair. Trials’ sense of precision and timing is excellent. Putting in the ability to watch other people’s ghosts and compare it to friends spurs you to try a course over and over to try to eke out that additional tenth of a second. And it has a sense of grandeur that is actually surprising in some of its levels – flying over canyons, jumping down the faces of mountains, and rolling through hellish dreamscapes. Trials is a game that I still love to come back to sometimes for a few minutes to see if maybe I can push just a little better in one of the old courses.

#9 – Crusader Kings II

Crusader Kings II is the game that I’ve moved up and down this list the most as I was filling it – at one point sitting at number 3, at another point dropping down to 14. However, I think it up in the right place at #9.

Crusader Kings II is a game that I’ve put several hundred hours into over the last decade, and it’s probably the best game Paradox has ever made. It combines the excitement and challenge of trying to build a lasting kingdom that will stand the test of time with trying to calm the squabbles of your family and courtisans to prevent the whole thing from simply collapsing from within. Every game of Crusader Kings has felt like a completely different puzzle, even when starting from the same time and ruler.

That said, however, I think that while Paradox has made many advancements with their expansions over the years (and managed to keep up at least 1 a year), they also have made some balance changes that have made the game much less fun – nerfing strategies that some of the more skilled players abuse constantly is all well and good, but it also hurts the less skilled players who simply enjoy messing around with the historical side more than the “game” side. And in a game that is really primarily meant to be a single-player game, that feels like a major detriment. That said, the game has given some amazing moments over the years, and I still remember my first game – winding up king of Ireland, Denmark, Jerusalem and North Africa all together. And it still manages to stay fresh. It definitely belongs on the list.

#8 – Spelunky

My strongest memory of Spelunky was actually from before its release as a paid product, back when it was just a little freeware game – the night after a breakup, I sat up the entire night listening to Eminem’s new Recovery album and playing Spelunky. I think I logged over 50 runs that night… and I still didn’t manage to beat the game.

So yes, I suppose it’s fair to say that part of the reason this game is on here is because of my old memories – even though it came out prior to this decade – but the full release of Spelunky is a great game in its own right. It still has some of the best and cleanest controls I’ve ever used – moving, jumping or, whatever everything feels tight and precise. The game added new enemies and items, it added unlockable characters, it added a new art style (which I’m not a huge fan of) and it added a co-op mode. But underneath that layer, it’s still got the strong heartbeat of the game I fell in love with all those years ago.

#7 – Dark Souls

Looking back at how my list shook out, I noticed a second line in my list that starts here. One might even say that “The real Dar…” No, I’m above that. However, while the last three games are all strong in their different mechanics, and that is clearly why I love them; to get beyond that, starting from here, it’s all games that have spoken deeply to me, that have resonated with me, or that in some way (as pathetic as it is to admit) have changed me.

Dark Souls is one that resonated with me. I have still never beaten it, and honestly I might never succeed in doing so. But I am all right with that. Dark Souls is a reef that makes me want to continue crashing myself against it over and over again, until I wear down one more hill and push a little farther. It has tested my mettle and taken my measure. I still can’t say for sure that I like it, but damn it, I respect it. I even stand slightly in awe of it.

It’s not just me. The amount of work by people like Vaatividya on researching and telling the lore of the Dark Souls games, the people who have taken it upon themselves to make replacement Souls servers for when the official ones are taken down, the fascination and the obsession prove that this is a game that has spoken to many of us. Even talking about it I feel like I am unable to keep from describing it in almost poetic and reverent tones.

And as I have said many times, I don’t think it’s a perfect game. I’ve discussed extensively that I think it’s far less fair than many people claim, and even though I share some of the mindset behind the “Git Gud” types out there, I think it’s a net negative to the gaming community. But I just don’t care. Dark Souls handles the beauty of ugliness in an incredible way. It has a call unlike any other series. And I think it’s a game that speaks to both the potential of games and the potential of gamers.

# 6 – Kerbal Space Program

Much like Dark Souls, I am not totally sure I actually even like Kerbal Space Program. Certainly I have enjoyed much of my time playing it. But it’s also finicky and fiddly and has a lot of time spent simply waiting for one number to equal another number and watching things move and…

It’s like one of those romantic comedies where both people kind of hate each other and that bickering leads to them falling in love. Because I absolutely think Kerbal Space Program is one of the greatest and definitely one of the most important games of the last decade. And if Dark Souls makes me maudlin and poetic, then Kerbal provokes an equal amount of grandiosity.

Kerbal is a game that has managed to make learning interesting. It is a game that evokes tension through no scripting, no horror elements, and no music but purely through its mechanics. It is a game that makes watching a number tick down one of the most stressful and tense experiences I’ve ever had. And it’s a game that actually makes me shout in triumph when I manage to do something successfully. At the same time, Kerbal evokes the majesty and splendor of space, the scope and scale of the universe and our insignificance within it.

In many ways, it’s fitting that Kerbal and Dark Souls back each other, because the two are a chiaroscuro of sorts. Kerbal is about the grandeur of the expanse while Dark Souls is about the beauty of the collapse. But both are about small successes accumulating into victory, both require long slow mastery of numerous systems to succeed, both require persistence and both can swing from making the player feel like an insignificant failure to the most amazing genius on a knife-edged pendulum.

#5 – Saint’s Row III

I don’t think anyone expected Saint’s Row III to be what it was. I know I sure didn’t. Saint’s Row 2 is a mediocre open-world crime game with an astoundingly terrible PC port. And then… Saint’s Row III happened.

Saint’s Row III is one of the funniest games I have ever played. And it always feel like it’s smart humor. Like, even when it has dumb jokes, it uses them smartly and makes you feel smart. Starting the game with a bank robbery where you’re all dressed up as your own gang? Dumb. But clever. The moment where your character and Pierce drive around Steelport for the first time, and the two of you suddenly decide to start singing along to Sublime’s “What I Got”, and he flubs one of the verses? So dumb. And yet… so perfect and so right that you know that it couldn’t work anywhere else or with anything else. Something Volition themselves proved by trying to do it again in the sequel.

But let’s ignore the sequel and the prequel. Saint’s Row III is funny, it’s clever and it’s absolutely, incredibly fun. It’s like if GTA and Just Cause had a baby, but funnier and controlled better. And somehow, by the end of that game, it managed to make me care deeply about one of the weirdest and most offbeat casts of characters I can think of. It’s the only game on this list that I have beaten multiple times, simply because I just wanted to go back and do it over again.

Saint’s Row III does a weird slight-of-hand. It is wacky and crazy and over the top, and at the same time it feels real. Not realistic, but real. True. The characters stop feeling like characters and jokes, and they feel like actual people. Like your favorite book or show, where you just want to go back and visit those friends again. Saint’s Row III does a magic trick, and it never stops feeling magical. Even just writing about it makes me want to go back one more time to hang out; see how Pierce, Shaundi, Kinzie and everyone else is doing.

# 4 – Portal 2

I honestly don’t know what I can say about Portal 2 that hasn’t been said a thousand times. Portal 2 is great. If you want to talk about funny games, Portal 2 is hilarious. If you want to talk about games with solid mechanics, Portal 2 is great. If you want to talk about games that look good and even render desolation well, Portal 2 has got you covered.

But it doesn’t stop there. Portal 2 also had a great co-op game, one I still have fond memories of. Setting up bridges and then dropping them out from under Luke so he died. Moving the portals just as Luke was about to fall into them so he got stuck. Moving the portal’s exit so Luke went flying off into the middle of nowhere. Oh, and also solving the puzzles, sometimes. And then Valve even put out their own simplified level creator, allowing anyone the chance to make their own levels and puzzles.

Now, a lot of the fanmade Portal levels are trash, as Luke and I have discussed before. And on revisiting it, Portal 2 could probably have cut a couple hours from the middle. But its highs are some of the highest. And it is also the only Valve game I’ve really ever liked, which alone gives it some level of meaning.

#3 – Bioshock Infinite

I walked away from this write-up a few times because of this block, because I simply don’t know what to say about this game. So, I’ll start by getting the obvious thing out of the way first… I am one of the – apparently heretical people – who like this more than Bioshock. Honestly, I didn’t really like the original Bioshock. It had a cool twist, and some of the writing was clever, but the atmosphere was just isolated and claustrophobic, I didn’t like any of the characters, a lot of the plot felt tedious and the game was far too survival-horror for my tastes.

Bioshock Infinite solved all of those problems. The world was bright, colorful and vibrant, with people everywhere. It had several amazing characters and twists, and I felt much of it was well written (this seems to be where I diverge from many people). It had interesting music. And most of all, it had Elizabeth. I didn’t care about the second half of Bioshock because I didn’t care about any of the filthy cretins involved in Rapture’s echelon’s of power. But Elizabeth… I genuinely cared about her. When she was with me, I was inspired to keep going to get her where she needed to go. And when she wasn’t with me, I felt an even stronger need to find her again, to make sure I could see her and keep her safe.

Bioshock is a game where once you know the twist, you don’t really need to keep going. Bioshock Infinite was a game where I had one of the major twists spoiled before I even started and there’s still so much worth seeing in it that it’s worth going through. One of my favorite moments was the revolutionaries hunting freedom becoming the oppressors themselves after a shift to the alternate dimension. Shockingly, some people online found that offensive, as though it is not one of the most common aspects of history. Plus, there were all the callbacks to the previous Bioshock were clever in both subtle and not-so-subtle ways.

And while we’re discussing the links, I think it’s fair to say that all of the top 3 games on my list are games with an existential message that really spoke heavily to me. Bioshock’s is a message of change and possibility: infinite potential from a single seed, spiraling out into an infinite web of infinities – each one of those a different person one could have become. Forgiveness, repentance, and resolution all encapsulated in a story of a man, his family, and a giant floating city. The people who have been unmoved or confused by this game have done both themselves and Ken Levine a disservice.

#2 – The Witness

This game, man. What can I say about it that I haven’t said before, several times in the podcast?

This game is good. It looks absolutely beautiful. It clearly parodies/homages/tributes Myst in a way that feels much like Kenneth Branagh’s direct challenge to Laurence Olivier via his screen composition of Richard III. And, much like Branagh, it has the talent to back it up. The gameplay is so smart, so solid and so clever. To take such a simple concept of the kind of line puzzles that many of us mathy kids did in little puzzle books and adapt them to an island puzzle that required learning via local observation – just like Myst – is one of those things that seems so obvious in hindsight that only a genius could have noticed it.

This game is important. It does things that I think almost no other game has ever done. It is a game where almost 90% of the playtime is a tutorial. It is a game that hides entire aspects of this game in a way that people might never even find (Luke’s discovery of it is still one of my favorite things he’s ever done. Spoiler alert.) While Fez did something similar, this is a much more organic version; a version that never feels like the designer is mocking you if you don’t find it. In fact, I think finding it vs not finding it is much of what the game is actually about. It’s a game that incorporates 4th wall breaking without feeling like it’s doing so. It’s a game that has a “message” without being a “message game” in that tedious, preachy way so many of those games can be. And it’s a game that brought it to Myst… and won.

Most of all, this game is powerful. I’ve made allusions to T S Eliot, Shakespeare and others when talking about this game. This game is literary, apocalyptic (in the classical sense) and deeply meditative – a treatise about Lotus Eaters and self-actualization; about the mundane vs the transcendental; about knowledge and the literal vs wisdom and understanding. Yet, it’s something that a player could finish the entire game and never notice. And, somehow, that in and of itself is perhaps the game’s greatest message, and one that’s worth discovering for yourself.

#1 – Katawa Shoujo

I feel like considering all the games that could have been here, some people might want me to justify my inclusion of this game not only on my list, but at the top of it. But I don’t feel like I need to. Katawa Shoujo is here for one reason and one reason only – it is the game that spoke to me most powerfully out of anything I’ve played. Possibly ever.

Katawa Shoujo is a visual novel about 5 girls with disabilities, plus the player, in a school purely made for people with serious disabilities. It’s about romance, but it’s about much more. It’s really about the importance of love and friendship for healing people, about how disabilities don’t define us, and about how the things that may seem like someone’s obvious problem might not be – that we need to look beyond the obvious and truly see someone as a unique person if we want to help them.

Katawa is also notable for being a game whose idea and creative staff all came from 4chan – a site that at the time was so infamous that it was being touted in the news as an “evil organization”. (For some of us this feels like only yesterday, but if kids ever read this, I’d like them to know humanity’s dark history.) Something like this, powerful and moving with love and polish doesn’t feel like something that could have come out of there. And it would have been so, so easy to make this game wrong – too memey, too cynical, too sloppy, laughing at the girls.

They didn’t. The game is reverent and dramatic where it needs to be; or light and humorous where it needs to be. It’s well drawn and while the backgrounds are clearly digital photographs put through a Photoshop canvas plugin, it still gives it a really special feel.

4Leaf Studios did an amazing job. I hope that all the people who worked on this have since gone on to find excellent jobs in the games industry. Maybe some of the games I’ve put on my list were also worked on by them. Or maybe they’re working on my top game of this current decade. But even if none of them work in games again, they should all stand proud of creating what I consider not just the best game of the last 10 years, but possibly one of the most meaningful of all time.

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And with that, just 2 weeks late I completed my list. Here it is, my top 10 games of the last decade. If you agree or disagree, let me know why and where. Otherwise, I hope you enjoyed my look at them and my rationale. I look forward to seeing what’s coming in the next decade.