The Escapist’s Best Games of 2024

While each staff member’s respective lists were all unique, there was one commonality between most of them – chances are, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth was on it. 2/3rds of our writers put Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth on their lists and it’s not hard to see why people liked it. 

Disregard the fact that Square Enix poured an absurd amount of money into the game’s marketing and production, arguably making it the biggest release of the year. It has everything you could want out of a modern Final Fantasy game. Its story feels subversive in all of the best ways, exploration is always fun, combat is better than its predecessor, and you’ll be spending dozens upon dozens of hours trying to see and do everything on offer. There’s an argument to be made that simply because more people voted for Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth it should be our Game of the Year, and if that’s your metric then sure, go for it, but because it was never considered to be any writer’s top pick, it wouldn’t feel right to give it top honors.

2) Balatro

While the phrase “Indie hit” may have lost some meaning over the years with so many smaller Indie sensations getting attention, Balatro is an Indie hit in the truest sense of the word. Developed by only one person, Balatro took the gaming community by storm when it was released in February and has since crossed over with numerous other franchises, released on nearly every major platform, and has garnered both critical and commercial success the likes certain AAA games wished they could have. There’s just a simple joy with crafting the best possible deck to raise your score to unfathomable levels, and it was a huge hit amongst the staff here. The people who loved Balatro absolutely loved it, and while it’s just shy of the number 1 slot, it’s a strong and worthy runner-up that people are going to be playing in 2025 and beyond.

1) Astro Bot

While Balatro may have had its fans, the winner of our Game of the Year wasn’t even close. Astro Bot ranked as many of our writer’s favorite game and those who didn’t still put it fairly high in their top 5. That shouldn’t be all that surprising though given just how well-polished Astro Bot is. While the game is relatively lean at 10-12 hours, each level is chock full of creative flourishes. One level may have you become the size of a mouse and explore a house, another level may have you climb a singing tree, only to then shift into a level that’s just a level from LocoRoco. The key is that all of the levels are fun and even if a level isn’t impressive, none of them are duds. It’s a game of consistently high quality throughout, and as probably the most polished game that came out in 2024, we here at the Escapist are content to crown Astro Bot our Game of the Year.