A Game Dev’s 4 Favourite Games of 2024 (and 3 for 2025)

When you’re designing games, you need to find the time to try as many as possible. Consider it research, but also one of the very necessary (and fun) perks of the job. Honestly, it helps provide  some inspiration for the team here at Clever Plays. As an example, I recently went into a number of the games that served as inspiration for our upcoming project, Happy Bastards, which you can read here.

I’m providing this humble developer’s perspective of what I think were some of the more interesting games that I played in the past 12 months. If you keep reading to the end, I’ll also let you know about a few games I’m looking forward to playing more of in 2025!

MY FAVOURITE GAMES OF 2024

Tactical Breach Wizards

Simply put, I am impressed by how Tactical Breach Wizards is a complete package. The game is innovative, well written, endearing, funny, visually unique, exciting, replayable, and deep. Suspicious Developments did a great job on this one. I’m going to focus on just a couple decisions they made that I really appreciated.

Despite using low-poly visuals and being a bit abstract graphically, TBW really makes it work. It helps accentuate the overall feel of the game. The team’s focus on character design, visual style, and the “cool” factor work to an amazing degree.

In terms of gameplay, there are two aspects of the game that I find particularly interesting relative to the work we’re doing on Happy Bastards. First is the knockback mechanic, and all of its variants, which occupy a central role in TBW’s combat – it is just so satisfying. Second is the combo-based approach to combat. You have a small number of characters (between two and five), and you can play them in any order, within a turn structure that lets you play all of your guys before the enemy acts. Identifying those cool combos between your teammates and seeing it play out is so much fun. (Honorable mention to Marvel’s Midnight Sons by Firaxis for also producing a great combat combo system back in December 2022.)

Unicorn Overlord

This is going to sound incredibly superficial, but it took me a long time to come around to playing Unicorn Overlord simply because I thought the name was terrible. Well, I’m glad I got over that because it’s an approachable, tactical gem that came out in 2024 that you shouldn’t miss. 

The strength of this game lies in the strategic layer of how you build and customize your squads. Unicorn Overlord’s high-level approach has you focusing on how you spread your units into multiple squads and how you decide which squad to use against which enemy in real time on the map. The game provides all these tools and it’s up to you to figure out how to win, which is incredibly satisfying. The sheer amount of options can be quite overwhelming, though. 

In Happy Bastards, we’re taking long looks at the importance of squad dynamics–about how some mercenaries will work alongside others. So, it’s always interesting to see how other great strategy games approach it. 

Besides the squad systems, I really like their implementation of the central resource in combat: Valor.  You always want more but you need to decide what to spend it on (deployment or valor skills). It’s a great decision loop that directly impacts your effectiveness. Similarly, we’re looking at new ways to use resources with Kev’s quest for fame in Happy Bastards .

Now this is more of a personal preference, but I’m not a big fan of heavy narrative exposition in games like this. The gameplay loop is so strong here, though, that I kept at it and played through to the end–which I highly recommend you do as well. 

Still, that name, Unicorn…Overlord? Really?

Age of Wonders 4

This one came out in 2023, but I played it this year. Now, here’s a game that really tugs at my nostalgia! It borrows from two greats, the Civilization series and Heroes of Might and Magic. It feels like a really solid mix of the two franchises—even borrowing both games’ progression systems.

AoW4 takes what I like about 4x grand strategy and speeds it up where it makes sense. No need to get mired down in all the minutiae when there’s such a rich world here to explore. The team clearly invested a lot of time into polishing the overall Age of Wonders experience and it shows with every turn. This is something that I can appreciate as both a designer and a player. 

Take the customization options. They allow you to play your favourite fantasy race in any way you want. You’re not limited by what the typical Dwarves must do or how your standard elves are expected to behave. This may seem like a little touch, but I appreciate this because so few games allow it. There’s a freedom in that, to make your world feel more suited to how you want to play it. That is one of the tenets to how we want to create Happy Bastards – knowing that there are many choices to make with each playthrough and the fun comes from how you experience the world each time.

All that said, I’m not a big fan of the combat system here. What gets in the way of the fun (for me) is that I wish I had more impactful tactical decisions to make. And in the late game when you’ve got bigger armies, things can slow down more than I’d prefer. The combat is…okay. At least I’m able to set up autocombat for the less-important battles.

Let me wrap this quick thought on AoW4 with this: By taking high-fantasy elements and layering them over the Civ formula, it makes Age of Wonders 4 feel more immersive and really elevates it above the sum of its parts. 

Indika

How did a game that’s not at all a tactical RPG get on my shortlist for the best of 2024? It is easily my favourite Indie game this year thanks to its strong writing and the amazing dialogue delivery from the voice actors! In a narrative game where story matters most, delivering on this point was paramount and it did not disappoint.

The alternate-reality Russia is really interesting to discover while exploring mature themes that you don’t often see tackled in video games.

It’s this mix of seriousness, humor, and utter nonsense that makes Indika a truly unique, fascinating experience. That said, I’m not going through Indika for the gameplay. I’m here for this fascinating tale and the full immersion that it delivers.

If I’m being honest, even now, I’m not sure that I can tie it back to what we’re looking to do in Happy Bastards, but sometimes you don’t need to—sometimes you just want to soak in a great game, regardless of the genre. Play it and tell me what you think.

GAMES I’M LOOKING FORWARD TO IN 2025

Obviously, it’s hard to give critical reviews on games that haven’t come out yet, but let me share a couple reasons why I picked these three games as ones I’m watching for 2025 – and, if you’re anything like me – why you should be keeping an eye on these as well.

Bonaparte – A Mechanized Revolution

An alternative-historical take where you can rewrite Europe’s history? An opportunity to take sides (relative to the monarchy)? If I’m going to take Napoleon Bonaparte’s place, I’m ready. What I’ve seen of the writing so far seems pretty good, but what has my full attention is the gameplay that feels like a combination of Fire Emblem combat and Total War world map exploration. 

What fascinates me is this added layer of political choices you make and how it is narratively framed, leading into gameplay choices. There’s currently a demo on Steam if you want to check it out for yourself.

Mars Tactics

I’m a huge fan of the classic turn-based tactics games that inspired a lot of what we play today, namely Jagged Alliance 2 and X-COM: UFO Defense. Mars Tactics clearly borrows several pages from these two legendary 90s PC games—including the inspiration of simple, but effective, graphics. (Keep in mind, this is inspired by the earliest of XCOM games, not the ones that came later from Firaxis.)

Mars Tactics looks to recreate (and slightly modernize) the sandbox-y approach to missions and squad-building you found in those older games, but with some modern capabilities built on top of it for good measure. I like that the environment is partly destructible, which can be used strategically, without letting you turn the whole map into rubble. It also doesn’t hurt that the story’s backdrop of workers versus the corporations is really fascinating to me.

Menace

Let me be as upfront as possible: I’m biased on this one. Menace is the next game from Overhype Studios, the makers of Battle Brothers. Yes, they made the game that serves as one influence for what we’re doing with Happy Bastards. 

I couldn’t be more excited that they are exploring a whole different world. This gorgeous-looking tactical RPG hits deep space where you’re squaring off against interstellar pirates, corrupt corporations, broken governments, and, of course, a mysterious alien threat. Because why make things easy for you?

From what I understand, the overworld (overspace?) is populated by these factions and deciding which become allies or foes heavily influences each playthrough. From what I’ve seen so far, I’m looking forward to not just deploying space marines, but also tanks and mechs. With the promise of squads being influenced by the individual soldier’s personality traits, it makes me wonder if this is going to be the XCOM 3-type game I’ve been hoping to see come out. Time will tell.

WHAT ARE YOUR PICKS FOR 2024 AND 2025?

Well, this was just a quick peek at what I really enjoyed in 2024 and a few of the things that I’m anticipating in 2025. What is your list looking like? I’d love to hear!

If you aren’t already on our Clever Plays Discord, please join us! We love talking about all this (and more) there. Chat with the team – and other fans, just like you. Also, if you ever find yourself lurking around Reddit, you can sometimes find me sharing thoughts on our Subreddit as well as in various subreddits as Matt_CleverPlays. Look for me there!