NPR's five favorite games of 2024

We designed NPR’s Games of the Year interactive list to give artsy indies like “Indika” and “Thank Goodness You’re Here!” as much weight as juggernauts like “Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree” and “Black Myth: Wukong.” That approach feels especially appropriate in 2024 when shoestring titles frequently eclipsed games with nine-figure budgets.

This final list of 80 games represents a robust range of tastes and genres, drawn from more than 200 nominations from NPR staff and contributors. I love a good spreadsheet graph and analyzed the top five most-submitted games as an extra treat to you, dear reader:

Each receiving five separate nominations, it’s appropriate that these two indies placed together as they’re both stuffed with obscure mysteries and dazzling puzzles. Graham Rebhun praises “Animal Well” as having secrets “so deep you could easily fall into them and never come out.” Meanwhile, Allen Walden says “Lorelei and the Laser Eyes” “will have you feeling like a real detective stumbling on the supernatural.”

I’m not surprised this megaton multiplayer hit ranked so highly, as it was so popular it crashed the game’s server for weeks after its release. Ben Cart writes, “This cooperative game combines third-person shooter chaos with outrageous satire to create a delightfully challenging game that will have you laughing with and screaming at your friends in equal measure.”

2024 featured the usual slate of high-profile remakes, from “Persona 3 Reload” to “Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth” to “Silent Hill 2.” But Nintendo’s new edition of tongue-in-cheek RPG “Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door” was by far the most popular among NPR staff, perhaps because it served potent nostalgia. Eliza Redway writes that she “grew up with the GameCube version and adored its clever writing, goofy animation and quirky sidekicks.”

Regina Barber has regaled me many times with her exploits in this brilliant poker roguelike — and she’s far from the only coworker to stop me at HQ to gush about it. Barber summed up the attitudes of legions of staffers best. “‘Balatro’ is a deceptively addictive cross between solitaire and five-card stud,” she writes. “At my most obsessed, I started dreaming in ‘Balatro.’”

James Perkins Mastromarino and produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Todd Mundt. Mastromarino adapted it for the web.