Eight months after the release of Raylib 3.0, Raylib 3.5 was just released. Raylib is an open source cross platform C/C++ game framework. Raylib runs on a ton of different platforms and has bindings available for more than 50 different programming languages. The Raylib 3.5 release brings the following new features.

• NEW Platform supported: Raspberry Pi 4 native mode (no X11 windows) through DRM subsystem and GBM API. Actually this is a really interesting improvement because it opens the door to raylib to support other embedded platforms (Odroid, GameShell, NanoPi…). Also worth mentioning the un-official homebrew ports of raylib for PS4 and PSVita.
• NEW configuration options exposed: For custom raylib builds, config.h now exposes more than 150 flags and defines to build raylib with only the desired features, for example, it allows to build a minimal raylib library in just some KB removing all external data filetypes supported, very useful to generate small executables or embedded devices.
• NEW automatic GIF recording feature: Actually, automatic GIF recording (CTRL+F12) for any raylib application has been available for some versions but this feature was really slow and low-performant using an old gif library with many file-accesses. It has been replaced by a high-performant alternative (msf_gif.h) that operates directly on memory… and actually works very well! Try it out!
• NEW RenderBatch system: rlgl module has been redesigned to support custom render batches to allow grouping draw calls as desired, previous implementation just had one default render batch. This feature has not been exposed to raylib API yet but it can be used by advance users dealing with rlgl directly. For example, multiple RenderBatch can be created for 2D sprites and 3D geometry independently.
• NEW Framebuffer system: rlgl module now exposes an API for custom Framebuffer attachments (including cubemaps!). raylib RenderTexture is a basic use-case, just allowing color and depth textures, but this new API allows the creation of more advance Framebuffers with multiple attachments, like the G-Buffers. GenTexture*() functions have been redesigned to use this new API.
• Improved software rendering: raylib Image*() API is intended for software rendering, for those cases when no GPU or no Window is available. Those functions operate directly with multi-format pixel data on RAM and they have been completely redesigned to be way faster, specially for small resolutions and retro-gaming. Low-end embedded devices like microcontrollers with custom displays could benefit of this raylib functionality!
• File loading from memory: Multiple functions have been redesigned to load data from memory buffers instead of directly accessing the files, now all raylib file loading/saving goes through a couple of functions that load data into memory. This feature allows custom virtual-file-systems and it gives more control to the user to access data already loaded in memory (i.e. images, fonts, sounds…).
• NEW Window states management system: raylib core module has been redesigned to support Window state check and setup more easily and also before/after Window initialization, SetConfigFlags() has been reviewed and SetWindowState() has been added to control Window minification, maximization, hidding, focusing, topmost and more.
• NEW GitHub Actions CI/CD system: Previous CI implementation has been reviewed and improved a lot to support multiple build configurations (platforms, compilers, static/shared build) and also an automatic deploy system has been implemented to automatically attach the diferent generated artifacts to every new release. As the system seems to work very good, previous CI platforms (AppVeyor/TravisCI) have been removed.

Release notes are available here and a complete change log is available here. Binary versions of Raylib are available on Raylib.com while the source code is hosted under the ZLib license on GitHub. If you are interested in learning Raylib you can check out their community on Discord. You can also download Raylib via vcpkg on Visual Studio with step by step instructions available here. You can learn more about Raylib and the 3.5 release in the video below.

Over the holiday season we’ll be republishing a series of Nintendo Life articles, interviews and other features from the previous twelve months that we consider to be our Best of 2020. Hopefully, this will give you a chance to catch up on pieces you missed, or simply enjoy looking back on a year which did have some highlights — honest!

This feature was originally published in May 2020.

If you’re anything like millions of other global-pandemic-lockdown Switch gamers, you’re on a vicarious head-in-sand holiday in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Strolling the beach, shopping windows, listening to chirping insects and lapping waves… you’ve seen this “Stalk Market” thing – interesting, but wouldn’t it take the heart out of the experience?

You hear the turnips’ calls, from deep in the woods. What might become of you if you followed? Which kind of turnip trader will you become?

1. Dabbler

Animal Crossing’s about friendship – seasoned with a little materialism, sure – but when you wake up to a letter from Axel the elephant, you feel wanted; like he needs you even more than you need that fifth colourway of the snack vending machine. And when Bangle the tiger gave you that sewing machine? Priceless.

You love all that. But giggles and blushes aside, there is the question of cash flow. After all, the customised wrapped gifts you rush to hand out to your islanders every morning don’t come for free. So how about you grab a bunch of turnips with whatever’s in the kitty on Sunday morning. Stick it in the garden somewhere and wait till the Nook boys make a decent offer. Maybe they’ll drive a hard bargain all week, but that’s part of their charm.

Graham the hamster gets the brush-off when you’re hurrying to catch the turnip seller’s narrow window, but he’ll understand – and he’ll dig that fortune-telling set you’ve picked out for the way back.

2: Amateur

Great to set up your friends in style – but don’t you deserve an extra present for yourself now and then as well? You know, give out some gifts of the ‘thought-that-counts’ variety during the week and save up to pop a couple of hundred extra turnips in the yard come Sunday.

Better dig up some of the tulips to make space. Was Katt the cat doing the “Disapproving Look” reaction just then? Is that one of the reactions?

3: Farmer

Once you’ve hit a 5x payout on your little turnip pile – Nook’s Cranny deciding they’ll buy at 495 bells per turnip one day – things start to look a bit different. You just put a third room on your house and paid off the loan on the spot. Any fruit-growing or bug-hunting money goes straight into the bank until Turnip Day.

Your islanders now get low-cost gifts of cheery hellos wrapped in promises of shared wealth in just one more week. You’ve fenced off a field and made decorative furrows so your turnips look smart when you line them up. In theory, if you catch the wave just right, you could turn over a million bells in a week.

Slightly annoying that Gwen the penguin thinks she can just walk around on your farm. It’s a place of work, for goodness sake.

4: Trader

When you go in big and score, the endorphins go wild. Money making more money. Who would work for a living? But it’s a shaky income if you’re waiting for the local Nooks to play ball every time.

Enter internet. Late nite Twitter trawls for randoms whose islands have prices over 500. Drug-deal vibes as you load up and fly to a stranger’s hood in the dark. Not sure if it’s a con or a sting. No option, though, if you’ve got four inventories of turnips worth a sweet 8 million.

Expanding that farm field soon got boring. And getting the turnips all neat takes time you could be spending scouring for a score. Now there are just heaps on the beach, in the road, around the pool…. Walker the dog can have his garden furniture back when you get the next couple of weeks done. He lives too near the airport, it’s his problem.

5: Broker

Reddit’s full of tasty turnip prices if you’ve got a few spare “NMTs” – Nook Miles Tickets, which can only be earned, not bought with bells. Hand a couple to your host and they’ll wave you on to their high-rolling Nook’s Cranny. So how about if you leverage your next decent price? (And maybe see what you could do to get a decent price sooner…)

You could be the Good Citizen who welcomes all freely, but no, you’re the Entrepreneur, who takes a sales brokerage of NMTs or a cash cut. (And you could consider being the Actual Entrepreneur, willing to share a Dodo Code for a Venmo payment of $10 US.)

At this stage, turnips are for chumps. You wouldn’t touch the grubby things. A couple of thousand need cleaning up from corners of your island, sure – behind palm trees and houses here and there – but you’ll get to that when you rebuild the barren plains that used to be your warehouses. That elephant seems to like running around there, anyway. What was his name again?

6: Scammer

What if – and of course you wouldn’t – but what if you acted the Grifter, who collects a fee then boots from their island because they never had the advertised prices? You imagine being the Twitter Scammer, who demands likes, follows and retweets in exchange for a non-existent Dodo Code to a fictional island. Feeling rather more trollish, you contemplate being the Prankster, who tells the world their friend has prices of 672: just keep DMing them until you get the code.

The #turnips tag on Twitter is now 99% spam. Fans of the actual vegetable must be dismayed.

7: Pro

But enough of that. This isn’t a game anymore. Managing a queue of sellers and keeping track of fees is a slog, so you get a team together. A friend comes to work on your island as a bouncer. You wear uniforms. You have a makeshift gate system, exploiting the behaviour of seats in the game to restrict entry until payments are made.

Bells are basically infinite at this point. Your house is maxed out and stuffed with any exotic treasure you like. Missing something from the catalogue? If you have a price of 500+ then someone will bring it to you, whatever it is. Your island is a gleaming OCD city-state of pristine paths and sparkling street furniture.

Those animal things have all moved house, relocated for your personal aesthetic satisfaction. That sort of stoner dog one sits under one of your ripe money trees.

But really it’s all about the NMTs at this point. #Turnips at 567. 3xNMT. DM for code.

Where’s all this going? What’s the absolute top level? The unburdened sharp point of the pyramid? Where is this course taking you, propelled first by a lust for bell bags then by the endorphin rush of money making more money?

Who are the gods of it all, your heroes, whom you can join in just one more step? They are:

8: The People Trafficker

Having maxed the material possessions of the game, you just want the last gilt touches of the perfect island: the A-list islanders with the fanciest houses. There are ways to trade them, little hypnotist’s tricks that’ll make them think they’re leaving another island and joining yours by their own free will. We’re talking backroom reddit deals with their current owners, briefcases glowing with strapped blocks of blue NMTs.

That’s what those tickets were for! Tom, you sly old raccoon-dog…

You disband your old clique in a heartbeat, ditch the mangey menagerie of has-been chumps and stock up with the it animals of New Horizons. And after all of it, in your retirement, you stroll round your sunny island, wearing your crown, and your elite cohabitants chat small talk with glazed eyes and sleepily pass you presents.

It’s the dearest friendship money can buy.

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by Josh Ge on 12/23/20 10:40:00 am    

  

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The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community.
The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

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A few months ago as I was planning out the rest of the year, naturally it was about time to start asking myself what kinds of special events we might have for Cogmind. The major Beta 10 was released in September, so there was once again an opportunity to spend some time playing with different ideas, and players have certainly come to expect some kind of event around various holidays given Cogmind’s history (see: Launchers, Pay2Buy, Holiday Mode, Abominations, RPGLIKE, Player 2…).

The next upcoming holiday was Halloween, but none of the specifically Halloween-themed gameplay concepts I had were particularly compelling, then one day I suddenly came up with the idea to do an ARG. I’m not really sure where this thought came from–it just popped in there xD

ARG refers to “alternate reality game,” which as a genre has a growing variety of possible forms and definitions, but among the primary uniting factors is that ARGs are created by mixing multiple types of interactive media, ideally with social aspects. (Wikipedia has lots more background info on ARGs.)

So what exactly would something of this nature work with Cogmind, and how would I build it? Having never done anything like this before, I had a ton of questions–well that’s what every special event planning session starts with, but this time it was especially acute. It really shows in my early notes, several pages of ideas bouncing all over the place, some of which aren’t even close to what the event became.

Early on I was clearly wrestling with trying to get myself into the ARG spirit by steering the concept outside the game itself as much as possible, against the grain of what I’m used to designing. I started out with REXPaint UI mockups (most Cogmind special events come with a special interactive UI component that appears in the bottom left corner, serving both as a useful reference and tool, and also providing extra info for screenshots), but in this case it didn’t seem necessary, and kinda worked against the ARG idea by concentrating more of the event inside Cogmind. Instead it would make more sense to move the primary form of interaction with this event outside the game itself.

So I built a little website.

The event banner for Cogmind’s ARG, more or less a screenshot of the website home page.

Players start from that page, on which there’s a single link to reach the next page, or “level,” but doing so requires a password. Getting a password is a multistep process:

• Read a hint on the web page which suggests a place in the game world to visit, or action to perform. The hint is just that, a hint, so doesn’t constitute specific instructions, and figuring it out is to some degree a small puzzle in itself (though in most cases not usually that difficult for players relatively familiar with Cogmind).
• Find the associated password clue indicated by the hint, somewhere in game.
• Use the clue to obtain the actual password, which is somewhere on the internet. This is often the more challenging part of the puzzle, at least for a single individual, since the possibilities cover a broader range of domain knowledge, and the clues are more cryptic.

So the goal for each level is to solve a pair of puzzles to get the password to continue advancing to subsequent levels. (If you’re wondering about more details and examples, there will be plenty of those in the walkthrough I’ll be sharing later.)

Each new level provides not only the next hint, but also comes with a reward: lore! This perhaps makes the Cogmind ARG more unique than some, helping keep players interested by offering an explicit reward at every step, rather than making the solving of puzzles the only reward in itself, with maybe a single reward at the end.

A lot of Cogmind players enjoy the lore behind the game world, and there’s plenty of unwritten pieces to that lore worth introducing or expanding upon. Some pieces are already hinted at in the game’s current lore, while others are just my own additional concepts behind some of the content that the game doesn’t (or hasn’t yet!) directly addressed.

At first I had no idea at all even what theme to use for the ARG (it is “Halloween” in color only :P), but I’m glad I settled on lore since this was a fun opportunity to share more information about potential future expansions. In most cases they’re not guaranteed, but are at least fun to read and think about–I’ve reread all the entries many times myself, just thinking about the possibilities ?

Design Options

Even with a theme nailed down, there were still some important general questions to answer, like whether the event should focus on individual participation or be more of a community event.

I did want it to bring the community together in solving a set of puzzles which would be relatively difficult for any one person to complete on their own, even planning to explicitly dub it a “Community ARG,” but decided that wasn’t really necessary and it could simply be a suggestion included as part of the announcement.

I also considered offering cash prizes, but changed my mind at the last minute since that might work against the idea of encouraging general cooperation across the community. Plus time zones, the fact that this event wasn’t pre-announced at all (I wanted to surprise everyone :D) nor designed with hardcore competition in mind meant it would be hard for a cash reward to be fair to everyone. And of course there’s already lore rewards at every level, anyway!

Another big question was whether to allow for multiple paths through the ARG, completing puzzles out of order (this was especially relevant to how the website would be built). It turns out there really wouldn’t be so much content that such an approach might become very desirable, and designing for a more controlled, linear progression would make it more enjoyable overall. In the rare cases when players might discover an in-game clue before they need it, they could simply write it down for later reference.

Time to Solve

I targeted 1~2 weeks for a decent individual player working hard at it, or a month if relatively slow, but based on the amount of ARG content I figured that a group of players working together could probably do it in just a day or two.

Sure enough the first team to assemble as soon as the event started managed to reach the end in about 22 hours.

The puzzles are ordered mostly by depth, thus the first clues are found early on, and so on, making it easier to find multiple clues in the same run without having to start over. Of course with branching and a lack of backtracking in Cogmind exploration, it’d be impossible to solve the entire ARG in a single run. Theoretically one could acquire every single clue in a minimum of two runs if they happen to have the right branches spawn in the proper order and choose to do certain things in each, although it’s highly unlikely someone would both get that opportunity and make the choices required, in some cases because the choices could be more dangerous and jeopardize some other clue they were aiming for at the time. More realistically it would at least take about 4~5 runs to complete (not counting potential deaths along the way).

Participation

70.5% of ARG release version (Beta 10.2) players were playing in ARG mode.

Note that Cogmind stat uploading is opt-in, so data only includes a subset of the community, and this event in particular had a higher run requirement threshold than previous events, at 10 runs instead of 3. What that means is that the event only auto-activates once a player has logged at least 10 prior Cogmind runs. Events normally exclude beginners like this in order to avoid confusing them (alternative rulesets and content are basically being added for experienced players to try out, or at least those already somewhat familiar with the base game). Players who hadn’t yet met that threshold could still manually activate it, but according to the data only one player chose to do that.

This event in particular, with its deep lore rewards and requirement that one already be pretty familiar with the world in order to make good progress, was very much aimed at long-time players, and the median historical run count among participants was 40.

9.7% of players who met the threshold to automatically activate ARG mode decided not to and forced the mode off in order to play the regular game. (Some other players and runs were also excluded from the 10.2 ARG because they had manually activated some different past special event.)

The median number of ARG runs per participant was 3, which isn’t really enough to solve it to the end, although in some cases where people were working together they might only do one run for the team.

Honestly the overall data here is not incredibly useful because it doesn’t offer a way to know who was actively playing the mode with the intent to participate, because again it activates automatically for most players. Unlike how I’ve handled most previous events, I didn’t include any mode-specific scoresheet data for analysis this time around.

But! We do happen to have another metric which will be somewhat more accurate, and also include anonymous players who didn’t opt in to data uploading. It just so happens that anyone who gets the first hint and is on their way to completing the first level of the ARG has to visit a particular Pastebin paste, and that page has a unique hit counter. The paste itself is unlisted, so it’s mostly going to be visited by players who are participating. Looking there (and subtracting my own test visits to that page with various browsers :P) I can see that we’ve got 185 unique hits. Still not likely 100% accurate, but it’s a decent gauge of participation.

Apparently several dozen people also visited the account page I set up to make that post, from a special someone in the game ?

Note the data for the above section was recorded a couple days before the end of the official ARG period (one month), so would be missing the last bit, plus some will still be playing past the end.

The website part of the project is quite simple, a good thing because I ain’t no web dev.

Like the front page, the content of each additional page/level is simply an image containing the entire page’s text and graphics (so I can work where I’m more comfortable, in Photoshop :P), plus a hint linking to the next page.

Each new level is protected by htpasswd authentication, where as the first page indicates the user name for each level is simply “cogmind” (for simplicity), while the password is what players have to discover, as described above.

While building the site I tested all the content and links numerous times in multiple browsers to make sure there were absolutely no mistakes, since I didn’t have anyone else helping me with prerelease testing this time as I wanted the nature of the event to be a surprise for everyone (even patrons). I did another complete round of testing once again shortly before launch, just in case.

On the game side there were a few new things to build, all of it pretty simple, though.

Naturally there’s new content included with this release, basically messages in various forms, and those needed to be stored somewhere. My inclination with this sort of thing is to store all related data in a single external file, for ease of editing and organization. Doing this for an ARG, however, would make it quite easy to identify and hack, so I decided to avoid centralizing the data and instead spread it around within the executable itself.

Even there I didn’t want the text to be that easy to scrape, so I also added a new system to encrypt strings within the executable. Despite these precautions I’m sure a dedicated individual could still hack it in less than a day, but that’s fine, and could be a challenge in itself if anyone with the appropriate skills wanted to take that route to “solving” the ARG ?

The other main game-side work involved display methods for clues. This was fairly easy since sharing clues in most cases just piggybacked on the existing message systems, although in some cases it was necessary to make it a bit more obvious that something was a clue, for example the on-map alert/notice pop-up system got a new Halloween color theme option I could use for messages prefixed with “FORBIDDEN NOTICE:”. There’ll be plenty of examples of this in the later walkthrough.

Early in development I considered going the usual special event route with a dedicated interface for recording hints, listing clues and whatnot, but decided it wasn’t necessary, and would even get in the way given how the event ended up being designed.

Mockup for an unused hint and clue interface.

Like raising levels during the RPGLIKE event in 2019, the mockup suggested there would a flashing popup whenever a clue was obtained, to make it extra obvious.

To come up with ideas for the puzzles, I first came up with two lists: one representing potential sources of clues within Cogmind, and another suggesting where I might want to hide passwords outside the game.

Most of the in-game options ended up being used, since an event like this should aim for maximum variety:

• NPC dialogue, for example on meeting them, or when they’re destroyed
• Hacking to parse an NPC (reading their mind)
• Scene text on witnessing an event
• ALERT-style global announcement
• Terminal query
• Some special cases used other more unique channels, as indicated in the walkthrough

For possible password locations I chose mostly bits of the internet over which I have some or complete control, in order to ensure the event would go according to plan, and also even continue to be accessible after the official event ended:

Not all of the above were actually used. Also note that some clues would likely require using a search engine like Google to find information relevant to uncovering a password. Passwords might also be directly provided within the game instead of via the internet, where that approach would be fun or made more sense.

As for the puzzle content itself, aside from being basically familiar with the world of Cogmind, much of it is tech-oriented. Obtaining passwords is easiest with some knowledge of very basic web page analysis, binary text, CPU hardware, a certain movie, multiple other roguelikes, specific Cogmind lore, and Cogmind achievements. Being good at using a search engine in general would definitely help a lot, and could mitigate much of the need to have these skills or knowledge prior to the event.

By the way, the terminology I’ve been using throughout this article, and that I stuck with throughout development to keep things organized, defines a “hint” as the piece of info given on the website for where the player can get more info to progress, and a “clue” being the info found in game that leads to the final answer/password which is usually found online, outside the game.

Reception was pretty good. Some players had never even heard of an ARG, others said they’d done a few before and loved them, and yet others said they didn’t really like them in general. Regardless of what kind of event is held not everyone is as open to a larger departure from a game’s normal format, but some players were really excited about it and enjoyed the process.

Not everyone was interested in the same part of the event, either–some were big on the puzzle solving, but didn’t necessarily want to go through and do the in-game clue-collecting part. Even some who did want to do the collecting themselves had trouble targeting a specific location in the game during their run, since that’s not normally how they would play (and it’s overall a more challenging way to play Cogmind). And some players simply had fun watching others do the ARG to share the lore afterward.

It definitely turned out to be a community event that helped give a singleplayer game more of a multiplayer feel, because even if not in a team, often times players would need additional hints from others to fill gaps in their knowledge, or because they maybe overlooked a clue.

I had fun listening to players in the voice channel on Discord working together to advance through the ARG.

I hung out in that channel for six hours, mostly as a silent observer, as 5~8 players at a time solved level after level. The group had some of its better players responsible for quickly playing to the relevant in-game areas, while others were thinking through puzzles or alternative approaches. Puzzles that would eventually stump a lone individual for a while, or even permanently without extra hints, were no match for a group of players working together bouncing ideas off one another, and that first group was the only known one to finish in a day.

One interesting thing about hosting an ARG partially inside the game is that people pay a lot more attention to the game’s details, to the point that players were asking others “wow, was this here before?” and “is this new?” or “did you know that???,” where in every case it was something common that had been a part of the game for years–some player just hadn’t noticed that particular detail before ?

So in that sense, ARGs are apparently a good way to force players to really notice details! (relevant or not…) Of course this effect also had players trying to find lots of meaning even where there is none, both inside and [especially] outside the game, leading to a variety of wild goose chases when searching for clues. One particular clue I’ll get to later in the walkthrough was especially funny because one of the websites players needed to visit (not mine) also had its own cryptic ARG-style content embedded in the page itself, unrelated to the Cogmind ARG ?

Most of the Cogmind community plays with the default Rogue difficulty setting, but several switched to easier difficulty modes specifically to collect clues more quickly and reliably.

Early chat about different player approaches to, and opinions on, the ARG.

Starting from the second day a dedicated chat channel was set up for the ARG (day 1 would’ve been best, but at the time most participants were hanging out in the voice channel for faster communication at the start anyway). Technically the default ARG period was for the entire month of November (and some will likely continue playing beyond that), so it’s been there and receiving a trickle of new comers as time goes on, more so because I keep pointing people there when they ask related questions on other forums or elsewhere.

The ARG channel is naturally filled with spoiler tags ?

As far as organization goes, and seeing how players advanced through the event, in the end I still think a linear design was the best approach, though I feel it would’ve been nice to have even more “side quests,” additional ARG content to discover along the way but that wasn’t required in order to progress to the end. There were a few such secrets, but not many–two of them were discovered, and to my knowledge the third has yet to be found.

So that’s it for the background and meta discussion. In my latest followup article on the blog I share a walkthrough for the ARG puzzles with lots of details and dev commentary:

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Gameloft Australia Pty Ltd — Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
[12.21.20]
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I tried to write this list without using “comfort game” in every other paragraph, but hey this year’s been a lot and repetitive language is the least of my worries. It’s been a stressful year, but I’m thankful that I’ve been able to retreat into both familiar and new worlds to find that feeling of comfort and stave off the mental burnout.

Many of those comfort games were old favorites: The Sims is an eternal presence in my life (and this year’s Snowy Escape expansion has been a blast to explore), Rimworld consumed my life for several months early into the pandemic and I’m still trying to get a grasp on that comforting chaos, and the familiar halls of Hitman‘s massive sandboxes are always a welcome retreat.

Turns out that several of those games were also 2020 releases, despite feeling like I’d been playing them for years. Turns out when a global pandemic skews your perception of time to the point where entire months fly by in what you swear was only a couple of weeks, it’s tricky to figure out which games came out when! Here’s an alphabetized collection of some of my favorites from this year, along with a smaller list of games way down below I’m planning on spending more time with at some point in the future.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons was a long time coming and, for many of us, exactly what we needed to make it through the pandemic’s early days in the United States. The latest in the nearly 20 year old series, Animal Crossing: New Horizons is the first mainline Animal Crossing game fans of the series have seen since 2012’s New Leaf and it couldn’t have arrived at a better time. 

New Horizons is excellent in its own right, but the serendipitous timing of its launch elevated the game into a cultural phenomenon. It was the first comfort game many of us fixated on to get through those initial weeks of lockdown. It was rare to turn on your Switch and not see an entire friends list of people playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Friends met up to enjoy a meteor shower together, group chats lit up when the illusive traveling shopkeeper Redd graced one islander’s shores, and Animal Crossing itself became the backdrop for social chats, general shenanigans, and birthday celebrations. 

That commotion has died down and given way to the relaxing, piecemeal gameplay the Animal Crossing series is known for, allowing its tedious but somehow still super charming mechanics to really shine. There’s less going on in New Horizons than, say, New Leaf but all in all it still makes for an incredible game that remains a cozy escape from everything this year has had to offer.

Baldur’s Gate 3 was a game made specifically for me. Thank you very much for that, Larian Studios.

The followup to BioWare’s decades-dormant Baldur’s Gate series, Baldur’s Gate 3 likewise brings lore, locations, magic, and mechanics from the expansive world of Dungeons & Dragons into the video game realm. Even in early access and with only its first arc out, it’s a game that captures much of the magic of an actual D&D session without the need for flipping through tomes of rule books or scheduling a weekly four hour block of time that somehow consistently works for five friends.

Skill checks and attacks are powered by digital dice rolls, infusing gameplay with a healthy amount of dice-driven misfortune along the way. Decisions and conversation found throughout the game offer plenty of opportunities interact to shape the world according to you character’s whims and personality, and there are different ways to approach situations based on the skills and knowledge your character or party has at its disposal.

The way Larian executed all of this may be rough around the edges at times (its early access!), but even so it presents a game built on the mechanics of a tabletop game that manages to appeal to both experienced players and those new to the D&D experience. (I was fortunate enough to chat with one of the game’s developers about that process earlier in the year!)

And I haven’t even touched on multiplayer and how amazing it can be to create characters with a handful of friends and try to meander our way through the game as our own party chaotic dumb tieflings, halflings, and elves. It’s an incredible game, and I cannot wait to see where the rest of early access leads it.

Dreams is so dang good. #MadeInDreams #PS4sharehttps://t.co/9yFhybO35F pic.twitter.com/qOrr3IXota

— Alissa McAloon (@Gliitchy) September 5, 2020

I’ve barely scratched the surface of Dreams. Media Molecule’s long-awaited creative engine technically launched this year (despite opening up a sort of early access in 2019) and, impressively, released an update with PSVR compatibility several months back. Dreams exists on user-created content; players can either roam from dream to dream and try out a wide array of games created within Dreams by other players, take a stab at creating their own assets for other players to use, or build their own playable creations.

I can’t speak to the creation tools because I haven’t quite dived that deeply into Dreams, but it’s impressive judging only by what players have managed to make thusfar! I’ve played remakes of Beat Saber and Guitar Hero within Dreams (with very little success because I’m trash at rhythm games), been completely enthralled by a deceptively complex puzzle game starring a little lightbulb robot friend (above), laughed to the point of tears in a Wallace and Gromit inspired(?) meme-laden adventure, and relaxed to an in-game recreation of Godot’s very good theme song from the Phoenix Wright games. (We won’t talk about the Sonic VR remake I played, but I will say that WIP VR experiences are a trip.)

There’s such depth in Dreams and you don’t have to look far to find it. The game shines both because of its community and because of the palpable love Media Molecule put into creating something powered by the purest creativity. If you’ve been on the fence about picking this one up, it’s well worth checking out.

This one’s not technically a video game and it didn’t technically come out this year but my list, my rules. I started getting pretty deep into D&D last year after having played a only few times since college before that. I’m incredibly lucky that I’ve had the opportunity to join a handful of groups all filled with wonderful people last year, and that those groups have continued meeting (mostly online now) in 2020. That lifeline and connection to so many friends has been an important piece of my life this year and allowed my frustratingly introverted self to keep in touch with friends despite being mostly confined to the apartment this year.

On the less sappy side of things, I’ve really enjoyed getting to know the rules, complexities, and weird situations that come with a tabletop game like D&D. The storytelling that comes from it is the sort of experience I always wanted more of when playing similarly non-linear games like Dragon Age or Mass Effect way back when, and the collaborative nature of the game means that those twists and turns have a wonderful unpredictability, that victories feel like heroic moments shared among friends, and that losses carry surprising emotional heft.

Beyond the pages of WOTC-published books, there’s a robust community of creators, writers, and designers creating their own adventures, items, supplements, content, lore, and much more to improve and build on the framework of 5e itself. Plenty of actual play shows have sprung up over the years as well (Critical Role! Rivals of Waterdeep! Fantasy High! So many more!) where you can enjoy some of those same emotional highs from the comfort of a podcast or Twitch stream, or even find a community of fellow fans built around that wonderful collaborative storytelling.

i will never be able to do anything this impressive again #Spelunky #PS4share pic.twitter.com/lvgA3TEgKX

— Alissa McAloon (@Gliitchy) September 3, 2020

While we’re talking comfort games, have you heard of a little game called Spleunky? It’s not a comfort game in the same way that Animal Crossing is; Animal Crossing would never betray me like most of my Spelunky runs do. 

Spelunky 2, like its equally brutal predecessors, creates a feeling of comfort by offering up a compelling roguelike loop that’s constantly feeding you more information through horrible, horrible deaths. The goal here is to descend through a series of procedurally generated levels to claim treasure and escape a cycle of death and revival, nearly the same as how it was in Spelunky 1. You learn lessons about mechanics, obstacles, and enemies as you die from them along the way, and eventually start to feel like you almost know what you’re doing.

I wasn’t sold on Spelunky even needing a sequel until the moment I first played Spelunky 2. What’s interesting about Spelunky 2 is that it manages to take the formula behind the original, a game that seems it’s already perfect in its own right, and build upon that using new mechanics, worlds, and structural changes that seem like a natural progression of the original. It wouldn’t have been enough just to make another Spelunky; the sequel needed to keep the charm, neatness, and challenge of the original while still finding a way to stand out from earlier games and excel in its own right without adding too much, and somehow Spelunky 2 pulled this off.

I’m a sucker for moody vampire fiction. Though the Bloodlines sequel won’t see the light of day until 2021, this year still had a healthy infusion of Vampire: The Masquerade content to keep me in good spirits. Both Vampire: The Masquerade – Coteries of New York and Vampire: The Masquerade – Shadows of New York are visual novels created by Draw Distance, and a great introduction to the world and lore of the series. I think I beat both in one sitting each, purely because I couldn’t put them down once I’d started playing. 

There’re differences mechanically between the two; Coteries lets you step into the role of one of three protagonists while Shadows revolves around one character. Both, however, set you lose on the streets of New York to make decisions about which allies you join forces with and how you cope with your newly found undeath. Each builds an eerily comforting atmosphere through music and stylistically animated scenes, and shares an enthralling story powered by the history and politics of The World of Darkness’ vampire societies.

Honorable Mention – Games I started and will eventually go back to

Desperados III (Mimimi Games) – It’s a great mix of the two best genres–stealth and western–with a wonderful combat system that I unfortunately haven’t had the mental bandwidth to fully explore quite yet.

Dragon Age Inquisition (BioWare) – I swear to god I will beat this game before the next Dragon Age comes out, no matter how many attempts it takes me. Last month was my third attempt. Every time I start I just want to go back and replay Origins and DAII. 

Moon (Love-de-Lic)- Moon was introduced to me as one of the inspirations behind Undertale, and that definitely shines through. I’m still pretty early in the game and the PS1 nature of it was certainly a readjustment, but I’m looking forward to seeing how the anti-RPG-ness of it plays out down the line.

Persona 5 Royal (Atlus) – I decided not to finish Persona 5 and just restart on Royal after falling off of the game originally. I still plan to do that, I hear Royal is great, but boy long video games are a big ask right now.

Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore (Atlus)-  TMS#FE is the sole reason I stubbornly kept our Wii U around, and I was thrilled it made the jump to the Switch. It’s such a bright game and the way skills combo together is seriously addicting, but long video games are a big ask right now.

2020 is all but over (good riddance!) and it’s time to look back and survey the gaming battleground. Despite this year being a particularly ugly one for practically all of us, we’ve been lucky enough to enjoy some incredible games throughout the year which have helped to restore our spirits in our down time, enforced or otherwise.

Below you’ll find the Top 50 Switch games of 2020 as ranked by readers of Nintendo Life. The order is governed by the User Ratings associated with every Switch game released in 2020 on our games database. As with several of our reader-ranked Best Games round-ups, the ranking is totally fluid even after publication, which means it’s never too late to rate your collection and influence the list.

If you’ve yet to score your favourites, simply click your chosen games’ ratings below and score as you see fit. Can’t see your favourite? Head to our library of Switch games (click the Games tab at the top of the page) to find what you’re looking for. A game needs to have been rated by a minimum of thirty users to become eligible, so it’s entirely possible to influence this best Switch games of 2020 ranking and get your favourites on the list.

The best Switch games of 2017, 2018 or 2019 are available if you want to look back even further, but for now let’s dive into this selection of the best Switch games of 2020…

Publisher: Gearbox Publishing / Developer: 3D Realms

Release Date: 23rd Jun 2020 (USA) / 23rd Jun 2020 (UK/EU)

A masterpiece to this day, Duke Nukem 3D is done proud by this Switch conversion. It looks and runs briliantly, the online options are a welcome inclusion and it’s not compromised in any way from its earlier console release. It’s a shame that a handful of previously-available expansion packs are missing, but given the low price of World Tour Edition, it feels churlish to complain. In the words of the Duke himself, come get some.

Publisher: Devolver Digital / Developer: Phobia Game Studio

Release Date: 23rd Jul 2020 (USA) / 23rd Jul 2020 (UK/EU)

Carrion is a special thing in many ways–a game which puts you in the shoes (or slithering eldritchtentacles) of the game’s ‘boss’–but its actual meat and potatoes structure is as formulaic as the genre gets. Thankfully, its core gameplay of tearing room after room of people into wet chunks of corpse never, ever gets old, and sustains the experience throughout. It looks superb, sounds great and is plenty of fun to play, despite some minor issues which just hold Carrion back from the absolute upper echelons of the Switch library. Still, if you’re after a Metroidvania with a twist, this one is digustingly intriguing.

Publisher: Nintendo / Developer: Paladin Studios

Release Date: 26th Mar 2020 (USA) / 26th Mar 2020 (UK/EU)

Good Job! Is a wonderful surprise that everyone should try out. Thanks to its hilarious physics, seemingly menial tasks have the potential to descend into utter carnage – whether intentional or not – and its grading system means there are plenty of opportunities to replay. Slight technical hiccups aside, Good Job! is absolutely guaranteed to have you in fits of laughter.

Publisher: Marvelous (XSEED) / Developer: Marvelous (XSEED)

Release Date: 14th Jul 2020 (USA) / 10th Jul 2020 (UK/EU)

Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town offers up a perfectly satisfying and simple take on the farm sim genre. Heartwarming character interactions, easy to grasp farming mechanics, and a nice variety of side activities prove to make this release a potent and worthwhile entry in this long-running series. Though its roots as a handheld game occasionally resurface and there’s not a ton of new content added for this remake, Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town more than stands enough on its own as a quality game that deserves a spot in your Switch library. If you’re looking for something to fill that post-Animal Crossing hole in your life, or are just simply a fan of the farm sim genre in general, don’t miss out on this one.

Publisher: Koch Media / Developer: Volition

Release Date: 27th Mar 2020 (USA) / 27th Mar 2020 (UK/EU)

Saints Row IV: Re-Elected fares far better than its predecessor on Switch, with better performance, minimal input lag and a refreshingly solid output in handheld mode. Its gunplay is always going to be messy and its unashamed sense of humour will undoubtedly offend some, but having such an activity-rich experience running so well on your handheld console isn’t to be sniffed at. And with so much extra content available in the Re-Elected package, Switch players have another long-term investment on their hands.

Publisher: Nintendo / Developer: Nintendo

Release Date: 1st Oct 2020 (USA) / 1st Oct 2020 (UK/EU)

Super Mario Bros. 35 gives Nintendo’s most iconic game a jolt of life and it’s massively welcome. Its matches could do with being a little shorter and it’s difficult to see whether it’s actually going to have changed much a few months down the line, but it says a lot about the quality of the experience that the biggest problem we have with it is that come April 2021 it won’t exist anymore.

Publisher: SEGA / Developer: Studio Zero

Release Date: 7th Jul 2020 (USA) / 7th Jul 2020 (UK/EU)

Catherine: Full Body is a fantastic revamp of a bonafide cult classic. With an excellent new character and several new endings slickly inserted into an already highly entertaining narrative – not to mention a slew of fun new modes – this is the definitive version of an outstanding game. If you’ve never played Catherine before then you’re in for an absolute treat, and if you have, we’d say there’s enough new content here to make it worth diving in all over again.

Publisher: 2K / Developer: 2K

Release Date: 29th May 2020 (USA) / 29th May 2020 (UK/EU)

XCOM 2 Collection on Switch is the full-fat XCOM 2 and XCOM 2: War of the Chosen experience. Virtuous has had to knock the graphics right down to the lowest setting, there are plenty of framerate issues and bugs that we’ve already encountered on other platforms and the not-insignificant – but hopefully patchable – problem with the game’s character creation pool, but this is still a highly playable version of the game. If you can make peace with some stuttering and long loading times and aren’t too offended by pretty ugly textures here and there, you’ll be rewarded with one of the very best turn-based tactical titles currently available. XCOM 2 is nothing short of a masterpiece and now you can play it on the go, which we reckon is well worth any sacrifices made here.

Publisher: Nintendo / Developer: HAL Laboratory

Release Date: 23rd Sep 2020 (USA) / 23rd Sep 2020 (UK/EU)

Given that it arrived with practically zero fanfare, Kirby Fighters 2 is a surprisingly brilliant Smash Bros.-style spin-off that simplifies its big brother’s control system but still offers a healthy amount of depth with its 22-character roster. Its Story mode, in particular, is a clever and compelling way to make each battle feel important, and that mode alone lasts long enough to make it a worthwhile purchase for solo and co-op gamers.

Publisher: Nintendo / Developer: Nintendo

Release Date: 5th Jun 2020 (USA) / 5th Jun 2020 (UK/EU)

Compilation games like Clubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide Classics always have a variety of hits and misses depending on your own personal taste, but there’s a wide enough variety of board, card and action games here that you’re sure to find a number that will appeal to you. Everything’s presented with charm and warmth (terribly-written cutscenes aside) and there’s an enormous amount of content on offer, whether you plan on playing solo or with others. The perfect game for if you’re stuck indoors with the family? Quite possibly.