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The official Idle Thumb Gamse of the Year for 2013 have been posted at the illustrious goty.cx URL! So this is a topic to talk about those GOTYs, about your GOTYs, and about everyone else's GOTYs. I'll start off with some discussion of the Thumbs GOTYs: I haven't played very many of them! The Last of Us and Republique are out because I only play games on PC, I heard middling things about Eldritch, and I haven't gotten around to State of Decay or Candy Box or The Yawhg! So, that just leaves Spelunky. Which owns. That game is so good! But if you're anything like Jake and Sean (or maybe you are Jake or Sean, seeing as they read these forums...) you're probably fucking tired of Spelunky, and if you aren't, you probably watch Remo stream it a bunch and play it yourself. So, yes, you know the game is good and I don't know if there's much to talk about that hasn't been said a thousand times. One interesting question is to think about the daily challenge - as Lord Remo points out in his writeup, it really transforms the game into something special. That's neat because it's something that's in one sense extrinsic to the game - it's not like any of the mechanics change when you play a daily. It's just got a thin metagame attached to it in the form of the scoreboard and the one a day run. For me, I think the biggest thing this does is make Spelunky into a habit - I play it every day, no matter what. I don't know if this makes me like the game more or adds to it in some other way that makes me want to include it as a GOTY more than I would otherwise. It's a weird thing because I'm so used to thinking about games a self-contained things that don't reach out into other aspects of my life. It reminds me a bit of VESPER.5, a game made for a game jam with the theme "ritual." The game only lets you make one move a day. The goal is to make the game into a ritual in your life. Playing the game each day is an intrinsic part of the game design and the theme of the thing. There's no divorcing the mechanics from the role it plays in your life. Is Spelunky like that? Or is the daily challenge just icing on the cake, so to speak? I'd pontificate more but this is the GOTY thread, not the Spelunky thread. My GOTYs, in VERY APPROXIMATE order from most to least favorite but still amazing, also remember THE ORDER IS VERY APPROXIMATE. They have platforms listed because I've copied and pasted this from another place I posted my GOTYs. Kentucky Route Zero (PC) The Entertainment (PC) Spelunky (PC) Actual Sunlight (PC) Papers, Please (PC) Proteus (PC) Destroy Your Home (PC) The Swapper (PC) The Stanley Parable (PC) Battlefield 4 (360, PC, PS3, PS4, XB1) Gone Home (PC) Gunpoint (PC) HORSEMASTER The Game of Horse Mastery (PC) Room of 1000 Snakes (PC) Simian.interface (PC) Knock-knock (PC) Dota 2 (PC) Ultra Business Tycoon III (PC) Bubsy 3d: Bubsy Visits the James Turrell Retrospective (PC) Monaco: What's Yours is Mine (360*, PC) You Will Select a Decision, No. 2: Cow Farming Activities on the Former West (PC) Even Cowgirls Bleed (PC) I have yet to play Surgeon Simulator 2013 which I suspect would've snuck in there somewhere.