The Escapist’s Best Games of 2024

Over the past 365 days, countless games have been released. While some games are definitely not worth your time, we here at the Escapist have come together and voted on what we consider to be the best games of 2024!

Our process was simple – over the course of around a week or so, our editors and writers each voiced what their top five favorite games of the year were. From there, we assigned points to each game based on their position in a person’s list. So for example, a person’s favorite game earned five points, their second favorite game earned four points, so on and so forth. After all the voting was done, we then tallied up the points each game earned and found out the top five (technically six) games we here at the Escapist consider to be the best games of 2024. 

So, without further adieu, here are the best games of 2024 according to the staff at the Escapist!

5) TIE: 1000xResist & Metaphor: ReFantazio

Given the amount of people who voted in this poll, it seems strange to see a tie, but it’s not impossible. 1000xResist had fewer fans but they absolutely loved the game and ranked it highly, Metaphor: ReFantazio had more popular support but ranked lowly on most people’s lists. It makes sense though that both of these games received the kind of love they did from us. Metaphor: ReFantazio is an excellent JRPG that continues traditions established in the later Persona games and strives to set its own path. And then there’s 1000xResist, a smaller title to be sure, but one that has just as strong of a narrative and presents it in a way that’s just as captivating. Both games look at the role of government and leadership, so weirdly enough, these two games sharing a spot feels very apropos. 

4) Fields of Mistria

While the term “cozy games” is more of a recent phenomenon, games that have centered on farming, starting small towns, or just playing around with avatars have existed for decades. Out of all of the cozy games that came out in 2024, Fields of Mistria captured the attention of several people on our site. Maybe it was the retro-pixel art aesthetic. Maybe it was the anime-inspired imagery. Maybe it was how the game refined several of the mechanics that made Stardew Valley the hit it is, but the point still stands – there’s something about Fields of Mistria that sets it apart from Stardew Valley and may even surpass it in certain areas. 

3) Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth

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.