With twenty-ten firmly in the rear-view mirror, it’s time to perform our requisite best of the year list. With so many great indie games released in 2010, we’ll forgive you if you might have missed a few gems here and there. There were a ton of fantastic games to choose from, so assembling the list was a bit more difficult than initially anticipated. So, the good news is that everything that made the cut is awesome, but needless to say, there are a lot of great games that were log-jammed for those last few spots. The list is presented by genre, and is not a countdown in any fashion. Each game is accompanied by reflections from the author who originally reviewed the game discussing why it deserves to be on the list.
Check out Part 2 of our Top 20 Xbox Live Indie Games of 2010!
RPGs and Adventure
Breath of Death VII
Breath of Death VII, along with Shoot 1UP, were the first games that convinced me that it was worthwhile writing about those indie games. It managed to tickle my nostalgia receptors for those classic RPGs I grew up playing in a way that no modern RPG really could. Its pixel-perfect 16-bit art style is absolutely gorgeous, and it’s jammed with hilarious nods to classic gaming franchises and self-referential humor. I really find a lot of modern Japanese RPGs to be overly cheesy, long-winded and pretentious, but Breath of Death VII manages to remind me of what used to be so much fun about the genre. It even manages to improve upon the formula by reducing a lot of the maintenance. The combat is snappy, the characters are quirky and it’s just about the best value out there for a buck.
Full Review by Mike Wall
