Alexandra Day's Games Of The Year 2021 | Winter Spectacular 2021
There were a lot of game releases in 2021. After the pandemic induced slowdown of last year, we got a wealth of games of all sizes being released. Rather than focusing on the heavy hitters of 2021, I’ve decided to focus on three smaller releases from the year that I feel are worthy of your time and money but maybe didn’t get as much attention as others. This isn’t a ranked list either, just games that I love equally but for different reasons. Without further delay, let’s get into three underrated games from 2021!
Elechead
Developed by a two-person team, Elechead is a simple but perfectly executed puzzle game. You play as Elec, a small robot trying to navigate a space station while tackling puzzle rooms to progress and find a way to escape the station. Elec has a unique ability. Everything he stands or jumps on is filled with an electrical current from his body. Platforms spark to life, tiles appear before allowing you to navigate otherwise impassable pits and light bulbs hum and spray out electricity through surfaces as you try to find a way around them. Sometimes this will require Elec to detach his head (the main conductor on his body for the electricity) and throw it to get around obstacles, but there’s a catch. Elec can only be away from his head for ten seconds or his body will explode, leading to precision platforming and down to the wire navigation of environments in order to beat the timer.
This is just really strong key-art ngl.
Editor’s note: when Alexandra first sent me this list I thought I had never heard of this game. Then I Googled it and realised I had seen a million gifs on Twitter and thought it was an awesome looking prototype,
The game takes four or five mechanics, establishes them and then subverts them wonderfully over the span of a three to four-hour playtime. The puzzles can be frustrating at times, especially since the game’s only form of a hint system is through different illuminated diagrams that you encounter as you venture further into the station. This trial and error approach to puzzle-solving will likely frustrate and turn some people off from sticking with the game but incorporating the instant restart mechanic from games like Super Meat Boy means that if something doesn’t work out, you’re never too far from trying out another potential solution. If you’re looking for a fun puzzle game that can be completed in a few hours, I’d recommend giving Elechead a shot.
“Hey Fanny, I don’t mean to startle you but I think we have been 1-bit-ified”.
Tux and Fanny
Tux and Fanny want to play football but they need to find their mislaid football pump to inflate the ball before they can. So begins probably the funniest game I played this year. From this very simple premise spins off a full adventure game, incorporating the stories of four playable characters (including an actual flea) while changing genre several times over the course of the story.
The game is based on a film of the same name made up of one minute clips originally posted on Instagram, resulting in Tux and Fanny beautifully walking the line between comedy and existentialism. This might seem like a strange mix but much like the tone of the game itself, the storytelling methods of the game shift too. One minute you’re making a short claymation film and the next you’re immersed in the story of a flea trying to save his colony before they’re completely wiped out. The ridiculous mixes with the sublime at every turn of this game. The game doesn’t artificially force you through the quest of finding your football pump either, you can just spend hours collecting medals by playing computer games in Tux and Fanny’s house or lie in the grass and gaze up at the clouds.
Everything about this shot from the movie sums up my 2021… No, I will not be elaborating.
It’s the only game this year where I had to play a mini-game multiple times where I escaped the digestive tract of an animal who had eaten my character and it was all the better for it! At times it feels like Warioware as crafted by an avant-garde director. Yet, for all its silliness, the game also expresses why these characters want to live together and spend so much time with each other. At its core, Tux and Fanny is a game about friendship with somebody who just gets you.
7 seas.
9 lives.
1 box of tissues.
Before Your Eyes
The pitch for Before Your Eyes is that it is a game controlled by your blinks. As in with your eyes. Using a webcam to track them. Each time this happens, the story jumps forward, sometimes to the next day, other times several years. The game tracks not just your blinks but your eye movement to control the narrative in front of you. Press play at the start of the game only means that you will likely miss parts of the story. This could have left the narrative feeling fractured or hollow and the player alienated by the information they didn’t have but developer GoodbyeWorld Games have ensured that this isn’t the case.
You play as a soul travelling through the afterlife and looking back on your life over the course of the journey, making decisions as you go along the way that determines how the story playing in front of you progresses. It’s a story about life and all the beauty and pain that it encapsulates. The joy is in trying to keep your eyes open long enough to see as many of these moments as possible, knowing that they’ll disappear entirely once you blink. To say too much more would be to spoil the joy of playing through the story yourself, which I obviously highly encourage you to do. Just make sure to have tissues handy when the credits roll.
Person-who-has-only-seen-the-Blink-episode-of-Doctor-Who: Getting big weeping angles vibes from this.
