I didn’t have much expectations going into this game. A indie-3D-plattformer was certainly not something I had ever played before, and the fact that I started playing it right after I finished Super Mario Odyssey should have been the death of any game. But A Hat In Time was invincible this year.

Since it’s an indie-game A Hat In Time is of course filled with strange humor, but unlike most other indie-games, the humor in A Hat In Time is really, really funny! The first person you meet is a little girl with a mustache who is the leader of a resistance and then you meet a classic mafia member who is feuding with seagulls, and then things get even more crazy, spooky and wonderful. The game unites the rush of discovery with cleaver platform challenges in a spectacular way. The foundation to all of this is the best controls I have ever experienced in a 3D platform game. The number of memorable characters are… well, every single character in the game really.

When this year started I had never even heard of A Hat In Time. Now it is a challenging, entertaining experience that I will never forget.

Talking about low expectation: Before I started playing it I had not expected Super Mario Odyssey to appear this high on my year-end-list. Since I never liked either Super Mario Sunshine or Super Mario Galaxy, I thought that 3D-sMario wasn’t anything for me anymore. In Super Mario Odyssey Nintendo’s Tokyo-studio have dialed down the difficulty and put all their money on exploration, lots of hidden secrets and experimentation – a perfect fit for me!

Super Mario Odyssey is kind of like a platform version of Breath of the Wild in miniature, where you run around in small but still wide open worlds where you can jump where ever you want and do whatever you want. Seldom has the rush of exploration and expectation been so strong than in a game. Yeah, I guess Breath of the Wild was the last game to make me feel this way.

On my first of these year-end-lists – The Top 10 Games I Played in 2018 – Forza Horizon 4 came in third place. Last year the game came in second. And for the third year in a row Playground Games inviting, warm and colorful racing festival score a podium finish. There is a simple reason Forza Horizon 4 is the only game to appear on all three lists so far: I just can’t enough of all the joy than this flood of racing entertainment gives me.

After 410 hours – the first game ever I have played for more than 400 hours – I still get better at the game and I still discover new interesting cars to drive. And since the developers are still updating and improving the game Forza Horizon 4’s spot as one of the best games ever just becomes even more solidified. It’s always sunny in Forza Horizon 4 – even when it’s raining.

Who would have expected that when you take two things I’m not interested in – rougelikes and digital card games – at put them together you would get one of the most enjoyable and addictive games I have ever played? I usually have a hard time enjoying a game that is almost all gameplay, a game that doesn’t care for either game world or story, but in this game I’m totally focused on building my deck of cards and killing monsters with said cards. It only takes a few hours to get to the final boss, but when you have finally beat the game, you want to imminently start over from the beginning because this is one of those few games where every playthrough actually is different. There is so much variation in the cards and special abilities you get, so many possible tactics arising from them, and there are so many secrets that this game probably will last forever.

There are many things that is great about Civilization VI, but let’s talk about the animations. They are simply incredible. The leaders of the other nations are so expressive that you almost feel bad about yourself when you declare war on them. But if you want to be a little more nice can control the world with other means than military force; you can use religion, culture, diplomacy or science too. After 150 hours of Civilization Revolution my first time with a game in the main series was a much richer experience with extra everything. "I Want to Conquer the World" Bad Religion is singing and I sing along.

I never expected to fall head over heals over The Sims 4. I never thought this was a series for me. It all comes down to the cats of course. The cats in The Sims 4 are cuddly, cute, funny, determined, rowdy, well-behaved, curious and adoring. Just like cats in real life. Speaking of animations – the animations in this game is also amazing; the animation team is surely worth all the credit in the world. The way the cats in this game act och moves looks so real it’s almost scary. Yeah, it’s a bit uncomfortable how much I care about my cats in the game, just like they were living creatures. The day my first cat died I’ll never forget. Nor the day after that either, when my other, sterilized, cat brought two cute little kittens to the world. The Sims 4 is all about life, and life is no doubt full av wonders and miracles!

Kudos to the guy/girl that came up with this brilliant idea: take the original Hyrule Warriors, make the fighters and the battles more varied and the progression system more engaging, set everything in the Breath of the Wild-version of Hyrule, 100 years before the events of Breath of the Wild. The graphics is amazing, the voice actors lovely, the Breath of the Wild-nostalgia out of control, and the battles are as addictive as ever. There are so many ideas in the world of gaming that seemed much better on paper than they turned out to be in reality, but here is one stroke of lightening that actually hit its target.

There are games that have been inspired by other games, and games that have been stealing from other games, and then there is Stardew Valley. This is Harvest Moon. No more, no less. Well, it actually is a little more because everything from growing your crops to the villagers life stories have been improved from the original game. The result is probably the best game I have ever played in terms of inspiring and motivating the player. Every single day there is so much to do on your farm, in the village, in the forest and the mine. This game is overflowing with inspiration and motivation. But well, this is Harvest Moon. No more, no less.

If someone at the beginning of this year had told me that this game was going to be on my top 10 at the end of the year I would have thought the world had gone mad. Now the world still went mad in 2020, and Euro Truck Simulator 2 is indeed on my 10. This is a game without any kind of challenge (unless you impose that challenge on yourself), where I’m cruising along the highway delivering ice-cream from Gothenburg to Stockholm or baskets from Manchester to Copenhagen. Since I can add my own music to the game, the main draw here is to listen to my favorite artists, as I’m traveling all around Europe, enjoying all the fascinating sceneries that is our continent.

While obviously not being the best game I played all year The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel is still my personal “Game of the Year”. After 126 hours of play from February to November this is the game that defined 2020 for me. I am being told it’s a “role-playing game” but it’s more of a hundred hours long visual novel with some dungeon crawling and some mini-games added for some little bit of variation and playability. The lack of any kind of moral choices, or any kind of choice really outside of choosing your magical loadout, frustrates me, but at the same time this an amazing story (and amazingly long story) that never loses my interest. And the game is so well-made and so player-friendly that I just keeps playing. If only the final boss stops cheating now I may actually finish this game too…