In order to ensure that my votes count as little as possible, I’m going to include both a couple of RPG systems and a boardgame! Generally, this is more a list of sheer life-impact than raw enjoyment of a particular title, though the two are often linked, and usually tied to play-time, as well.
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Fate Core
No other game, digital or otherwise, has consumed more of my time, or generated more raw enjoyment, than the tabletop RPG Fate Core by Evil Hat games. A wonderful revision of the Fate RPG system, it’s heavily based in narrative, storytelling, and character growth-as-people-rather-than-numbers. Low-crunch, fast-playing, and incredibly easy to mod, it matches my particular GMing style perfectly, and I’ve run multiple lengthy campaigns and a couple dozen highly successful one-shots with Fate Core. From scifi to high fantasy to horror to slice-of-life to comedy to cyberpunk to the utterly bizarre, it’s handled every single thing I’ve thrown at it with aplomb, and helped me drag several people into the TTRPG hobby. I hope to publish a game on their awesome open license someday! Moreover, Fate’s introduced me or brought me closer to several of my very best friends, lead me to a very fun online game with some Qt3 friends, and helped pay my way to Gen Con the last couple of years, so really, it had to be number one, didn’t it? -
Starcraft II
If we’re going by the sheer time metric, SC2 has to rank up there as well. My preference is to encourage other fans to simply list the full game rather than its three (albeit very significant) quasi-releases. All things considered, I’ve played SC2 monumentally less than I did Warcraft 3 or Starcraft 1, and honestly, even much less than almost every other game on this list. However, the SC2 proscene and the twitch.tv tournaments it spawned consumed the first 5 years of this decade almost entirely, introduced me to my first group of close friends in Raleigh, and are generally responsible for some of my happiest, most exciting gaming memories in the last decade. Watching greats like Mvp, Nestea, MarineKing, TaeJa, Hero, INnoVation, MC, Life (dammit Life), sOs, DongRaeGu, Scarlett, idra, White-Ra, Stephano, Naniwa, TLO, Huk, and iNcontrol (RIP) win it all, seeing the rise and fall of incredible teams like SlayerS, IM, TeamLiquid, EvilGeniuses, Axiom (RIP TB), going out to Barcrafts, catering for my buddy James’s annual BlizzCon party year after year. . . goddamn, I love SC2. -
Mass Effect 2
There’s a pretty big drop-off after the top two for me, but ME2 is still a pretty fantastic memory in my gaming life. It was a big drop down from ME1 in terms of story, gameplay, and overall importance to my life, but I still had an absolute blast on both playthroughs and adored the new crewmates so much by the end. Sure, the end boss is dumb as fuck and the third game utterly lost my interest, but ME2 was an intriguing, challenging sequel to one of my favorite games of all time, and I’ll always appreciate the effort that clearly went into making it great. -
Sid Meier’s Civilization V
I pretty much have only played Civs 2 and 5 for more than about an hour apiece, so I suspect my choice will bug a lot of folks here who are hardcore Civ4 heads, but eh, I missed the boat on it when it was fresh and the drop back to the awful graphics and lack of quality of life features I got used to in V mean I’ll never really be able to enjoy it properly. Civ5 ate up tons of my time and gave me a lot of fun for what I paid for it, so even if I did get pretty exhausted by it in the end, I can’t say it wasn’t worthwhile overall. It’s my most-played digital game on this list almost by a factor of 10! -
Powered by the Apocalypse
Apocalypse World dropped in the TTRPG market in 2010, and from that point forward had spawned a massive ecosystem of interrelated “PBTA” games using its same basic 2d6 core mechanic and innovative “playbook” character-building system in a massive variety of genres and game styles. From the D&D-inspired Dungeon World to the X-Files/Supernatural ripoff Monster of the Week, from sexy teen monsters in Monsterhearts to sad teen heroes in Masks, it has given so many great games, and is such a fantastic system, I had to include it. I play much more PBTA stuff than I run, but I can’t wait to get a game up and running in the near future. -
HEXplore It
Tom made me spend $200 on two giant boardgames and their expansions last summer and I’ve since spent about 6 amazing afternoons wrapped up in their absurd hexmaps, goofy dry-erasable character boards, epic boss fights, and crazy overpowered combos. I even kickstarted the third one! What an excellent boardgame concept – somehow condensing a full hexcrawl style RPG campaign into an afternoon’s worth of gaming. It’s convoluted, complicated, and more than a little insane, and I love it. -
Slay the Spire
The game that made me love gaming again in 2020. An easy to play, impossible to master card-based rougelike dungeon-crawler/deck-builder that hits so many of my gaming pleasure points it’s almost a little naughty. I’ve dropped a good 60 hours on it in the last month and can see myself getting at least that many more out of it going forward. -
Dragon Quest XI
The best JRPG of the 2010s, it helped rekindle my love for a genre that defined my gaming time in the 2000s. It really is gaming comfort food, to paraphrase Tim Rogers amazing video review. Gorgeous, inspiring, cleanly designed, masterfully made, it is one of the purest expressions of JRPG perfection I’ve ever experienced. To the point that I’m buying it again on the Switch to get the full experience! -
Gone Home
The game that’s impacted me emotionally more than any other in the 2010s, Gone Home made me feel shit a game hadn’t ever brought out before. Beautiful, haunting, and all-too-brief, it absolutely ensnared me and didn’t get go until the tear-jerking conclusion. I love this game. And dammit, it is a game, and not just a point-and-click story. I’ll not hear otherwise from any of you! -
Sorcerer King
This game fell in my estimation following Stardock’s fairly abysmal Star Control release near the end of the decade. All the promise I felt for their future making a new SC game seemed for naught, but nonetheless, I spy glimpses of greatness and brilliance in this deeply satisfying turn-based fantasy romp. The writing is clever and fun, the gameplay is an excellent refinement over the troubled Elemental formula, and it still makes me think of what could have been, which is almost more fun than the game itself. Alas.
Shout-outs to Age of Rivals, You Must Build a Boat, and Boggle, which are the only three cellphone games I’ve ever loved, but nonetheless, I can’t shake my association of cellphone games as not being “real games.” Special mentions also to Broken Age, Halcyon 6, Pathfinder: Kingmaker, and Pillars of Eternity for each nearly dragging me back into gaming but not quite having the juice to do it, and to my bevy of new Switch games (Mario Odyssey, Super Mario Party, Mario Kart 8, and Octopath Traveler), which I look forward to getting to know better in the coming weeks <3
Anti-shout-out to 2013’s horrific Sim City reboot, and a confused trumpeting noise to Adventure Capitalist, Cities: Skylines, Crusader Kings II, Galactic Civilizations III, Guacamelee!, Mass Effect 3, Rogue Legacy, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Star Control, Stellaris, and XCOM: Enemy Unknown, each of which consumed a LOT of play hours but ultimately left me unsatisfied or even outright unhappy in some cases (sweet fuck how much time did I waste on Adventure Capitalist???).