Game Developer's best of 2022: Joel Couture's top indie games

gamedeveloper.com:

2022 was another incredible year for indie games. The sheer variety of experiences continues to remind me why I love this medium, as I can rarely expect what games will sweep me off my feet from year to year. Games about poring over movie clips, hanging out with the elderly, or putting on a struggling comedy act would impress me the most this year with their humanity, creativity, and vital themes.

While I have a lot of fun with games, there are so many incredible emotional experiences that they capture and make you feel. It’s in living through these experiences by playing them as games that helps us truly take in what it might feel like in these situations. They ask us to think about the power of our words, to place great value on how we spend our time, and to reflect on the horrors that people around the world experience as part of their everyday. These games ask us to examine ourselves as we work through them and strive to become better people. It’s games like these that make me love this medium.

Although sometimes they’re just a really fun card game. That can be great, too.

Immortality(Sam Barlow, Half Mermaid)

Marissa Marcel starred in three movies that were never released. Now, with access to those films, as well as a wealth of interviews and behind-the-scenes footage, maybe we can find out why those movies never saw the light of day.

At first, I wasn’t sure of what I was doing or what I was looking for as I shifted through brief scenes and interview clips. Was I trying to find out what had happened to Marcel? Did I want to know why the movies were shelved? Was I just hoping to piece together the plot as I clicked on objects and bounced around Marcel’s filmography? The game seemed to encourage me to get lost within the