Our 24 favourite games of 2022
As voted for by the RPS Treehouse
14. The Quarry
Alice Bee: I was a big fan of Supermassive's original "like a 00s horror movie, but a game!" game Until Dawn, and The Quarry really goes ham in that direction again. A bunch of camp counselors are spending one last night at Hackett's Quarry before the end of the summer, but it turns out they're not alone. There are some weird, blood covered hicks stalking the woods, not to mention some literal clawed monsters. If you want to watch a bunch of teenagers awkardly snogging before they spend 10 hours screaming and losing limbs then hot diggedy daffodil, is this the horror game for you.
Of course, you are notionally supposed to avoid the limb-losing aspect with your choices: run left or right, pick up this gun or don't, that kind of thing. Your QTE wins and decisions really stack up over the run time. The thing is, a lot of the deaths are such beautifully over-the-top gore-fests that I wasn't even mad. But I particularly enjoyed The Quarry for some of the subtler changes. It plays with teen-horror tropes in fun ways, and sometimes winning a QTE is, in fact, exactly the wrong thing to do. It's a rip-roaring popcorn fest of a good time, but it's smart, too.
Rebecca: I'm still in awe of the fact that The Quarry was kept completely secret until just three months before its release. Supermassive Games are not known for being coy about their upcoming projects; they're known, in fact, for always announcing the next entry in The Dark Pictures Anthology with a trailer embedded in the previous year's game, giving the audience 12 months or more to build up hype. What's more, details around the anthology's development are often prone to leakage. So how on earth did we hear not so much as a peep about them working on an Until Dawn successor starring David Arquette, Ted Raimi, Lin Shaye, and a dozen others of similar profile, right up until the game was practically out?
Every member of The Quarry's 15-strong main cast is either a legend of horror cinema or an up-and-coming bright young thing in Hollywood, and you have to hand it to the casting director who managed to score so many coups. If you've watched TV at all in the past decade, you're going to spend the first couple of chapters exclaiming "hey, it's — !" over and over again.
The Quarry has been rightly praised for its suite of accessibility options, as well as for being welcoming to players unfamiliar with its genre. Supermassive are known for throwing a bunch of Quick Time Events at you, some of them quite punishing; but The Quarry pares that right down. Aside from navigation controls, you only need to hammer maybe two buttons throughout the entire game. For those of us who are well-practised in the art of QTEs by now, succeeding at every single one in The Quarry presents basically no challenge.
However, that isn't to say that playing The Quarry is easy. I'm good at these games, and I still boned up the finale the first time around badly enough that two of my favourite characters suffered extremely anticlimactic deaths. Understanding how your choices in Chapter 5 impact your options in Chapter 10 is the sort of thing that's key to keeping characters alive, and it's that intricate branching narrative design rather than those "Press X To Not Die" moments that keeps me replaying these games time and time again.
But if you want to watch The Quarry like a mini-series and skip the part where you take responsibility for the outcomes, that option is there too. The game includes a movie mode that sets it up to auto-play while you settle in with the popcorn, and the quality of the cast makes it well worth stepping back from the action in order to devote your full attention to the story at least once. It's a goofy '80s throwback creature feature at heart, but everyone gives it their all and seems to be having great fun.
13. Powerwash Simulator
CJ: I never thought a game that should feel like pure work would end up being one of the standout experiences of the year for me. PowerWash Simulator became something of an obssession mid-year, and one that dragged in my wife and kids too. The best way I can summarise it, a surprisingly deep simulation of running your own spray cleaning business out of the back of a van that you have to give a jolly good washing first, is "satisfaction". It doesn't matter if you lose genuine hours of your life to hosing down rooftops or dinosaur playground equipment, because it always feels worth it to do a good job, and see that sparkle where once there was only thick grime.
My kids were happy to sit with me, pointing out bits I'd missed and shouting to turn the nozzle around. PowerWash revives that 90s spirit of home spectator gaming, and my family were all too eager to assist in my new business endeavour. It admittedly took my wife longer to be drawn in by PowerWash's charm; it wasn't until I moved on to cleaning down a whole house and garden that she started asking if she could have a go, and advising whether I should tackle the lawn furniture or roof next. Everyone succumbs to PowerWash in the end.
See, there's big satisfaction to be had from putting in the time with PowerWash Sim before you get to stand back and admire your cleaning might. Yet that's not what keeps you playing. After a few hours spraying down other people's astonishingly grubby property, anyone would need a breather. No, I keep revisiting PowerWash because it knows you finish a big job only to spot the next is a bloomin' great steam locomotive, or the mayor's mansion, or a Ferris wheel. Can you handle that much power(washing)? Are you a bad enough dude to make sure every inch of what you're hired to spray down is glistening? I'm not satisfied with just cleaning people's houses anymore. I need to make sure that Mars rover is just so.
Rachel: I don’t want to think about the number of hours I’ve spent cleaning in this game. PowerWash Sim has been my go-to for kicking back and switching off my brain, all while obliterating dirt into nothing. I love watching those deep-cleaning rug TikToks, or the ones where some lady uses a single ScrubDaddy sponge to scour her entire kitchen - oven, microwave, sink, and all. I'm also a huge fan of "clean up a big ol’ mess" kinda games like House Flipper and Viscera Cleanup Detail, but there's something about PowerWash Sim that just hits differently.
It starts off with easy jobs like cleaning a mucky car and washing a nasty dirt bike but ramps up to cleaning an entire fishing boat, a giant Ferris wheel, and - my personal favourite - the outside of an entire old-timey steam train. I don’t even wanna know how it got that dirty. The ease and satisfaction of removing the toughest muck and blasting grime into oblivion is a videogame high I’m always chasing. Looking at your handiwork when everything is sparkling clean feels powerful. You feel powerful.
It’s surprisingly also a great social game. I wrangled some friends into joining my cleaning hijinks and it worked out so well we started meeting once a week in-game for a catch-up. That filthy kid’s playground didn’t stand a chance with three powerwash experts on the case.
But I think what I like the most about PowerWash Sim is that it doesn’t take itself too seriously, but has been made in complete sincerity, and I respect that.
Alice0: When I first heard about PowerWash Simulator, I thought it might would be one of those bad wacky X Simulator games where you just click on stuff in sequence. No, it's really fun, and often fiendish.
12. Persona 5 Royal
Ed: Persona 5 Royal is a JRPG about a guy who moves to Tokyo after he’s involved in a dodgy incident and then joins Shujin Academy as a bit of an outcast. Here, he meets some mates and forms The Phantom Thieves, a bunch of high school misfits who make it their mission to enter the metaverse (not that one) and change the hearts of horrible people.
Persona 5 Royal is the definitive version of the original game, adding a new character into the mix, a new semester, and a wealth of small tweaks that make the Phantom Thieves’ journey even better. While I’m only beginning to encounter these subtle changes (it’s a very long game), I can confirm that it’s paced better than its predecessor, with plenty of the game’s former irritants either eradicated entirely or reconfigured with twists to make them funnerer. I’m talking about added story cutscenes, new enemy types, traversal tools, Christmas outfits, and an entire new semester which I can't wait to reach.
I rarely replay games, especially those the size of Persona 5. But I’m happily doing so with Royal because it houses pals that I simply like to hang out with. Every evening I get to spend some time with the gang, talking not just about the next horrible person we’re going to stop next, but, more importantly, nothing in particular. We’re just studying and eating ramen and all of it may be upping my overall stats and my gear, but hey, I’m just happy to be back chilling with my buds. What more could I want?
Liam: Poor Ed. Every few days he recieves a message from me on Slack where I update him about my progress through Persona 5. In my defence I don't know anyone else who's picked their way through this mammoth JRPG, and this thing is so dense I just want to enthuse about every little scrap of it with someone who understands my excitement. I am months away from finishing this (like I said, it's a biggun) but there's almost something quite comforting about that. Yes, the road ahead is 80-100 hours long, but that's 100 hours I have left to grab Ramen with Ryuji or to study for my finals on a rainy afternoon. Persona 5 is a warm, cozy thing to spend time with. Oh, and it's a perfect fit for the Steam Deck too.
Morgana can do one, though.
11. Return To Monkey Island
Alice Bee: One of the first games I got properly obsessed with was The Curse Of Monkey Island, which is in fact the third game in the series, and I worked backwards to play the first two. Getting a new Monkey Island game in 2022 seemed like dreaming the impossible dream - but we did! So this September saw me doing the 2D point-and-click around a group of colourful, imaginary Caribbean islands with Guybrush Threepwood once again.
It was extra exciting because this time some of the original creators were back on (almost literal) board. This had a big effect on the tone and story, which is a mix of sweet nostalgia and looking towards the future. You are, once again, racing to find the secret of Monkey Island, because guybrush and dread zombie pirate both got distracted the first time by falling in love with the same woman, the no-nonsense and very practical Elaine.
Elaine and LeChuck are only two of a bunch of fan-favourite characters who make a return, but none of them overstay their welcome, and there are just as many - more, even - new piratical pals to talk to. Return To Monkey Island doesn't have a firm place in the canon, only taking place somewhere after the third game, but a lot of the fun is in seeing how characters' lives have changed. Elaine is running a charitable lime farm to combat scurvy, and the pirate lords have retired to run a fishmongers.
It's possible that none of the names I've mentioned mean anything to you, but I think that's also fine. There are references, and even an optional trivia mini-game, for Monkey Island fanatics to enjoy, but that's never the actual aim of the game. It's a new story that you don't need the entire canonical context for. I know someone for whom Return was both their first Monkey Island game and their first point and click adventure, and it has now made them interested in both. Return To Monkey Island has two different puzzle difficulty settings, an unbelievably specific hint system, QOL changes to the controls, and a beautiful new art style that lends the whole thing the air of a storybook.
You can never go back, truly. But sometimes you can visit. And that's what Return To Monkey Island's story is about, too.
10. The Case Of The Golden Idol
Katharine: Detective games are a tricky beast to get right. Giving players all the right clues to solve the mystery at hand is one thing, but giving them the freedom, scope and choice to draw their own conclusions from them (even if it's canonically incorrect) is a rare thing indeed. In my book, Lucas Pope's Return Of The Obra Dinn is still the absolute pinnacle of modern detect 'em ups, but Color Gray Games' The Case Of The Golden Idol comes very close to capturing that same kind of Sherlockian brilliance.
With 12 murders to solve over a period of almost 100 years, the meat of your deduction involves scanning a crime scene for word-based clues (names, objects and the occasional verb) to fill in the gaps of a scroll describing what happened. The murder scenes themselves are visual delights, offering up a treasure trove of interconnected rooms to poke and prod for clues and telling bits of information, and a gurning, misshapen cast members who have all been frozen in time seconds after the crime in question has been committed. Their needling expressions, curiously stuffed pockets, snarky comments and deceptive inner monologues give you plenty to chew and coo over while you go about solving whodunnit and howtheydunnit, and seeing certain characters crop up time and again to cause more mischief does a brilliant job of pulling you deep into its overarching mystery.
They're a fun, if devilish bunch, and figuring out how all these seemingly standalone tableaus connect together over time is one of Golden Idol's greatest deductive flourishes. Alas, there's still only one correct solution for each of its dozen murders, but extracting it from your pool of collected words is still intensely fun and satisfying as cases grow in complexity. Plus, you're not just solving the meat and potatoes of whodunwhat, either, as each case also has accompanying puzzles to fill out as well, adding even more detail to its already artfully constructed murder scenes.
It's by far the best detective game I've played this year, and certainly the one that's come closest to recapturing Obra Dinn's brilliance in the four years since the latter changed the genre forever. If you fancy a big meaty mystery to chew over this Christmas, it would be an actual crime to pass this up.
Rachel: You know a mystery game is going to be good when you’re reaching for a pen and paper to take notes, and by the end of my playthrough of The Case Of The Golden Idol, my notebook page was a chaotic biro scrawl of crude facial descriptions, messy family trees, cryptic symbols, and cluttered event timelines. So. Many. Timelines. It’s one of those mystery games that leaves the detective work all down to you (the best kind of detective game), but there’s a handy hint system if you’re really stumped. Its fill-the-blank system is smart, intuitive, and never gets tiresome, and together with its creepy anthology of whodunnits - of which there are twelve in total, what a treat - makes it a stonking good game.