In alphabetical order:
Death's Door
Look, I'm a Zelda fan. A huge Zelda fan. If I wore one different Zelda t-shirt every day of the week, I'd still have further Zelda shirts available to wear the following week. Death's Door is a Zelda-like which, while it unashamedly riffs of its inspiration, also manages to feel unique and worthwhile. It's demanding but forgiving (thanks, generous checkpointing), and it boils its mechanics down to a handful of staple Zelda abilities (bomb, bow, boomerang, hookshot). It tells a worthwhile story with a unique perspective, and separates its varied environments through a neat hub world. Each of its dungeons has a notable shift partway through - the first dungeon's shift is the most radical and successful because mechanics, aesthetics, and tone all radically shift in a surprising but fun way. I played it in the last week of 2021 and I have a lot of love for it.
Dungeon Encounters
Here's a funny one, because I only got around to playing this game in 2022; but it is a 2021 game and so it's still allowed to be in this list. Dungeon Encounters is utterly minimalist, removing the fancy trappings of JRPGs and boiling it down to 99 grids for you to traverse. I think the real triumph here is the combination of elements is both basic and deep. It helps that the game's art - used for battle scenes in place of 3D models - is absolutely gorgeous, and that, while the game can throw curve balls at you, diligent, strategic play is rewarded. Exploration abilities radically alter the game once you've made it around a third of the way through, substantially shifting how you approach the dungeon. This one caught me completely by surprise, coming out of nowhere, and claiming a place as one of my favourite games of 2021.
Famicom Detective Club
Flash back 20 years, to 2002, and I've got my first Nintendo home console. I've dabbled with SNES and N64 games through friends, and I've owned a GBC and GBA, but GameCube is my introduction to owning a Nintendo home console. A friend introduces me to Super Smash Bros Melee, and as soon as I can, I wander off to buy it one day after high school. I'm hooked, and surprisingly, it's the game's trophy vault which becomes one of the most memorable aspects of the game. I've been brought up on Nintendo's portables, and don't know all that many of their franchises, so the trophy vault becomes an education. It introduces me to Ayumi Tachibana, and the idea that a 1980s visual novel about a crime agency is 100% a Nintendo game I want to play.
Fast forward to 2021 and this (slightly odd) dream becomes a reality. Absolutely stunning art, strong writing, and an excellent remixed soundtrack which maintains the game's powerful 80s vibes, and this joint release (in Europe, yes I'm cheating) is one of my favourite releases of 2021. A history lesson in Nintendo oddities and a distinctly Japanese game genre, this is something I never thought I'd get to play, but I sure am glad I did.
Halo Infinite
My tried and trusted gaming combo from 2002 to 2015 was Xbox + Nintendo's home and handheld systems. In 2021, I returned to the Xbox fold, lured by Game Pass, and the promise that Halo Infinite might finally be a return to form for this iconic game series. I'm glad I took the chance, because while it's fair to say that Infinite doesn't (yet) live up to the promise 343 and Microsoft initially made, it does more than enough to refresh and reinvigorate the series, with smart new mechanics and a new, more open structure combining to make for one hell of a ride. It's bizarre to me that a game which is so obviously ripe for improvement could also manage to feel genuinely excellent, but kudos to 343. This Halo ring is an exciting place to be and hopefully will be even more so as months and years go by.
Metroid Dread
It feels a little like a recurring theme on this list is "concepts I was introduced to in the early/mid 2000s which somehow reappeared" and Dread was another of those. Once a scrapped game, now set to be the most successful Metroid title yet, I absolutely loved every single minute of this. Controlling Samus has never felt better; the boss fights were frenetic, varied, and challenging; the story engaging without being intrusive; and the whole damn thing looked and oozed style. While I understand that some will be disappointed with the way the game nudges you onwards, I felt that this was very much Dread by name, Dread by nature; Dread is a future-orientated state, a form of anticipation, and I felt this long overdue step forward in the Metroid saga lived up to the anticipation and then some. A standout title in the Switch's overall library.
Monster Hunter Rise
My most-played game of 2021 and my second most-played Switch game yet, Monster Hunter Rise is a game that's great - as far as I'm concerned - because it's built for Switch. Palamutes and wirebugs condense the large open maps into spaces which can be navigated far faster than any Monster Hunter, a design decision which creates a gameplay loop which is fast, concise, and immediate, mirroring the Switch's own focus on immediacy. The combination of rapidity, verticality, and new traversal options makes for a dynamic and exciting game with top-tier production values. One of the best games on Switch all round, I think.
No More Heroes 3
Do you want a game with neon visuals, frenetic action, and irreparable fourth wall breakage within seconds of starting? A game which shifts from a CRT filtered wasteland, to a game of musical chairs, to homages to Japanese cinema? How about a game which tasks you with collecting scorpions for a ramen chef, mowing lawns, shooting giant alligators, and saving the world from super-powered aliens? I'm halfway through this game right now and I love it. If this truly is no more heroes, then what a way to go out. Janky, funky, sweary.
Olija
Olija was one of the very first games I played in 2021. Mechanically, aesthetically and narratively taut, it is nevertheless exciting, atmospheric, and rewarding. A brief but brilliant game.
WarioWare: Get It Together!
I mean, obviously. This is a really interesting one, though, because this is not a series which needed to take risks, and ultimately, the major change in Get It Together is perhaps one of the more divisive changes this series could make. By making the characters playable, the level playing field that WarioWare leant on as the foundation for players accessing its multiplayer mayhem is at least partially upended; the positives for this, however, are that now there's more method to the madness, and these characters who were so fun to observe are now implemented mechanically in the moment to moment gameplay. I thoroughly enjoyed the shift, and I think, a little like Halo Infinite's changes, Get It Together's made a notable shift whose actual significance may be felt further down the line. What else could a playable cast with different abilities bring to Wario's future, given his past as a form-shifting treasure-hunter?
