I love stealth games. They are my absolute jam. I’ve been an Assassin’s Creed acolyte from the beginning and Splinter Cell rests firmly atop my list of favorite franchises. The industry isn’t flooded by this genre, but there are a fair number of quality contenders. The Dishonored games are a tour de force, I love the critically mixed Deus Ex prequels deeply, I only play Far Cry with my knife and bow, Ghost Recon is a kind of comfort food, even in Uncharted 4 I avoided combat in favor of being a sneak. Why is there so little stealth multiplayer?

In the last 10 years that pattern is increasingly, for me, built around competitive or cooperative multiplayer. Yet, despite the amount of time that this trend has sustained itself, the experiences that exist all fall into well tread and familiar genres. Overwhelmingly we get shooters. After a year of playing cooperative games with my family, we have all begun to notice that what we’re looking for, somehow, doesn’t exist.

I remember hearing about Stardew Valley when it was approaching release. I thought it looked cute. I have this long hidden secret that I love organizational and management heavy games. It doesn’t come out very frequently. Deep down I knew that Stardew Valley was something that I could easily sink dozens of hours into, I would just need to find the right moment.

Just before the Super Bowl rumors started stirring. Vince Zampella had been abnormally active on Twitter in the last week, streamers were talking about trips to California, in the days leading up to the weekend keywords were being tossed in the air. Free-to-play, Battle Royale, Titanfall. All of them interesting separately, but together, a potentially amazing surprise. Then, during the Super Bowl, Vince sent this tweet:

2018 was a stellar year for games. From God of War kicking the door down in March, to Fortnite redefining persistent online experiences, to Red Dead Redemption 2 causing games to flee its wake, to Celeste, Owlboy, and Gorogoa taking hearts and thumbs by storm. It is impossible to tell people what they should go out and play because the list is humanly impossible to complete. That is, unless you are superhuman. So, rather than trying to page through every single Black Friday ad, we thought it would be more fitting to give you a list of games that you have to play.