(It’s listicle time!)

10. Shovel Knight

Shovel Night has gorgeous pixel art, unabashedly retro chiptunes, and inventive platforming gameplay. I also see it as a trailblazer for a batch of indie games that reached the mainstream this decade.

9. Hearthstone

Hearthstone encapsulates the joy of trading cards brands like magic and pokemon into an addictive video game. I really enjoyed the loop of playing matches to up my rank and building up my decks with new cards.

8. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Besides being the sole reason I got a switch, this game transformed the classic Zelda formula into an open world experience. It features a huge world to explore, logic puzzles, a variety of weapons, many callbacks to past games, and a compelling story. For anyone who has followed the Zelda series for a while, this is a fascinating and highly detailed new look at the world of Hyrule.

7. Undertale

Undertale is a charming RPG about traveling through an underworld full of monsters while optionally befriending and getting to know them. It has some of my favorite character dialog in any game.

6. Dead Cells

Deadcells is a polished roguelike where you play as a reanimated corpse (I think?) fighting through an abandoned castle. There’s a huge variety of weapons and tools and the game has a nice ambiance that mixes 2d and 3d effects.

5. Spelunky

Spelunky is a brutally difficult roguelike with impressive random level generation that makes each run feel unique. Everything is a physics object which can lead to infuriating and hilarious scenarios.

4. Agar.io

Agar.io is an online multiplayer blob game where the goal is to grow as large as possible by eating other players. It has simple controls but it’s one of my favorite fast-paced yet deeply strategic games.

3. Firewatch

This exploration-based game completely sucked me in for a weekend. You play as a man who signs up for a forest fire watch job as an escape from problems in his everyday life. A lot of the enjoyment of this game comes from exploring the beautiful wilderness, but a compelling mystery also quickly emerges as you play. I loved the way this game acknowledges the ethical flaws of the main character without turning the player against him.

2. MarioKart 8 Deluxe

The latest entry in the MarioKart series brings current-gen graphics while building on the already long-solid racing mechanics of the previous games. The endless online mode is especially fun.

1. Downwell

Downwell is a minimalist roguelike where you make your way down a randomly-generated well filled with increasingly difficult obstacles. It’s based on a unique “gun boots” item which has several different modes such as machine gun, burst, and laser. It’s my game of the decade because it’s a small scale distillation of the mechanics I love in other games.