2017 was a pretty huge year for gaming, with most top games of the year lists needing to stretch past the usual ten to twenty or more just to begin to highlight the genre re-defining games that were released throughout the year. The release of the PS4 Pro in late 2016 followed by the Nintendo Switch and Xbox One X in 2017 have pushed games both at home and on the go to extremes that would have been laughably impossible even a mere half decade ago. Nintendo really outdid itself with multiple huge exclusive titles from its biggest IPs and while The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey are both excellent games, not to mention some of the year’s other big hitters like Horizon Zero Dawn, Cuphead, Resident Evil VII, Night in the Woods, Sonic Mania, Hollow Knight and Metroid: Samus Returns, there was one game that stood out to us above them all in one way or another — and that game is our 2017 Game of the Year: SteamWorld Dig 2 (SWD2).
The original SteamWorld Dig was easily one of our top games of 2013, so it was no secret that we were already anticipating SWD2 at least as much as the new Zelda and Mario games. Metroidvanias are becoming increasingly plentiful and each have their own unique take on the classic rewarding formula, but the SWD twist of adding Mr. Driller/Dig Dug-style mining to the customary exploration and equipment upgrading is particularly sublime. The core gameplay loop of SWD was improved upon in essentially every possible way in SWD2, after two games (both of which could easily have been 2-3 times their length without growing tiresome) we still can’t get enough and are eagerly awaiting the original SWD’s re-release on the Switch on February 1st so that we can dig in again.
The reason SWD2 stands out to us as the best among all of this past year’s excellent games is that the love and hard work of Image & Form’s approximately 22 employees practically oozes out of every pixel in the entire game. Moving from SWD’s procedurally generated mines to a pre-designed world was inspired and allows for much more varied gameplay from start to finish. The new items, abilities and mechanics all lend themselves to much faster and stylish traversal of the game’s beautiful world and there is not a single thing from SWD that was left as “good enough” — every element, no matter how seemingly perfect in SWD was masterfully examined, fine-tuned and improved to build one of gaming’s most thoroughly well upgraded sequels. The likes of Nintendo, Capcom and Guerrilla Games with budgets in the hundreds of millions and teams in the hundreds are naturally able to make mind-blowing games year after year, but what Image & Form Games was able to do with SWD2 — a completely enjoyable and enthralling game from start to finish — is an inspiration for the entire industry and a testament to not only their skills and abilities, but also the amount of heart that they pour into their projects instead of merely chasing the almighty dollar as too many AAA studios with their unethical loot boxes and microtransactions.
If you have yet to experience SteamWorld Dig 2, you’re doing yourself a great disservice and we encourage you to do so as soon as possible. A breath of fresh air, even in a year filled to the brim with hugely entertaining games in every genre, SWD2 reminds us how video games are meant to be, and how they still can be when even just a couple dozen people come together to make something as fun as possible.