It’s approaching the end of another gaming year, and publications are gearing up to name their to??p games from the last 12 months. Within the world of indie gaming, one such publication is Patch Magazine, and this month they revealed their winners. 

Patch M?agazine is a monthly indie gaming magazine that you can subscribe to either physica??lly or digitally. They ship worldwide, and if you want to follow what’s going on in the indie gaming world, there aren’t many better options out there. 

This month, the results of the Patch of Approval Awards 2024 are center stage, and Fields of Mistria has snapped up two awards, while Thank Goodness You’re Here! takes home the gold in their cat??egory. Of course there are oth??er categories, nominees, and winners as well, so here’s all of them. 

Game of the Year goes to Fields of Mistria

Look, it’s no secret that I love Fields of Mistria and have far too many hours sunk into the adorable farming sim already, with more to come later this month with the arrival of the first major patch on Nov?ember 18, so I’m incredibly happy to see that Patch Magazine readers agree with my opinion of it. 

Nominees:

• Thank Goodness You’re Here!
• Mineko’s Night Market
• Nine Sols
• Fields of Mistria

I have to admit, I had a hard time voting between Thank Goodness You’re Here! and Fields of Mistria for the award, but my heart won out and I’m glad that Fields of Mistria is getting the recognition it deserves.

Nominees and winners in the Patch Seal of Approval Awards 2024

Here’s a brief run-down of the qualifiers for each category, the nominees, and who took home the win in each? category.

Mini-Made

Winner: Balatro

The Mini-Made category is for games that are created by small teams. More specifically, they’re the ones that a??re created and brought to the indie gaming field by teams of less than five people.

Nominees:

• Animal Well
• Minami Lane
• The Garden Path
• Balatro

Community Champion

Winner: Slay the Princess

Voting for the Community Champion award was exclusively available to members of t?he Patch Magazine Discord server, and they’re the games that have “truly captured the heart of the community�

Nominees:

• Snufkin: Melody of Moomin Valley
• Tiny Glade
• 1000xRESIST
• Slay the Princess

Yogscast x Patch Game of the Year

Winner: Animal Well

Not to be conf??used with the reader-voted Game of the Year award which went to Fields of Mistria, the Yogscast x Patch Game of the Year nominees were chosen by the Yogscast crew, with the Patch editorial team then picking their favorite from the no?minations. 

Nominees:

• Go-Go Town
• Solium Infernum
• Dale & Dawson Stationary Supplies
• Animal Well

Campus Creations

Winner: I’ll Be Brave, Tomorrow

All of the games nominated for the Campus Creations were designed and developed by students at a college or university. The winner was made in conjunction with Great Ormond Street Hospital and will have you ugly cryin?g at least once. 

Nominees:

• Book of Dreams
• Arm of Satan
• Morgan Metal Detective
• I’ll Be Brave, Tomorrow

Tranquil Title

Winner: Fields of Mistria

The Tranquil Title Award celebrates the cozy side?? of gaming, where I am very much entrenched and seem to spend most of my time. The nominees are all special in their own way, and all are worth playing if you’re at a loose end. 

Nominees:

• Summer House
• Little Kitty Big City
• Spirittea
• Fields of Mistria

Boundary Breaker

Winner: Thank Goodness You’re Here!

This category celebrates games that find new and unique ways to deliver a story, ?o??r that introduce new mechanics that aren’t commonly seen in gaming. 

Nominees:

• Paper Trail
• Balatro
• Pacific Drive
• Thank Goodness You’re Here!

Multiplayer Mode

Winner: Lethal Company

This one’s pretty self-explanatory and celebrates games that let you play with others in engaging ways. There have been a lo??t of amazing multiplayer games this year, but these are the ones that stood out.

Nominees:

• Chained Together
• Content Warning
• Palia
• Lethal Company

Heart Racer

Winner: Slay the Princess

Let’s be honest, there are a lot of?? incredibly chilling horror games out there and it can be hard to sift through them to fi?nd the best of the bunch. Patch has done the legwork for us, bringing the best of the best together as nominees for the Heart Racer Award.

Nominees:

• Bendy: Secrets of the Machine
• Crow Country
• Blasphemous 2
• Slay the Princess

The Journey Continues

Winner: Hades II

Whether through DLCs ?or direct continuation of a previously unfinished story, this category celebrates the continued progress of much lo??ved indie titles.

Nominees:

• Cult of the Lamb
• Power Wash Simulator
• A Little to the Left
• Hades II

Musical Moment

Winner: Sea of Stars

While all games have their own unique soundtracks, some games have music that sticks with us long after we’ve finished pla?ying. This category celebrates the music in ??indie games. 

Nominees: 

• Snufkin: Melody of Moomin Valley
• Farewell North
• Mineko’s Night Market
• Sea of Stars

Anticipated Gem

Winner: Tiny Book Shop

While the rest of the categories celebrate games ?that have been released and done well, this one looks forward to games that have yet to be released. 

Nominees:

• Cat Café Manager
• After Love EP
• While Waiting
• Tiny Book Shop

The post Fields of Mistria wins Patch Magazine’s Game of the Year appeared first on Destructoid.

As a British person, very few games come along which I feel represent a true vision of what it means to be British. British characters usually have a very generic accent, the whole of the UK may as well be London, and the humor is just lost. Then a game like Thank Goodness You’re Here! comes along.

Thank Goodness You’re Here! is the second game created by Coal Supper, a duo of developers made up of James Carbutt and Wi?ll Todd from Barnsley, Yorkshire. Their love for their home county shines through in this brilliant display of all things British, including subtle nods to things anyone who grew up ?in Britain will know, to the inescapable Yorkshire accents throughout the game. 

In Thank Goodness You’re Here!, you play as a small and very yellow businessman sent to the fictional town of Barnsworth (which is definitely not based on Barnsley in any way) to have a meeting with the Mayor. Instead of imm?ediately going into this meeting, however, you venture outside and end up doing some very bizarre odd jobs for the locals. This is presumably because Bobby Odd Jobs has sadly passed away. RIP Bobby.

Somehow, Thank Goodness You’re Here! manages to capture the feeling of growing up in Yorkshire, or any small town in Britain f?or that matter, perfectly. You just get the?? feeling that everyone in the town knows everyone else, and that’s so true to my own upbringing that I can’t help but feel a huge wave of nostalgia while playing. 

It’s not just the main quests that make Thank Goodness You’re Here! feel so alive. There are small touches that resonate with ?my inner child, such as the neighbors squabbling over a bin, only for one and then both of them to end up inside it as you revisit the area after progressing a little. In the end, you’ll find them playing cards together while wedged inside a wheelie bin. It’s both an incredibly biz??arre and strangely heartwarming moment.

Then there’s the girl who’s taking what is more than likely her first driving lesson and her remarkable ability to get the car stuck in small spaces acts as a way to point you in the right direction. It’s actually an incredibly useful feature because there are no quest hints in Thank Goodness You’re Here!, you??’re on your own to figure out where you’re supposed to go. 

At one point, you get absorbed by a piece of meat and have to ‘gather�smaller pieces of meat inside so that the local pie-maker can make a giant pie. It gets a little dark during these moments, with the meat telling you stories of how they were killed, and every single story ends with “and I wept.�This is a clear throwback to Coal Supper’s first game released in 2023, The Good Time Garden, which is just a ?bizarre mind-trip?? on every level.  

The quests themselves, all of those odd jobs that you’re doing for the locals, never once feel monotonou??s or arduous. Despite the fact that I spent more time lost than I did on track, there was always something to discover and something to make me smile. I spent more time reading al??l of the graffiti on the walls or slapping the locals (don’t look at me like that, it’s how you talk to them) than I did actively trying to figure out the next step, and I never once got bored. 

Although the vast majority of Thank Goodness You’re Here! is presented in what is now Coal Supper’s trademark style, there are glimpses int??o the real world upon which the game is based in both the opening credits and the pause menu. During the opening scenes, there are clips of Yorkshire in the 1960s and 1970s, when coal mines were still operational. The pause screen, on the other hand, is the view down a back alley in what could be any town in the north of England. Or the South, for that matter. 

I can’t think of any other game that captures this particular slice of life. I even did some research into the subject, and the closest game I found was the 2000 PlayStation 1 release Chicken Run, which is entirely based around a bunch of freedom-hungry talking chickens, so I think we can all agree that itâ€?™s missing the realism I’m talking about here. 

And that’s the thing, even though Thank Goodness You’re Here! is a bizarre and frequently disgusting (in the best possible way) cartoon, it feels real despite the moments of utter surrealism, thanks to the characters who make it feel so alive. Playing Thank Goodness You’re Here! feels like the homecoming ??I didn’t know I needed, but it’s?? also a brilliant display of small town life in Britain for anyone who never had the joy of experiencing it first-hand. 

If, on the other hand, you want to completely skip over the entire experience, you could always sit in reception for 15 minutes and do absolutely nothing until the Mayor calls you in for your meeting. You can actually finish Thank Goodness You’re Here! this way, but where’s the fun in that?

The post Thank Goodness You’re Here! is a hilarious ode to an often forgotten side of Britain appeared first on Destructoid.