Rankings so far:

Slay the Spire = 60pts
Dead Cells = 44pts
Celeste = 39pts
God of War = 38pts
Into the Breach = 36pts
Spider-Man = 29pts
Hollow Knight (2017 really) = 25pts
Super Smash Bros Ultimate = 24pts
Forza Horizon 4 = 23pts
Tetris Effect = 17pts
Yakuza 6: The Song of Life = 14pts
Assassin's Creed: Odyssey = 14pts
GRIS = 13pts
Hitman 2 = 10pts
Life is Strange: Before the Storm (Epilogue) = 10pts
Rimworld = 10pts
Return of the Obra Dinn = 9pts
Red Dead Redemption 2 = 9pts
Shadow of the Colossus = 7pts
Valkyria Chronicles 4 = 7pts
Xenoblade Chronicles 2: The Torna Exp. = 7pts
Subnautica = 6pts
Guacamelee 2 = 5pts
Ashen = 4pts
Minit = 4pts
Monster Hunter World = 4pts
Pillars of Eternity 2 = 4pts
SoulCalibur 6 = 4pts
Spyro Trilogy = 4pts
Beat Saber = 3pts
Artifact = 2pts
Capcom Beat 'em up bundle = 2pts
Overcooked 2 = 2pts
Sea of Thieves = 2pts
Wizard of Legend = 2pts
Cultist Simulator = 1pts
Dragonball Fighter Z = 1pts
Far Cry 5 = 1pts
Football Manager 2019 = 1pts
Katamari Damacy = 1pts
Portal 2 Steam community levels = 1pts
Super Mario Party Switch = 1pts
Vermintide 2 = 1pts


Voter so far:

acemuzzy
AndCallMeCharlie
b0r1s
Bob
Dark Soldier
digi
Diluted Dante
Dogfingers
Facewon
hylian_elf
JonB
Kow
LivDiv
monkey
Moot_Geeza
optimark_prime
poprock
regmcfly
Roujin
SpaceGazelle
Tempy
tigerswiftly
Vela

Reserved

I vote for Trserved.

Why end of Feb 2019? Surely everyone stsops caring about goty by about Jan 2nd?

People care about goty? I thought it was just a laugh/timekiller and, as such, the deadline is really just when elf stops regularly updating it.

It's MHW because that's what I've played the most.

1. Rimworld
2. Hollow Knight
3. Dead Cells
4. Subnautica
5. Sea of Thieves

Well I certainly don't care in March.

It’s not been as good a year for me. 2017 was too good it’s unbelievable.

Bob's Used Hat Simulator 2019

Waiting until I play Gris and Smash brehs.

Elf is gonna love that list

Keyforge?!?!?!!

I’ve checked the rules, it’s legal

So new Shadow of the Colossus doesn't count?

*flounce*

5. Vermintide 2
This was essentially to Vermintide what L4D2 was to L4D. A grand refinement, rather than a total overhaul, but one that proved itself to be more enjoyable after the tweaks. As a dyed in the wool Warhammer nerd it was a lot of fun playing a good licensed game, as they often force out quite a lot of chaff off the back of the brand. Luckily this was full of crunchy first person melee, inventive level design, wonderful AI horde mechanics, a brilliant range of characters each with multiple classes, and a great slew of voice acting. It isn't perfect by any stretch, and its weird levelling up and risk/reward mechanic for gaining anything near decent XP and gold per level was a bit tedious, but overall it was great. Packed full of levels, that were in turn jammed full of secrets - if you could find a break in the tide of Skaven to explore them.

4. Subnautica
I hate open world survival adventure games, so for Subnautica to hook me is a testament to how fun it is. It really is the freedom and allure of the ocean that makes it so interesting, coupled with some smart early game design that keep things moving along at a decent pace. It really struggles to maintain that momentum all the way to the late game, but luckily the depths you reach are full of enough weird and wonderful biomes that you keep wanting to push further. I'd love for them to expand to it and give me more ocean to explore, but less of those bastards that hang around the rim of the caldera please, my blood pressure can only handle so much

3. God of War

The only AAA game I played this year, but one that I still really enjoyed. It's got all the problems that these games are riddled with: a conflict of intent and impact, a homogeneous set of systems and menus and ideas that refuse to hone down into the real meat of the game, and a combat system that is not quite refined enough to make it worth digging into the higher difficulties (the Japanese still lead the world here). That said, it's grand, epic, sprawling and... hey, a fairly good story. It eschews the massive combat of the previous games to make something more personal, but in the first hour you're still going to be doing things that other games would save for their final chapters. Fighting with your fists and the axe felt claustrophobic, scrappy, and incredibly satisfying, and it's impossible to understate the level of polish in the game, from Atreus involvement in combat, to the overall fidelity of the graphics. I hope for the inevitable sequel they move away from the broadness and give us some focus, but part of me wonders if Kratos hasn't suffered enough - something I wrote about here.

2. Into the Breach

FTL was a masterpiece and I guess people wondered if it was a fluke, given Subset games remained fairly quiet for the next five years. Luckily their return with Into the Breach shows that they spent all that time tinkering with a game system with a watchmaker's eye for detail. Into the Breach is a puzzle game masquerading as a tactical combat game. Your team of Mechs are pitted against Vex assailants, instructed to complete an objective whilst protecting the surrounding civilian buildings. Killing quickly becomes secondary to body blocking damage and shunting enemies around to rearrange events in such a way that you delay rather than destroy. There's rarely a single piece of information that isn't conveyed by its elegant UI, and the short rounds with the ability to cash in an undo mean that you can really explore the possibility space of pulling and shoving and shelling that you are afforded with your team of mechs. As with FTL, it's almost staggering how much they can eke out of such a small set of verbs and ideas, but they pull it off with aplomb and there's hundreds of hours of content here if you want it.

1. Slay the Spire

When me and Jon wrote our Roguelike piece I think Jon asked me to edit down my part about Slay the Spire two or three times. Truth is, it's hard to get across the brilliance of this underwhelming looking game without spewing thousands of words about it. It is elegant, expansive, exciting, puzzling, frustrating, dazzling, spectacular. How the developers managed to get so much out of so little is incredible. Card games are nothing new to gaming, but Slay the Spire feels like the first one that's gone out of its way to really push the boundaries of what you can do with a deck builder and the support of technology. Like Isaac, it revels in the way that all of its many parts - cards, potions and relics - interlock and react to each other in ways that eventually spiral out of control. Like any roguelike, you will have dull runs, but the ones that explode... you'll never forget the first time you pull of a synergy you suspected existed, and you'll spend tens of hours chasing those highs again. Luckily, the daily mode they have included, along with the wealth of options for custom modes, means you can easily toy around with all sorts of crazy combinations to your hearts content. Like the best sandboxes, if you think to yourself that something will work, it very likely will, and there's not much higher praise you can give a game like this. I suspect, like Hollow Knight, this will be a daring on Switch early next year, and it deserves it.

Two Runners Up
Dead Cells and Artifact are my runners up, simply because Slay the Spire kinda eats into their space a little. Artifact is a stunning piece of games design, and has all the polish you'd expect from Valve, but until I get some more games under my belt I am not sure it's something I am clever enough to appreciate. Dead Cells, well, I love it, but I think Slay the Spire is a far more successful roguelike. I also really wanted to get God of War in there, because as much as it failed to set itself apart from the AAA masses, I do still think about it quite fondly.