Manatees 2024: A Newish Dawn

Hi friends, it’s been a while. I started putting this post together a year ago and never got around to actually writing most of it. I had all the games picked out, all the screenshots uploaded…I just never actually wrote the damn thing.

2024 was the first full year I didn’t do Make Me A Gamer as a podcast, and 2025 was worse than 2024 for me. But I’m hoping to turn things around in 2026. My first goal is to do my top 2025 games at a reasonable timeframe, but the completionist in me needs to get my 2024 thoughts out first. So you’re going to get a very abbreviated thoughts on my 2024 list, now even further out.

It’s been hard to be excited for video games because there have been so many layoffs and general disappointment in the industry as a whole, on top of the world outside of games. However, there were many bright spots in the actual games themselves. I didn’t finish nearly as many games as I normally did in 2024, mostly because there were so many massive RPGs that released that took up a ton of my time. I also hit a few games in my backlog – Pentiment, Immortals of Aveum, and Donut County were all non-2024 games that I really enjoyed and wanted to throw a mention out to here before I get to the official list.

So without further ado, here are my top 10 games of 2024.

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The 2019 Manatees – Written Companion

So if you haven’t listened yet, last week myself and my partner in crime HarveyZ recorded our Game of the Year podcast where I handed out my Manatees for 2019. In that I outlined my top 5 games of the year and talked a little bit about each. Like last year, I also wanted to put up a companion blog post to add some written words about why I enjoyed each game and also flesh out the games to a full top 10 and a few Honorable Mentions.

Most of these are going to be games I’ve talked about already this year, but a few are games that I always meant to talk about but slipped through the cracks (at least on the writing and podcast side). I hope you enjoy this last blog post of 2019 and I’ll see you in the new year with all sorts of new games, posts, and ideas!

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The 2018 Manatees – Writing Edition!

Last Friday on a bonus episode of the Make Me A Gamer Podcast, I doled out the first-ever Manatees (T-Man, manatee, get it?) to some of the games I really enjoyed this year. But I also wanted to write up a companion article to expand a little bit on all the games I talked about and a few I didn’t get to on the podcast.

In the podcast I go over a lot of the technical and mechanical details as to why I enjoyed the game, but in this piece I wanted to go a little more into the feelings and emotional side of the games. I’ve gotten into a habit of writing about and reviewing games from a detached, matter-of-fact standpoint instead of really exploring how games make me feel. Sometimes a game just has that je ne sais quoi and grabs you from the beginning and never lets go.

So here are TMan’s 2018 Manatees in article format. Hope you enjoy, and happy new year!

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