Shifty’s fists (or other very temporary weapons). There’s no spamable long-range attack, no guns to fire, just whomping enemies with Mr. Shifty can teleport small distances, or “shift”. There’s no guns, but this is a fuck-‘em-up style game that brings in just enough tech to keep the themes of Hotline Miami alive and well. It’s not a particularly great model, but it’s okay in the world of video game monetization. I have a pretty mediocre deck that I like to play, and I can plop myself onto a relatively average skill bracket, or compete on even ground in automated tournaments. I don’t plan to hit the top of the ranked leaderboards, so I don’t have to spend however many thousands of dollars it’d take to keep ranking up. There’s legitimate concerns over the Clash Royale monetization model, but my expectations for progression are low. When do I drop my Ice Golem? How do pros manipulate unit AI to maximize their defensive plays? How do I optimize waiting in line at a Chipotle and crushing “PimpingNoobPimper” at the same time? It’s a fairly simple game to play, but there’s just enough nuance to make most games interesting. That’s not to say I’m not freaking out over the world imploding, but I’ve just replaced some of that freakout time with a pretty good strategy game. It actually fills a time void that was formerly dedicated to 2016 election freakouts. It’s the type of game I play if I’m waiting for something to happen, or chilling on the CalTrain and not thinking about work. Clash Royale is a game that I started in February and continue to play to this day. I like to pop a game from last year onto these lists, something that I missed, but ended up taking a ton of my time.

Even with the limited time I had, I got to play some ridiculously cool games, and I’m excited for what 2018 brings, even if it’s just time to burn through my backlog. So I haven’t played Breath of the Wild or Persona 5, and probably can’t until I have more time to play video games (it’d be great if Capitalism crumbled). A lot of my gaming choices were made with opportunity cost in mind-something had to look really cool to play, and I couldn’t justify games that I knew would take over a huge amount of time. I left Games Done Quick (amiably) at the start of the year to work production at a Mobile Games Studio, and I’ve had way less time to play games, even though I’m helping make them.

Personally, this has been a tough year to play video games. You can often find him streaming on Twitch, or tweeting on Twitter. Chris has previously appeared at numerous GDQs and gaming websites to promote speedruns and show off Cool Stuff. Chris Grant is a project coordinator at MZ who you may remember as the former media relations manager at Games Done Quick.

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