Julian’s Bonus Games of the Year: A Culture & Opinion on The RPS Selection Box

Rock Paper Shotgun's Selection Box this year centers on Julian's bonus games of the year, a personal curation from the magazine's new editor that doubles as a meditation on taste, time, and the politics of a year in games. It nods to the Advent Calendar voting while gently questioning its own limitations, hinting at a season ahead where the editor will have learned the levers of power after a full year in the chair. The piece treats the list as a portrait rather than a creed, a string of idiosyncratic picks that illuminate the mood and curiosity that defined this year in indie play.\n\nThe lineup ranges from offbeat im-sims to traditional genre mashups, anchored by a handful of memorable notes: Skin Deep, Strange Antiquities, Herdling, Chip N Clawz Vs. The Brainoids, and The Count of Monte Clicker. Each entry is sketched with warmth and measurement—enough description to part you from your curiosity, but not so much hype that it overstates its significance in a year crowded with bigger releases.\n\n\n\nSkin Deep anchors the collection with an im-sim from Blendo Games that throws you into the role of an insurance commando thawed aboard spacefaring vessels piloted by cats. When pirates board, the mission to rescue the crew is yours to shape: sneak up on foes, smash a window to vent air, or trigger a chain of events that ends with a pirate expelled into the vacuum. The tone is welcoming and humorous, and it sits alongside the classic action game lineage—Dishonored, Prey, Deus Ex—while offering more cats and a Bond-style opening number that gives the whole package a distinct playful mood.\n\nStrange Antiquities places the player in charge of a boss's magical shop, identifying charms and knickknacks based on feel and catalog descriptions. The player searches shelves and drawers, relying on senses to pinpoint items like a gourd etched for warding against Oshadic spirits or a cold wooden box that might house something more endangered. The act of matching item to customer is its own puzzle, and the experience rewards careful observation and description. Its tone sits somewhere between a quaint boutique and a high fantasy mystery, a contrast that makes it feel both cozy and slightly uncanny. The game even nods to a playful PC culture and the moment it can reference a familiar shopkeeper vibe.\n\n.png "")\n\nHerdling describes a compact journey that can be completed in a single evening. Players shepherd calicorns—a shaggy horned mix of bear, goat, and guinea pig—through a mountain pass while a soaring orchestral score swells in the background. The experience feels like a tonic for the winter, a calm counterpoint to the noise of the city, even if the narrative beats are familiar. It is the kind of game that lands on you with quiet warmth, and the note about The Free Shepherd promises a peer into the power dynamics between herder and herd that could deepen the concept.\n\nChip N Clawz Vs the Brainoids is a co-op blend of real-time strategy, tower defense, and MOBA. It tasks players with harvesting resources, building unit proving towers, and guiding troops against brainoid invaders. Units counter with rock, paper, scissors style interactions, and tight maps keep micromanagement approachable even as the pace can sharpen on higher difficulties. It can be forgiving in cooperative play but challenging in solo, a reminder of the genre blending that defined early 2000s strategy games and still feels timely in a modern indie frame.\n\nThe Count of Monte Clicker reimagines idle game mechanics as a retelling of The Count of Monte Cristo. Upgrading masonry chisels, digging out of a prison, and racing toward new shores unfold as upgrade milestones, sometimes with dolphins and other whimsical rewards. The ambition to fuse a literary classic with an idle loop is clear, and the piece treats the experiment with affectionate curiosity, recognizing the novelty without surrendering critical perspective.\n\n\n\nBeyond the game by game notes, the essay threads the reader through the process behind the list. It reflects on the editor's tenure, the conversations with colleagues, and the communal mood that shapes these year end picks. It nods to the Treehouse crew as a supportive, occasionally mischievous circle whose tastes help anchor the boundaries of this project, and it suggests that a democratic, community-oriented approach can coexist with a clear personal voice. The result is not a dry tally but a snapshot of a year in which taste evolved alongside the games themselves.\n\nTaken together, the Selection Box functions as more than a list. It captures a culture of indie play: curiosity, humor, and a willingness to be surprised by a game that does something unexpected with a familiar form. For Culture & Opinion, it demonstrates how a publication can celebrate idiosyncratic discoveries without surrendering critical voice, and it invites readers to explore these titles on their own terms, to reflect on their own year and the games that shaped it.