Some game developers just will not give up, and for that we should be eternally grateful. As more and more games pour onto digital and physical storefronts, it’s nice to find that some of them continue to develop and grow, long after they’ve been thrust out of the door. While this is rarely ever entirely free – though in some special cases it is – finding that the game you adore has new content to keep you playing years later has to be one of the greatest side effects of our always-online lives.
The following games are shining examples of a developer having such faith in their product, and such care for their fans, that they continue to lavish their game with the same level of care and attention that went into the original release.
The development team behind Monster Hunter have been at this a long time, and if there was an award for best-supported franchise of all time, they’d probably be winning it. Sunbreak was a phenomenal addition to Monster Hunter Rise, bringing in another batch of awesome monsters and a new narrative that featured some of the most memorable Monster hunter characters of recent years. It also made smart and welcome additions to the gameplay, from small things like being able to pack even more foraged goods into your Palamute’s knapsack to being able to take full-blown AI followers out on quests with you.
It didn’t stop there though. Just as we saw with Monster Hunter World, the development team at Capcom have updated Rise at regular intervals with new monsters, quests and equipment, all of which arrive for free. These include some awesome collaborations with other franchises too, which add an element of fun that’s often sorely lacking in the serious game space. The continual feed of things to do is the perfect example of why Monster Hunter Rise is our winner of this award, and why we can’t wait for PlayStation and Xbox gamers to join in the fun next year!
No Man’s Sky – Runner Up
A hardy perennial of this award, Hello Games just keeps on space trucking, constantly iterating upon, adding to and expanding their space exploration game No Man’s Sky. 2022 saw them continue the good work of previous years, leaning on the Expeditions that were added in 2021 for a meaningful lure to keep playing, while also dropping a handful of major patches through the year.
It started off with Sentinel, which overhauled combat and expanded the Sentinel pseudo police force that you can fight, then threw Outlaws into the mix, with smuggling and illegal space stations, before Endurance reworked freighters, fleets, nebulae and more. It built up to a crescendo with the Waypoint update, incorporating broad game customisation settings, and seeing the game release on Nintendo Switch.
The breadth of No Man’s Sky is now such that someone’s even gone to the trouble of building Hello Games’ hometown of Guildford in-game!
Vampire Survivors – Runner Up
How many times have you 100% completed Vampire Survivors? For players who jumped into the weirdly zen bullet hell game early, it could be up to around eight times depending on how devoted they were to sazvouring each Early Access patch. It’s a game that we expected to see finalized and finished upon release, but nope, it turns out the content will simply never stop.
In fact, having hit a full 1.0 release in October this year, we’ve been graced with a DLC for it less than two months later. It’s the sign of a game and a developer that has no intention of slowing down or stopping, and given how much a single weapon or character can alter how the game feels to play, not to mention the new DLC map being entirely unique in its construction, it’s hard not to feel as though Vampire Survivors is just going to keep going forever.
That’s not a complaint though, especially not with the game having recently come to mobile platforms for free, but it does mean we’ll all be spending a lot more time picking up experience gems and agonizing over which weapons to go for in our next run, for the foreseeable future. Oh well, anyone for garlic?
– Jason C
Honourable Mentions (in alphabetical order)
- Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla
- Destiny 2: The Witch Queen
- Sea of Thieves
Want to catch up on our Game of the Year 2022 awards so far? Well, here you go:
