Looking forward to this one for sure!

Tomb Raider! I played it recently, didnt realise it was going to be thaaat good. Dated...but didnt seem like it. It was a movie i gamed thru! I felt foolish having delayed playing it for so long. Glad I finally played. Rise (part 2) was meh tho.
In a bad way... has to be Ghostrunner 1....man...thank heavens for mods and cheats. Did not enjoy it at all.

PoE2 suprised me in a bad way. I have been having the issue with having to hard reset my PC and the devs have been silent about the issues.

The Deed surprised me. Tiny game that takes a few minutes to play. Actually made me think. Not much to it, but was an interesting tiny puzzle-story. Was one of my first wins on SG.

yakuza like a dragon was surprisingly good

Roboquest. I'm not a big fan of FPS to be honest, but this one is a pure fun. I'm pretty sure I'll play it again — the game is actively updated, and there are some builds I haven't tried yet.

Inkulinati ! ^_^
I feared that it would be just like some reviews says, bad humor with animals, but the tone is in fact really distracting, i've a good time actually playing it.

Yakuza: Like a Dragon. I thought it's silly all-around, like the skills. As many can guess, it was my first Yakuza game. An excellent, deep, gripping crime story unfolded, with love, hate, friendship, lots of beatings and quite some tears on the road.

Probably The WereCleaner, wasn't expecting much when i saw it, looked meh, turned out really fun actually.

Games I liked more than expected: Little Misfortune, Soulstice, Cloudpunk, Middle Earth Shadow of War.

Card-En-Ciel sorta came outta nowhere for me, that game can be addictive. And the music is a banger.

Lamplighters League and Dreamscaper.
Lamplighters was aparently a flop (its very positive, but sales on launch were cold) and the studio closed, not much noise... and i fell in love with it.
Dreamscaper was i that didnt gave it much. Seemed a bit generic looking at videos quickly, screenshots... im enjoying it way above what i expected

Hacknet, hands down was my biggest surprise. I had no idea I would end up enjoying it as much as I ended up doing.

Dark Deity, in a bad way. I like turn-based-tactics games, but this game simply have way too many characters you can choose from and a lot of artifacts you can equip. You will be able to deploy more than 10 characters in battle. Equipping artifacts and remembering which characters do what best had been a painful experience for me. Even though I 100% the game, I actually did not enjoy it.

I'd say Balatro. I did not know I was into drugs :D

I guess Backpack Battles was surprising to me, because of how addictive it can be, even if I'm not the fun of the artstyle. Took me awhile to break free

Age of Empires Mobile. Not really surprised, but just milking the name with generic genre game like many already out there

Wizardry Variants Daphne, I'll just say, I was not expecting such a treat!

Helldivers 2.

I got it 2 weeks ago (kinda late to the train, but hey, at least I got it).

Man. It feels like Deep Rock Galactic and Left 4 Dead 2 once again. This game is hella fun. The community is a little bit disappointing, but you can't compare any other community to DRG's community. That one is probably the only near-zero-toxicity game fandom I've seen.
I love DRG.

View attached image.

That would be animal well, it is a really interesting puzzle game/metroidvenia

Supermarket together was really fun with company

Toy Tinker Simulator. It wasn't even exceptionally good, but I didn't expect it to become a "windows solitaire" type of game for me, something to have open in the background and then tab in to do a few toys every now and then or use as a mindless fidgeter while listening to an audiobook.

For good it has to be Universe for Sale, I expected it to just be a quirky game with a nice artstyle and ended up getting a truly mesmerizing experience with a really good story.
And for bad Nightmare Kart, the controls just feel awful, I found it to be impossible to enjoy as an actual racing game.

Not for Broadcast.. yet another in the backlog. I've read it's got much of the same blood as Papers, Please... which is of course a good thing. :D

Let's see, I'd say the biggest surprise was Timelie. Puzzle games are always fun, and time manipulation can be great if done right. Timelie managed to not only hit the nail on the head with those, but also remind me of one of my favorite games of all time: Invisible, Inc. Intuitive controls and clever puzzles roll through a decent little story. The biggest letdowns were the open-endedness of said story and maybe the shorter length of the game. It still ranks among my best for 2024.

Thank you!