The Rob Fearon I’m a rambling hiker (with an owl) award for the game most at one with nature (with an owl):

Proteus

Proteus is a sacred space, it is the English countryside, it is not the English countryside, it is nowhere, it is somewhere you’ve been before. It invites you to explore, eyes wide open as a stranger. It feels almost generous in allowing you to tread upon its lands, albeit within a dream. There is no jumble of videogame assets here, no back story, no audio diary, nothing, just an island, somewhere, with beautiful noise and curious life.

I miss Proteus when I’m not there. I’ve visited when cities blighted the landscape, I’ve walked upon its roads now gone, I’ve visited its castles and I’ve walked its well worn pathways but always, always, it comes back to the island and me. The hills, the trees, the wind, the rain and the sound of something otherworldly hanging in the air. The seasons may change but the island remains a most wonderful dream.

I trust wherever Proteus is to be a safe place. I can close my eyes and come back tomorrow and it will still be somewhere magical.

With an owl.

The Rob Fearon Filthy Phallus award for the game that could be the worst euphemism ever if you squint really hard (I said squint etc…)

Vertex Dispenser

Up against GoatUp, Land A Panda and Greedy Bankers for the prize, Vertex Dispenser is rather obviously the only one of these that couldn’t possibly, not even in a million years, be construed as anything even remotely rude.

The lengths I’ll go to for a tremendously shit and unfunny joke should never be underestimated. Nor should the lengths I’ll go to to raise a shout out for a game I fear underappreciated either.

It seemed fitting that the award it would receive would be one for which Vertex Dispenser is ill fitting precisely because aside from “fucking great”, it’s a bastard hard game to pin down exactly where it belongs in this gaming universe. Vertex Dispenser is ill fitting for most categories so it was either this or “best game that is Vertex Dispenser” and where’s the fun in that?

It’s abstract, it’s abrasive, it’s uneasy, it’s an RTS, it’s a puzzle game, it’s an RTS puzzle game at exactly the same time. It’s an RTS puzzle game with fucking graph theory puzzles to solve on the fly. It’s the sort of game that looks like something you might have played before, kinda behaves mostly like something you’ve played before but isn’t afraid to spit in your eye and say FUCK YOU, I AM MY OWN MOTHERFUCKING GAME when it suits it.

It could only be made by an indie developer. You might get the push/pull landgrabbing RTS gameplay past the marketing drones but the graph theory puzzling? They’d shit a brick.

It all seems so simple but as with the best simple systems, it invites mastery. It knows it’s smart, it wants you to be smart too. But no-one likes a smart arse and so it’s remained overlooked far more than it should ever have been.

Now seems as good a time as any for you to remedy that and go and take a look at it.

The Rob Fearon Potty Time award for the game that makes even the most arduous of trips to the toilet a pleasure:

Super Spike Dislike from Jayenkai

Jay writes games. I think, if you check under the sofa, you’ll probably find some of his there. They get everywhere. I’m beginning to suspect that at the rate he churns them out, he’s secretly the person who writes all the games. Every last one of them.

Sometimes, he writes the same game more than once. Super Spike Dislike is Spike Dislike again but not but better but different but oh yes.

It is stupendously easy to play. If you have fingers or some appendage with which you can hold down a button (or on iOS, touch the screen with) then you can play Super Spike Dislike. You could, probably, play it with your nob if you wanted to (and you have a nob). I wouldn’t recommend it but you could.

Actually, I would recommend it but shush.

It’s also incredibly easy to explain to people what you do. “You avoid the spikes”. That’s it. You do so over a multitude of modes, in a variety of sometimes incredibly random feeling visual skins and at a skill level of your choosing. If you like avoiding spikes easily, you can do so. If you like TOUGH SPIKE AVOIDANCE, you can do this too.

It works. Everything about it just works. It’s also the kind of game that people pass over because they’re idiots. It’s almost too simple, it’s not got EA production values so it doesn’t always scream play me now but it is brilliant. It is perfect mobile gaming. It’s the sort of thing that makes your poo stops just fly by in an enjoyable manner, it’s one of those games that I’m surprised (and glad for Jay) that no-one has come along and cloned it, reskinned it and tried to pass it off as their own because it’s just that sort of game. Pitched to perfection with a twitchy compulsive soul.

Exactly how I like my women. I think.

Don’t quote me on that. No, don’t – it’s not true. I just said it for effect.