endings i haven't stopped thinking of

06 Jan, 2026

this is a republished essay from 2021. you can find it here.

2021 has been a year. God awful one, directly in the shadow of the reigning traumatizing terror of the one just before it. It’s one that I will be happy to put behind me soon. These two years have been spent on a lot of rebuilding. Getting back to normal. I think I’m gonna spend a long time doing that because I don’t know when that can happen or what that is anymore. Just need to trudge through until I feel it again, I guess.

To that end though, I threw myself into my work and games. I played something like 50 games to completion this year, perhaps over correcting in my attempts to get to normal. This isn’t a piece about all those games. Instead, this is a roundup of games that didn’t make my arbitrary top ten list of experiences, but that I wanted to say something about. To get that list out of the way, and not spend the time a lot of games writers do philosophically expounding on their picks, here’s my top ten (and associated writing I did for some of them):

• Death’s Door
• Psychonauts 2
• Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart
• Loop Hero
• Chicory: A Colorful Tale
• Halo Infinite
• It Takes Two (still reeling from this “game of the year” dark horse)
• Unpacking
• Knockout City
• Metroid Dread

This year, I was particularly drawn to endings. Not just literal endings, but endings as premises and concepts. As the end of all things and as the beginning of new ones. That’s why I almost called this post “i’m thinking of ‘ending’ things,” but even I thought that was a little too bait-y and would elicit far more concern and attention than I ever desire…even if it was clever. Anyways I’ve gone long on the intro now (fucking writers, am I right?), so here’s the games, and endings, I couldn’t stop thinking of in this utterly cursed year.

Solar Ash is an audacious follow-up to Hyper Light Drifter, adapting the latter’s aesthetics to the 3D realm while completely ditching the gameplay and ambience that helped stick that game in everyone's head and hearts. Solar Ash is louder, messier and yet still finds the space to tell a series of small stories about people confronting colossal ends, all the meanwhile you are literally skating on clouds and taking out colossi threatening your goals. It’s pretty and weird and I like it for all the things it wants to be. It’s not a perfect game, but it’s a game whose ruminations of moving on, as well as what we leave behind when we do and the people we become when we don’t, is still on my mind.

For a little while, I dreamt up an essay about Solar Ash and Sable. I don’t know what it would have been exactly, but I loved these games that seemed to be in conversation. In the former you are trying to save your world while sifting through the detritus of countless others in some kind of unreality at the center of a black hole. In the latter, the wreckages of the world before have given way to an idyllic new one. They don’t just inherit their ancient technology, they repurpose it. They meld it into new shapes and fresh ideas. This society is one that understands purpose and identity is derived from the self and our own experiences, not the views of those around us or what came before. It’s one where there is doubtless strife, but it seems like petty squabbles compared to the magnitudes of violence, discontent, and unpleasantness that plague our actual lives. It’s a society where there’s hope beyond ruin. Another unreality, but what a blissful and joyous one Sable provided me for a few days.

Adios ends in the way that you probably think it will. A farmer who gets rid of bodies for the mob decides he’s done with this way of living. He’s a bad man, a good man, and lots of kinds of men between that. In other words, a real person. His hitman friend tries to convince him to stay and they have a final series of conversations. These talks often communicate the depths of pain and regret that an imperfect (and normal life) begets. But what I most respect about the game is that it knows it needs to end. The ending of Adios is definitive and even abrupt, the legacy and impact the characters leave behind at the end a messy sprawl. That’s life though.

Jett: The Far Shore is one of the more intriguing games I didn’t finish. Regardless, its one whose premise and opening hour has stuck with me. I don’t know that I enjoyed all my time beyond that, but Jett’s opening (an ending in itself) sets the stage for a tragic sci-fi epic that hits too close to home: our dying world needs to find somewhere else to lay down roots. A pilgrimage is taken by a crew who are tasked with severing ties to the people and way of life they knew in order to set out for the stars and find a place to start again. Everyone back home knows they will not live to see the future of their people and everyone setting out knows they will never be back home. Its sad and yet simultaneously wondrous when you touch down on the surface of what is to be your next home; the bittersweet joy of a new chapter unfurling so perfectly distilled in an often breathtaking set-piece.

Okay I’ll make an exception to talk about Death’s Door, my actual game of the year for a bit. I don’t think I actually need to say all that much about it because it’s one of those indie hits that broke out and exploded in popularity. That and the audience this post will find will not be unaware of it. But in a “piece” (gonna use that really liberally here) revolving around ends, I can’t possibly take Death’s Door, a game about death and the pursuit of life before it comes knocking, for granted. Death’s Door treats the end like the inevitability it is and makes it light. Cute in places and funny too. It’s not a perfect expression of the sentiments around death and endings, but one of the few games I’ve played that understands there is another way to feel about them but profound sadness, a thing I’ve struggled with. I’ve no idea how to feel about the countless endings I’ve accumulated in my life or the ones that just missed me. Endings are just complicated, so are the people at the heart of them. This game gets that, even in the smallest of ways.

I don’t know that I learned all that much through these endings and experiences. But I made some connections through them. Felt seen and whatnot and I will take that. I’ll leave the profundity for later. For now, I’m tired of this year. I’m happy for its end. Sad about it too. I don’t know, I’m a mess of emotions about 2021 honestly and it’s exhausting. So with that, I’m ready to send it off. One final goodbye to another year that almost did me in. Here’s to literally whatever the next one promises.