The best video games of 2021

This year was, in some ways more like the previous. 

COVID-19 continues to be a pandemic and the supply chain remains choked. While isolation is not the norm, for many it remains the default. It was a calm release year with a steady stream of blockbuster games moving out and in to the new one. 

But in trying to find a unifying thread for the games that defined the last 12 months, I’m struck by the fact that this year wasn’t really calm at all. The reality was that it was an incredibly confusing, amazing, disorienting labyrinth filled with dazzling titles. It felt as if we all were more open to trying something outside our comfort zones, with fewer AAA attention-grabbing titles.

Some games focused on fighting self-doubt. One game was about crushing wealthy people in Argentine wineries. My favourite was storytelling and the power to make our own stories out of fantasy adventures.

I’m hard-pressed to describe so many of 2021’s best games because, well, so many of them are hard to describe. It became what felt like a weekly occurrence here at Polygon for someone to unmute their microphone during a Zoom meeting and say something along the lines of: “So, I played this game called Encryption this weekend. I’m not sure what it is, exactly. But you all You are required to play it.”

As I see them all laid out on this page, I also recognize that many of the year’s best titles were about hope. Packing explored humans’ talent for making a home, even as we grieve. Unsighted posed that age-old question: If we’re all going to die, then why care about anything at all? We all have our favorites games that deal with how we cope with disaster and then move forward.  

Video games are a towering monument to our collective imagination — they’re part haunted castle, part Freudian psychoscape, part interactive museum whose exhibits each bleed into the next. Genres are helpful in the brochure, but they can only get you so far — at a certain point, you need a bit of patience, a lot of curiosity, and maybe a tour guide or two.

That’s where we come in. Whether you’ve been following along with each new release throughout the year, or you’re popping in now to see what you missed, the following is a collection of games that we think encapsulated 2021. Some of them had some interesting points to make about the cultural landscape. Others were simply great fun. While some might be categorized as one genre, others aren’t. And that’s exciting.

But enough. Let’s get to the good part.

—Mike Mahardy, senior editor, reviews

What the top 50 Polygon lists look like

Polygon’s staff debated, voted and then re-debated the matter over the month. The result was our list of top 50 games in 2021. This list includes any video games released between 2021 and 2021 that have received significant updates or gained renewed cultural relevance after 2021. Any hidden gems we stumble upon over the next few weeks will be eligible for next year’s list.

Next week, we’ll also begin rolling out in-depth essays about the top 10 games on this list, along with trend pieces, opinion articles, and retrospectives about the year as a whole.