3 'Disco Elysium' (2019)

A Image via ZA/UM

ZA/UM's Disco Elysium was written and designed by a team led by Estonian novelist Robert Kurvitz, based on a tabletop RPG setting that he had created before forming ZA/UM. The result? One of the best indie video games of all time. The gameplay is quite simple and straightforward, but people who love story-driven games with a tremendous depth of player choice and impact of decisions should consider Disco Elysium a must-play game. [...] The level of psychological depth, philosophical complexity, sociopolitical nuance, and thematic breadth that Disco Elysium exhibits throughout its whole duration is almost unparalleled. Likewise, it makes it so that re-plays in order to see things you might have missed on your first play-through not only tempting, but practically necessary. The world is enrapturing, the characters are fascinating, and the literary-level writing is some of the best that video gaming has ever seen. [...] Video games are still such a young medium, one that has evolved so dramatically over the years and whose different eras all have such different gems to offer, that it's practically impossible to point to a single period in gaming history as the art form's true "Golden Age." It's undeniable, though, that the 2010s saw the release of several of the greatest, most foundational, and most influential games the world has ever seen, and may thus be many people's favorite era of video gaming.