 I really didn't think I'd be able to cram another one of these videos into this year. I felt like I had gone through all of the best that eShop had to offer for 2019, but late November, early December had other ideas, and there has been some of the best releases we've seen this year in the last couple weeks, enough so that I have another 10 games to talk about. In fact, one of these games... I'm pretty sure it's my favorite indie eShop game of the entire year. Like, right now I'm working on my end of year video for my top 10 favorite eShop games of the year, and this one might be number one. Although I have so many favorites on this list, I'm gonna start with a favorite, end with a favorite, and have a bunch of favorites thrown in in between. This might be the best one of these videos I've done, and I know I say that every time, but I think I really mean it this time. But again, all of that. In fact, I've already forgotten it all. I don't know what it was, and it's totally not because I'm filming this on a completely separate day. And by the way, this video is sponsored by the power in my hand. Raycon. That was a lot. They're perfect for when you're running around and doing things, cords always get tangled, and when they... That does not happen with these suckers, baby. This is what would have happened if I had done the Ring Fit Challenge while wearing Raycon. I would have been a little something like this. These are really stylish and discreet. In fact, probably a little too discreet, because when the amazing bass is pumping in my ears, Taylor Swift with full bass. Oh my gosh, T-Swizzle! They're already noise isolating as they are, so just having them in your ears, it's hard to hear stuff. These little bad boys sound just as amazing as the top audio brands I know. The latest model has six hours of play time, not to mention the little cradle they sit in acts as a power bank. Who knows how long the battery could last? And they come in a wide variety of colors. Just look at these pretties. And Christmas is just around the corner, whether these are for you or maybe a gift for someone else. You don't have to be a gym nut like myself, who hasn't been in a month and a half. 15% off if you go to my specific link down below in the description. Thank you, Raycon, for sponsoring this video. And if you don't mind me, I'm going to go back to listening to some Nickelback. Raycon might want their earphones back. All right, are you ready? Three, two, one. Like the video or I'll toss my switch again. My first of many favorites today, Alien Isolation. This port to the Switch is actually incredibly cool because for the first time that I can think of, this Switch version of the game is actually more impressive kind of than the PlayStation 4 version. Now, I'm not going to get into all the mumbo jumbo for this. I'll just link the video that Digital Foundry did below, breaking down exactly why this happens. But yes, while the frame rate is 30 and not 60, like on PlayStation 4, the image quality is actually much cleaner and it just looks better overall. What else can you do, man? What secrets do you hide? I treat this thing like garbage and it still holds up. That's a testament to how great the Switch is. It's to make this even more exciting, Alien Isolation is actually a really fantastic game too. You know the franchise, you're in space, stuck on a ship with an alien sneaking through corridors and trying to stay alive. It's terrifying, horrifying, spruppifying. It's one of the best horror games of all time with so much attention to detail. This is one of those rare occasions where a movie has actually been captured perfectly within a game. The AI of the alien is scary good. In fact, it's so good that IGN gave the game a 2 out of 10 because the AI was too smart. That's how you know it's an awesome game because IGN said it wasn't and everything IGN says is typically... Remember what I used to play with swords in my videos? I wondered why I stopped. Stop! Star Ocean finally makes its first ever debut on a Nintendo Switch system with Star Ocean First Aperture R. Now, I'ma be honest, I know little to nothing about Star Ocean. It hasn't had the same success in the West that other Square Enix RPGs have had, but Star Ocean's time has come, dang it. I actually wasn't even aware that First Aperture R is a remaster of a full remake of the first game, so it's really a perfect place to start your Star Ocean journey. But I'm not totally sure what's new here. I take a guess and say the fully voiced characters in both English or Japanese as one and the beautiful animations would have to be another. I love the battle system. It's a real-time action gameplay that you don't usually see in games of this style. You have full control over your character while the other characters just kind of do their thing. There's a lot of different options and story parts here with 10 different possible party members. There's a lot of content in this title and I'm really enjoying my time with it. Shovel Knight! I'ma claim to be the biggest Shovel Knight fan, so I was shocked to see a fighter in the franchise drop on my eShop. Apparently, it was a stretch goal on the original Kickstarter for the main game and now it's finally here. Wow, I really hope this was worth my weight of finding it on the eShop and then downloading it the same day because as I said, I'd never heard of it before, but... So Shovel Knight's showdown is what would happen if Smash Bros. made Shovel Knight character Smash Fighters and then removed all the other Smash Fighters and also made Smash Bros. 8-bit. So it's Shovel Knight Smash. It's what I'm trying to say. Each character has a very unique move set and plays quite differently while still feeling very true to the original game. Similar to Smash, sure, you can just mash buttons, but you're not gonna get very far against an opponent who actually knows how to play the game. It even has a story mode. Showdown is really well-flashed out and even not being a Shovel Knight super fan, I really enjoyed this fighter more so than most Smash Clones because it actually felt different and offered a lot of new and fresh ideas. Next up for the Switch, we... I'm just kidding. This thing's a pizza. Yeah, I guess I can't talk about Shovel Knight Showdown and then not talk about Shovel Knight King of Cards, which is the newest and final DLC to the Shovel Knight series that released the same day as Shovel Knight Showdown. Again, even not as a super fan or anything, I really love how much life Shovel Knight has had ever since its release. And in this new DLC, you play as King Knight, a man of royalty and high esteem who still lives at home with his mummy. Most of the game has platforming traditional to the series, but with some card game mechanics thrown into the mix. The card game is honestly pretty fun. It reminds me a lot of the card game mini game in Final Fantasy IX with an added element of having to collect gems. For the platforming parts, you have a new mechanic called the Spin Jump. You can chain this sucker on as many bad guys and objects as you want, and that's pretty fun too. It's even used for platforming later in the game and the way the level layouts have you seamlessly chain together attacks and platforming is just brilliant. And hey, if you already have Shovel Knight Treasure Trove, you can download both this DLC and Shovel Knight Showdown for free. You have to pay for it. Oh, y'all aren't ready for this next one. I have a soft spot in my heart, which is something I say too much for this next game. I think that for me, that just means I love this game a lot and I had great fun playing it. I really, really enjoyed playing through Ashen with my friend on Xbox earlier this year. And I never expected this one to find its way to switch, but I'm glad it has, because now it's one of the most unique games on the console. It's a Dark Souls-inspired game that you can play in co-op as well, obviously, because I already said that's how I did it. We found a lot of these enemies brutally difficult and the checkpoints on death would send us all the way back to the start of the dungeon and we'd have to slug our way back through the last hour of grinding. The bosses would take us an entire night to beat while pulling our hair out. And yeah, we loved every freaking second of it. The exploration is probably what I enjoyed the most, with the scale of the world being so much larger than it initially appears. Visually, this game is just wonderful and full of secrets. On the surface level, it appears as a color-muted, almost minimalistically designed game. And I mean, the characters don't even have faces, but that just makes the moments when you find a new hidden city or step out into an expansive, gorgeous, brand new area that much more breathtaking. Lots of different weapons to craft and choose between side quests and respawning enemies. And I never got tired of this giant goddess emerging from the depths. Ashen was already a hidden gem on Xbox's Game Pass, hidden amongst a bunch of other Game Pass games. So don't let it get buried in the e-shop and become a Switch hidden gem too. I cannot recommend this one enough, especially if you have a friend to bring along. If I had a dollar, for every time a game released on Switch that I would never in a million years have expected to release on Switch, I guess I'd have at least one more dollar because Tropus saves the universe. Oh, that's a game I didn't see on a Nintendo system. I, as an adult, was very excited to play Trover Saves the Universe when it launched on PlayStation VR. As I had already played and thoroughly enjoyed the other VR games made by the Rick and Morty show creator Justin Rowland. And Trover was absolutely the best of all those three games, taking elements from both the previous games and mashing them into a more cohesive action platformer adventure. It has the exact same kind of vulgar sense of humor that you can expect. Each other! You see this shit? But there's also an option to switch to a kitty-friendly version of the game, which I never tried, but I assume it would be less... You see this shit? Gross. Here's the thing, though. This video is called E-Shop Games Worth Buying, and while Trover is on the e-shop, and I do believe it's a game worth buying, funny enough, it's not a game on the e-shop that I would recommend buying off the e-shop. What I mean by that? I would stick to the VR for this one. The humor in this game alone isn't worth the $29.99 price tag, and for me, the VR aspect of Trover is what really made it something special. They worked with the VR to build many unique and fun elements that are just totally lost outside the headset. And the ridiculous world and its characters are better experienced in first person. From your floating chair, which actually acts as an integral part of the story, it's kinda lost when you're playing Switch in handheld mode lying down in bed. Again, this is one of the best VR experiences I have had, and one of the most mediocre Switch experiences I've had. All right, this one's interesting. Dauntless. A free-to-play game? Well, that's gotta be worth it, right? Let me get to it. Now, the most beautiful, sweet, charming, wonderful intellectuals watching this video right now have already seen my 10 free games on Switch worth buying video because they're perfect. You're perfect. Unless you didn't watch it. Then you're not perfect. Anyway, in that video of free Switch games, I reviewed Dauntless. It's obviously a free-to-play game. So go and watch that if you want to see me actually review it. But why am I talking about it again? You might be asking right now of all times. Like three days later. Well, because since then, I've actually spent like $30 inside the game and I figured that I would talk about whether I felt that was worth it or not. Interesting concept, right? Let's do it. So I bought in-game credits to buy the Hunt Pass and some items to help me on my adventures. And I have to say that, yeah, it was worth it. I put about 20 hours into the game so far. So for $30, I can pretty safely justify that purchase. I have a cool weapon skin for my sword, new stylish armor and emotes. And it did make hunts easier as I had loads of potions to drink to power me up. For a free-to-play game, this one packs a big punch. But I will say I'm getting to the point in the game where I kind of feel like I want more. And that's why I wanted to do this follow-up. I'm already fighting the same beasts again and again, trying to craft armor sets I'm missing, and I don't really feel like there's an overall point to me doing any of it. I'm still having fun with the game going on the hunts. I'm just wondering what's it all for. But even if you just get 20 hours out of the game, hey, it's free. I think that's a pretty solid time. And I don't regret the money I have spent, but I wouldn't recommend going too crazy early on with those micro-transactions. Okay, this next one is for you die-hard retro fans. Xenocrisis is a top-down arena-style shoot-em-up. Kind of like Smash TV was, and I have to say, we have a lot of retro-inspired games being released these days. And usually, if they're done right, they typically end up feeling like a fresh take on the old days. But nope, Xenocrisis ain't a fresh take on anything. In fact, it plays, looks, and feels like one of the best Neo-Gio games to come straight out of the 90s, man. And it's frickin' radical. Honestly, y'all don't even need to hear me talk and blab about it. All you need to do is see, hear, and experience this game. If you still ain't convinced, then this game just ain't for you, and there's nothing I can do to help you hit it. I love this game, I think it's fantastic. Whenever I sit down and figure these videos out, because I make so many of them, I usually end up with a maybe pile that goes list to list, and every time I'm filling up those slots, if I get to eight or nine and I'm missing a game or two, I'll dive into that maybe pile, and maybe one of those games will finally make it onto the list. But a game that's been floating around that maybe pile for at least the last 10 videos this entire year is The Wardrobe. Honestly, I'm just sick of seeing this one in my maybe pile. And it just had a new version of the game release on the eShop in October called Wardrobe, the even better edition. So hopefully finally this was enough to throw it into the list. Well, I'm talking about it. The new version includes, I have no friggin' idea. The trailer doesn't tell you, I check the description for the better edition on the eShop and Nintendo's website. I even check Steam. I have no clue what's better about this version of the game, and at first I thought maybe I'd stumbled upon some kind of scam until I realized you can't even download the old version anymore. And in fact, this even better version is just the old version that's been updated. So technically if you bought the old version, your version you have now should say even better edition. Having said all that, I still don't know what's even better about it. Regardless, it's a charming game with a fantastic hand drawn art style. That was my initial draw to the game, other than my love for anything point and click. It's a solid game. It's not breaking any boundaries. I mean, it took this long to even make it into the video, but it's fun and it has some great comedic moments. And I like putting point and clicks on the list. So I mean, I guess I'll just bottom with the barrel. No, that's me. The whole reason I made this video is because the tourist dropped on Switch and I fell friggin' in love with this game. And I just, I had to make another one of these. This one guys, as I said, could honestly be my favorite eShop game of the year. I don't know, that's a big call, but I friggin' adore the tourist. It's jaw-droppingly gorgeous. Smooth as butter to play and a perfect example of what makes indie games so exciting. It was first announced during Nintendo's August edition of Indie World. The tourist is a Switch exclusive that boasts a beautifully perfect blocky art style mixed with realistic lighting and world elements. With a huge focus on exploration and puzzles, tourist is breathtaking from the very first island to the last. The first island has a small shop, some huts and a dungeon where you discover your path to find other dungeons on islands scattered across the world. As you travel to each new location, you'll find rainy forests, beach parties and a shopping island with stores that allow you to buy music, more travel pamphlets for new islands, an art gallery where you take photos for the creator based on hints and clues he gives you for what he wants to put in his gallery. This element right here reminds me so much of Wind Waker and I can't even with how much I had fun. Finding all these picture locations throughout the game, snapping the photo and then seeing them up in the art gallery. Like my photo, it's so clever. And this island even has a little arcade with working arcade machines. I planned initially to breeze through this game in one sitting for the review, but I got stuck in this arcade for hours because the guy out front met me. All his money, I couldn't beat his high scores and screwed that Billy Mitchell wannabe I'm going to. It took forever. I'm talking hours for me to finally conquer the F-Zero clone and don't even get me started on that brick break bull honky. It's frustrating. As legitimately mad as I was getting, trying to get my name up on all these arcades, I can't tell you how much fun I was having with these games inside the game. The world design, the music and audio design, lighting and art design and gameplay design are all a perfect 10 for me across the board. I was completely lost in the world of Taurus during my stay. The dungeons were so unique with puzzles that finally had me stumped for a while. When you've played enough puzzle-based video games, you start to see the way to solve puzzles before the games even managed to set up the premise of the puzzle you're supposed to solve, but Taurus managed to keep me guessing. Even the boss fights were puzzles that had to be solved as you can't attack it all in the game. There's even side quests, as well as other real world mini games like surfing or soccer. There's like a point and click style element to it too where you have to take certain clues between the islands to unlock different things and pads. So clever, it's just a brilliant little game. Oh and about the game being smooth, yeah, it runs perfect 60 frames. There's no loading screens whatsoever and the game even boots up from start menu and gets going in under 10 seconds. It's amazing. I wasted no time 100%ing this game and I'm so glad they left it open for a sequel. It's perfect, it's perfect. Like for what it is, it's perfect. I've said this once! I've said this a thousand times! At the end of the year, on the very last day of the year, I upload a video celebrating this year in indie game releases. I do my top 10 throughout all these videos I've done this year. I pick my 10 favorite games. It's really fun. It's a chance to look back at not only the games that came out throughout the year, but my channel and how it grew throughout the year. So I hope if you're new here, you'll subscribe, stick around, maybe check that video out. And if you've been here for a while, thank you. I love you and I hope you're looking forward to it. Like the video, subscribe. I don't know what that noise was, but...