Glaad (formerly known as the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) have brought their media awards back for the 31st year, and for the second year in a row they’re recognising video games “for their fair, accurate and inclusive representations of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community and the issues that affect their lives”.

Last year, Jay Castello wrote about how these video game awards highlight difficulties in celebrating queer representation, and this year it’s slighty better, but it still feels a bit like it’s missing the point.

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It’s been a weird, weird year for games. My perspective has been particularly odd and hard to square, as I’ve now been full time staff here at RPS for nearly six months. Six months! That’s … oh my god, I still haven’t extended my rent.

It’s quite strange suddenly being able to talk about games in real life without having to apologise, but other than that it’s nice. In that time I’ve played somewhere around 1,200 to 1,300 games (an exact count is impossible for boring reasons), almost all of them little known.

There have been many, many excellent games. There’s a refrain you see around the internet sometimes that “this was a bad year for games”, and I’ve honestly never understood it. I lived through the 2000s, people, I remember that wasteland. But this year, even after a solid 2018, has been so replete with interesting things to play that I cannot fathom how to be disappointed with the games. Sure, the industry, the culture, these are often garbage things for garbage people. But the games, man. The gaaames. Don’t hold it against them.

So here it is then. It’s time for the very best of Unknown Pleasures 2019. The finest of all that we’ve got through since last year, in a mostly random order.

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As a young queer woman, often I have to ask myself what media I want to consume in my video games. Sometimes it s simply picking the next best thing that includes LGBT+ representation, even if that representation is actually pretty damn awful. There are limits when it comes to certain genres, as well as the type of game, be it indie or giant global studio. LGBT+ representation is much harder to come across in FPS shooters, or even in action-adventure games.

Luckily, there s an increasingly popular kind of game that s giving me more options. LGBT+ visual novels, along with LGBT+ developers who put in a huge amount of work to deliver unique, respectful and interesting stories, are challenging my old mindset completely. Instead of settling for the next best thing of having a gay character who is there> but later killed off, or is sad and alone, these VNs allow queer sexuality and love to play a role of importance. The most mainstream example is Dream Daddy, which broke through partly because it was developed through Game Grumps, but every day even more VNs with queer themes are getting made, and more are getting time in the spotlight.

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Oooh, we’ve got a bit of a “mystery” theme. Between slow burning stories and the rare survival of a… ah, survival game, this week’s selection of Unknown Pleasures is leaving me thoroughly unresolved. Leaving a trail of gross keyboard crumbs this week: space friends, snow lesbians, and evil geometry.

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