Hello again, and welcome to the penultimate section of our festive countdown. There have been complaints that many of our choices so far have been rather – let's say – obscure. We disagree, but I'm not sure those people are going to be much happier with numbers ten to six...
For everyone else, this selection proves a key theme of 2012: this was the year indie stepped up and claimed a central role in the industry. At least four of the following games were part of that.
Once again I've been helped out by our regular contributors, whose names appear in brackets after each entry.
10. Fez (Xbox 360)
Polytron's Fez is a multifaceted delight - everything about it feels perfectly pitched. The platforming is elegant, tricky but rarely annoying; the puzzles fiendishly difficult at times but a delight to solve; the graphics and music gorgeous; and the core idea innovative and delightfully executed. Gomez, the cute and cheerful fez-wearing character at the heart of the game, picks up the ability to rotate his 2D world in three dimensions, and in doing so open doors to gather cube segments, save the world and unlock secrets about the world he lives in – deciphering coded languages and complex puzzles as he goes. (Mary Hamilton)
9. Super Hexagon (iOS, PC)
Simple, astoundingly addictive and brutally difficult, Super Hexagon is a beautiful git of a game with a gorgeous chiptune soundtrack. With just two controls – left and right – you pilot a tiny triangle trying to avoid incoming walls of light in elegant, repeating patterns. As with creator Terry Cavanagh's other work, the game unabashedly appeals to hardcore perfectionists and challenge lovers, and there's a genuine, visceral thrill in beating your own high scores – even by a couple of seconds. The first time you survive for a whole minute makes you feel like a god. (Mary Hamilton)
8. Guild Wars 2 (PC)
Guild Wars 2 lets players play together without having to talk to each other. Dynamic events throughout the online fantasy world sees teams of warriors spontaneously forming to deal with enemy threats, and a removal of the standard class roles (big chap, sneaky chap, magic chap, medic) makes groups both easy and fun to be a part of. Up until now, World of Warcraft has been the benchmark for MMOs; it's suddenly looking very old fashioned next to this. (Grant Howitt)
7. Walking Dead (iOS, PC, PS3, Xbox 360)
So this is how it ends – humanity scrabbling for existence against the undead hordes, but mostly against each other. Walking Dead is a stark survival adventure following an escaped convict and the little girl he somehow chooses to protect. The two drift into dangerously fragile relationships with other people; they lurch from one disaster to the next. The player is forced to make impossible decisions that always involve death and regret. Walking Dead is so many times more grim and terrifying than Resident Evil 6 it's almost laughable. True, some have questioned how much choice you really have in the game – but then, that's the whole point. In the end, it doesn't matter.
6. Spelunky (PC, Xbox 360)
Derek Yu's Spelunky, which evolved from PC freeware to XBLA download this year (and therefore had its first commercial release in 2012, qualifying it for this list), is a dungeon crawling 2D Rogue-like in which you explore randomly generated mines in the hope of finding great treasures and rescuing distressed damsels. More often than not, though, what you actually find is sudden death, thanks to spikes, traps, angry shopkeepers and a range of unpleasant animals. The fun of the game is as much in the stories it generates as the pleasure of the platforming, and playing is an exercise in overcoming failure – repeated, grinding, permanent failure – to find great glee in the occasions when everything just happens to go right. (Mary Hamilton)
