Writing this newsletter and reading your correspondence remains my favourite part of my job. It means a lot that so many of you have written in to say that you look forward to Pushing Buttons landing in your inbox every week. Thank you also to the Guardian's brilliant newsletter team, who have worked hard all year to get these missives to you on time even when I've submitted them horribly late. Relatedly: if games publishers could stop dropping huge news right around my deadline in 2025, that would be amazing.) To cap the year off, we've got a bumper issue of readers' favourite games of 2024.

Below is a game steeped in time, from creation to consumption, and it demands patience from developers and players alike. Capybara Games revealed Below during the Xbox E3 conference in 2013, suggesting this beautiful, dark and expansive adventure game would be out soon. Another trailer dropped, showing a tiny character fighting its way through massive dungeons filled with supernatural secrets, but no release date appeared. Finally, on December 14th, 2018, Below landed on Xbox One and Steam. Players dove in, and many quickly realized that waiting for Below to launch wouldn't be the only test of their patience.