I spy with my little eye, the year 2020. I mean I wish, it actually says 2023, nearing 2024. It’s just my luck that I live in the past—encroaching bald spots aside, 2023 was a stacked year for creative, fun, and frankly speaking content packed games. This list I’m about to encumber you with will only scratch the surface of the awesome games that came out, and this list is also going to carry plenty of games that didn’t come out this year, covering games I mostly spent a lot of time with. Some are well over a decade old in fact, but I bring them up because of the quality of their content and how their developers continue to build on old systems and look to attracting new players. Gaming is huge, all made up by a bunch of niches you’ll likely never hear about in the typical forums.
Before I delve into my list, I would also like to talk about how poorly this industry treats its content creators and why I hope to see more unionisation efforts in the coming years. Too often, developers work their backs off to create massive worlds, unique game mechanics, bringing their creations to life. This work tends to go unacknowledged (work that can be far more difficult than say, rocket science), and when these games go live and make bank for their executives and shareholders, the workers are left holding the bag and end up jobless in the holiday season. Overworked and underpaid: when other industries pay far better, give benefits, and offer job stability, it goes without saying that our industry is built on passion and we really need to care for that lest it burns out.
Now just like last year, I’m not numbering this list. I can’t and I refuse to rank games as I’ve played far too many and I will never be able to decide on what goes where—it’s just not my style. Now, without further ado, have a gander at my list for this year.
Islands of the Caliph
I’ve briefly mentioned this one in the past in my interview with the awesome Long Gone Days developers, but here’s a unique first-person dungeon crawling title I think is a particularly cool standout. Islands of the Caliph is a retro role-playing game based on Middle Eastern folklore and Islamic traditions. It boasts great visuals, fun action gameplay, and a unique setting that sets it apart from so many games—the prayer mat is even a game mechanic!
Middle Eastern culture is often explored so little in gaming (well, besides the usual stuff), so I can only offer praise to the one man army Schmidt Workshops for his unique retro-inspired dungeon crawler. He is also active in responding to feedback on his forum and reviews, which is always appreciated.
NeverAwake
Twisted nightmares, an extended hospital stay, and really ugly figments of a little girl’s imagination that you just gotta shoot through. NeverAwake offers stellar visuals and music alongside roguelite shoot ’em up gameplay. After a run, you come back to tackle on more challenges while reading the diary of a girl forever stuck in her dreams. I loved it and I think you will, too.
Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life
This one might be a bit unfair, more or less being a remake of a GameCube title from too many years ago. But it came out this year and it’s just as fun to farm, tend to animals, explore and befriend the townspeople here, and ultimately make your own ending in this Wonderful Life. I’m not particular on every Story of Seasons (Harvest Moon) title, being more of a Rune Factory buff myself, but this one is definitely one to dig into for your semi-casual farming and life simulation.
The Talos Principle II
How common is it to strike gold not once… But twice? Welcome to The Talos Principle II, a fantastic sequel to a superb puzzler from nearly a decade ago. Gorgeous as it is, offering large hubs to tackle well-designed puzzles at your own pace, but also come to terms with and help a society of people find a path forward in the awkwardness and frustration of conflict in deciding “what’s best for everyone”. Croteam’s game is so strong a narrative puzzler, they’re selling you a 70 dollar game for 30—that speaks volumes.
The Fan-run MMOs
Of my many hours of gaming, I actually don’t spend much of it on consoles. I started gaming on a PC, an eMachines in fact, and from there it was only natural I’d get into MMOs. Hundreds, no, thousands of hours have been eaten up by likes of RuneScape, Mabinogi, Vindictus, ToonTown, and far too many other titles to count. But over the years, a lot of these games have come to a close, taking down years of fun and interesting content with them as well as their history and communities.
It sucks when that happens, but not all online-bound games end up in the gutter. Thanks to dedicated fans, often working on budgets of zero dollars and zero cents (with a capital zed), there are so many private servers of MMOs that have come back from the dead, giving old players a chance to go back and relive memories and for new players to experience the MMO before it became all theme-parkey and wittled down to the last few remaining ones. Not only that, they even continue the work of the original developers, often adding in big expansions of their own—all in their spare time.
The cost of bringing back a dead online game isn’t cheap, especially on time—many, many hours are spent reverse engineering code down both locally and server side. I spent a lot of time on these private servers, from ToonTown Rewritten and The Legends of Pirates online (and they do not accept donations at all), so to these developers I can only offer my gratitude. It’s thanks to these folks that I have games I can play with my family and ways to explore games I never had the chance of playing. I personally plan to finally get around to really playing Star Wars Galaxies next year.
Uma Musume – Pretty Derby
I like idol slash management games. Pair that with horse racing and you get Uma Musume – Pretty Derby. Though it released back in 2020, this game has silently eaten up my time. Working with your Mumuse and training their skills to take to the big leagues in this satisfying management + roguelike combo. The better your Musume do, the better your team comes out and the better chance you have of taking on other player’s teams and going up the ranks to be the best trainer ever. Not to mention, fun stories and song performances only add to the overall experience.
Runs can take a while for a mobile game, almost an hour or two a day in fact. Before I knew it, Uma Musume has consumed a total of 300 plus hours of my year, so it’s fair I give it a mention.
Everhood: Eternity Edition
Everhood is a 2D adventure game that very quickly becomes a rhythm-based battler and a test to how well you can handle psychedelics. Though this game did come earlier on PC, the Eternity Edition of the game brought the game to consoles for the first time alongside a host of additional side content to test your ability to dodge, jump, and dish back damage dealt by opponents of varying sizes and principalities. If you like your humour crass and a bit odd—Everhood is for you. Like fighting to the rhythm of the beat? Oh boy, Everhood is for you.
Halo: The Master Chief Collection
Bet you weren’t expecting to see this one one last time. Neither was I, truth be told. I bought this game day one back in 2014 (came with a license plate cover et al) and it barely worked. Even its singleplayer campaigns barring the Halo 2 Anniversary remaster were also burdened with issues, due to working with codebases from the PC ports of their original titles. I wasn’t expecting this to get fixed, but what we got over the last couple of years was nothing short of a miracle. The codebase for MCC was a mess, and yet what 343i did to fix longstanding graphical, physics, and mechanical issues alongside introducing new content, mod support, and bringing Halo to PC. It sucks that it took this long, but I’m not going to say otherwise: The Master Chief Collection is the best way to play the original Halo saga outside of original hardware.
MCC’s support has likely all but ended this year, so it gets on the list of amazing collections that are content complete.
Warframe
Warframe continues adding to its massive collection of content, offering Tenos more gameplay than they can shake a leg at. This game has been running for years at this point, is available across multiple platforms, and also has crossplay. There are game mechanics within game mechanics in this game and Warframe will make sure it’s shredding your time like no tomorrow. If you like game’s where you can run, jump, and slice slash shoot everything that moves, Warframe is for you—and if you don’t know, it’s all free.
Resident Evil 4 (2023)
You know a game is great when its remake simply can’t replace its original in any capacity. That’s not a slight against the 2023 remake of Resident Evil 4, rather I can only praise its new take on moments from the original while giving the player a modern control scheme and hastening the gameplay to keep the pressure on. You can play either the GameCube original or this remake and have a fantastic time—easily some of the best action-adventure titles in the industry.
WE LOVE KATAMARI REROLL+ ROYAL REVERIE
I love Katamari and you will, too. All you need to know is that you’ll be rolling up junk, people, buildings, and landmasses as you work to build a Katamari big enough to impress. This remaster of sorts offers new modes too, allowing you to roll up without the original’s timer—but I recommend you keep it on for the challenge. Because while you’re panic-rolling, you’ll be comforted by some of gaming’s iconic scores. If you need a stress reliever, look no further than the people of the galaxies.
I told you a lot of stuff came out this year. Now one thing I want to do come next year is really dig into each and every storefront and find the releases that slipped right in. A better New Year’s resolution than wanting to go to the gym or something, seriously. Happy New Years!
