FAVORITE GAMES 2023
I apologize in advance for the shenanigans I pull with this list. 2023 was absolutely bursting at the seams with obscenely good games—and I didn’t even play most of them! Even with my limited exposure to the juggernaut offerings of 2023, I’m still bending the ever-living shit out of this list to accommodate everything I want to talk about, and if you can believe it, I’m holding back even with that compromise.
I wrote about my misgivings with the gaming landscape in this post (https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=10160953362589844&set=a.10152213783249844) but make no mistake, this is still one of the all-time best years for gaming. Like, ever.
I mean, if you’d told me five years ago that in this year of our lord 2023, the game most likely to be propped up as the ultimate Game of the Year award winner wasn’t a team-based shooter, nor Bethesda’s first new open-world IP in two decades, nor the successor to Breath of the Wild, nor the first mainline Final Fantasy in 8 years, but a goddamn cRPG of all things? The forgotten genre? The style of game that has been largely abandoned in the derelict basement of the gaming consciousness since the 90’s? THAT is going to be the Game of the Year?
Probably. And I think that’s beautiful.
Buckle in, because this is the longest list of the year. By a lot.
(Shout out to a few friends who bought a handful of these games for me because I had no income for half the year, and without whom several of these entries would not be listed).
—
HONORABLE MENTIONS
“Miasma Chronicles”
What if sci-fi apocalypse, but like, set in the bayou? Because nothing says ramshackle laser weapons and deified supercorporations quite like fighting a mutant alligator man with a Cajun accent.
Miasma Chronicles carefully balances a curious chemistry of ideas. Not only does it merge weird, dark sci-fi with Louisiana-flavored mining towns, but it flows seamlessly between real-time exploration mechanics and a tactical, turn-based rpg. The town of Sedentary is beautifully realized in its post-apocalyptic squalor, and the journey of the two brothers Elvis and Diggs, along with their accommodating banter, makes the minute-by-minute experience of this game a blast.
Also, naming your central antagonists “The First Family” is a truly inspired decision.
—
“Cocoon”
When it comes to puzzle games, I have a peculiar ethos: “I like them, until I don’t like them.” (Thanks to games journalist Patrick Klepek for that one). I can appreciate a good puzzle and how it elevates the gaming experience, but only to a point. I like to be challenged, but if I end up spinning my wheels for more than ten minutes, I quickly lose interest.
In this, Cocoon is about as perfectly intuitive of a puzzle game as any game could ever be. This is the tightest puzzle-exploration experience I’ve had in at least the last few years, wrapped in the _weirdest_ world I saw all year. This game has no dialogue, no particularly evident plot, and yet I loved the journey it made from one weird, absurd set piece to the next.
I described Cocoon to a friend as an “okay then” game, which I meant in the highest regard. It is a game where you say “okay then” a lot, because it’s so bizarre that you just need to roll with what happens, and the primary gimmick of carrying around different worlds in giant marbles and jumping in and out of them to solve situational conundrums was some of the most fun 5ish hours I had this year.
—
“Chained Echoes”
I didn’t finish Chained Echoes because another RPG came out that stole all of its thunder (more on that later), but I’d be doing the game a disservice not to give it at least an HM. This is a SOLID jRPG experience, utilizing a clever fantasy world with elaborate, interlocking political motivations and larger-than-life dangers.
Chained Echoes is very apparently cribbing a lot of its inspirations from Chrono Trigger, but with arguably more likable characters (mostly…Frog is still the best, and Robb is meh) and some of the tightest progression you can ask for. The thing holding back Chained Echoes from going farther than this, is it left me frustrated on more than one occasion. The pacing of your party’s growth is such that you can never be overleveled or underleveled—like Chrono Trigger, you are always roughly right where the game devs want you to be. This is a great idea, until you hit an enemy that just doesn’t click with you, and you end up beating your head against the same opponent for an hour and a half, with no room to go back and power up. You need to learn how to win (and be a little bit lucky) with what they’ve given you.
With that one exception, this is a sharp, lovingly crafted offering to the jRPG genre, and if you have any interest in those, you 100% should give this game some of your time.
—
(Edit: I don’t know where else to say this, but I’d be remiss not to mention that this year I finished my first-ever D&D campaign, which ran for 4 years. A part of me thought I’d never finish one, so that was really cool to see).
---
(Second Edit: I need to post this and go to work, but upon this final read through I just realized I DIDN'T TALK ABOUT DISCO ELYSIUM AT ALL. This is a huge failure on my part.
What I can say is it'd get an honorary mention, because it's just not my kind of game or story, but it is one of the most brilliantly crafted narratives I've seen. The language is divine and Kim is the best. The scene at the end where you talk to the guy and then see the thing filled me with an authentic awe that I wasn't expecting, and it was beautiful. This is all I have time to write, I'm sorry.
—
BRONZE MEDAL
“Resident Evil 4 Remake”
This is about a nearly perfect recreation of one of the most significant games in the history of the medium. The only flaw is that it got rid of the safe room theme, which is ludicrous. That song is iconic.
I was torn on whether to give RE4 Remake the Bronze Medal or something more. As a finished product, it’s hard to understate how fine-tuned and sharpened its focus is. This is the peak of Resident Evil experience. The only reason I’m deciding to keep it lower rather than higher is due to its nature as a remake.
While the developers took liberties to modify, improve, and develop the blueprint of the original RE4 experience enough that this felt like a mostly new experience (Ashley is SO much better now), the broader plot beats were all still there, and so I knew mostly when to expect most things, which detracted somewhat from the novelty of the experience.
But in a way, it also contributed, because I was privileged with the opportunity to anticipate with growing apprehension my inevitable encounter with the dreaded “regenerators.”
Those bastards. The only time in this entire game where I actually felt afraid was when I knew I was in their territory. Even when revisiting the game for the DLC, the regenerators are the only enemy that got my heartrate up. Even knowing how to kill them doesn’t make them less horrifying. They are the only enemy that make me do the “gamer thing” of leaning forward in the seat to focus.
Anyways, I didn’t mean to go on that tangent, those things are just the worst.
But Resident Evil 4 isn’t.
Bad zinger, moving on.
—
SILVER MEDAL
“Plague Tale: Requiem”
One of my delights this year was the opportunity to meet the protagonists of the Plague Tale games, Amicia and Hugo de Rune, a scrappy older-sister, younger-brother duo who can never stop moving. Despite their treacherous status as children, they are relentlessly hunted by all manner of forces, but most notably soldiers of the French Inquisition and their cultish leader, Lord Nicholas. This is because young Hugo, who has been ill since birth, has inherited a legendary ability which flows through his veins, the _Prima Macula_ with the supernatural power to control rats.
And if you have never seen this game before, let me tell you, boy, are there a F*** TON of rats in this world. Like, I get that it’s set in 14th century France during the Black Plague, but Jesus Christ. There are actual, literal tidal waves of rats (almost like they represent something more than rats, who can say).
Plague Tale (which, in truth, is two games: Innocence and Requiem—my actual medal winner is Requiem, but I must lay the groundwork for both) is one of the most cinematic gaming experiences I believe you can find in the medium. There is a slavish dedication to nailing the macabre, grim quality present throughout all contours of this title. Every death-colored environmental dressing, every biting line of dialogue, every aching twist of the knife delivered into our chest is uniquely tailored with love and precision by a studio that wanted to do something special. And damn, their success is resounding.
So much of what makes gaming the biggest and most popular medium year after year is its ability to immerse—to invite us into autonomy and character struggle in a way that is intimate and searing. Few games enfold you into that experience as much as Plague Tale, because the developers understand how to elevate one aspect of a game with another, in both the big and the small.
Take two aspects of Innocence for example. In the first, something small, but significant: needing to encourage your little brother to jump during flashes of lightning, because those brief moments of light are the only times that scare off the rats long enough to move forward. Each time the lightning flashes, there are discordant, dragging string sounds played alongside it, punching you with dread as you leap, hoping the rats will still be gone when you land. The second, something larger, a dream sequence where the main character imagines that her brother has been taken, and she has to squeeze through a hellish underground passage. As she chases the echoes of her brother’s voice, and pleads that he doesn’t listen to the deceiving words of the ones luring him astray, the walls of the passage melt into a violent swamp of rats, and then the arms of the dead, people slain by Amicia on her journey to save Hugo. She screams as she tears her way through them, startling even us:
“I’D KILL ALL OF YOU AGAIN IF I HAD TO.”
Before watching as her brother is taken away and she is consumed in an ever-growing ocean of dark fur and beady eyes, the voice actor for Amicia screams and wails and begs Hugo not to go with him, because what would happen is unspeakable.
And you come back to yourself, the player, and remember to breathe.
It’s the sound design, the visual imagery, the graphics, the emotional tension, the voice acting. The story.
I haven’t talked about the story. Not really. Because I’m not sure what to say.
It’s the best story I saw in a game all year. Maybe ever. I can say that, at least. Better than most other stories in most other mediums. A story that begs for analysis, dissection, and theorycrafting. The kind of story that makes certain creatives amongst us, in a moment of weakness, hold our heads in our hands and whisper “well damn…how am I supposed to compete with something like this?”
And then resign to the idea that you can’t.
—
SILVER MEDAL #2
“Midnight Suns”
If you took a handful of my favorite interests—Marvel Superheroes, deckbuilding game mechanics, metroidvania sensibilities, and dark narratives—and threw them in a blender, you’d get Midnight Suns.
I was interested in this game from the jump, and my anticipation only grew as I learned more of what we could expect from its minute-by-minute experience. It’s a turn-based srpg? Cool. There’s going to be a Persona-esque social system? Rad. I get to play as an original character who is the child of a dark god she helped destroy a thousand years ago? Sign me the f*** up.
The feelings I have now, having played it through, are a bit muddier. I am certainly high on the game—obviously, it’s getting a pretty enviable spot on this list—but my opinion transformed a few times over the duration of my playthrough, both in terms of its narrative, and its gameplay.
In discussing Midnight Suns, we must disentwine these two strands of its genetic makeup. While the game wouldn’t be what it is without the chemistry between its narrative side and its gameplay side, they function differently enough that each deserves its own assessment.
First: the story. My initial glee and delight at the narrative of this game was palpable. The writers manage in quick order to convince you of a specific social flavor: making new buddies in college. The Abbey, which functions as the central hub between hero missions, plays host to a dormitory-esque setup, where you get to rub shoulders with many of Marvel’s biggest figures: Spider-Man, Ironman, Dr. Strange, Wolverine, Captain Marvel—as well as some of its slightly more fringe offerings: Magik, Nico Minoru, Blade. As you go on missions together and talk with them day after day, your relationships with them grow, you explore who they are as people, and you complete some entire character arcs independent of the larger threat (remember that “destroyed” dark god?).
I really liked this part of the game. For about 25 hours. Then it kept going for another 25 hours and it lost me.
See, the character dialogue and necessity of the very structured social system mean that interactions with the cast of the game can become a bit self-defeating. Once the veil of the fun lasts too long, you’re able to pull back the curtain on the machinations of the game. You realize some of the characters don’t really behave the ways those characters would in…any other circumstance, really. You’re telling me that I manage to successfully convince Logan to go bird watching and he…just vibes with that? In the middle of an apocalyptic, world-ending event? When there is prey to kill?
While I still love the game and the time I spent hanging out with the characters, the dissonance eventually pulled me away, especially as the threat of the main plot loomed ever larger. The dialogue felt more off-kilter, my interactions with the heroes more performative and mechanical, growing increasingly redundant until I caught myself skipping the dialogue altogether most of the time.
In this regard, I think Midnight Suns would have benefitted from a modest reduction in length. On average, it takes 50-60 hours to finish this game without DLC. It could have EASILY been pared down to 30-40 hours and would have probably been better for it.
Fortunately, I believe the gameplay side of Midnight Sun’s DNA helix is a lot stronger overall, though not without its dents.
The bad out of the way first: the level design and enemy variety leave something to be desired. It was fine, again, for about 25 hours, but I eventually wanted more Z-axis than the game was interested in providing. Especially the filler fights and side quests, which I mostly enjoyed, became increasingly monotonous until I eventually just started beelining for the main story events.
That’s the end of the bad things.
This game further reinforced something I didn’t need to know: I absolutely love deckbuilders. And card games in general. Fortunately, Midnight Suns managed to spin the deckbuilder formula in a couple fun new ways. Since each Marvel hero had a couple different strategies inherent to their design (and to who they are as a character), the ability to mix-and-match teams—and the chemical reactions of their individual playstyles—was a delight to explore and experiment with.
Midnight Suns challenged me to think about my next move at all times, and was on a perfect level of difficulty to optimize my enjoyment in combat. I rarely felt like I was steamrolling any one situation, and often had to think a few moves ahead to formulate strategies. This only broke once, when I was actually on the cusp of defeat and only had Ironman left. Something about the way I’d built his deck, combined with the situation I was in, meant that a rare opportunity had opened to me, which once I’d noticed it, made me effectively unkillable. I had just the right cards that, when Ironman was by himself, he was more effective than a full team of three. With all the other characters out of play, my hand every turn was full of Ironman cards. Ironman’s gimmicks are cardcycling (drawing a lot of cards really quickly) and buffing. So in any given turn I could buff the shit out of him, deal a ton of damage, recover most of my health, and set myself up with enough energy to do it again next turn. I was momentarily, as it were, invincible.
It was fun, and I really enjoyed figuring out the best way to utilize each character both on their own, and in different team setups. I learned to love characters who I didn’t before, and I was generally just impressed with the variety of styles I got to play with. Blade was an early favorite with his bleed, health drain, and critical strike mechanics, but eventually I think I came down on Magik as my favorite. Portal magic is just rad as hell, and the level of crowd control, especially when paired with an AoE specialist like Ironman or Ghost Rider, was a blast.
I could keep going, but we don’t have all day, and we’re still in the silver medals. Whoops.
—
GOLD MEDAL
“Cassette Beasts”
I’m going to save us both some time and cheat a little bit. I unwound my thoughts and feelings on Cassette Beasts at length earlier this year. You can find those musings here (https://www.facebook.com/cooper.d.barham/posts/pfbid05wWMPn3PZLBg1PPBWkGP2su9YiWsuoGj9o78NzVGdXmvK7ZYq7bPTgFgmxcVJykPl), as I’d rather not burn daylight repeating an opinion that hasn’t changed.
What I’ll say is this: the game has improved since I played it. As a small indie project, this delightful little gem did admittedly suffer from some frame rate issues, which only revealed themselves once you gained the ability to sprint.
They’ve since reconciled the game’s performance capabilities with this design choice, so it’s a more polished experience in this, and many other regards.
The other thing I’ll say is that I listen to a couple songs from this game super regularly, and I constantly think about playing through the game again (though not as often as I do for Plague Tale).
—
GOLD MEDAL #2
“Tunic”
*Deep breath*
What the hell is this game.
There’s no game on this list I have more anxiety writing about than Tunic. One must tread in slow, patient circles around discussion of this thing, this…creature. If careless, one could easily stumble into fabulous dramatics and hyperbole, sacrificing journalistic integrity on the altar of shameless grandiosity.
But fuck it, I’m doing it anyways.
This game will cave your head in and make you question your sanity.
Tunic is about…a fox. A cute little fox, in a cute little world. And it IS cute! Some of you might assume that the heel turn here is that it’s actually gritty and dark, but no. It is a cute game to the marrow, and cribs a lot of its vibes and surface ideas from early Zelda titles. And that’s truly all it is. On that level, anyways.
I had a whimsical, wonderful adventure with the fox, slicin’ and stabbin’ things with my sword, finding treasure, uncovering colorful new areas and intriguing mysteries. At this stage, and throughout the game in total, the most interesting element is definitely the unique collection idea of discovering—and hang in here with me—the instruction manual of the game.
Yes, you can find weapons, health power-ups, and all that jazz, but by far the thing you want the most are pages of the instruction booklet, which teaches* you how to play the game. For any gamer over 20, you’ll recognize that this is something all games used to have, when purchasing physical copies was the norm. Once upon a time, every game came with a little booklet that one could consult to learn more about what they were playing.
This design choice was brilliant in a way that I struggle to put into words. And that brilliance only expands when you realize that within the pages of that booklet, much greater inquiries lay buried. Why are only certain words in English? What’s this other language? Why…hmm…what do these lines mean here? Why is there an arrow in that spot? I’ve been there and didn’t see anything. Hold on, does this item do more than I thought it could?
Why…does it feel like I’m not the only person playing this single-player game?
Tunic is a game where the juicy, enticing secrets distract you from other, more important secrets, and by the time the true nature of what Tunic was began to reveal itself, I had to set the game down and back away.
In John Mulaney’s stand-up comedy, “Baby J,” he talks about how, when he was addicted to cocaine, he began “to see the world in terms of surfaces.”
Play the game of Tunic long enough and you start to see certain patterns that always existed, in a hundred different shapes and forms, and they threaten to dismantle you. The scope of what this game does is so immense and intricate that it’s nearly profane to the natural order. Like learning the machinations of a clock, from the point of view of a mote of dust between its gears.
Eventually I literally had to stop playing so I could look up who made the game, because I was convinced that people do not think on the level required to make something like this. Tunic does not feel like it was made. It felt like one day instead, it materialized, a cipher from the gods by which if we unearth its ancient architecture, we might receive the lens with which to view the true nature of reality. Or discover bomb codes. Or learn the true location of where Tupac is hiding.
Tunic is, in a word, “inexplicable.”
I don’t know. Maybe it’s all just like I said at the beginning: fabulous dramatics.
—
GOLD MEDAL #3
“Sea of Stars”
At long last, our final entry. I promise, no other list this year will be quite as exhausting as this one. But I can’t end the dissertation without discussing what *might* have been my favorite game of the year: Sea of Stars.
This classically-inspired jrpg indie colossus barreled onto the scene and ensnared hearts far and wide with its charming, highly-animated pixel art style, simple turn-based gameplay, and sincere heart.
As is often the case with most games that make me play them for over 20 hours, the luster does wear off in some spots over time, but hot damn if this still wasn’t one of the most enjoyable experiences of my year. Sea of Stars oozes charisma and wonder, harmonizing a few smart reinventions of the turn-based combat formula with an inherent sense of nostalgia for this type of game.
In Sea of Stars, you control two Children of Solstice, Valere and Zale, who have the powers of the moon and sun, respectively. From birth they were chosen by the heavens to protect the world from the Dwellers and their supreme darklord, the Fleshmancer, who twists things into impurity. In traditional form, they then venture off, requisitioning the help of a motley crew of quirky goons and badasses, my favorite of whom shows up way too late and has one of the coolest design concepts I’ve maybe ever seen. He is the soul of a decimated people from centuries past, who is turned into a sort of spiritual smoke, who is then injected into a liquid-like glass body that he can manipulate to his will. So he’s like a giant glass golem filled with roiling smoke, and he’s cool as shit.
That said, Garl is the best character overall. By a lot. His relentless hopefulness and enthusiasm makes him by far the easiest character to like, and unfortunately he shines so brightly that the two main characters actually look pretty bland by comparison.
The overall plot of Sea of Stars is…mmm. Basic, in shape, but with some deceptively intriguing turns and delightful concepts. If this is what you play jrpg's for, I'd actual suggest Chained Echoes over this one.
There’s one plot twist in particular that is superbly veiled behind a red herring, and the actual reveal fired on all cylinders. It is a game that is simple, but effectively executed.
The combat is similarly quite easy to wrap one’s head around, and involves repositioning oneself and enemies around the field to maximize damage, as well as multiple timing mechanics to increase/reduce damage, and an elemental slot-machine-like system where you can neuter an enemy’s attack (or prevent it altogether), by hitting them with the right combination of abilities before they let that attack off. This is a great design choice, especially when you see that multiple attacks are forecasted and you don’t have enough turns to prevent all of them. It forces you to surrender to the notion of receiving certain kinds of pain, and you need to decide when you have the capacity to receive one type of damage over another.
That said, this is a very easy game overall. I don’t think I lost more than a few times through the entire run. As for difficulty level, they have an interesting “relic” system, where you can turn certain gameplay advantages on and off depending on how much challenge you want in battle. These range from massive buffs like doubling all of your character’s health and healing them in between battles (effectively trivializing…basically every combat encounter) down to more subtle boons. I played the entire game with exactly two of these: the relic that allowed me to see enemy health bars, and the relic that made it so when I blocked, I recovered one mana, both of which felt like they should have been included to begin with.
Besides all of that, I can’t sing enough praises for the soundtrack, which captures the mood of every scene and setting to a tee, and the level design—the LEVEL DESIGN—which is just *chefs kiss* impeccably clever and creative. Exploration of one’s environment is one of this game’s strongest suits, and this isn’t a conversation.
At the time of sharing this, in a few hours, the 2023 Game of the Year Awards ceremony is about to take place. I really hope that Sea of Stars wins the indie game of the year. Personally, nothing deserves it more. (Though Dave the Diver will probably take it, which is slightly annoying, since that's barely an indie game).
(If Baldur’s Gate 3 doesn’t take the whole thing I’ll be flabbergasted.)
—
EVERYTHING I PLAYED IN 2023:
Midnight Suns
Callisto Protocol (Watched)(DNF'd)
Signalis
Plague Tale: Innocence (Watched)
Plague Tale: Requiem (Watched)
The Knight Witch (Watched)
Death in the Water 2 (Watched)
Horizon Forbidden West (Watched)(DNF'd)
Moonscars
Portal 1 & 2 (replay)
Chained Echoes
Beat Saber
I Expect You to Die
Space Pirate Trainer
Resident Evil 4 Remake
Cassette Beasts
Redfall (watched)
Showgunners (watched)
Fear & Hunger (watched)
Fear & Hunger: Termina (watched, twice)
Endling: Extinction is Forever (watched)
Amnesia: The Bunker (watched)
Miasma Chronicles (watched)
Dave the Diver
Under Night: In Birth
Oaken
Stray Gods (watched)
Disco Elysium (watched and sorta played)
Sea of Stars
Have a Nice Death
Tunic
Cocoon
Final Fantasy 6 (watched, DNF'd)
Quoridor
Tsuro: The Game of the Path
Quacks of Quedlinburg
Spyfall
King's Dilemma (finished)
Here to Slay
Magic: The Gathering
Marvel Zombies