Best of 2023: Josh's Picks

2024 is here! As we look back and reflect on the past year, it's always fun to take a look at what games I've played over the last year and then pick my favorites. As always, these will be games that I played for the first time this last year rather than games that were released this year. The first two entries are my top two, and the other eight are in no particular order.

Game of the Year: Tears of the Kingdom.

Here's a pitch: you need to make a sequel to one of the most-beloved games of the last decade, you need to do it on eight-year-old hardware, and it also needs to be better than the original. Tall order, right? Not so for Nintendo. They somehow improved on the pinnacle of the open world genre (at least of the 2010s... Bryan and I both agree that Elden Ring belongs up there too, even if we'd disagree about which game comes out on top.) They mixed up a familiar landscape and playscape in ways that were a joy to explore, and then added the Sky Islands and the Depths on top of it. I kinda expected a phoned-in sequel to a best-selling game, but what I found was a wonderful game that surpassed the original, and then some.

The DnDest: Baldur's Gate 3

2023 was the Year of Balder's Gate. (Baldur's Gates? Baldurs' Gate?) Bryan and I played casted on all three games, and I will say the series didn't really resonate with me until the most recent iteration. Everyone raves about the combat, the storytelling, and the roleplaying in the series. What impressed me the most was the UI. The UI made all of the interlayered systems easy to parse and understand. You could pick up the game without ever having rolled a d20 and not miss a beat. It condenses hundreds of pages of the 5th Edition Player's Handbook into accessible tooltips. Masterful.

Best Narrative: Citizen Sleeper

Citizen Sleeper is a sci-fi game where you play as a escaped clone trying to survive on the edges of society. It's a game about hierarchies, capitalism, and the precarious living of those on the fringe. It has what might be the most original mechanic I played last year, where you spend dice on action spaces to advance a storyline or quest. I liked it enough that I went and made a game using similar mechanics. Well-writen and well-paced, Citizen Sleeper is worth a look even if you don't normally like narrative games.

Best Climbing: Jusant

It's a bold move to release a climbing game in the same year as Tears of the Kingdom. Jusant delivers. It offers interesting climbing mechanics in a beautiful sci-fi cliff world. I loved how great exploration felt, whether the 'reward' for following a side path was a letter from a cliffside farmer to a canteen owner or simply a cairn to place another rock on top of. An engaging experience, easily worth the game's playtime.

Most Epic: Red Dead Redemption 2

I finally played it! After years of harping on how great the original was, I finished blazing a trail through the West in RDR 2. I feel like the pacing and character building of Acts 2 and 3 were a bit left-footed, but the story comes together in grand fashion from Act 4 onwards. (As Bryan put it in our cast on RDR 2: Act 2 is the game's true epilogue.) I loved the slow burn of the narrative as the Van Der Lind gang slowly disentigrates and Dutch descends into madness. (Or was he always there?) Taken together, Red Dead Redemption 1 and 2 are a thesis on what the West was and wasn't. Highly recommended.

Most Enchanting: Tunic

Tunic is is an excellent homage to early Zelda games, even going so far as to clothe its hero in a green tunic. The game has gorgeous visuals and tight combat, but what the mechanic that captured my interest was the instruction manual. In Tunic, you would find pages of the manual in-game, and the pages would reveal more and more of the game's secrets and systems to you. It felt like such an organic way to reveal things to the player, as opposed to explicitly unlocking new abilities (a la any metroidvania). Be charmed, be enchanted.

Most Linguistic: Chants of Senaar

Chants of Senaar has you sneaking into a sci fi Tower of Babel, struggling to translate and contextualize the various languages and reunite the tower. The mechanic is taught well, operating as a small puzzle game at first as you learn to use observation and deduction to learn a few words. Later levels are more involved, and Act 3 and 4 offered some of the most interesting puzzles I've played in a while. I would love to play another game where Object Subject Verb order (as Yoda would say, "An example, this is.") is a "twist" that the player has to figure out.

Tiniest Tactics: Cobalt Core

Cobalt Core is a quick-paced roguelike deckbuilder with a simple but effective space combat system. It has the Attack and Defense cards you'd expect after Slay the Spire (lasers and shields here), but the addition of Movement cards really elevates it. The ability to (sometimes) move your ship left and right adds a satisfying mechanic, as you line up your cannon with different segments of the enemy's ship or move your ship out of their cannons' firing arcs. It has that great "Tiny Tactics" feel from other gems like Into the Breach.

Economy of Game Design: Domekeeper

Domekeeper has a simple-sounding game loop: dig for treasure, buy upgrades, then fend off monster as they try to smash your dome. Sounds simple, but the execution on this concept is first rate. Dig-buy-fight loops only last a few minutes each, but there's enough to do and interesting upgrades to buy that you get sucked into that "just one more turn" mindset that I typically associate with 4X games. It doesn't need anything fancy to be great, just an extremely well-executed concept.

Exceeds Expectations: Hogwarts Legacy

Harry Potter hasn't had much luck with video games before. Movie tie-ins were created, but they all were burdened by the problems of source material fidelity. Hogwarts Legacy charts a different path by turning back the clock to Victorian England. It frees the game to tell its own story using the wonderful and magical world Rowling created. Exploring the castle and grounds of Hogwarts (and the lands surrounding) was a real treat. The magical combat system was thoughtful, and the open-world travel systems were fun to explore. (They put a lot of work into broom flight, and it shows.) The game brought a cherished childhood memory to life, and did so in an engaging and respectful fashion.

Honorable Mentions:

Case of the Golden Idol
Backpack Hero
Lil Gator Game
Your only move is HUSTLE

In 2023, I made THREE (3!) games! For an enthusiastic part-time game dev whose development time usually measures in years, not months, this was a huge accomplishment! All the links to itch are free versions, while Steam will have the later commercial releases.

Within a Dead City - RTS autobattler inspired by Majesty. (itch.io and Steam)
sleep.Walker - Citizen Sleeper-inspired sci-fi narrative (itch.io)
Neongarten - vertical cyberpunk city builder (itch.io and Steam)
I also got Moondrop out of Early Access and into a full release! Haha, it’s been a productive year.