You’ve probably already seen Eurogamer’s top 50 games of 2023, but we didn’t leave our end of year thoughts there. Big lists can sometimes feel impersonal, and as you know, individual tastes in games are anything but. So, we wanted to cobble together our collected thoughts on the games we felt shaped 2023.
This brief series of articles will, then, collect the top fives of a handful of different Eurogamer writers each day, and run for four days. The top fives aren’t ordered because ordering is not what’s important here – it’s seeing which games were special to people this year, and hearing about why. And please, feel free to share yours.
Jessica
Baldur’s Gate 3
Baldur’s Gate 3 is a phenomenon, and my nerdy RPG-loving heart is all the more fuller when I see just how passionately other people have taken to it – and how could they not? It feels like so many games have promised us deep choice consequences over the years, but then inevitably trick us with the illusion of choice, whereas Baldur’s Gate 3 choice – it’s D&D. Romance, story, playstyle, personality, looks, morality – it’s up to you. It’s also incredibly funny and charming, and just a complete delight to immerse yourself in. Baldur’s Gate 3 is a forever game.
Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty
I played Cyberpunk 2077 when it originally released and liked it despite the many technical issues trying their best to stop me. However, my biggest issue has always been its attitude. Everything seemed designed around this faux scale of ‘cool’, and boy did I hate V. Phantom Liberty is something completely different. Billed as a spy-thriller, it actually delivers on this Bond-like promise while telling a story without that ‘cool’ attitude ruining everything. Turning the focus to new characters – Songbird, Reed, and Alex – acts as a reset button, and although the story can be bleak at times, it’s one that slowly grows on you and might just be one of my favourites now. Finishing Phantom Liberty was bittersweet, but I’m now very excited for the future of Cyberpunk.
Cocoon
Cocoon’s remarkably clever design means some of the most mind-bending solutions in gaming can be described as just solving puzzles by using orbs to travel between worlds. It’s so simple to play, but when you stop to think about how far you’ve come since the beginning, and how many worlds within worlds you’ve travelled to, you begin to see just how intricate Cocoon really is. Despite how trippy some of the puzzles are, solutions never feel out-of-reach, and the fact you just learn everything naturally on your own with no tutorials shows just how sneakily smart Cocoon really is.
Honkai: Star Rail
At first, Honkai: Star Rail looked like a smaller scale sci-fi version of Genshin Impact with a mercifully simplified way to farm for gear and character materials. That would have been just fine, but Star Rail excels by differentiating itself from Genshin in lots of little ways. And in one big way: it’s goofy. It knows that its lore is complicated and silly so it plays on it, and it also sprinkles in the strangest interactions that still surprise me, even after all this time. Why of course I’ll help that depressed robot-mushroom, and yes I will search every bin in Belobog because my character has an obsession with rubbish. It also happens to have one of the best modern turn-based combat systems out there. Eight months after release and I still play Star Rail daily. It’s pretty good.
Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical
Its promise of roleplaying is a little misleading, but Stray Gods is certainly a musical, and goes one step further by letting you shape the tone of its soundtrack. Depending on what option you pick during key moments of a song – charming, kickass, or clever – you get a completely different performance, and often a different story outcome too. There’s a murder-mystery to solve, gods to romance, and a charming atmosphere held together by its incredible voice cast: Laura Bailey, Troy Baker, Janina Gavankar, Anthony Rapp, Ashley Johnson, and more! Although Stray Gods’ individual songs might not be standalone hits, its entire package is a commendable attempt at merging the worlds of video games, theatre, and Greek mythology.
Geoffrey
Thirsty Suitors
As the famous meme goes: If I had a nickel for every time a game ostensibly about cooking south-Asian food made me cry in 2023, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice. A funky, relatable, and heartbreaking elucidation of cultural, familial, and relationship-driven trauma, Thirsty Suitors had me salivating over the food it let me cook and weeping over how well it captures the complexities of human relationships. As someone with no interest in rhythm games (he says, with three games that incorporate rhythm elements on this list) or skateboarding, to wrap those in a short, sharp RPG that perfectly captures the joy and trauma of community and keeps me engaged is tremendous. Also, you can skateboard as the dog.
Dredge
I don’t relate to many video game characters. Yet, in Dredge’s lighthouse keeper – who thinks we shouldn’t poke the preternatural sea or the monsters that lurk therein – Dredge gives me a character to which I can only aspire. Paired with a dreary yet beautiful fishing simulator laced with cosmic horror that is equal parts Lovecraft (the few good parts) and the few good parts of Moby Dick (plus the grid inventory from Resident Evil 4 that’s just as fun as the actual game), Dredge – weighing in at around 9 hours – is a reminder that a game doesn’t need to be big to be fun.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
That said, Tears of the Kingdom is big. So big I’ll never finish it – not truly finish it, anyway; its scope is too grand. That’s okay, though. As someone who has spent years feeling guilty over the games I’m not playing, to the point of affecting how I feel about those I do, Tears of the Kingdom’s multiple definitions of completion taught me the value that can be found in what we leave unfinished (sorry Persona 3). In the process, it changed my relationship with my backlog forever. It’s a remarkable game for so many reasons, but in a year replete with amazing games I’ll never play, it became for me more of a public service.
Tchia
“Ö ngo eka? / Me tuneka? / Tro’ni a tro Tuneka?” John Robert Matz’s remarkable soundscape has lived in my head all year. A musical style so patently Tchia’s and yet spectacularly evocative of the New Caledonia Awaceb creates in the game. Tchia may owe much to Breath of the Wild – though, that’s not a bad template to follow at all – but its beautiful rendition of childhood adventure wrapped in a story that makes me want to learn more about New Caledonia, and in a rare manageable open world (albeit with wickedly hard rhythm sections), was a much-needed reminder of how fun games are supposed to be.
A Highland Song
I have shallow roots owing to a need to keep moving, something drastically mitigated by a disability that keeps me inert. Perhaps that’s why games that evoke a strong sense of place were so important to me in 2023. I wrote earlier in the year how Season: A Letter to the Future evoked a visceral memory of cycling, but A Highland Song reminds me what it was like to hike – one more love lost to disability. In its beautiful, undemanding meditation on Scotland, as the player climbs, runs, and jumps across mountains, A Highland Song offered some much needed late-year solace in a 2023 in which we lost so much. I’m a simple man though, so A Highland Song would have been on the list just for being about walking and including Talisk in its soundtrack.
Victoria
Super Mario Wonder
I played Wonder with my two children, and oh what a hoot we had! Honestly, the decibel levels must have been off the charts. When we all turned into elephants, my children cheered. When a Wonder Seed caused our world to turn on its head in any myriad of ways, they were basically rolling on the floor with full, uncontrollable, belly laughs. This game brought us all so much delight time and time again. It is chaotic, it is eclectic and it is, quite honestly, a wonder.
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2
It is not often that I complete a game in one weekend, but I did that with Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. While I don’t feel the game did anything revolutionary, I just had so much damn fun playing it.
A lot of my pleasure came from the game’s traversal. Soaring through New York as both Spider-Men felt so slick, and even when I had the option to fast travel to places, I still chose to get there through a combination of web slinging and gliding. This world became my playground. I would flip and spin my way through Brooklyn, grinning away like a small child. I really felt like I was Spider-Man in those moments. It was smooth and effortless. While in reality I am quite prone to tripping, in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 I was an agile superhero, and I really couldn’t have asked for a better way to explore New York City.
Alan Wake 2
I always knew I was going to enjoy Alan Wake 2, having been a Remedy fan since the original game. But what truly elevated the sequel above other games this year for me was its musical number, Herald of Darkness. This moment was completely unexpected and unlike anything I had ever experienced in a video game before. “I didn’t see that coming,” the titular Alan Wake remarks at one point. Nor did I, Alan. Nor did I.