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2023 Game of the Year

It's that time of the year again: Game of the Year season!

Ok, I'm kind of late with my hot takes this year, but being laid off in February threw a lot of things off-kilter. I actually thought that being unemployed would mean more time to catch up on my games backlog, but it really meant long hours on Discord commiserating with former co-workers, on the phone with the EI office and the bank, and on Zoom interviewing in a far less generous market than 2 years ago. (I'm happy to say that I signed an offer last week and will be employed again as of April.)

On to the games! Last year, I knew what my GOTY would be 15 minutes into playing it (Citizen Sleeper). This year, the choice was less obvious. There were a LOT of great games, but very few that I finished (I'm sorry BG3, I promise that I'll get back to you). It was tough narrowing down the list of candidates but, without further ado, my personal GOTY pick for 2023 is:

::: Thirsty Suitors :::

This game has so much personality and heart. The gameplay is nothing revolutionary (mostly turn-based battles and QuickTime events) but the writing is top notch and the story is compelling and meaningful. The art and animation styles are fantastic too, and communicate a lot of the game's humour. I continually found myself wanting to go back to and find out what happened next, which is rare when my growing backlog usually pushes me to move on to a new game. I also found myself hungry and hunting down kottu roti on UberEats for the second time this year. (It's a good year when I get to play TWO games about cooking South Asian food - shout out to Venba, a short but sweet game about the immigrant experience and cooking Tamil food!)

And a close runner-up:

::: Terra Nil :::

 A pretty and relaxing sim-puzzle game. Not quite a city builder, more of a puzzler that asks you to manage limited resources and balance different biomes in a limited space. I really enjoyed this one and it's one of the few games of 2023 that I fully completed.





And because I played so many good games this year, here are some other quick recommendations:

Last but not least, I'll hand out a retrospective award (a.k.a. a pre-2023 game that I first played in 2023):

Dorfromantik (2022)

 A rare game that I had to uninstall because I kept staying up till 3am playing it. Big "just one more turn..." energy. I just bought the board game version and I'm hoping that one is less life-consuming.

The full list:

Bold = completed / played at least 10 hours (if it's not a linear narrative game)

2023 releases:

Older:

Posted: March 2024