My Top 10 Video Games of 2023
21 January 2025 ☼ video games
Our incredibly delayed road trip through contemporary video games finally comes to an end with this, the definitive list of the best games of 2023.
I played 42 2023 releases in the 2023 calendar year, a lower number than I claimed I did in the previous post. I made a mistake, but here I am, listening, learning, and so on. Please, join me now on this journey of growth and humility.
10) Final Profit
My friend Aura spent a good deal of time heaping praise on this one, and I’m very happy I took her at her word. This is a combat-free shopkeeping sim with a really strange sense of humor and an overtly anti-capitalist message. Definitely scratched an itch I’d forgotten I’d had, and it’s an RPG Maker title to boot!
As I’ve frequently noticed in these postmortem write-ups, Final Profit’s creator has since shipped a very detailed side-mode that essentially spins the mid-game shopkeeping portion of the title into its own game. I gave that a go a few months ago and it was equally great, so I highly recommend taking a look at both.
9) King of the Castle
If you think it’s weird that a game I played twice made it to #9 on my list, go write your own fucking list.
Those two sessions were some of the best gaming I’ve had in recent memory, however! This one’s a built-for-streaming title that puts one player in the role of a monarch who is trying to steer a kingdom through a series of crises all while trying to placate three subsidiary factions made up of anyone and everyone who decides to play along from Twitch chat. I ran a small 10-15 person game of this myself and participated in a larger 200 person game across several sessions, and both were a hell of a lot of fun.
Not a ton of traffic for this one on Twitch these days, but there is also an in-person mode that supposedly gives you the same experience with 4-20 folks in person, so that’s potentially worth a shot if you’re curious!
8) Darkest Dungeon 2
I was hoping before this came out that it’d be higher up this list, but that’s perhaps undercutting the fact that Darkest Dungeon 2 was a really good sequel to a phenomenal game. What’s more, DD2 streamlined and solved a lot of my issues with the combat portion of the original game. It finds itself down here at #8 because the strategy elements of the game aren’t nearly so satisfying as the more XCOM-esque ones from DD1. There are a lot more reasons to bring weaker classes along to the dungeon in DD1, and I found that the stagecoach travel system that was akin to a Slay The Spire-esque node map wasn’t super compelling.
As it is, there is a giant piece of free DLC coming in the next week or so that’s adding a new mode that sounds like it’s keeping the combat the same and jettisoning the strategy layer in favor of something else. I’ll definitely be taking a look at that.
7) Lies of P
Another fun surprise in 2023, I definitely didn’t expect a third party to ship a worthy Bloodborne-like, but here we are. Ignore how cringe the world/fairy tale tie-in seems, it’s actually handled pretty even-handedly and the game is damn fun to play. There are a few late bosses that are simply not fun to bash your head against, so you have my blessing to mostly skip those with the game’s summon mechanic. Overall, a great game to try if you’ve been craving Soulslikes since Elden Ring shipped.
6) Dave the Diver
The Best Independent Game of 2023! Please ignore that it was developed by giant gaming conglomerate Nexon.
Joking aside, Dave the Diver is a satisfying blend of roguelite exploration and shopkeeping sim. I only ever got through about half of it, but even that deep in, the game had an amazing sense of knowing exactly when I wanted it to drop a brand new area or mechanic in my lap to maintain my interest, and the folks I know who got all the way through said that keeps up until the end.
The game’s gotten a few fun pieces of free DLC since release, and is currently scheduled to receive a big and potentially standalone expansion near the end of 2025 called In The Jungle.
5) Cobalt Core
A neat little roguelite deckbuilder (please hold your groaning until the end of the post) with the twist that you control a spaceship and use your deck to maneuver it around a battlefield, dodge attacks, and line up shots from your own weaponry. It has a bunch of fun unlockables and achieved the nigh-impossible task of making me enjoy playing a roguelute deckbuilder in this dark post-Slay The Spire world we live in.
4) Everspace 2
Another one for the “boy, I wish I’d spent the time actually finishing this one” pile, Everspace 2 was a Kickstarter darling that finally released out of Early Access in 2023, and it was great. The original was an arcade cockpit shooter with roguelite elements. The sequel jettisoned the roguelite bits in favor of expanding other systems and tying everything together with a cool little story. It’s not the spiritual Wing Commander: Privateer sequel we’ve been waiting decades for, but if arcade space shooters ring any bells for you, it’s definitely worth giving this one a look.
As is almost always the case, they’ve also shipped a chunky piece of paid DLC since the original release, mostly focusing on endgame content, with another one in the hopper for later this year. There’s been a few free patches/updates, too, so overall plenty of new stuff to look forward to if this one piques your interest.
3) Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon
The real fear with AC6 was that FromSoft would pull way up and decide not to ship a proper Armored Core game, instead stripping things back in an effort to make their classic mech combat series more appealing to the swathes of fans they’d gained from Elden Ring. I’m pleased to report that they did no such thing, and instead made a crunchy mech combat game for sickos. I loved damn near everything about AC6, including the storyline, which happened to have one or two of the most memorable moments I saw in 2024 (do a search for “I won’t miss”). The game has a few very brutal difficulty spikes, but I implore you to stick with it, as it pays serious dividends by the end.
2) Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
What is there to say about Tears of the Kingdom? It was honestly more a giant piece of DLC for Breath of the Wild than anything, but isn’t that something everyone wanted anyway? Was its focus on facilitating the kind of wild crap only hardcore Breath of the Wild content creators were doing a little bit baffling? Do I want them to make another Zelda game that’s basically just entirely made out of the exploration style they created for the Depths? Have I painted myself into a rhetorical corner by asking a bunch of questions that I didn’t really leave myself room to answer?
Tears was pretty much the only reason I dusted my Switch off in 2023, so you gotta know that I think it’s worth your time and attention. Enjoy the ride.
1) Baldur’s Gate 3
You already know this one.
If you enjoyed it, for the love of God, don’t go play D&D 5E. Get Divinity: Original Sin 2 instead.