2023 Game Rundown

New games I played in 2023

January 3, 2024

Last updated on January 4, 2024 01:00:21 UTC

Travellers Rest: Perfectly enjoyable tavern simulator in the vein of Stardew Valley. I played this early in the year so it's probably way more developed now.
Encased: CRPG that I really wanted to like. Mildly based on off Roadside Picnic/STALKER. It almost had the right magic, but honestly felt wildly incomplete. There are whole zones and cities that are full of people, but without any NPCs to talk to or quests to pick up. The real CRPG gem will be later.
Slice and Dice: A little dice roguelike that I got off of itch. It took 10 minutes for me to get totally hooked. You're 5 person party each has a die that gets rolled and they do whatever the face stays. Sometimes they attack, or defend, or heal, or get mana, or whatever. Leveling up characters get them different dice. You can also find items that can manipulate the dice as well. Had a ton of fun with it.
Black Mesa: A high quality remake of the original Half-Life. It's great. Half-Life ruined FPSs for a decade because every game tried to copy it without doing what it did well at all. For whatever reason, doors that you can open and doors you can't open look exactly the same and I got stuck/lost so many times because of this.
Total War: WARHAMMER II: Yeah, I liked a couple of Total War games and this one really hit the spot.
Against the Storm: This game rules. It's a roguelike city builder and IDK anything else like it. The gameplay loop is perfect because you get to "start from scratch" a new city ever hour or so, so you really get to try out lots of different strategies and see a lot of the game.
Raft: I played Grounded with some friends last year and we all liked it, so we looked for something else similar and Raft was our choice. This game is fine, but frankly kinda annoying and redundant and just plain hostile sometimes.
Dwarf Fortress: I finally tried this game and after one session I knew it wasn't for me.
Resident Evil 4: The remake! Yeah, the remake is way better than the GameCube original. The flow of the game is perfect, the only bad part are the boss fights where that flow is disrupted and you have to re-learn how the game wants you to play the specific boss fight. Kills the momentum.
Darkest Dungeon II: Loved the first one. This game is totally different and yet imports a lot of details from the first game, making a sort of confused mess. When I played this in May, the third boss was broken as hell and basically killed my momentum to keep playing. I think there's a lot of good things here, however, the runs take too long and there are lots of meaningless gameplay filler (like the travel time between fights). I'll come back to it later.
Stellaris: Got sucked into this for a while and had a blast. It's a 4X space empire game that is a bit more heavy on the management side then some others I've played (such as Endless Space).
UnderRail: A CRPG released years ago that I finally tried and it absolutely rules. The world is deep and intricate with a dope setting. There are lots of zones, NPCs, and factions to interact with. Tons of items and stuff to find hidden everywhere. It's the closest thing I've played to the original Fallout 1 & 2. I also love the character building system and all the different ways you could build them.
Diablo IV: The most mid game ever. It's incredibly smooth and polished, but the gameplay is very samey. The skill system is vastly simplified for the sake of a gamepad, which is unforgivable. The variety of item choices, which is a staple of this genre, is completely gone and bigger number -> better weapon is always the case. The mods of items barely matter.
Lies of P: A total clone of a FromSoft game. They copied every last detail. The result is sometimes that it resembles a good game, but maybe kinda misses the spirit of why they were designed that way. It was fine, but it just made me want to replay Elden Ring again.
Elden Ring: Still my favorite game.
Potion Tycoon: You run a potion store and have to brew the best potions to attract customers. There's a whole potion mixing system that changes the effects of potions based on the ingredients and how you prepare them. I had fun with this for a while, but it becomes samey.
Astrea: Six-Sided Oracles: I played exactly one run of this and it was Slay the Spire except with the variance of dice which I did not like.
Cobalt Core: Another Slay the Spire knockoff that has also been compared to FTL. It's okay.
Control: This game is hella fun when you're just fighting and advancing the story, but holy hell there is so much filler and unneeded dialogue and tutorial. Why do games like this have dialogue trees? Why am I told that there are random enemies to kill in the executive sector when I'm in a whole different places advancing the main story? I also hated the weapon mod system. Adding random drops to this, which is nothing but a slot machine, feels so stupid when this game is clearly a MetroidVania and should follow those patterns. Just let me find the "Accuracy" mod somewhere, one time, and be done with it. I do not need to find 27 copies of the same mod only the pick exactly one of them that has the higher number.
Lethal Company: Played this one time and it's pretty interesting. Not really my kind of game, but I could be convinced to play it more.
Football, Tactics & Glory: I really wanted to like this one. It's a turned based football game which sounds interesting. The Steam page for the game compares itself it XCOM a dozen times, but honestly it's closer to a mix of Blood Bowl and Into The Breach. It's ok. The player and team progression feel a little wonky to me. It takes a long, long time to develop your players. The matches are really short. You'll get about three chances to score a goal in the entire match if you play it well. It's a game that claims to value your time, however, I found that it takes a long time to see any progress and the fun parts of the matches are way too short.
Quasimorph: My god. This game blows me away. It's a roguelike that is turn-based like the original Rogue or NetHack. It takes place in the grim dark future of the 23rd century where anarcho-capitialism has taken over, and the solar system is essentially ruled by a couple dozen corporations. You're a mercenary crew who will do anything for paycheck, so you perform shadow operations for corporations for reputation and reward. Oh, but also, there's a bunch of inter-dimensional aliens (called Quasimorphs) that are phasing into your universe who happen to real like phasing in around all the violence that you're doing! The game has a ton of unique gameplay mechanics in it, such as injuries to different parts of your body that you need to patch up with bandages or splints. You have to manage food and calories, so pack a lunch before you go on a mission. There are a tons of guns, but melee weapons are also viable. There's a great action point system where there are sneak, walk, and run modes, where you are allowed a different number of actions given certain tradeoffs. Anyone who loves classic Roguelikes should look at this one.