To some, 2023 was one of the best years for video games in a long time. It didn’t quite land that way for me, but that’s okay. Even if I don’t rank the likes of Super Mario Bros. Wonder and Baldur’s Gate 3 among the year’s best, I still admire the impulse they exhibit to try something fresh and new, or to make the familiar bigger and better, with orders of magnitude more intricacy and complexity than it’s ever been done. 2023 was, refreshingly, a year of big swings, in which the safe and conventional were overshadowed by the daring and visionary. My own short list of personal favorites includes two of the most high-profile successes of the year, as well as a few games that look back at visionary efforts of the past, and one intimate gem that speaks to the place games occupy in the lives of those of us who love them.
Here, in order from bottom to top, are my five favorites of the year.
