Cohost repost: 2023 GotY

I think the best game awards are individuals talking about games they liked, and I'm an individual, so here goes! Same rules as last year, top ten commercial releases in 2023 in no particular order. (I play too many oddball free games to keep track.)

• Chants of Sennaar is an adventure game about learning a series of languages. I'm a sucker for video game languages that aren't just a cipher on English, and this does that well. [Also my 2023 Puzzle Game of the Year (For Non-Sickos)]

• Can of Wormholes was my Sokoban-adjacent puzzle highlight of the year. It takes the core snake concept to a lot of interesting mechanical places. It's also got some fun takes on hinting (making an easier version of every level that showcases the core aha) and discrete puzzles with an overworld that's also a puzzle. [Also my 2023 Puzzle Game of the Year (For Non-Sickos) - these two were the reason I created these two categories.]

• Paquerette Down the Bunburrows is a puzzle game about trying to catch bunnies that are smart enough not to run into dead ends. It also goes some interesting places, although I didn't get as deep in the obscure stuff as I could have.

• Storyteller is a puzzle game that's hard to classify- you build a sequence of events and characters and try to create narrative situations like "the wrong person gets arrested for the murder." It was apparently on the short side when it first came out, but it got an update which fleshed it out a bit.

• Cocoon is probably the most "mass-market" puzzler in this batch. Its core mechanic of carrying around orbs with worlds in them isn't too new if you've played Parabox or Recursed, but it's still a nice overall package.

• Against the Storm is an interesting twist on the citybuilder which I played a bit when it was out in Early Access last year and had its 1.0 release this month. It's done as a roguelike, where a run takes an hour or two and you have a different set of perks, quests, and building access that gives you a different path to keeping everyone happy.

• Cobalt Core's from the deckbuilding side of the roguelike tree, except you're in space and card effects can move you around to dodge shots, target enemy weak points, etc. It's got very cute characters and writing which kept me interested.

• Tears of the Kingdom is new Zelda. They've said future games in the series will be in this style and I don't know where they go from there, but I would've said that after BotW. It does feel like part of the model is starting to fray a bit, especially trying to balance having more story and letting the player do things out of order.

• Pikmin 4 is new Pikmin. There's a surprising amount of game in this game, and the new stuff it adds to the formula is fun.

• Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo is a spooky visual novel that does some fun things I don't want to spoil. A few small jump scares but nothing that bothered me too much as someone who isn't a horror fan.

I'm not sure whether to put the Case of the Golden Idol DLC in 2023 games list or the pre-2023 games list, so I'll put it between them. A couple other especially cool games I played this year that came out before 2023 are:

• Lingo, word puzzle game in Antichamber-esque impossible geometry
• Melatonin, indie Rhythm Heaven-like
• Unsighted, Metroidvania with heavy Zelda influences
• The Void Rains Upon Her Heart, roguelike shmup