The Game Awards are for celebrating game developers and their hard work on wonderful games, so we wanted to do the same! In this blog, our team highlights our favourite games of 2023! Happy New Year and enjoy!
Game Of The Year
Reuben: Super Mario RPG! It’s always been one of my favourite games, and the remake is swish as heck!
Ann: Hi-Fi Rush. Gorgeous visuals, a great soundtrack, loveable characters, great experience. I loved seeing how much clear love the team had for this game, really pushing the comic book stylisation with screen tones, hard outlines, bright colours, text bubbles, motion lines and more! So wonderfully animated. It’s also reminiscent of Dragon Booster, made 19 years ago, and shows off how far animation has come.
Dom: Super Mario Bros. Wonder. It was so well polished, brought a lot of new stuff to the old genre and the online interactions were so unintrusive but still made you feel so connected to all the other people playing.
Grant: Trepang2. Scratches all of the shooter itches I’ve had for a long time. Very well made in effectively every department with a rarely seen “Smash face into wall until you succeed 4 hours later” difficulty setting while still being able to drop down your difficulty at any time to enjoy the best violent sandbox created in a long time. Definitely not for everyone but for those it will appeal to, it’s probably an uncontested favourite game of the year. A.K.A If you have fond memories of F.E.A.R, this was easily your GOTY.
Ronnie: Super Mario Bros. Wonder. Refreshing take on a classic.
Christine: Dead Island 2. I enjoy killing zombies and this one has the best storyline, gameplay, difficult challenges, and beautifully made!
Best Indie Game
Reuben: Lethal Company. I mean it took the world by storm, and it’s pretty fun. Needs more love so it gets more content, since you can run out pretty quickly at the moment.
Ann: Space for the Unbound. A beautiful game that’s full of heart. I adored the story in this and the slow unravelling of the world we knew as late 90s rural Indonesia. There were cute cats, a touching story about growth, wonderfully dramatic music, and pretty pixel art. Loved meeting and getting to know the characters in it too! Also, it’s a testament to the indie spirit for such a beautiful game to come out of South East Asia, very proud of the team and feel privileged to be able to experience it!
Dom: Wizordum. It just hit the right spot and the right time for me, I felt that itch for a fantasy-style setting and was feeling really nostalgic for the retro FPS genre with Doom’s 30th anniversary coming up. Design wise it felt like he was doing a lot of creative stuff with his restriction of building the level terrain out of large cubes.
Grant: The Light Brigade. Didn’t have high hopes for the game but was pleasantly surprised by how good it was overall. I usually just try VR games out to see where trends are currently but TLB made me actually come back to play it over and over again. Just the fact that it made me put on a VR headset more than once is an astonishing testament to how good it was.
Ronnie: Pizza Tower. The art, sound, speed and comedic presentation are highlights of this unique experience.
Christine: Far: Lone Sails. Beautiful game and music. The puzzles are pretty fun too!
Best Horse Game
Reuben: Pikmin 4’s rideable alien dog!
Ann: Horizon Zero Dawn’s coolest robotic horses!
Dom: Astride. It was a pretty cosy game, good for slowing down and it was just well-animated! It was fun even when watching someone else play.
Grant: Darkest Dungeon 2. It does, in fact, have a horse in it. Two of them, even! They’re even present for major parts of the game. Without them, the game might not even be possible!
Christine: I didn’t play a horse game but enjoy this video of the secret trophy in Dead Island 2 (Tw: gore)
We hope you enjoyed reading this! Have a question or want to chat more about game development? Reach out to us!
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