Every year, we at TheGamer write up our own Game of the Year lists to laud our favourite titles from the last 12 months. Just like last year, it feels like my list can’t be fully complete or truthful because I haven't played every single game that came out this year. Look, I'm just one guy! As I work through my backlog of games from the year during the holidays, catching up on what I’ve missed and finishing what I didn’t manage to, I’ll probably start wishing I’d moved some stuff around. Unfortunately, I can’t go forward in time and see what my future self has to say about the order of this list, so here are my favourites so far.
For fun, I’ll be keeping track of how many of these games made me cry, because that’s a surefire way to end up on my GOTY list. I think the number will be pretty high.
10 Life Is Strange: Double Exposure
The newest Life is Strange game was a controversial one for longtime fans of the series, but I might be one of the few people who really loved the way it retreaded familiar narratives in order to reinterpret Max Caulfield as a protagonist and a character. It wasn’t a perfect game by any means, but it did a surprisingly good job of showing us how the teenager we met in the first game had grown and changed as she turned into an adult. We all deserve a redemption arc, and Double Exposure was Max’s.
Cry count: one.
9 Phoenix Springs
I’m a sucker for a good point-and-click, but Phoenix Springs is more than that. It’s surreal, stylistically unique, excellently voice acted, and plays with conventions of the genre. As I said in my five star review, despite the game being incredibly abstract, meandering, and borderline confusing, it moved me to tears when I finished it. I’ve never seen anything like it.
Cry count: two.
8 Metaphor: ReFantazio
I expect Atlus’ newest title will be on many people’s GOTY lists. While I haven’t yet finished the game, and there are some glaring sources of friction stopping me from diving into it headlong (good god, those dungeons are painful), it’s undeniable that the game has excellent storytelling and a lot of important, relevant things to say about the world we live in right now. It might have been higher on my list if I just had time to finish it.
7 Lorelei And The Laser Eyes
Yet another indie game that I simply don’t have anything to compare to, Lorelei and the Laser Eyes received my first ever five star review earlier this year. If you love puzzle games, you’ll be hard pressed to find one more atmospheric, beautiful, and confounding than this one. I played this one while moving into my new home, which meant many nights spent on the couch with my housemates screaming with exhilaration when we collectively figured out a particularly tough puzzle.
6 Closer The Distance
You’re unlikely to see this one on anyone else’s GOTY lists, because it’s been woefully overlooked by most people, but it’s excellent. A very small town loses a teenager named Angie to a tragic car crash, and you try to hold the community together by controlling its members through Sims-like gameplay. It weaves an engrossing, heartbreaking tale of how we deal with grief and how we honour the people we’ve lost. Yes, it made me sob like a baby.
Cry count: three.
5 1000xResist
Good god, this really was an all-timer year for indie games. 1000xResist is astonishingly ambitious in its storytelling, delving into a tale about disease, oppression, generational trauma, religion, and somehow still more beyond that. As an Asian person myself, playing it felt like being punched in the gut a million times, but this game has a gut punch for every kind of person, really.
Cry count: four.
4 Tactical Breach Wizards
Sweet god, this game is good. The XCOM-style turn-based tactics gameplay is extraordinarily finely crafted, making every level an absolute joy to play. But beyond that, the game somehow balances a strongly written, very political tale about authoritarianism and oppression with being funny as hell. Every single one of its characters is amazing. I will ride or die for Tactical Breach Wizards.
3 Helldivers 2
I played so much Helldivers 2 this year. Sure, it fell off a little after its Galactic War narrative started dragging, but seriously. I played so much of it. And I forced so many people to play it with me. It was my first live-service love – it might be an ex now, as I’ve moved on, but I’ll always have a soft spot for it.
2 Balatro
A gamer got hooked on Balatro and ruined their own productivity for weeks? Fork found in kitchen. Everybody and their mother loves Balatro. Maybe I should get my own parents playing it this Christmas. It’s a better choice than Candy Crush, at least.
1 Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth
My fellow Features Editor Ben Sledge clowned me in TheGamer’s Slack when I said in January that Infinite Wealth would be my Game of the Year, but who’s laughing now, Ben?! He was right on principle (concluding the list in the first month of the year is stupid), but it turns out that Infinite Wealth really did rise to the top of everything else I played.
It was hysterically funny, emotionally damaging, and beautifully crafted in every way possible on top of being ridiculously ambitious. It was like four (Maybe five? Maybe more?) games in one, rendered a totally new setting in Hawaii’s Honolulu beautifully, and had more thematic complexity than a game about a reformed Yakuza had any right to be. I’m ride or die for Yakuza games in general, but Infinite Wealth is probably one of my top three favourites in the series, and my favourite of the year.
Cry count: five. What, like you didn’t cry playing this one?
5.0/5 Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth Like Follow Followed RPG Systems OpenCritic Reviews Top Critic Avg: 90/100 Critics Rec: 97% Released January 26, 2024 ESRB M For Mature 17+ Due To Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Sexual Themes, Simulated Gambling, Strong Language Developer(s) Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio Publisher(s) Sega Engine Dragon Engine Franchise YakuzaWHERE TO PLAY
DIGITALLike A Dragon: Infinite Wealth continues the story of Ichiban Kasuga, in the ninth mainline entry in the series formerly known as Yakuza. It will once again feature turn-based combat, and takes our protagonist outside of Japan for the first time.
Genre(s) RPG Powered by Expand Collapse
