Published On Dec 26, 2023
Last year I did a game of the year list picked by my friends, who could only choose one each with no double ups. This gave us a much more realistic list than the bullshit we saw at the Game Awards. This year we're doing at again, but we're also including a community pick from you guys.
Pizza Tower
This was the Rathole audience pick for game of the year and much like every other deserving game that wasn't Baldurs Gate it was absolutely dicked by the Game Awards, otherwise known as the Game Infomercials Hour.
Pizza Tower is like if Courage the Cowardly dog mated with Luigi to make the most frantic platformer of all time. No other game on this list made me laugh from just the animations alone as this one did.
You're a chef gathering ingredients across a level, panic murdering critters that look just as terrified to be there as you. You use a range of movement combos to quickly wall run and blast your way through to the end, activating pizza time and hauling ass back to the beginning of the stage with a timer ticking away. It's incredible. I might have to do a proper review of this one down the line.
Baldur's gate
Since PC gaming has been a thing people have been trying to make a 1:1 d&d experience. When Larion studios dropped Baldur's gate 3 after six years of development and $100 million dollars in budget they certifiably proved that digital D&D is almost on par with one DM spending a weekend looking at monster stat blocks only to have it all thrown out cause the players decided to kill the king.
As perhaps the most feature rich dating simulator ever created Baldur's gate is primarily about simping for the goth girl that never puts out while fending off all the other dick riders. When Larion noted that people wanted lots of party members there was a translation issue and instead of members they wrote down "genitalia"
Tears of the Kingdom
Breath of the wild two is a great follow-up to one of this generations most influential games. They turned the map 90 degrees and completely defamiliarised Hyrule.
To expand on the game they added Sky islands with lots of nothing in-between and then when that wasn't enough they added caves with lots of nothing in-between.
To expand on puzzles the Devs also added a fuck around and find out mechanic known as building.
Just as an actual serious note. If you're somehow only just hearing about these games play breath of the wild first. Tears of the kingdom is really a "please sir may I have some more" game.
Battlebit
Battlebit is a return to tradition, getting shot from a million miles away by some sniper you can't see .
Battlebit did what no triple A studio seemingly can in 2023, just make a battlefield game. It also did what 50% of all indies can't help but do, mercilessly cruise on Minecraft aesthetics. It also has a transport helicopter that will either drop you a million miles away from the objective or kill you.
Slay the princess
Making fun of visual novels feels like punching the kid with glasses on. It's just not sporting.
Fortunately rats have no sense of honour. Fuck that kid.
Slay the princess is a horror choose your own adventure about killing your manic pixie Dreamgirl. I don't know about you but my Dreamgirl occasionally grows a million hands and cries blood. Having massive latitudes of freedom isn't expected in this genre but they somehow managed it with this one
Dwarf Fortress
The only thing that held back dwarf fortress from making a million dollars were Devs never bothering to put a price tag on it. And a functional UI. And graphics that non-matrix hackers could understand.
This is a mining simulation that is more story generator than tactical wargame.
Want something done, put a job order in and hope a dwarf who isn't busy getting drunk does it. Want a nice clean fort? Too bad one of your dwarves decided to hoard a wheel of cheese in his room and it's stinking up the place.
Prepare for the joys of raising depressed children because you forgot to deselect "carry dead bodies to the crypt" from the chores kids could do. The game ends when you get exasperated with a sudden tanking in the frame rate cause your CPU can no longer keep up with all your forts bullshit.