It's been one of those years where I feel like I've been just waiting for something good to come out... all year. To kill time, I've gone back to a lot of the old ones like Factorio, Terraria and Satisfactory (which is STILL NOT OUT). There have been a few gems here and there, but I've mostly been re-playing stuff, clearing the backlog or just playing filler games that are "fine, but forgettable" (like Wolfenstein: The Old Blood, Elden Ring and Metro Exodus). That being said, there were still some really fantastic ones out this year that are absolutely worth your time. They are, in order:
I remember reading a review of a game last year where the guy's girlfriend was playing it, without any of the preconceptions that us gamers grow up with. She kept asking questions like "But why can't I do this?" "How did you know I'd be able to interact with that?". As gamers, we've learned over time subtle things like "objects looking slightly different usually mean you can interact with them". Weird West is one of the first games that I feel really starts to break out of that; if you think "I wonder if I can..." the answer is probably "yes". Aside from the very detailed simulation of the Weird West, there's also bounties, combat, stealth, looting, quests and a really excellent story.
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I love the ideas that come out of indie game studios. This one is about being a shipbreaker; someone who disassembles old space ships. If you've paid attention to the players who've had this throughout EA you'll see a lot of divided opinions on what made it into the game & what didn't - but I respect the fact that this studio set out to do something very specific, and they did it. Yeah, there could be more ships - but they decided they wanted to make a really solid game about shipbreaking and tell a story about worker rights - and they did that amazingly well. I absolutely recommend playing this - I've spent almost 50 hours in this and absolutely loved it.
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Grounded is effectively a multiplayer survival game of "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids". It's well optimised, the building system is polished and it's really immersive to play in. There are tons of building pieces which should make some interesting possibilities for bases. The garden world is pretty huge, hand crafted and full of interesting things to find. At such a small scale, it's really interesting to walk among the dirt, seeing grass stalks as high as trees. There's also tons of verticality; you can climb grass stalks, get high up to get a better view of your surroundings, delve into an ant hill and go diving in the pond. There's also loads of weapon and armour sets to make from bug parts.
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This does exactly what it says on the tin. Want a game where you can chill out to the cathartic white noise and systematic cleaning of power washing? You've come to the right place. Like many others I laughed at this and rolled by eyes when I first saw it come out, but there's definitely space in my life for this. End of a long day of work, stick a film on, clean a children's play area. The controls are great, there's a whole bunch of equipment upgrades and LOADS of things to clean. Really well made game.
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Dorfromantik is a great example of a well defined, highly polished, relaxing game. It reminds me very strongly of the Carcassonne board game where you have to place tiles on a board, and the edges have to match the others around them. Here you're allowed to place them wherever you like, but you score more points (and extra tiles) by placing them correctly. As you place tiles, some of them contain "quests" where you have to build fields of a certain size, rivers of a certain length etc. There are also new tile types that unlock once you reach certain score milestones. It has a lovely relaxing soundtrack, and is really pretty to look at.
Read the reviewIn other news, the Early Access list is still as full as ever, and some of the most anticipated games are still on there. Valheim has lost all momentum and fallen to the wayside as far as I'm concerned. I look forward to playing that again when it's out, but the development speed is so slow that I dont expect to play it again for at least another 2 years. Same publisher / studio as Satisfactory.
Dyson Sphere Program has seen a lot more progress and is nearing the finish line (I think), having recently released a combat trailer (which I will immediately disable)
Cosmoteer took the automation and space gaming communities by storm recently and is releasing patches faster than they can be played. That's a 2D space freelancer game, but your ship is entirely built from scratch; you have to plan where the crew quarters go, manage power, design, energy and armor to have an effective ship. It's great.
Core Keeper is well up the top of my EA list. I played it in February when it first game out and loved every minute of it, but don't want to ruin it so I'm waiting for full release. I don't understand companies that add seasonal event content to games that aren't even out yet, but hopefully it'll continue adding new regions at a decent pace.
Everspace 2 is also nearing full release, Foundation has added another 0.1 to the end of it's version number, Len's Island has pretty much rebuilt the entire game, Timberborn just released a major new content patch for Christmas (like last year) and The Universim is grinding it's way (possibly) to releasing soon too after 9 years and is actually looking like it will be really good fun... just 5 years late.