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350 games released in 2023 and reviewed here, best first.
350 reviews
A genuinely ad-free, purchase-free idle RPG from a solo developer players consistently praise for listening and staying active — undercut by a thin, repetitive core loop that even a large share of its own fans concede has "not much to it."
5.5 / 10
A cheap idle collector-battler from solo developer okyakusama, built around gathering AI-illustrated banshees and gambling on skill-book rerolls, undercut by thin late-game content and no offline progression at all.
5.5 / 10
A cheap fitness-themed clicker from the same solo developer behind Idling Gears, still receiving updates as recently as last week — undercut by an achievement asking players to log in for 365 days straight when most of the game's own reviewers say there isn't 365 days of content.
5.5 / 10
One entry in a whole shelf of near-identical cheap idle RPGs from the same solo developer, with genuine long-term depth for players who push through — and a first hour so poorly explained that one reviewer called it "the easiest refund of my life."
5.5 / 10
A genuinely no-click idle farm-management game about cat fairies tending crops and minerals -- charming and well-built for its first several hours, but Steam's own achievement data shows the overwhelming majority of players stop long before the back half of its content, and price-versus-length is the review sample's single most repeated complaint.
5.5 / 10
Cold Hours' free pixel-art clicker nails a charming opening few hours, then buries its own idle promise under an offline-time cap, an autoclicker-favouring economy and a premium currency that gates full completion.
5.5 / 10
A cheap, fairly-monetised idle RPG about auto-battling demons with a squad of exorcists and spirit pets -- functional and honest about its price, but its own Chinese-speaking audience (89 of its 100 reviews) calls it a near-copy of the developer's two previous idle games, and its tiny English-language review sample flags a rough machine translation.
5.5 / 10
A sci-fi hero-progression RTS/tower-defense hybrid from Kingdom Rush studio Ironhide, praised for its charming art and accessible strategy layer — hit by real, well-documented melee AI problems, a step down from its beloved predecessor, and a specific final-mission softlock bug the developer appears to have abandoned within a month of launch to focus on its bigger Kingdom Rush franchise instead.
5.5 / 10
The game built to match its own fake advertisement, and one of the highest-grossing mobile titles on earth. Rated 4.7 by nearly half a million people, mocked everywhere else as a bait-and- switch — and both of those are accurate descriptions of what happens after you install it.
5.5 / 10
A charming, Pokemon-inspired monster-collection game with a genuinely fun core loop that its tiny review sample still enjoys — held back by real, repeated UI and control complaints that several reviewers feel give it an unfinished, Early-Access-adjacent feel despite shipping as a full release.
5.5 / 10
A cheap, genuinely charming room-decorating sim that lets you build the desk and bedroom setup you actually want — held back by consistently reported save-corrupting bugs, frustratingly rigid room-building tools, an achievement that requires posting to Twitter/X, and a serious, specifically described Workshop moderation problem.
5.5 / 10
A physics-based interactive food-art toy years in the making after a delayed Kickstarter campaign, praised by some for its striking visuals and satisfying sandbox chaos — and criticized by a substantial share of reviewers, including original backers, for unexplained, unintuitive controls that undercut the experience it set out to deliver.
5.5 / 10
A Nordic-folklore action roguelite that launched with a secretly always-online requirement for a single-player game, patched it out within months after backlash, then wound down development entirely by October 2023 — leaving real structural complaints about exploration and weapon variety permanently unaddressed.
5.5 / 10
A beautiful feudal-Japan village-builder that both its critics and its own defenders keep measuring against Medieval Dynasty — and finding wanting, with clunky combat, broken enemy AI and a grind so pronounced that building a single house can demand its own sub-loop of crafting.
5.5 / 10
A chibi-anime dungeon-crawler ARPG from Marvelous offering seven playable classes and a Torchlight-esque loot loop — undercut by combat reviewers consistently describe as shallow to the point of feeling mobile-first, a price nearly every reviewer calls too steep for the depth on offer, and keyboard-and-mouse controls widely reported as close to unplayable.
5.5 / 10
A competent bullet-heaven survivor-like whose Mostly Positive reception sits alongside a genuinely well-documented story — a 13-month update silence the solo developer has since confirmed directly was caused by a pivot to a second project, on top of a separate, real complaint that its difficulty is punishing even on Easy.
5.5 / 10
A free 2023 idle-management game about breeding demons, undead and warlocks from the top of each faction's chain down — Mixed across 867 reviews, with a long-running, well-documented complaint that its offline progress is a rounding error and its pacing is tuned around a NZ$56.99 token pack.
5.5 / 10
A janky, PS2-throwback sword-and-gunplay action game that split opinion at launch and has just weathered a fresh, verified controversy of its own — a retroactive, initially undisclosed swap to AI-adjusted store page art that the developer has since publicly disclosed and clarified doesn't touch the actual game.
5.5 / 10
A ground-up Unreal Engine 5 remaster of one of survival gaming's biggest franchises, sold as a paid upgrade that a huge share of its own reviewers say carried over the original's bugs while demanding hardware far beyond what the visual improvements justify.
5 / 10
A free-to-play auto-battler that blends Auto Chess, idle RPG and CCG mechanics — its own Steam review corpus agrees the battles work, then splits hard over whether the gacha hero system and ad load are worth putting up with.
5 / 10
A catastrophically incomplete 2023 launch that devastated long-time Blood Bowl 2 fans has genuinely improved on the technical side according to more recent reviews, but a persistent, heavily-corroborated complaint about teams being locked behind premium currency, a battle pass and seasonal releases — rather than available at launch — kept the negative sample nearly as high in 2025 as it was at launch.
5 / 10
A genuinely novel medieval melee extraction looter, praised by a dedicated niche audience for combat unlike anything else in the genre — undercut by a "free to play" framing several reviewers say locks most real content behind a paid expansion, a toxic unmatched PvP ecosystem, and a development team this review's research confirms went silent for more than two and a half years after a brief, active post-launch period.
5 / 10
A free-to-play idle RPG about farming, fishing and fighting for scrap, released by solo developer blevsoft in December 2023 and left without a content update since January 2024.
5 / 10
A free-to-play sci-fi idler in ongoing Early Access since October 2023, built as an authorised spiritual successor to Idle Space Raider and Transport Defender, undercut by a prestige loop that pays out less on every reset and a store-page offline-progress promise several reviewers say doesn't hold up.
5 / 10
