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350 games released in 2023 and reviewed here, best first.
350 reviews
A completely free, unofficial Hololive fan-game that stands with the best Vampire Survivors-likes on genuine build diversity and challenge alone — increasingly weighed down by grindy side content and one mandatory platforming gauntlet reviewers near-unanimously dislike.
8 / 10
A turn-based tactical folktale from The Lion's Song studio Mipumi, praised almost unanimously for its storybook atmosphere and deterministic, puzzle-like combat — a short, polished, low-replay-value gem that reviewers consistently describe as knowing exactly when to end.
8 / 10
A "motorvania" blending Trials-style motorbike physics, twin-stick shooting and Metroidvania exploration, wrapped around an emotionally devastating story about motherhood and generational trauma — praised almost universally for its originality, art and soundtrack, held back by a lack of difficulty options and confusing open-world navigation.
8 / 10
A Belle Époque retelling of Pinocchio that wears its Bloodborne influence on its sleeve, then earns the comparison with a weapon-assembly system and a guard-timing mechanic good enough to stand on their own.
8 / 10
A gorgeously illustrated horror life-sim RPG blending fairy-tale folklore, a sapphic dating-sim structure, and genuinely eldritch horror in a rural German setting — celebrated for its striking mixed-media art and branching narrative, but held back at launch by unforgiving, sometimes obscure puzzle and survival segments the developer has since substantially, though not fully, addressed.
8 / 10
A deep, one-time-purchase game-development tycoon that over 2,300 English reviewers rate more highly than its own predecessor — as long as you're happy solving its systems rather than expressing yourself through them.
8 / 10
A meditative, combat-free exploration game about cycling through a doomed world to record its final memories before a mysterious cataclysm erases it — praised almost universally as deeply moving and beautifully realized, held back at launch by real bugs and a short length several reviewers feel undercuts its own ambitions.
8 / 10
A supernatural pirate real-time stealth-tactics game from Mimimi Games, the studio behind Shadow Tactics and Desperados III, praised for its polished craft and inventive cursed-crew abilities — released to a Very Positive reception that sits alongside real complaints about padding, and a launch-period review-bombing campaign unrelated to the game's actual design.
8 / 10
A build-crafting incremental about small creatures smashing a rock for wealth, where the usual "number always goes up" comfort is replaced by permanent choices that can genuinely sabotage a run.
8 / 10
A brutally difficult tactics/tower-defense hybrid where a handful of heroes must defend a mage casting a world-saving spell across ten nights, praised for its combat depth, art and soundtrack — held back by a genuinely divisive balance history and a meta-progression system some reviewers say punishes unlocking too much too fast.
8 / 10
A surreal breakup-simulator that mashes turn-based RPG combat, skateboarding and competitive cooking into one story about confronting your exes and your family — Very Positive at 97.2% across 248 reviews, with a tiny but sharply consistent negative sample naming the same two soft spots, clunky skating and combat that turns repetitive, against writing and art almost nobody disputes.
8 / 10
A solo developer's sci-fi idle game with over ten interlocking systems and players who have logged thousands of hours apiece. The reception is Very Positive, and the one recurring complaint is that late-game progress stops rewarding curiosity and starts demanding one correct answer.
8 / 10
A puzzle game built around one genuinely brilliant idea — photographs you place in the world become the world, letting you reshape reality by swapping what a picture shows for what's actually there — undercut by a runtime and a script that its own fans agree don't live up to the mechanic carrying them.
8 / 10
Shiro Games' open-world mercenary RPG treats a company of sellswords as a small business — wages, food, gear repair and prisoners are the real spreadsheet, and combat is what happens when that spreadsheet goes wrong.
8 / 10
A long-awaited English localization of TYPE-MOON's acclaimed 2012 visual novel, the true origin story of the entire Nasuverse (Fate, Tsukihime, Kara no Kyoukai) — praised almost unanimously for its prose, art direction and music, and hit by a specific, detailed translation- quality complaint alongside real Steam Deck performance problems.
8 / 10
A stylised 2D Metroidvania whose turn-based combat plays like real-time action — attack combos on your turn, parry and block on the enemy's — wrapped in abstract, philosophical art direction, undercut by navigation that loses players and a difficulty curve with no way to ease it beyond what patches have already softened.
8 / 10
A short, atmospheric Bitsy "run poem" about grief and memory, exceptionally well-received on itch.io (4.8/5 from 1,463 ratings) - confirmed genuinely working with real directional movement on both desktop and phone.
7.9 / 10
A horror-themed survivor-like that adds active, twin-stick-style aiming to the Vampire Survivors formula, widely credited as the genre's first genuine evolution — held back by a persistent, heavily-reported visibility complaint over its monochrome palette and flashing effects, and a build-variety complaint the developer began addressing but appears to have folded into a separate, newer game instead.
7.5 / 10
A Hades-and-Dead-Cells-flavoured roguelite metroidvania whose art, combat feel and hub writing draw strong praise for its opening hours, with a consistent, specific counter-argument that its meta-progression grows passive rather than build-defining once the difficulty ramps up.
7.5 / 10
Backpack Hero turns the inventory screen itself into the entire combat system — item shape, orientation and neighbouring slots decide what a fight looks like, not a separate stats page. A look at whether that idea, and the game built around it, survived the jump from a free browser prototype to a finished commercial release the developer has since gone quiet on.
7.5 / 10
A submarine survival-horror sim where the alien monsters outside are rarely the reason a run ends badly — its own review corpus is unusually consistent that the biggest threat is the crew, whether through griefing, incompetence, or seven years of accumulated engine jank.
7.5 / 10
A from-scratch, MIT-licensed rebuild of the real-time area-denial puzzle Microsoft shipped in its 1990s Entertainment Pack — wall off empty sections of the board to trap bouncing balls before they can wreck an unfinished wall, rebuilt here with dedicated touch controls rather than a mouse-only port.
7.5 / 10
A Nordic dark-fairytale adventure whose art, music and folklore draw close to unanimous praise — repeated inside its own top positive review, which admits to hand cramps from "tedious" trial-and-error platforming — while Steam's own data shows nearly half of buyers still see it through to the end.
7.5 / 10
A six-year solo passion project built without RPG Maker or any off-the-shelf framework, praised by CRPG veterans as a genuine, deep throwback in the vein of Jeff Vogel's work — worn down over a 90-to-100-hour playthrough by a widely-reported glut of low-stakes trash combat that even its biggest fans say the back half leans on too heavily.
7.5 / 10
