There have been a lot of great games this year.

Maybe more than in any year we can easily remember.

Because of this we’ve handled our top 50 list of our best games a little differently.

Abstract planetary bodies swirl forming concentric circles in this image from Rytmos.

Below you’ll find two groups of games from 2023.

Going backwards, at the bottom you’ll find our top 10 in an ordered list.

So here are our favourite 50 games of the year.

A Highland Song screenshot showing the peak climbed screen at the top of a high mountain

We hope you might find something in here that passed you by and will make for a lovely discovery.

Be safe, and thanks for sticking with Eurogamer in 2023.

Here’s our Against the Storm review.

A cross-shaped playing field for the abstract shooter Akka Arrh

Here’s our A Highland Song review.

If you’re after sound and light and perfectly balanced waves of arcade excitement, this is unmissable.

It might even topSpace Giraffe.

An ocean voyage scene from fantasy visual novel Amarantus, in which Màrius moans that you, Arik, are unintentionally thwarting his romantic advances on another character.

Here’s our Akka Arrh review.

Amarantus

2023 was a great year for visual novels, and Amarantus is one of our favourites.

Here’s our Amarantus review.

The player aiming a pistol down a corridor at an unseen creature in Amnesia: The Bunker.

Horror and a certain amount of stress ensues, inevitably.

Here’s our Amnesia: The Bunker review.

Huge robots, endless contrails and the glow of radioactive plasma combine to create something wild and memorable.

Armored Core 6 screenshot, showing an airborne mecha nimbly dodging missile fire.

Here’s our Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon review.

Bahnsen Knights

LCB’s Pixel Pulps imagine schlock horror as cursed CGA games from the late 1980s.

Here’s our Bahnsen Knights review.

A car races towards the viewer, lights flashing in this screen from Bahnsen Knights

Here’s our Birth review.

Levels are larger and perhaps less intricate, but the spirit of a true classic sings once more.

Here’s our Bomb Rush Cyberfunk review.

A rat with a hole in its body and a skull for a head lurks in a doorway in Birth

We didn’t see this game coming.

Don’t miss out.

Here’s our Chants of Sennaar review.

Preparing to lay down graffiti in Bomb Rush Cyberfunk

Race through space, battle with cards, and explore the unknown.

Oh yes, and say hello to the frog captain whose ship keeps trying to shoot itself.

Here’s our Cobalt Core review.

Chants of Sennaar tower vista showing walkways and columns at night

Here’s our Dave the Diver review.

It’s a trip to hell.

It’s a love story.

A screenshot from Cobalt Core. A pixelated spaceship has just destroyed another spaceship. There’s a big pixelated explosion. Pixel-yay!

It’s an endless night in a motel right out of indie cinema from the 1990s.

Here’s our El Paso, Elsewhere review.

Final Fantasy 16

PS5

Combat sings even as side quests wither slightly in this grand blockbuster adventure.

Daybreak with a golden sunrise in Dave the Diver, a ship bobs on the water.

The younger generation wrestles against problematic gods, so there’s a certain topicality in the mix too.

Here’s our Final Fantasy 16 review.

iOS, requires Apple Arcade

Every year needs at least one grimly compulsive touchscreen puzzler.

The hero dives and shoots through a spooky abattoir in El Paso, Elsewhere

Here’s our Finity.

Here’s our Football Manager 2024 review.

The writing’s sharp and the music is even sharper.

Clive against bullet hell from a mechanical boss in Final Fantasy 16 DLC

This is not a game to miss.

Here’s our Goodbye Volcano High review.

Here’s our Hi-Fi Rush review.

Erling Haaland scoring a goal for Manchester City in Football Manager 2024.

Honkai: Star Rail

PC, iOS, Android

Here’s our Honkai: Star Rail review.

Humanity

The follow-up to Tetris Effect is a puzzler about programming the movement of crowds.

Oh yes, and you play as a dog?

Goodbye Volcano High screenshot of a contest announcer gesturing toward a band of teen dinosaurs on stage

Here’s our Humanity review.

Jusant

So many of our favourite memories of 2023 are found on Jusant’s near-endless mountain.

Fantastical and also densely realistic, this is video game climbing to dream about.

Hi-Fi RUSH, Chai is dressed as a shark and is standing on the raised walkway in track four

A free solo option next, pls.

Here’s our Jusant review.

Here’s our Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 review.

splash art of dr ratio character, who is a short blue haired man resembling an ancient greek man, wearing a loose white top resembling a toga and blue trousers

Here’s our Moonring review.

It’s a blast on the surface and surprisingly rich with cleverness underneath it all.

Here’s our Remnant 2 review.

A queue of people snakes across a floating level in Humanity

Dare we say: bingo?

Here’s our Resident Evil 4 review.

Warning: it can be super, super hard.

Our young hero hangs, one-handed above a drop on a high section of wall in Jusant. Up ahead the cliff has horizontal ridges set into it.

Here’s our Roto Force review.

The sea has risen and the world that remains is transformed.

Here’s our Saltsea Chronicles review.

Miles Morales as Spider-Man in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 using his aerial combat skills to take down one of Kraven’s hunters

It helps that clever use of colour and light means the game is an absolute beauty, too.

Here’s our Sea of Stars review.

Brace yourself for another compact open-world adventure seen through the buzzing fish-eye lens of an almighty hangover.

Moonring screenshot showing an ancient ruin.

Explore the swamp, smoke cigs, and mess around with dangerous technology.

What is all this sweet work worth, etc etc?

Here’s our Sludge Life 2 review.

A screenshot of Remnant 2’s The Awakened King DLC showing a player attacking seemingly amphibious enemies while an imposing castle looms overhead.

And what he found was a classic game that was successfully starting to embrace modern elements of design.

And miss you, Wes!

Here’s our Street Fighter 6 review.

Resident Evil 4 Remake Leon S. Kennedy

Super Mario Bros. Wonder is brisk, inventive, and scattered with popping candy joy.

Here’s our Super Mario Bros. Wonder review.

Super Mario RPG

The perfect Christmas game?

Roto force review screenshot - a blue square contains you and your missiles, in front of a mustard yellow background

With him, though, it remains both inviting and gorgeously odd.

A few accessibility features would have completed the package, though.

Here’s our Super Mario RPG review.

Saltsea Chronicles - a look-out nest-type building stands at the top of a pole suspended above walkways and fauna in Saltsea Chronicles.

You are spoiling us, madames.

Here’s our Synapse review.

Here’s our Tchia review.

A title card from Saltsea Chronicles. Against a shifting sky, the text reads: The crew takes a minute to gather themselves.

It’s a reverse city-builder, really.

It’s heady stuff.

Here’s our Terra Nil review.

Saltsea Chronicles - a cross-section of a sailing ship shows many chambers within the vessel. The one selected reads “Supplies”

But there’s much more to it than that.

This is a complex game about community and identity as well as divination and witchcraft.

It’s beautiful, and filled with wrenching choices.

Sea of Stars characters look out over a town in the distance

Here’s our The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood review.

Thirsty Suitors

PC, PS5, Switch, Xbox X/S

What a dazzling game.

Thirsty Suitors is an adventure that includes turn-based battles, open-world skating, and the tricky embrace of family.

Sludge Life 2 an anthropomorphic bird on a football pitch

Come for the action, stay for some delicious recipes.

Here’s our Thirsty Suitors review.

Turbo Overkill

Unapologetic - that’s what Turbo Overkill is.

A.K.I. beats Chun Li in Street Fighter 6

There’s no filler here - it’s all banger.

Here’s our Turbo Overkill review.

It’s generous, magical stuff.

super mario bros wonder screenshot showing mario inhabiting a spiky creature, flying through the air

Here’s our Venba review.

It’s a 2D sokoban adventure at heart, but this core design is riddled with complexities and ambiguities.

The Steam page promises “several stages of frustration.”

A screenshot from the Super Mario RPG remake showing Mario leaping away from a lava castle visible in the background.

Our top 10 games of 2023

10.

Come for the visual splendour, stay for the musical interlude.

No word from us on whether that bear makes another appearance.

Chaos and flames fill the screen in this shot from Synapse.

Here’s our Alan Wake 2 review.

Here’s our Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew review

8.

Filled with love and insight, it also includes a lot of cats.

Tchia smiling on diving challenge near Mwaken Village

What more could we ask for?

Here’s our A Space for the Unbound review.

The Banished Vault

Space exploration?

A screenshot from Terra Nil. Bertie has significantly regrown the Arctic biome now. The waters are blue again, the land is green, and the aurora has returned. It’s not yet refrozen though - that’s the next step.

An interstellar Gothic monastery?

And it all looks like it was printed by Durer?

Luckily, The Banished Vault is every bit as fascinating, challenging, and overwhelming as the sales pitch.

Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood screenshot showing Fortuna in pixel art centre-frame, staring at the camera with tears in her eyes. She wears deep purple, with purple eye shadow and a third eye in her forehead.

This is an astonishing piece of game design and sheer game conception.

It’s not for everyone, but that’s part of what makes it such a thrill.

Here’s our The Banished Vault review.

Thirsty Suitors artwork showing two main characters back to back in front of a yellow and black loveheart, with a bright purple-pink background.

If you’re undecided, there’s a demo so you could wet your beak.

Here’s our Pikmin 4 review.

Here’s our Mediterraneo Inferno review.

Turbo Overkill promo screen showing a giant eye in the distance shooting a huge laser beam at the protagonist sitting on a cool motorbike

Here’s our The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom review.

Rytmos is a gorgeous musical puzzler, with ingenious solutions that always yield to playfulness and experimentation.

But more than that, it’s a journey into some of the most fascinating areas of world music.

Venba combs her hair in the mirror looking content in Venba

Come for the challenge, stay for the Ethiopian Jazz.

2023 games at their most generous.

Here’s our Rytmos review.

A tile with the shape of a splayed human body in this screen from Void Stranger. “So be it!” is written at the bottom.

This is a role-playing game of depth and imagination, with an astonishing amount of space for player expressiveness.

It’s the consummate blockbuster.

Here’s our Baldur’s Gate 3 review.

Alan in Alan Wake 2 gives a small smile as he holds an Oh Deer diner mug

In 2023 there was no headier brew.

Here’s our Cocoon review.

An illustration showing all eight members of the Red Marley’s undead crew gathered together in a heroic pose. Fearless female pirate Afia Manicat stands front and centre, glowing spectral sword in hand.

A Space for the Unbound review - Atma and Reya sit next to each other in the movie theatre and awkwardly touch hands

The Banished Vault key art in gothic black-and-white pencil style with a pointy city to the left and moon and bright sun to the right, with stars in the sky.

Pikmin 4 artwork showing a bulborb enemy attacking.

An illustration from Mediterranea Inferno showing three naked young men, viewed from the waist up, bathed in a sinister green light as neon pink scissors dance around them. Mida stares out in the middle, golden threads stretching from the fingers of his crossed arms, while Claudio and Andrea stand either side behind him, both wearing blindfolds.

Zelda holds a torch as she and Link look at something in Tears of the Kingdom

A puzzle level that forms a looping track over several faces of a knobbly cube in this screen from Rytmos.

Baldur’s Gate 3’s Astarion deep in thought

Key artwork from the game Cocoon, showing a small insect-like character, with wings, looking into a large transparent dome that has a world within. And a dome with another world within. Which has a dome with another world in.