I didn’t do one of these posts last year because I didn’t play enough games, but I played a lot this year, and so many of them were fantastic! There were even more great games that didn’t make my list, but I managed to make myself stop at ten. So in no particular order, except the last two, here they are!

*If you want to know more about the diversity and accessibility in these games, check out the games section of my Diverse Books/Games page!*

Darkside Detective (+ A Fumble in the Dark)

This is such a fun point-and-click pixel art paranormal detective game! There’s puzzles and humor, but maybe the best thing of all is the adorable friendship between McQueen and Dooley.

MY REVIEW

Calico

This is a chill, adorable game where you go on little fetch quests and decorate your cafe and pet lots of animals. What makes it so fun is how silly it is, what with how you can make big animals small and small animals big and lift polar bears above your head and put hats on all your pets and wear your pets as hats and use magical potions to do all sorts of things, all with a physics engine that makes the animals flop around in fun ways.

MY REVIEW

Spellcaster University

This deck building / sorta management sim is addictive! It has so much cuteness and creativity with all the types of magic, magical items, magical careers, supernaturals, and more. It’s so fun uncovering more as I play. As is trying to achieve the goals in each level before time runs out. The little characters are cute too.

MY REVIEW

The Sexy Brutale

This is a hard game to describe in a sentence, but it’s a very cool sorta murder mystery puzzle game involving a repeating day. And it’s all set in the extravagant, creepy mansion of an eccentric millionaire. The gameplay is fun, the graphics are cool, and the story and lore are so detailed and fascinating.

MY REVIEW

Song of Farca

I sort of had a blast getting into the detective/hacker elements of this game and pretending I was actually zooming in on grainy security cam footage and moving drones about and doing all the things they do in movies even though it’s not at all accurate to real life. I also enjoyed the slightly cyberpunk world and the intensity of the story running throughout the game. There’s also lots of diversity, and you play as a sapphic main character.

MY REVIEW

A Ghost Story?

This visual novel about a haunted house and a ghost was lovely and bittersweet and beautifully illustrated with such a strong, unique art style. The story took some surprising but really cool twists, and I felt for these characters. It’s also queer, since you play as a guy and can romance male, female, and nonbinary characters.

MY REVIEW

Townscaper

This is just a building sim, no challenges or objectives, but “just” doesn’t do it justice. It’s a really well-made game that let’s you chill while using your creativity to create cute, colorful little (or not so little) towns or castles or compounds, and its simplicity means you don’t get bogged down in details. And with a handful of mods, you can have even more creative options! (The image uses my own custom color palette and a weather mod.)

MY REVIEW

First Bite

This was such a fun, sexy visual novel for vampire lovers, by vampire lovers. They absolutely nailed the appeal of vampires, and though this isn’t very long, it’s a great time! And all three characters are canonically queer.

MY REVIEW

And my top two favorites, because these are very different games that both excel at what they do, and I couldn’t choose just one:

Synthetic Lover

The romance in this visual novel, just UGH! So perfect! There were actually three romance endings, and all of them were great, but one especially got me right in the feels with how much I felt it and how perfect the characters were for each other. It was also just an enjoyable sci-fi story and had lots of gorgeous artwork.

MY REVIEW

Project Zomboid

If you follow me on Twitter, you know I haven’t shut up about this game since I started playing it months ago. I would never have expected to even try, let alone LOVE, a zombie apocalypse survival life sim type of game, but the attention to detail, the realism, the freedom to make your own goals (beyond simply surviving), how it’s just as much about post-apoc survival as it is about zombie killing, and the customization that allows for players of all skill levels to play makes this a truly phenomenal game!

MY REVIEW

Check out my other end of the year posts!

Gamer Musings: Top Ten Games I Played in 2022
Cover Characteristics: Best Book Covers from Books I Read in 2022
Bookish Musings: Top Ten Characters from Books I Read in 2022
Bookish Musings: Top Ten Books/Series I Read in 2022 + Some Non-Bookish Things