2023 was an exceedingly intense year for the gaming industry. It satisfied all gamers worldwide with long-anticipated popular game releases, as well as high-quality sequels and remakes of classics, and not without surprises. With so many recent game releases, it was quite a task to form any kind of shortlist of the best games of 2023. Nevertheless, we have decided to choose the best from the best recent video games, according to critics’ and players’ scores. As much as we’d like to, we can’t cover all the top games of 2023 in detail, so we’ve decided to create a shortlist of Top 7 of the most popular video games that became a real highlight for the entire gaming world in 2023. Make yourself comfortable and embark on our introduction to the most trending and popular games of the past year. 7. Starfield Bethesda Game Studios’ most ambitious, anticipated, and long-delayed title was finally released on September 6, 2023. For the first time in their history, Tod Howard and Co. decided to step away from the boundaries of their detail-designed game worlds and make the Starfield universe procedurally generated. What came out of it? A virtually endless universe with vast areas to explore, a multitude of characters and different factions, an incredible number of various enemies, and tons and tons of loot for the player to collect. Built on Creation Engine 2, Bethesda’s sci-fi RPG delivers on all its promises and has all the chances to become one of the most popular games for the years to come. When it comes to the players’ and critics’ dissatisfaction with the relatively empty game world followed by overall game scores decrease another ambition and highly anticipated game in a similar sci-fi setting comes to mind. We’re talking about No Man’s Sky with its promises of “quintillions of procedurally generated planets”, complete freedom of action, and exploration in a virtually infinite MMO universe. As a result of the wave of negative reviews and refunds that hit the game after its release, its developers, Hello Games, made the only right conclusion, namely, they conducted massive and high-quality work on the game’s misprints, and put all their efforts into further development of the project. We hope that Bethesda will draw conclusions and keep refining Starfield transforming it from an experiment to a solid game title. And no matter how Starfield is criticized, it has already taken its place among the games that somehow changed the game industry and we are unlikely to see anything like it soon. 6. Hogwarts Legacy The open-world RPG which takes place in the Harry Potter universe from its very announcement has become the most anticipated game and was destined for popularity, due to the huge fan base of the original work and its multiple spinoffs. And even though you won’t meet the Boy Who Survived or fight Lord Voldemort in Hogwarts Legacy, Avalanche Studios has managed to fulfill the expectations of numerous fans. The Hogwarts Legacy game developers succeeded in the most important thing – They have designed an incredibly detailed and elaborated Hogwarts beyond anything imaginable. Avalance Studios managed to recreate an amazing magical environment of the school of wizardry and offer each player the opportunity to feel themselves as Hogwarts students, immerse in its numerous secrets, and discover its previously unknown mysteries. Released on February 10, 2023, Hogwarts Legacy impressed users with an incredibly beautiful game world created with the help of the Unreal 4 game engine. Another reason for the game’s incredible popularity is that it was published on almost all existing gaming platforms, including the previous generations of PlayStation and X-box consoles, as well as on the Nintendo Switch. Thanks to its top-notch visuals and highest level of user reach, Hogwarts Legacy immediately became the most popular game of the season, and now, almost a year after its release remains one of the best games of 2023. The more surprising thing such a popular game whose sales have already exceeded 15 million copies didn’t receive a single nomination at the annual Game Awards ceremony. Well, we’ll leave that to the credit of the award holders and the jury. 5. Lies of P An incredible mix of Bloodborne and Pinnokyo, Lies of P combined the hardcore gameplay of Souls-like games with the intriguing story and deep lore that is also the signature of Hidetako Miyazaki’s creations. Never concealing that they drew inspiration for the game’s design and combat system from Bloodborne, the Lies of P creators have hit the trends. While thousands of fans around the world were waiting for a sequel to Miyazaki’s masterpiece, on 18 September 2023 Round8 Studio offered them an alternative that looks like Bloodborne’s boaty twin and is made with such high quality that it can already be called one of the best games in the genre and the best Souls-like of 2023. 4. Alan Wake 2 Another much-anticipated title on this list. The sequel to the acclaimed mystical horror-action game from Remedy Entertainment has been in development for more than a decade. During these years the studio had time to develop and release several other products, draw lessons from the mistakes, and as a result on 27 October 2023 finally released probably the best video game in the survival horror genre for the last few years. Alan Wake 2 stands as a quintessence of all the best of the studio’s experience. The team led by Sam Lake did exactly what was expected of them, namely a psychological thriller with a mystical component, a plot with a lot of references to the original game, as well as to horror and thriller movies, as well as stunning graphics, provided by the Northlight Engine. As a result, fans got themselves a heart-pounding, knee-jerking story, and the studio earned a nomination for Best Game of 2023 from the Game Awards. 3. Diablo IV As it turns out, since the release of Diablo 3, Blizzard has been doing more than just merging with Activision, dealing with controversy within the company and producing a disappointing Warcraft 3 remaster alongside a successful remaster of Diablo 2. This became evident on June 6, 2023, at the release of the fourth part of their iconic action RPG video game. The Blizzard team has demonstrated that they are not only able to learn from their own mistakes but are not bent on adopting the best ideas and trends that have emerged in the genre over the past decade. Diablo IV received an open world, a new antagonist, and a new-old approach to character development while retaining everything that millions of fans around the world consider the Diablo series to be the best game in the genre, which was created by the very first part of the franchise back in 1996. Another important innovation developers made in Diablo IV is the rethinking of the Seasons, which first appeared in the third part of the game. Now each Season is a full-fledged DLC with a separate storyline, new game mechanics, and challenges. Thanks to that the title of the best video game time killer of 2023 goes to Blizzard. 2. Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom The previous game in the series, Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, is considered by many to be the best game ever in the history of the gaming industry with more than 32 million copies sold. Therefore, the creators of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom initially faced a very high bar represented by its famous predecessor. But has the Nintendo EPD team managed to fulfill the expectations of millions of fans, and make the new part of Link’s adventures worthy of its predecessor? Yes, they did! Eiji Aonuma’s team took the best of the best from the previous franchise chapters and expanded it with innovative gameplay elements, such as Zonai devices that can be used for a variety of purposes, from combat to the creation of various types of machinery, thus evolving the world of Hyrule into an even more complex and immersive sandbox. Do the series fans appreciate such innovations? Consider this: the game was released on May 19, 2023, and within six months the total number of copies sold exceeded 19.5 million. Taking into account that the Legend of Zelda is traditionally a Nintendo Switch exclusive, this is an undeniable success! Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom for sure would have claimed the first place in our “the best video games of 2023” shortlist if exactly that same year, the sequel to another famous fantasy game franchise had not been published. 1. Baldurs Gate 3 9 times out of 10 when someone says “classic RPG” it’s the Baldurs Gate 2: Shadows of Amn they keep in mind. For the last two decades this unmatched masterpiece, made under the Forgotten Realms license and based on the AD&D 2.0 mechanics, remained the elusive benchmark for porting board game rules to a video game. Baldurs Gate 2 creators, Bioware Studios have subsequently attempted to replicate its success by producing such significant titles as Dragon Age, Mass Effect, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Although each game was iconic in its own way, players around the world looked forward to a return to Faerun. But at some point, Bioware lost its insight and has spent the last 10 years spewing out failure after failure. But there was one team that risked taking the responsibility for the legendary RPG sequel development. It was Larian Studios, who already created and released the brilliant and highly acclaimed Divinity: Original Sin 1 & 2 that brought back from oblivion the genre of classic RPGs with their wagering, hardcore gameplay, and a huge variability of decisions. On August 6, 2023, Baldurs Gate 3 was released and since then it has been hitting the trends of both video game magazines and various games-related forums. The reasons for this excitement are merited. Baldurs Gate 3 is based on the D&D 5 core rules and built on Divinity Engine 4. It includes over 170 hours of cinematic clips and three times as much cinematic dialogue hours which is three times exceeds the Lord of the Rings novel. Larian has received it all: worldwide acclaim and multiple awards, including the Game of the Year title from the Golden Joystick Awards and The Game Awards, and some even considered it the best video game of the decade. And it’s hard to argue with that. Of course, in this article, we have not listed all the best games of 2023. But at least we would like to mention such memorable 2023 releases as Resident Evil 4, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Dead Space Remastered, Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, Final Fantasy XVI, and Sea of Stars. 2023 was a great year for gaming, but let’s take a look at what’s coming up in 2024. The Most Anticipated Games of 2024 2024 has so many promising and highly anticipated video game releases in store that it could very well shatter the 2023 achievements. See for yourself: Final Fantasy VII Rebirth by Square Enix. Star Wars Outlaws by Ubisoft and Lucasfilm Games. Persona 3 Reload by Atlius and P Studio. Ubisoft’s Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. Avowed developed by Obsidian Entertainment. Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II – a highly anticipated AAA sequel to the indie masterpiece Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice developed by Ninja Theory. A highly promising Souls-like Black Myth: Wukong Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, a sequel to one of the best RPGs of the 2000s that has been on the brink for a long time. And of course: S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 by GSC Game World which is expected to be a Microsoft exclusive at least for the first year after it’s released. All these games have at least one thing in common, they are created by professional teams of developers. And it’s a great time to mention that Arrible has exactly this kind of team in place. Game Development Services by Arrible Arrible, is an international award-winning game development company that offers you an experienced team of skilled game developers, artists, and testers capable of creating a game of your dreams from scratch. Game development from concept to release.With 60+ highly skilled versatile specialists on staff, we are offering a full-cycle of game development services starting from creating a game concept to pre-release final product testing. Our experience and solid skillset allow for offering custom solutions for full-cycle game development. Game co-developmentIf you already gathered the core team but lack sub-specialists on staff Arrible will gladly enhance your project with the support of our expert designers, programmers, and artists. Game portingEager to maximize your reach and optimize your game’s features for different platforms? Our experts ensure a smooth transition across platforms and high-quality porting of mobile and PC games from one platform to another We provide our clients and partners with all the creatives, techies, programmers, writers, and testers needed to develop your game and bring your vision to life. Aiming for the game of the year title? Study the detailed information on Arrible development services and portfolio, and don’t hesitate to contact us!
2023 was an exceedingly intense year for the gaming industry. It satisfied all gamers worldwide with long-anticipated popular game releases, as well as high-quality sequels and remakes of classics, and not without surprises. With so many recent game releases, it was quite a task to form any kind of shortlist of the best games of 2023. Nevertheless, we have decided to choose the best from the best recent video games, according to critics’ and players’ scores. As much as we’d like to, we can’t cover all the top games of 2023 in detail, so we’ve decided to create a shortlist of Top 7 of the most popular video games that became a real highlight for the entire gaming world in 2023. Make yourself comfortable and embark on our introduction to the most trending and popular games of the past year. 7. Starfield Bethesda Game Studios’ most ambitious, anticipated, and long-delayed title was finally released on September 6, 2023. For the first time in their history, Tod Howard and Co. decided to step away from the boundaries of their detail-designed game worlds and make the Starfield universe procedurally generated. What came out of it? A virtually endless universe with vast areas to explore, a multitude of characters and different factions, an incredible number of various enemies, and tons and tons of loot for the player to collect. Built on Creation Engine 2, Bethesda’s sci-fi RPG delivers on all its promises and has all the chances to become one of the most popular games for the years to come. When it comes to the players’ and critics’ dissatisfaction with the relatively empty game world followed by overall game scores decrease another ambition and highly anticipated game in a similar sci-fi setting comes to mind. We’re talking about No Man’s Sky with its promises of “quintillions of procedurally generated planets”, complete freedom of action, and exploration in a virtually infinite MMO universe. As a result of the wave of negative reviews and refunds that hit the game after its release, its developers, Hello Games, made the only right conclusion, namely, they conducted massive and high-quality work on the game’s misprints, and put all their efforts into further development of the project. We hope that Bethesda will draw conclusions and keep refining Starfield transforming it from an experiment to a solid game title. And no matter how Starfield is criticized, it has already taken its place among the games that somehow changed the game industry and we are unlikely to see anything like it soon. 6. Hogwarts Legacy The open-world RPG which takes place in the Harry Potter universe from its very announcement has become the most anticipated game and was destined for popularity, due to the huge fan base of the original work and its multiple spinoffs. And even though you won’t meet the Boy Who Survived or fight Lord Voldemort in Hogwarts Legacy, Avalanche Studios has managed to fulfill the expectations of numerous fans. The Hogwarts Legacy game developers succeeded in the most important thing – They have designed an incredibly detailed and elaborated Hogwarts beyond anything imaginable. Avalance Studios managed to recreate an amazing magical environment of the school of wizardry and offer each player the opportunity to feel themselves as Hogwarts students, immerse in its numerous secrets, and discover its previously unknown mysteries. Released on February 10, 2023, Hogwarts Legacy impressed users with an incredibly beautiful game world created with the help of the Unreal 4 game engine. Another reason for the game’s incredible popularity is that it was published on almost all existing gaming platforms, including the previous generations of PlayStation and X-box consoles, as well as on the Nintendo Switch. Thanks to its top-notch visuals and highest level of user reach, Hogwarts Legacy immediately became the most popular game of the season, and now, almost a year after its release remains one of the best games of 2023. The more surprising thing such a popular game whose sales have already exceeded 15 million copies didn’t receive a single nomination at the annual Game Awards ceremony. Well, we’ll leave that to the credit of the award holders and the jury. 5. Lies of P An incredible mix of Bloodborne and Pinnokyo, Lies of P combined the hardcore gameplay of Souls-like games with the intriguing story and deep lore that is also the signature of Hidetako Miyazaki’s creations. Never concealing that they drew inspiration for the game’s design and combat system from Bloodborne, the Lies of P creators have hit the trends. While thousands of fans around the world were waiting for a sequel to Miyazaki’s masterpiece, on 18 September 2023 Round8 Studio offered them an alternative that looks like Bloodborne’s boaty twin and is made with such high quality that it can already be called one of the best games in the genre and the best Souls-like of 2023. 4. Alan Wake 2 Another much-anticipated title on this list. The sequel to the acclaimed mystical horror-action game from Remedy Entertainment has been in development for more than a decade. During these years the studio had time to develop and release several other products, draw lessons from the mistakes, and as a result on 27 October 2023 finally released probably the best video game in the survival horror genre for the last few years. Alan Wake 2 stands as a quintessence of all the best of the studio’s experience. The team led by Sam Lake did exactly what was expected of them, namely a psychological thriller with a mystical component, a plot with a lot of references to the original game, as well as to horror and thriller movies, as well as stunning graphics, provided by the Northlight Engine. As a result, fans got themselves a heart-pounding, knee-jerking story, and the studio earned a nomination for Best Game of 2023 from the Game Awards. 3. Diablo IV As it turns out, since the release of Diablo 3, Blizzard has been doing more than just merging with Activision, dealing with controversy within the company and producing a disappointing Warcraft 3 remaster alongside a successful remaster of Diablo 2. This became evident on June 6, 2023, at the release of the fourth part of their iconic action RPG video game. The Blizzard team has demonstrated that they are not only able to learn from their own mistakes but are not bent on adopting the best ideas and trends that have emerged in the genre over the past decade. Diablo IV received an open world, a new antagonist, and a new-old approach to character development while retaining everything that millions of fans around the world consider the Diablo series to be the best game in the genre, which was created by the very first part of the franchise back in 1996. Another important innovation developers made in Diablo IV is the rethinking of the Seasons, which first appeared in the third part of the game. Now each Season is a full-fledged DLC with a separate storyline, new game mechanics, and challenges. Thanks to that the title of the best video game time killer of 2023 goes to Blizzard. 2. Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom The previous game in the series, Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, is considered by many to be the best game ever in the history of the gaming industry with more than 32 million copies sold. Therefore, the creators of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom initially faced a very high bar represented by its famous predecessor. But has the Nintendo EPD team managed to fulfill the expectations of millions of fans, and make the new part of Link’s adventures worthy of its predecessor? Yes, they did! Eiji Aonuma’s team took the best of the best from the previous franchise chapters and expanded it with innovative gameplay elements, such as Zonai devices that can be used for a variety of purposes, from combat to the creation of various types of machinery, thus evolving the world of Hyrule into an even more complex and immersive sandbox. Do the series fans appreciate such innovations? Consider this: the game was released on May 19, 2023, and within six months the total number of copies sold exceeded 19.5 million. Taking into account that the Legend of Zelda is traditionally a Nintendo Switch exclusive, this is an undeniable success! Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom for sure would have claimed the first place in our “the best video games of 2023” shortlist if exactly that same year, the sequel to another famous fantasy game franchise had not been published. 1. Baldurs Gate 3 9 times out of 10 when someone says “classic RPG” it’s the Baldurs Gate 2: Shadows of Amn they keep in mind. For the last two decades this unmatched masterpiece, made under the Forgotten Realms license and based on the AD&D 2.0 mechanics, remained the elusive benchmark for porting board game rules to a video game. Baldurs Gate 2 creators, Bioware Studios have subsequently attempted to replicate its success by producing such significant titles as Dragon Age, Mass Effect, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Although each game was iconic in its own way, players around the world looked forward to a return to Faerun. But at some point, Bioware lost its insight and has spent the last 10 years spewing out failure after failure. But there was one team that risked taking the responsibility for the legendary RPG sequel development. It was Larian Studios, who already created and released the brilliant and highly acclaimed Divinity: Original Sin 1 & 2 that brought back from oblivion the genre of classic RPGs with their wagering, hardcore gameplay, and a huge variability of decisions. On August 6, 2023, Baldurs Gate 3 was released and since then it has been hitting the trends of both video game magazines and various games-related forums. The reasons for this excitement are merited. Baldurs Gate 3 is based on the D&D 5 core rules and built on Divinity Engine 4. It includes over 170 hours of cinematic clips and three times as much cinematic dialogue hours which is three times exceeds the Lord of the Rings novel. Larian has received it all: worldwide acclaim and multiple awards, including the Game of the Year title from the Golden Joystick Awards and The Game Awards, and some even considered it the best video game of the decade. And it’s hard to argue with that. Of course, in this article, we have not listed all the best games of 2023. But at least we would like to mention such memorable 2023 releases as Resident Evil 4, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Dead Space Remastered, Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, Final Fantasy XVI, and Sea of Stars. 2023 was a great year for gaming, but let’s take a look at what’s coming up in 2024. The Most Anticipated Games of 2024 2024 has so many promising and highly anticipated video game releases in store that it could very well shatter the 2023 achievements. See for yourself: Final Fantasy VII Rebirth by Square Enix. Star Wars Outlaws by Ubisoft and Lucasfilm Games. Persona 3 Reload by Atlius and P Studio. Ubisoft’s Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. Avowed developed by Obsidian Entertainment. Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II – a highly anticipated AAA sequel to the indie masterpiece Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice developed by Ninja Theory. A highly promising Souls-like Black Myth: Wukong Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, a sequel to one of the best RPGs of the 2000s that has been on the brink for a long time. And of course: S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 by GSC Game World which is expected to be a Microsoft exclusive at least for the first year after it’s released. All these games have at least one thing in common, they are created by professional teams of developers. And it’s a great time to mention that Arrible has exactly this kind of team in place. Game Development Services by Arrible Arrible, is an international award-winning game development company that offers you an experienced team of skilled game developers, artists, and testers capable of creating a game of your dreams from scratch. Game development from concept to release.With 60+ highly skilled versatile specialists on staff, we are offering a full-cycle of game development services starting from creating a game concept to pre-release final product testing. Our experience and solid skillset allow for offering custom solutions for full-cycle game development. Game co-developmentIf you already gathered the core team but lack sub-specialists on staff Arrible will gladly enhance your project with the support of our expert designers, programmers, and artists. Game portingEager to maximize your reach and optimize your game’s features for different platforms? Our experts ensure a smooth transition across platforms and high-quality porting of mobile and PC games from one platform to another We provide our clients and partners with all the creatives, techies, programmers, writers, and testers needed to develop your game and bring your vision to life. Aiming for the game of the year title? Study the detailed information on Arrible development services and portfolio, and don’t hesitate to contact us!
According to Forbes Hogwarts Legacy sold more than 20 million game copies only in the USA which makes it the best-selling game of 2023.
The Day Before was the most anticipated game of 2023 on Steam. But just in few days after the game’s release the studio that was behind the video game closed after a flood of negative reviews and money refund charges.
