Surprisingly 2023 was a pretty good gaming year for me. Half because of escapism and the other half… okay well it was mostly just escapism. But hey, that’s fine. Whatever get’s us to the next day, right?! I got really into PC gaming in 2022 so a lot of the games I’ve been playing have been on PC or on Steam; according to Steam I played 19 games in 2023, 15 of those were new games. And here I am, giving you my top 3.

Cozy Grove

I started this game in 2022 on my PS4 and I wasn’t really into it. I’m not sure what got me to pick this game back up again, but I’m *so* glad I did. While I’ll always say I’m not emotionally ready to play Spiritfarer, I wasn’t expecting Cozy Grove to be as emotional and hard hitting as it was. Getting to know these bears, what they thought of the island, how they got here and seeing them slowly start to remember why they’re there, how they died and who they left behind… is heartbreaking. Considering you have a handful of bears running around helping at the same time… you get hit with a lot of really sad memories.

Getting to know these bears has been such a pleasure. It gives me the same feelings I had when I first played Animal Crossing New Leaf on the original DS, like these bears were my friends and I got to see them every day. I’ve been taking my time with the story because 1) Flamey is demanding way too many logs at this point and 2) I got the DLC not knowing that you’d lose 3 bears once you completed their stories. So now I’m watching their hearts and wondering which 3 am I going to lose. I’d prefer to not lose any of them!