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!

Sun Haven

This was a game I had did an early access for and completely forgot about it until it popped up on my IG feed one day. It was a bit of a pain to make your character on the Steam Deck (it was one of those “bright idea’s to start a whole new game at 3am” things), and the intro was a bit long but after all that when the game started to pick up, I enjoyed it. A little too much.

It has all the things of your usual cozy game but the idea of unlocking 2 other parts of their world, how vastly different they are from each other and all the different fish, crops and items you can gather and craft from there really pulled me in. I just wish that the other 2 mines had more to them.

Palia

Palia is another game that I did early access for. This free to play MMORPG is marketed as a cozy MMO and to be honest, it kind of is. The community on this game is fire. Everyone is so nice and helpful and ready to help. The NPC’s have zero business being that cute and funny. All the NPC’s also have their own distinct personalities. It’s fun learning who they are and the history of the place.

The concept that humans are extinct and they’re trying to figure out how or why, is SO interesting! I can’t wait to finish the MSQ and find out right along with them! You also get your own plot you get to decorate. There’s a thing called cake parties where people come together at someone’s plot and they all contribute towards baking a cake. They all get their share and sell, and they actually sell for a lot!

I love everything about this game; the community, the quests, the grind, the bugs you can catch… the achievements! I can’t wait to see where else this game will go.

Honorable Mention;

Coral Island

No problem Pablo….

I mean,

This game has no business having hot NPC’s. Coral Island is another cozy game and it’s a bit different from the other games; there’s a lot to do on this game, a lot of things to complete and they keep adding more and more things to the game with every update.

Coral Island focuses on healing the ocean where you have to help clear the trash off of the ocean floor. You meet different sea animals along the way and stumble on the Merfolk kingdom. The sea creatures you collect along the way are fun to find. They all come with a mini info card.

My only problem with this game is that during the early access is that there were so many different kinds of beta’s that when they updated the game, it would delete the last beta file and you’d have to start all over. Which ended up happening to me twice. 100 hours, gone. Now I’m having to redo my entire farm all over again and it’s not as exciting as the first two times lol.

I do enjoy seeing the differences from each beta phase and now that 1.0 is released!

I can’t wait to see what other games I’ll discover in 2024; what were some of your favorite games in 2023?