Awfully nice year you've got there, videogames. Mind if we look under the hood?
2023 is looking good on paper. We've already declared it a "stacked" year for FPSes. Long-awaited games from Bethesda and Rocksteady are due, but it's not all remakes and sequels, either: Suicide Squad is a bonafide blockbuster, Rogue Trader is the most original Warhammer 40K concept we've seen in awhile, and Demonschool is a gorgeous interpretation of Persona.
But as ever, we have to concern ourselves with the possibility of whether these games will actually come out in the next 12 months, uncertainty that has only increased following the pandemic's disruption of the games industry. Toward that, we took a more mathematical approach to this year's list, which factors in our best guess at whether these games will manage to release before January 1, 2024. You can find a breakdown of how we determined these rankings at the bottom of the page. Let's get started.
30 Nightingale
Evan Lahti, Global Editor-in-Chief: An eye-catching gaslamp fantasy survival crafting game, Nightingale's Victorian-inspired setting and polish immediately impress for how cleanly they depart from the desert island and primal backdrops we've played for years in this genre. Fantastical realms and giant monsters are a pleasant match for aristocratic garb and historical weapons—the Fantastic Beasts films being one of the best comparisons.
29 Fortune's Run
Release date: Coming soon
Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: Immersive sim depth meets boomer shooter speed. Fortune's Run boasts imm-simmy hallmarks like complex enemy AI, an alert system, and granular environmental interactivity. For example, you can microwave meals to get more health back from them, or microwave your grenades if you want significantly less health very quickly. This is no "crouch walk and quickload when you're spotted" joint though—you listen in on guards' conversations and read people's emails to find out their passwords and office drama, but when the rubber hits the road Fortune's Run is all bombast.
The highlight is a peerless melee combat system that lets you pull off Devil May Cry combos in first person, flinging enemies into the air with sliding kicks and slicing them to ribbons with a futuristic space katana (like a regular katana, but in the Dark Future and also it can parry bullets). Team Fortune brings it home with a gloriously grungy sci-fi setting featuring the chunky, analogue, vacuum tube and rubber puppet stylings of a 2D Fallout or the Star Wars Expanded Universe (sorry, Legends). I need this to come out so I can finally stop playing its Realms Deep demo.
28 Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl
Release date: Currently listed as December 2023, and if you believe that I've got a bridge in the Exclusion Zone to sell you
Andy Chalk, NA News Lead: Released in 2007, Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl is perhaps the ultimate in Eastern European shooter-jank, demanding effort, patience, and a whole lot of forgiveness in exchange for immersion, intensity, and moments of absolutely balls-out terror. Its failures arise mainly out of its great ambitions, which is why I'm so eager for the long-overdue Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl. (Chornobyl, by the way, is the proper Ukrainian spelling of Chernobyl; developer GSC Game World is a Ukrainian studio and, for reasons I'm sure are obvious, is a little more eager these days than it was in the past to assert its national identity.) The latest trailer doesn't make Heart of Chornobyl look like the most graphically advanced shooter ever, but what I'm interested in are the underlying systems that bring the bleak, bizarre game world to life. It's been 16 years since Shadow of Chernobyl, and if that passage of time means GSC Game World can properly realize its vision for the Zone in Stalker 2, we could be looking at an easy game of the year contender.
27 Frostpunk 2
11 bit studios denied a rumor it was releasing in 2024, so hopefully that means 2023 and not 2025, based on the "Coming soon" shown on its Steam page.
Chris Livingston, Features Producer: The sequel to Frostpunk has some big snowshoes to fill. It'll be hard to top the original's blend of survival city building, society simulation, harrowing choices, and gripping story, but on the other hand maybe Frostpunk 2 doesn't need to top the first game, just match it. Set decades after the massive blizzard that ended the original campaign, the future of human survival has moved from coal to oil. Gee, how could pinning your hopes on oil possibly go wrong? While we're excited for the sequel, we've seen nothing of it yet besides a brief cinematic announcement trailer almost two years ago. Cross your frozen fingers we'll get a closer look soon.
26 Alan Wake 2
2023 - expect it late summer/early autumn at the earliest
Robin Valentine, Senior Editor: As far as I'm concerned, Remedy doesn't miss. 22 years ago, Max Payne was truly iconic; three years ago, Control was a wonderfully refreshing slice of weirdness; even Quantum Break was a blast whenever it wasn't making you watch a TV show. It's a rare studio that works in the big budget realm while retaining an incredibly distinctive, idiosyncratic voice. Alan Wake exemplifies that—only Remedy would make a Stephen King stand-in the protagonist of a major videogame series—and I can't wait to see what strange new avenues this sequel veers into. Especially now that Control has established the idea of a shared Remedy universe that both Jesse and Alan reside in…
24 Star Trek: Resurgence
April 2023
Wes Fenlon, Senior Editor: Perform a Vulcan meditation ritual by saying these words along with me: Good Star Trek is back. I was beginning to lose hope after the film franchise puttered out and the first season of Discovery left a terribly sour taste in my mouth. The Discovery vibes were all wrong for me, and I didn't even bother with Picard, but Strange New Worlds has been a revelation, a show that looks and sounds both new and classically Trek at the same time. Resurgence is aiming for that same balance, setting an adventure game in the Next Generation/DS9 timeline and emphasizing the sorts of political snafus that created some great, thoughtful episodes of '90s television. So far Resurgence has looked really promising outside of some rough animations and framerates, and hopefully its delay into 2023 will take care of those technical shortcomings.