We’re a whole halfway through the year, so it’s time for our annual look at some of the movers and shakers we’ve covered in our regular Weekly Spotlights every Sunday to see where the game of the year top ten currently lies. Before that though, according to my Retro Arcadia Game of the Year 2023 Predictions from the start of January, there’s supposed to be stuff on here that isn’t on here! Specifically, I’m talking Street Fighter 6, and it still pains me that it’s not, but I really didn’t click with the open world format of the demo and the dreadfully social Battle Hub in the beta! Who knows, if it drops in price by the end of the year it might still make the final reckoning! What definitely won’t though is Redfall, another big disappointment and total mess whose only saving grace is that it was on Xbox Game Pass!

Apart from those, there’s two on the January predictions list that fortunately didn’t disappoint and (currently) fill the top two spots, and I’ll also mention Octopath Traveller II from that list too because on the strength of the generous Nintendo Switch demo alone it’s going to make my top ten at the end of the year but I just haven’t got to it yet! Maybe it can fill the other gap it looks increasingly like Hollow Knight Silksong is also going to leave… Again! Anyway, enough moaning about what’s not here because all of that means there’s great stuff I didn’t see coming, which is even better, so let’s run down the current top ten games of the year, as they stand at the end of June 2023…

10. Cursed Demons of Wallachia (ZX Spectrum)

A brand new platforming homage to my dearly beloved Hammer Dracula movies for the ZX Spectrum, no less, was definitely not in that list of predictions at the start of the year! You are Van Helsing, who finds himself inside Castle Dracula in search of garlic and stakes to take down all the vampires, as well as the horde of “cursed demons” who live there with them, before finally escaping. There’s loads of excellent homebrew platfomers on the Spectrum but it’s not just the setting that elevates this one – it looks great, with so much atmosphere and colour (leading to some lovely colour clash!), and there’s a level of polish and attention to detail that only comes with a real love for the subject matter, but most of all it’s the creative and well-thought out level designs – old-school brutal but old-school fun too! Realistically unlikely to be here in the final countdown but deserves to be now!

9. Star Gagnant (Nintendo Switch)

I can’t resist a decent vertical shoot ‘em up, especially when you see a Hudson Soft legend like Takahashi Meijin’s name attached to it. Okay, he’s only in a supervisory role but if there’s one thing he knows it’s how to make a shooter fun, and that’s precisely what this is! It’s got a lovely modern-retro aesthetic that screams early nineties, and a cool rapid-fire special weapon that keeps everything on one button but offers just enough depth. A lengthy arcade mode with several difficulties, plus caravan and challenge modes just about justified the heavily discounted launch price, although the regular one is a stretch, but if you want an accessible and just really enjoyable new schmup you could do a lot worse, especially when it inevitably goes on sale too.

8. Picross S9 (Nintendo Switch)

I’ve been lapping these things up since Mario’s Picross on the original Game Boy, and if there’s one thing that system’s great-great-something-grandchild isn’t short of it’s even more of them! As you can probably tell, this is the ninth in this particular series alone, where crosswords meet sudoku logic puzzles, and apart from a Rewind Board feature I’ll never use, it brings not much else of note that’s new to the party but does have almost five hundred puzzles, across classic and a bunch of other modes, and that’s precisely all I wanted from it!

7. Dredge (Nintendo Switch)

A Lovecraftian fishing RPG of all things, with you initially working to repay your debt to the island community that found you shipwrecked, upgrading stuff to catch more fish to get more upgrades and so on. You’ll pick up quests along the way too, forming the game’s narrative which is also going to force you onto the ocean at night. And you don’t want to be out there at night because that’s when the unfathomable cosmic terrors start turning up from the unfathomable terrifying depths! The tension as you risk safety for reward is superb, racing to complete a mission and get back to the dock before something unspeakable happens! Looks nice, sounds great and the fishing is fun too!

6. Puzzle Bobble Everybubble! (Nintendo Switch)

As much as you can see I enjoyed this, every time I play it still makes me want to play Puzzle Bobble 2, all the way from 1995, but no shame in that, I guess – thing’s a masterpiece! This is plenty more of the same crazy addictive match-three bubble popping though, with all the 2023 super-polished cutesy Bubble Bobble-infused sheen you could ever wish for and probably a bit more on top! The main course is a massive story mode built on hundreds of stages that double in size if you can unlock their expert versions, and ends up with a competitive endless mode with online leaderboards. There’s multiplayer everywhere too, with up to four player co-op, versus modes and even a madcap Puzzle Bobble vs Space Invaders mode! Full review here.

5. The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow (Nintendo Switch)

A point-and-click adventure in the style of classic LucasArts, but with an easy modern interface and possibly less obscure puzzling and exploration! The pixel art graphics, including suitably primitive cutscenes and animations, together with the soundtrack, form the perfect gothic atmosphere for your adventure across the bleak Yorkshire Moors as an antiquarian unravelling the very English folk-horror mysteries of this ancient burial ground. Great story, characters, puzzles and interactions make this a really great point-and-click, and you don’t see many of those nowadays!

4. Graze Counter GM (Nintendo Switch)

Vertical bullet-hell shoot ‘em up with a graze mechanic that rewards getting close to the enemy bullets by filling up a gauge that lets you unleash a huge beam of destruction once it’s full. Shoot stuff with this, collect the stars dropped as a result, and you’ll in turn fill up a break gauge, and once that’s full you can go even more intense for some big scores. Loads of modes, ships, boosts and unlocks, and the presentation is great, with a super-cool modern 16-bit art style, tons going on and an energetic synth-prog soundtrack. And the whole thing just feels really special!

3. Diablo IV (Xbox Series X)

I had no intention of buying this, but it turned out the open to all server stress test a few weeks ago was the best possible advert! It’s a total nerd-out isometric, hack and slash fantasy RPG with endless evil to slaughter, dungeons to explore, abilities to master and not least loot to pick up and pore over and organise in almost equally endless but surprisingly intuitive screens full of lovely numbers! Huge campaign by the looks of it, some hauntingly atmospheric settings already and a decent story so far too, progressed both in-engine and through some very slick cutscenes, and apparently tons more stuff still on the way. Scarily compelling and almost impossible to put down once it’s got you. And it will get you! Only launched earlier this month and I’m still only scratching the surface so watch this space at the end of the year because I reckon it could keep climbing up the countdown!

2. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

I don’t even know where to begin with this! It takes Zelda’s greatest hits and then creates its own on top and then some – a vast, beautiful and mesmerising adventure that can be familiar but is always something new and often like nothing you’ve ever experienced before! Some of what you can pull off with Link’s new abilities, together with the game’s inherent no-right-way-to-do-it philosophy, leads to some real moments of exhilaration, not to mention anxiety, as you wonder if it’s really going to let you do what you probably shouldn’t be doing. But you should! The Switch might be starting to creak now but you’d never know it here, and you certainly won’t get anything like it anywhere else!

1. Resident Evil 4 Remake (Xbox Series X)

The GameCube original from 2005 is my number three favourite game of all time, and everything that made it so great is lovingly present and correct and they didn’t stop there! The meandering story remains compelling, it’s pacing relentless, the tension likewise, and the characters never more tolerable, and on top of all that it looks more stunning than it ever did and the sound design is truly terrifying! It even plays like a modern survival horror – running and shooting at the same time, crouching and sneaking… What a time to be alive! And what a remake this is, not only taking the original and running with it 2023-style but somehow also reinforcing why it was and still is one of the finest, most influential games of all time. Full review here.

As predictable as I am with my Resident Evils, I really, really like Diablo IV, and the more I keep playing, the higher it’s likely to keep climbing as things currently stand, so I am most interested in seeing where that lands at the end of the year! And while I’m no longer holding out much hope for Hollow Knight Silksong arriving in time to make a dent in the countdown, I’ll be absolutely gutted if sci-fi pinballer Xenotilt doesn’t because its occult-focussed predecessor, Demon’s Tilt, is my favourite pinball game ever so I’ve got very high expectations whenever that arrives! Maybe not so predictable after all then, and there’s still new Tekken, Mortal Kombat, Forza and Starfield to throw into the mix too… I hope you can join me around Christmas for the final reckoning, and, of course, I also hope you’ll keep checking in at Retro Arcadia for our weekly deep-dives and reviews, our monthly looks ahead to upcoming game releases, and the Sunday spotlights for everything else!