Greetings all! Hope you're enjoying a Christmas with an appropriate degree of merriment. Me, I'm not. I'm angry. I'm fuming. Why? Because the RPS 2023 Advent Calendar is wrong. It's wrong>, I tell you!

If all were just and right in the world, then it wouldn't have left out the following list of excellent games that came out this year! Plus a couple others that came out of early access in 2023 but which I sadly don't have time to write about in full. Trust me, The Last Spell and Against The Storm are both phenomenal games as well.

Anyway: in this handsomely decorated selection box, you'll find four of my honourable mentions for games I've enjoyed playing the most this year. If you have a hole in your Steam library, maybe these will help fill it over the Christmas break!

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Promise you won't tell the other children, but the RPS staff are actually complex magical spells cast by the Sugar Plum Fairy, as part of an age old pact with the ents of the forest where the RPS treehouse was built hundreds of years ago. Each year the Sugar Plum Fairy has to collect more wishes to power the spells every year (you can help to make the spells more powerful by joining the RPS supporter program). While she's out wish-hunting, here are some Christmas Crackers to distract you.>

Time to enjoy your lovely joke!

Q: What did Thor say when he saw his brother hogging the mince pies?

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I’m going to level with you, readers. Probably something like 70% of my 2023 games time was spent on precisely two co-op shooters, neither of which I’ve written about much, nor were new enough to be eligible for the most recent Advent Calendar. I apparently have a type. I’m sorry.

Still, while the man’s rules prevent me from recommending Deep Rock Galactic or Darktide, I do have a few picks that fell short of full Advent Calendar glory. And they’re all... colourful, quite short indie platformers? Hmm, maybe I have two> types.

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Welcome to my first selection box for Rock Paper Shotgun, where I get to pick my favourite games of 2023 that didn't make it into our Advent Calendar draw. In anticipation of your judgment incoming, I'd like to preface this list by saying I didn't play nearly as many games as I should have this year (something echoed by other RPS staffers). My pile of shame is ever-growing, but here are a few games I did play and actually liked.

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Promise you won't tell the other children, but the RPS staff are actually complex magical spells cast by the Sugar Plum Fairy, as part of an age old pact with the ents of the forest where the RPS treehouse was built hundreds of years ago. Each year the Sugar Plum Fairy has to collect more wishes to power the spells every year (you can help to make the spells more powerful by joining the RPS supporter program). While she's out wish-hunting, here are some Christmas Crackers to distract you.>

Time to enjoy your lovely joke!

Q: Where does Basim get his car fixed?

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And thus, we arrive at the end of another year. A year filled with some very excellent games, and some very not excellent games. And through it all, the RPS guides team has been quietly toiling away, appeasing The Beast That Is Google with medium-rare slabs of SEO meat, and providing the answers to oft-asked gaming questions.

It's important to me to have a moment in the year where we can step into the light for a little bit and celebrate everything the guides team has accomplished this year. Usually we stay well out of the spotlight, because people only like seeing guides if they're actively searching for it. But today, we're staging a coup. We're taking centre stage, and threatening the lighting technician with all manner of disagreeable bodily experiences unless they keep the spotlight fixed firmly on us for the duration of this post.

2023 has been an amazing standout year for guides. Let's take a look at the games that have defined the year for us, and celebrate some of the fantastic work our team has published.

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I've mentioned elsewhere that I played a lot of huge games this year, both literally referring to their size, and metaphorically referring to their brand name awareness (I had great intentions of doing a long-running Starfield diary, where I visited every planet I could until I got demoralised by the project, but unfortunately that turned out to be the length of one entry). I didn't play quite as many small, odd things as I would have liked in 2023. I am very pleased with the shape of our Advent Calendar this year, though, especially the mid-table, which has some good weirdo entries and some surprises there.

So I thought I'd struggle to come up with three reminders for you for the Selection Box. And yet I didn't! They're also very on brand. Words and murder you say? Maybe in 2024 I should make a resolution to switch things up a bit. Gotta keep you guessing, dear readers...

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Promise you won't tell the other children, but the RPS staff are actually complex magical spells cast by the Sugar Plum Fairy, as part of an age old pact with the ents of the forest where the RPS treehouse was built hundreds of years ago. Each year the Sugar Plum Fairy has to collect more wishes to power the spells every year (you can help to make the spells more powerful by joining the RPS supporter program). While she's out wish-hunting, here are some Christmas Crackers to distract you.>

Time to enjoy your lovely joke!

Q: What do you hang above the fireplace in a cyberpunk space station controlled by a malevolent AI?

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Cor, there's been a lot of games this year, haven't there? While I've only slapped one Bestest Best badge down in 2023 (woe is me), our lovely freelancers, current RPSers, and former RPSers have done a whole lot more badge-slapping. A grand total of 26 Bestest Bests have graced our monitors this year, which makes it three more than last year's Bestest Best round-up. And I'd say it's a nice mixture of big budget open worlders, puzzle gems, and indie delights that make up our roster for 2023, too.

So yeah, I'd encourage you to have a flick through the list below and see if there's anything you can add to the wishlist. Even as the person with "Reviews" in their job title, I can confirm I literally have loads of these Bestest Bests in my backlog. I will endeavour to play a handful over this Christmas break on my Steam Deck, maybe combining the experience with a nibble on a mince pie. Anyway, enjoy! And Merry Reviewsmas!

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I didn't have much time to play new games this year, honestly. Prior to joining the RPS Treehouse in late October, I spent much of the year organising a massive international move with my family from the US to the UK, which meant that many of 2023's fresh releases - aside from the few that I've highlighted in this year's advent calendar - remained in the unplayed depths of my Steam list. Now that it's December and life has settled somewhat, I had to wrack my brain to come up with three entries for this Selection Box. After much deliberation, I realised that there were> a few indie gems that I managed to crack open amidst all the chaos of arranging 60+ boxes for shipment across the Atlantic.

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