Worst Game You Played This Year - 2023 Edition

Agarta - absolutely bang average FMV game. Really cheaply made, with not great acting and plot of absolute nonsense.

Lords and VIlleins - colony sim of your colonists not doing what you instructed and starving to death. Also abysmal UI.

El Hijo - decent game at first glance ruined by unresponsive controls and camera.

Uhh, I barely had time to play games this year. I guess Sakura Alien sucked? Do the Sakura games count?

If that doesn't count, Grow: Song of the Evertree is just one big grind that doesn't want you to stray outside the gameplay the developers have in mind for you. It's not a bad game and I love the concept, but it's just very mid. I also guess it's hard for these types of games to NOT be grindy and childish. (I feel bad since I won this, but at least I completed it?)

the day before.. hands down the worst game i have came across in 2023

Lacuna (A SciFi Noir Adventure) sadly fell flat for me. The story and characters just weren't strong enough to keep such a simple point n click afloat ... the single auto save file left me super frustrated ... all in all it's okay, but after a couple of chapters there's no motivation for me to pick it up again. :( For me that's worse than a memorably bad game lol.

Edit: Happy belated cake day <3

Edit 2: OH and Coral Island, the only game I refunded this year. Devs released an unfinished mess of a game with WIP quests and character storylines. And that was after leaving EA. Super disappointing.

Happy cakeday!

Escape from Russia: Mobilization comes from the top of my head. I think it's also the most recent addition to my "crap" collection. Almost all other games I played/tried were at least decent.

I started Starfield, went through intro sequence and quit. Does that count?

Whitewash was close to unplayable
Dragon's Dogma is so unenjoyable, that I still try to find energy to even return to it in hopes of getting any better.

between bad rats and soulblight for me.

I found Party Hard to be a huge disappointment. I had expected a lot of amusing environmental interactions (traps, hiding places, etc) but it turned out to mostly be a lot of standing around near a place to hide bodies waiting for a chance to pick off a victim. I'd kind of hoped for Hitman meets Serial Cleaner.

Hmm... hard to select just one.
"Un pas fragile". I can't believe I paid for something that gives less than some freebies. It's just a really short story. Although I admit that the illustration is very cute.
"Potions and emotions": (free) Soporific. Lots of boring reading, and eventually you make some choice.
"Lemon cake": I was expecting something better. Same with "Agrilife" (I got a refund for this last).

Aaaand... not a terrible game... I kind of like it... but find it so annoying. Yes, I'm talking about... "Alan Wake" aka ALAN WEAK. Is just unfair. UNFAIR. I'm stuck with Hartman.

EDIT: I just remembered one I played on Epic Games (they gave it for free): "Orwell: Keeping an Eye on You". Bad... I mean, is not something that would make me cut my veins, but I was expecting something better. Also, they didn't even let me finish the game. I was about to do something and they just took me to the final cutscene. That bothered me, I hadn't finished filling out the files!

Psychonauts
Arcania: Fall of Settarif

Thankfully didn't really find any duds this year aside from Samurai Story maybe. It was apparently a puzzle shooter or something, but whatever it was it sucked terribly. One-note gameplay that's as fun as slapping yourself on the face, I got tired of it extremely fast.

There would be at least, but maybe let's make limitation that played at least 1h, or beaten it, with that top 3 is:

• One day for Ched
• Pepe Procupine
• Top Trumps Turbo

Syndrome and INDUSTRIA.

Thankfully nothing egregiously bad. Worst I played must be The Magical Mixture Mill when I tried it from a friend. It's not bad exactly, just quite tedious and the design philosophy isn't there just yet. It is an Early Access title though so who knows, maybe it'll get better than its current state.

Geisha World - just wanted to make sure the game is as horrible as it looks
MirrorMoon EP - I don't mind vague games but this one is too vague

Diablo 4 ;(

Muse Dash, I like Rhythm game, but this game is one of the worst one I played, the musics are boring, the controls are alright,I guess? and it's way too focused on basically anything anime ( this is MY personal opinion )

Gonna have to be Lemon Cake for me.

2-4 hours of content stretched out to 25-30+ should be illegal. Here is my review if you wanna read the whole thing.

Alien Breed: Impact for me. I tried it because I thought it's gonna be fun, but lacked monster variety, a good story to tell, and fun gameplay. Overall a game I'd not recommend, but eager to play the sequels if they improve on the game.

Lots of contenders, but the worst for me has to be the Finding Paradise + To The Moon + Bird Story combo. I see what they were trying to do, they were just very dull as games. I think they would work really well as movies or short series, thou.

Another game that would be a great mini series but is a terrible game is Lucius. There's a lot done well there, but as a game it just doesn't click.

Less notable disappointments include the first Yooka Laylee that started really strong but lost so much steam around the halfway mark due to repetitive level design and overpowered upgrades, Weaving Tides which was a nice, niche mechanic that was tied together into a full game without a lot of coherence, and SUPERHOT: MIND CONTROL DELETE that had all the tools to make the original much better, but executed really poorly. The last two were SG wins so I forced myself to finish them for the sake of respecting the gifter, but boy that was hard

Reigns - this game is boring as hell. Repetitivness galore. Worst kind of puzzles I can Imagine (learning right sequence of choices).

Evoland - E1 was nice, E2 was attempt to make actuall game, and as game it failed.

Worst disappointment ever:
Wolfenstein: The new order. I wanted to shoot stuff, not watch endless cutscenes. Also Plot was amazingly stupid. Ending forced in many ways. Checkpoints (especially last one) fucked up.

God DingingDANG! great post!
I for one absolutely hate Monstrum🤮.
I trusted the reviews and entered for it and subsequently won it on SG. Decided to play it for PAGYWOSG...it was such a toil :(

I don't want a waste more words nor describe it to relive the trauma. I have already done so.

But on the positive side, this game is the reason Im extra careful while entering for Gibs. I read the negative reviews well. So that I cherish whatever I win on SG.

The Talos Principle 2 felt quite underwhelming for me. From one side puzzles are good, but locations are giant and empty with puzzle levels scattered around them, all that makes navigation between them quite tedious as there's no fast forward at all, felt like game really wants to waste my time.

Another disappointing experience was Storyteller, game offers too little for its price, even after half of year after release with single content update.

Hmm, either Rayman 2: Revolution or The Outer Worlds: Spacer's Choice Edition.
Not exactly bad games, but nothing great either.

Oh, MediEvil 2 might also make it.