The Best Video Game Surprises Of 2022

I was pretty damn skeptical about Valve’s portable PC when it was announced. How could it possibly handle modern games? How heavy would it be? And how long before Valve just let it die on the vine like so many other Valve-produced things? Well, luckily for everyone, I was wrong, and Valve’s Steam Deck has quietly become one of the best things this year. Sure the battery is a bit crappy, but other than that it’s quickly become a great play smaller indie PC games while chillin’ on the couch. Good job, Valve.

Last year, we saw the start of unionization in the video game industry after Activision Blizzard reportedly treated its employees so badly they walked out and began forming unions. Now things are growing faster and faster. QA testers at Blizzard Albany won their union vote, and 300 QA devs at Microsoft-owned Zenimax are also forming a union. As more and more people in the US join unions—just look at Starbucks Workers United as a prime example—it’s great to see game devs following suit. This industry has long needed unions and hopefully we get more in 2023 so fewer devs have to endlessly crunch for low pay for years and years.

Normally, the news that a very good and popular video game beloved by many is getting a sequel wouldn’t be surprising. But when Hades II was announced at The Game Awards 2022, it was a huge shock, as its developers, Supergiant Games, have notoriously avoided sequels. However, with just how huge Hades became and how well it sold, it makes sense that the studio wants to do more with the IP. Considering how many people are still playing and loving the first game, I assume few are upset about this decision.

A free-to-play mobile card game starring Marvel heroes probably didn’t sound like a potential game of the year contender a few months back. How wrong we were. Marvel Snap has consumed the lives of many Kotaku writers— myself included. Even if I have some misgivings with its recent, pricey bundles and the short length of seasons, I’m still logging in every day to play a few matches of this fast-paced card battler that ditches some of the more annoying parts of card games and focuses on being fun, short and random.

After decades of bad remakes, sequels, and canceled remasters, it’s finally happening! The original N64 classic shooter, 007 Goldeneye, is coming to modern platforms, including the Nintendo Switch. The way it’s making the leap to new consoles is a bit of a mess—with only the Switch port getting online play—but still, for many this seemed like it would never happen.

FromSoftware has had a lot of success over the last decade with hit games like Bloodborne, Dark Souls and Demon’s Souls. But with Elden Ring,the studio’s particular brand of challenging-but-satisfying action finally clicked with enough people in a way that catapulted the open-world game into the mainstream and helped it sell over 17 million copies, becoming one of the most popular games of 2022. And 10 months later, it’s still got an active player base hungry for more content and secrets.

Not only was Edgerunners, Netflix’s anime Cyberpunk spin-off show great—even if you didn’t play the game—but it basically gave Cyberpunk 2077 a second life well after many players had moved on. And thanks to years of updates and patches, players returned to find a better game waiting for them. It took some time, but it does finally seem like Cyberpunk 2077 escaped its status as a broken mess and has become a genuine classic for many. Sadly for fans, there won’t be a season two of the Netflix show.

For folks who don’t want to buy a PS5 or PS4 it’s been nice to see more previously-exclusive Sony games—like Spider-Man: Miles Morales, The Last of Us Part I, and Uncharted—hopping over to PC. These games now look and play better thanks to the more powerful hardware available in many high-end PCs. But more importantly, the PC ports of PS4 games are a boon for game preservation. Emulation is nice and all, but having actual native ports ofgames on PC will make it easier than ever to save, modify and keep them running for decades to come.

Trombone Champ is very silly and dumb but also great, and naturally is one of the biggest little surprises of the year. A rhythm game built around recreating one instrument in as silly a way as possible might not sound like the blueprint for the next big indie hit on Steam, but it was. And as players added their own songs to the game it only became even more popular and funny thanks to the absurdity of it all and the awful-but-great music you could create in it.

Zero Build single handedly got me seriously into Fortnite. Before Zero Build, I had toyed around with past seasons of Fortnite but never played it for more than a few days before walking away for months. I hated mining resources and building forts. But with Zero Build’s removal of all that crap and fun events featuring Dragon Ball characters and Star Wars villains, Fortnite became one of my most played games in 2022 and will likely continue to be one of my favorites into next year, too.

A classic in its own right, Dwarf Fortress has been around for 16 years and inspired stuff like Minecraft and Rimworld. And while it had a dedicated community that loved it, the game never truly saw mainstream success due to its dated visuals and tough-as-nails difficulty. However, the recent Steam release—complete with fancy new graphics and UI changes—finally brought the game and the two brothers behind it the success it’s long deserved. And in the process made its creators millionaires almost overnight.

There were some great looks this year at the Game Awards. Was it because we virtually bullied some high-level game industry execs and celebrity devs into putting a molecule of effort into their looks during one of the industry’s supposedly biggest nights? Maybe. Maybe not. That doesn’t matter, really, because this year at the Game Awards 2022 people looked great!

When it was first announced, Dreamlight Valley looked like “Animal Crossing but with Mickey and Pixar characters.” But then it was released and yeah, in someways it is just that, but it’s also so much more. It has a ton of quests, more ways to create and customize, full cross platform support, and far better writing than recent Animal Crossing games. And with Disney pumping out dozens of movies a year, it’s unlikely Dreamlight Valley will run out of new characters or locations to add to its ever-growing life sim.