Holy Wow Studios / IGN

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.

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11 / 15

Fortnite’s Zero Build mode launched!

Fortnite’s Zero Build mode launched!

A group of Fortnite characters stand together in front of an orange map.
Image: Epic

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.

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12 / 15

Dwarf Fortress finally gets the mainstream success it deserves!

Dwarf Fortress finally gets the mainstream success it deserves!

A notification warns the player that a dwarven child has been stung by a bee
Screenshot: Bay12 / Kitfox / Kotaku

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.

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13 / 15

Everyone dressed nicely at The Game Awards!

Everyone dressed nicely at The Game Awards!

Singer Halsey appears on stage at the Game Awards in a black dress.
Screenshot: The Game Awards / Kotaku

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!

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14 / 15

Disney Dreamlight Valley ended up being more than just an Animal Crossing clone!

Disney Dreamlight Valley ended up being more than just an Animal Crossing clone!

Box art shows a group of Disney characters hanging out in a colorful cartoon village.
Image: Gameloft / Disney

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.

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