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.