The Game Awards are here and with them will come waves of disappointment as underappreciated gems are swept aside for the same most popular fistfull of games filling every category. We all know The Game Awards are more so an elaborate advertisement than a proper celebration of the medium.

That’s why Hard Drive is proud to present our very own game awards for 2023. Our writers pride themselves on never making content for things like money or attention. We have never done that. Simply, Hard Drive is the perfect and only accurate source for which games deserve awards.

Though you should take our words as gospel, it’s understandable why our darlings might not have the notoriety or scale to make it into those famed Game of the Year nominees. Through careful research and reasoning that’s far beyond “first thing that came to mind to justify the games we like,” we have chosen pinpoint accurate categories to display these games. If there’s no competition, there’s no argument for making sure we’re a winner. – Ezra Tsao

Best Oddly Specific Ending Credits Song That’s Used Thematically Throughout the Game’s Story

American Arcadia retells a familiar story with new spins and style galore. This game is a master craft at mashing and merging. It visually stuns as it seamlessly switches from the overly idyllic, 70s-inspired city of Arcadia to the modern, miserable corporate world of the offices watching over this fake society. More than that, it switches between a polished 2.5D puzzle platformer and first-person 3D puzzler with ease. It never stops mixing up its gameplay styles to fit the situation.

Even for the genre savvy, there were twists that genuinely surprised me and left me endlessly excited to see how things continued to play out. The switching and banter between Trevor and Angela is equally endearing and hilarious. What might be more memorable than any of that is the use of “Don’t Be a Fool,” an original jazzy, orchestral song you only get to hear in full as the credits roll.

Sometimes game stories can feel like they’re being held back by the medium, but American Arcadia really takes every advantage of being a game. And it does so in stride.

Best Soundtrack In A Game I Can Give The Boys Cat Ears

I may be attracting the wrong crowd, but I’ll do what needs to be done to give Octopath Traveler 2’s attention it deserves. There’s already so much you can say about how it took its solid predecessor and ironed out all the kinks that dragged it down. Smoother gameplay, unique strategies with every character, gorgeous day and night settings, better writing, and more interconnected stories that get the breathing space they deserve are barely the tip of the iceberg on how fantastically Octopath iterated on itself.

The excellent composition and performance from a live orchestra and chorus brings so much life to every environment, and it’s only doubly impressive with versions to support both the day and night. Battle tracks are instant classics from “Battle on the Sea” to “Cait Battle” to “Those Who Deny the Dawn.” The sequel really plays with style more than its original while keeping the genius tricks that helped music heighten story beats to their highest level. I still can’t get over the transformation from Agnea’s already incredible folk theme, perfectly invoking the imagery of a small town gradually joining into the dancing and playing, to the grand, vocal majesty in “Song of Hope” that makes the differentiation to clarify how Agnea’s story doesn’t end with finding hope but continues in giving it to others. It’s hard to imagine traditional RPGs getting much better than this.

Best Rising Content Creator Who Really Makes Me Doubt What I’ve Accomplished in Life

I can’t always watch gaming challenge videos, but Sample makes such high quality content that it makes me want to throw up from stress. Like, how the hell is this guy my age yet so good at video games, editing, writing, and presentation? The way he seamlessly blends clear explanations of complicated gameplay with hilarious, original writing makes me stomp my feet and go into palpitations while I watch my life fade away past me. In order to channel my self-pity into powerful revenge, I require that you watch every video on the @SampleChample on YouTube except the Battletoads one. – By Ezra Tsao

Best Game to Make Me Go “What Even Is That?!” Every Few Minutes

Coming in at the tail end of the awards cycle, illWill probably wouldn’t have fit in anyway with all the other more ‘respectable’ games everyone and their mother plays. But it does what it says it does on the can – -pure, unadulterated murderous carnage. If there ever was a spiritual successor to the sheer insanity of 90s Serious Sam and its hordes of Kamikaze bastards, this right here is it.

Every monster is a memorable icon in the making, from the little pinheaded toddlers that waddle towards you, to the weird squat croco-dogs always snapping their metallic jaws. There’s nothing more satisfying than leaning on your array of weaponry–primarily the shottie for me–to put these freaks down before they get their green snot all over you. Or white snot. Or black snot. There’s a whole lotta phlegm in this game.

Just keep circle-strafing, just keep circle-strafing… – by Michelle Pereira

Best Game That I Will Beat You With Hammers If You Dislike It

Fire Emblem fans like saying this is the game for those who can’t read, but I’m not sure anyone into this series is known for their exceptional reading ability. I’ll keep it short.

I know the story’s bad, shut up about it. There’s some good writing when you dive into the supports fully, and it’s the most thematically consistent and resonant game in the franchise. The gameplay is really good. I actually had to plan carefully. I can be very gay. My favorite game in the series.

Best Low Stress Aquarium Idle Game That You Only Have to Check in on Every Few Days

Chillquarium is great. It gives you the joy of both playing a video game and keeping fish without the undue burden of actually having to do either of those things. You just buy fish, then sell fish, then buy fish. Eventually, you can buy better fish. Even more eventually, you can buy more tanks. Even more eventually, you can buy neat decorations. There are cool color variations of each fish, including super-rare golden and rainbow versions. The developer is very passionate and regularly adds fun features and secrets. Sure, the art isn’t hi-res, but it’s charming and cohesive. Plus, it beats having to scrub a real aquarium. – by Kyle Duggan

Best Totally Fair and Honest, Wondrous Circus Game

BEHOLD- THE WINNER OF THIS DIVINE AWARD; AKABI’S WHEEL OF WONDERS. YOU ARE FORTUNATE TO BEAR WITNESS TO AKABI’S MUCH DESERVED WIN, FREAKISH ONE. ONLY ONE GAME AT THE CIRCUS OF THE LAST DAYS PROMISES SUCH CHANCE TO WIN PRIZES BEYOND ONE’S TINY IMAGINATION, AND MAKE ONE’S LIFE MORE BEARABLE. AKABI HAS TRAVELED ACROSS THE PLANES TO ACCEPT THIS AWARD. WE THANK GEOFF KEIGHLEY FOR BESTOWING AKABI WITH SUCH A GLORIOUS PRIZE! – by Akabi

Best Game Where a Protagonist Loses Their Arm and Gets a Magic New One With the Power to Make Weapons From Random Junk That Is Not Tears of the Kingdom

Hi-Fi Rush is an amazing rhythm action game where you get to beat up corporate executives to nice music. So it’s basically free therapy. Combine that with magic musical robot powers and you have a recipe for success. Not to mention the setting and story for the game are all just as great as the combat and music. When these many aspects all come together what you get is an extremely fun video game. It makes you nostalgic for some cartoon that never existed and makes you miss an older generation of games.

Now some may say this award is a bit niche or it may seem a bit arbitrary to exclude a specific other game, and those are valid concerns. But I say no it’s not and I’m the one giving the award so I think I know what I’m talking about. – Myles Conlon

Best Game That May or May Not Have Been Delayed From 2023 Despite My Desperate Pleas

Team Cherry. Please. I have watched the fans crumble into dust under the weight of their own insanity before rising again in a burst of flame that really scared my dog when he saw it. Please.

Best Game to Play While Brushing Your Teeth

It’s strange what a hidden comfort the New York Times games bring to my life. Wordle might have been so 2021, but it always feels safe to dip in and play it alongside the mini crossword and 2023’s new Connections. Almost just as comforting was the surprise of being sucked down the “WordleTok” rabbit hole. There’s a lot of love in the strange, little community created over playing these mini word puzzles every day. An “apple” a day keeps the doctor away.

This might be the hidden game of the year for your friends and family that don’t really get video games. You do still have those, don’t you? Maybe you should be glad that Sam from high school never jumped into video games because the crossword competitions with their coworkers at the nearby bank are cutthroat and unforgiving. Maybe you should use this connection over these little games to reconnect with Sam. They want to show you their dog photos and decimate you in a mini crossword race.

Best Game That Makes Point of Assuring You You Aren’t Depriving Thousands of Peaceful Afterlife

Humanity, the brilliant puzzle-platformer by THA Limited where you control hundreds of ant-like people via arrows and woofs, will not receive much if any attention at award shows, let alone The Game Awards. That’s because Humanity, unlike the real deal, is relatively small. It has not gone viral or garnered the arthouse status necessary for indie games to make a mark at these events. Its protagonist isn’t a gruff father-figure who must escort a precocious kid through a land made hostile by man and beast alike, and it does not feature a 2D childlike figure making their way through a dark scary world.

What it does have, however, is a very good boy who must lead hundreds of humans through a series of ‘afterlife trials’, let’s call them. Much like the real deal, these humans are stupid, and they will pour ceaseless out of portals and march straight off a cliff unless you tell them not to. Humanity is a beautiful game with inventive puzzles, engaging levels, and a surprisingly thoughtful story about human nature, but it is also a game where you will watch thousands (and I do mean literal thousands) of faceless men, women, and children spill to their deaths while you mull over a puzzle’s solution. Luckily, in a line that feels like it could have been added following play-tester feedback, the tutorial voice in Humanity makes a very clear point of telling you that the people falling into the void or getting their bodies maimed by the soft kiss of the ground from five stories up are not, in fact, being deprived of a peaceful afterlife: “Though their bodies are lost, their spirits persist”, and they are ‘recycled’ into the stream of people.

Presumably, to die again at your idle hands. Thank goodness. Go play Humanity. – by Nik Theorin

Best Rhythm Game That Makes You Realize Final Fantasy Music is The Coolest Music Ever Made

You’re loco if you think you’re gonna hide this chocobo

Everybody’s gonna wanna ride your chocobo

It’s choco-loco style in a choco-rodeo

Gonna ride him straight through hell in this chocobo rodeo!

Yeah, let’s ride!

I have never played the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy but I know a lot of Final Fantasy fans dislike it. However I have played “Crazy Chocobo” in Theatrhythm Final Bar Line many times and it rocks. I refuse to believe a song that rocks as hard as it does and features lyrics such as those above belongs to a game that isn’t also awesome. When you play Theatrhythm Final Bar Line, that’s what you’ll experience for every song, every time. It will be the most incredible piece of music you’ve ever heard, it will be awesome to try getting perfect and you’ll believe that the Final Fantasy game it came from must be the most awesome game to exist. Then you’ll play another song and have the exact same feeling. Music is awesome, rhythm games are awesome, Final Fantasy is awesome, this gives you all of that. Yeah sex is cool but have you ever got a perfect all critical run of One Winged Angel? – Matt Fresh

Best Game From 1997 I Played For The First Time This Year

Wild Arms was fine. The localization was a little dry, but the music was really nice. I thought it’d have more of a Western twang, but that’s kinda just set dressing, it’s a pretty typical fantasy RPG with some sci-fi. It’s the only game from 1997 I played this year. I don’t feel particularly strongly about it. Do I have to keep talking about it? I liked the lady that had a crush on the main character, she was fun. I don’t remember her name. – Travis Madole

Best In-Game Original Song With Lyrics That Made Me Question My Own Sanity

“Human Sundae” is the soundtrack to an ice cream man’s psychotic break. 30 seconds in, I wasn’t sure if I was asleep or awake. By the end of the track, I did not get any conclusive answers on that…

El Paso, Elsewhere is not afraid to get demented, and you’re already going deep into dream logic by the time it throws “Human Sundae” at you. It’s a freestyle rap by an ether-crazed Hunter S. Thompson, and I had to stop shooting vampire minions for a solid five minutes to make sure I was hearing the game’s audio correctly. Congratulations to Strange Scaffold on recording the next great madman’s anthem, and get me a lyric sheet so I can show it to my next therapist. – Thomas Wilde

Best Game for the Theatre Kid Who Will Not Shut Up About Hadestown

Stray Gods is the most delightful niche game, the dream come true for those who love a good performance on stage. Taking your role front and center in this Greek mythology murder mystery musical is a magical experience. Sure, a play in your control where you have the power to command all the world, your stage, is already innovative in a way it’s almost flabbergasting that it hasn’t been done to death. But Stray Gods really pulls you in when your decisions not only affect the story but the many, incredible songs.

Best Narrative Involving Ducks

Placid Plastic Duck Simulator (the Switch port) easily held gaming’s best story this year. Alan Wake 2 wishes it could create symbolism like Propeller Duck lifting up and away into the sunset. Let me tell you, I cried when I watched Submarine Duck sacrifice their life to save the Imposter Duck from an eternity trapped within the inner tube. It made me really consider if I would be able to find forgiveness in my heart for a traitor. Let me tell you, I really cried.

Best Game That Allowed Me to Give My Son a “Back in My Day” Lesson

Oh, man, as soon as my wife and I gave our son the green light to download Mortal Kombat 1, I was ready. As he mashed buttons for the first time in the newest entry of the famed fighting game series, I pulled up a chair, took a sip of water, and started telling him what it was like back in my day.

Back in my day, Mortal Kombat was the star of the local arcade – it was so incredible that it cost 50 cents! Oh, arcade games usually cost a quarter back in my day. It would be a one-on-one match and kids would line up to challenge the winner. We would put our quarters on the machine to note our place in line. I actually rarely played because I never got to really practice and was too nervous to go up against someone else. I really just liked playing against the computer.

You know how video games have age ratings? Well, back in my day, that didn’t really exist…until the first Mortal Kombat was on consoles. You see, the original game used digitized sprites of real actors (Yes, I know you know this – have you seen the behind-the-scenes videos of the original Mortal Kombat actors, by the way? I should show you.), which made it look much more realistic. And of course, there was all the blood. So parents and Senators got all upset about it – Mortal Kombat wasn’t the only game that upset them, but it was the main one – and there were Senate hearings on video game violence. The Senators threatened to implement federal regulation on the games, so companies like Sega, Nintendo, and EA agreed to create their own organization to give video games ratings like movies.

Oh, did you know that back in my day, the SNES version of Mortal Kombat didn’t have blood? It had gray “sweat,” instead. That gave Sega a huge advantage with its Genesis version. I didn’t have either system, I just had NES, but I played it in my freshman college dorm. Doom II was our big game. – by Dan Katz

Best Game That Should Have Been at Least Nominated for Best Soundtrack, Jesus Christ

The original Octopath Traveler lost to Read Dead Redemption 2 in 2019, as if the music made the list of things literally anyone cared about in RDR2. The sequel, which is even more of a musical triumph than the original, fittingly got snubbed even harder. I’m not even gonna push for best RPG, even though I liked this better than Baldur’s Gate 3, yeah, I said it. But the music? Are you kidding me? Listen to Castti’s theme song and tell me Tears of the Kingdom, a game which is dead silent most of the time, deserved more recognition in Best Score and Music. This is about more than getting an award for one of my favorite games this year. It’s about getting even a single nomination for one of my favorite games this year. And also it’s about righting a history of wrongs. Octopath Traveler deserves justice! Do you hear me? JUSTICE! – Raven Kennedy