2023 Game of The Year : Group Four voting
Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2024 2:14 pm
Manic Miner 40th Anniversary Tribute
2023 marked 40 years of Manic Miner, still possibly my favourite Speccy game. I even finished it in 2020 ( September 10th, to be precise ). But it's clearly not hard enough, and this is a lovingly balanced harder-but-not-too-hard tribute. Same 20 screens, but reimagined. Sort of like one of those recent Disney movie remakes, but not awful. .
Imprisoned
Classy text adventure that starts out in darkness and slowly reveals itself and its protagonist.
The Mandarin 2
Pretty nifty citrus-themed Star Wars game where you'll be jumping and shooting and flying sometimes.
ZX Terror House
Another Game and Watch, this one with a fast moving horror theme and multiple levels. Sword-fight bats and Frankensteins and mummies and what-not.
Ghostly Capers
RetCon is haunted? Sure, why not. Bright and musical platformer, with an extraordinary death animation.
Pacman
There are already 51 Pacman games on ZXDB, one of them an actual emulator running the arcade machine code. So this has work to do to stand out - and makes pretty a darn good stab at it. Excellent.
SudokuNY
Cute single-level Sudoku, using the 9 letters of Hap New Yor instead of numbers.
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Rondure Sorcerer
Pretty nifty citrus-themed Star Wars game where you'll be jumping and shooting and flying sometimes.
Pirate Captain Creed: Adventure on Hallowe'en Island
Mrs. Mojon must be very proud of her boys. Another wildly colourful and eminently playable platformer from the Twins.
Johnny The Ghost
Smooth and devious puzzler, remaking an Atari game
JeT SeT JnR aNd ThE CuRsE oF ThE PhArAoH
A Jet Set Willy mod, starring Mr. Williams' son, Jet Set Junior. Do I need to say that this is astoundingly difficult?
Shangri-La
Good-looking GAC adventure by Luis Perez, this time adapting a 1937 movie and casting you as a diplomat on a plane about to crash in the Himalayas.
Train Your Brain
Brain training with simple puzzles.
The Mijadore Vase
Super-smooth movement, a double jump and a killer soundtrack all elevate this very tricky platformer. A bit of a treat this one, although you can expect to be restarting a lot.
Bell of Witch
The second text adventure in the group to start off in pitch darkness, this translation of a 1995 Slovak original has a peculiar parser and simple language, but has just the right difficulty level.
Eclipsia
Ambitious 3-part GAC text adventure in a mysterious fantasy setting.
Tobit
Biblical mini-games, based on less well-known arrow-dodging, corpse-burying, desert-wandering, fish-wrestling, demon-shooting Old Testament sources.
Orbol Von
There's a lot going on in that loading screen, huh? Typically professional platformer from Mojon Twins, where you have to jump on zombies.
Tapeworm
Oh Lordy, not another Snake game! But! This one has a unique (lack-of-)control system, and is a welcome addition as a result. Has a little something extra for Limahl fans as well.
Parsley Sage and the 7 Bins of Sunak
Politically charged and finely presented Cookie-style arcade action. There can't be many games with such a finely digitised 'Arse!'. Perhaps this is what the UK needs right now?
Rosetta
A single cypher puzzle with a absolutely thrilling payoff.
Pepe's Day Out
Frogger, but backwards. Ruinously unresponsive, but perhaps that's a metacommentary on making a Pepe the Frog game in 2023.
Face Punch Deluxe
A simple, colourful boxing game, with 2 player support.
Cursed Castle
Fast moving and eminently playable exploratory platformer. Little bit Ghosts and Goblins, little bit Jet Set Willy.
Duck Tales - Family Comes First
Pogo-stick platforming action with the World's most valuable still-under-copyright duck.
LOS ANILLOS DE SATURNO
Another aventura conversacional which I cannot understand. Maybe I can learn some more languages as a New Year resolution?
The Ghosts of Blackwood Manor
An exceptional, well-written and atmospheric text adventure.
Blue Diamond
Platform maze game with dedicated buttons for jumping left and right. Unusual.
Poker
This makes 18 games on ZXDB simply called 'Poker'. Incredibly, several of them are dice games. This one manages to be card game, which is a fine start.
Covidians Extended
Impressively smooth for a BASIC game, this is a straight-up Asteroids clone. No excuse for that loading screen though.
Super Cobra
Fast and playable Scramble clone from the Boriel Basic competition.
ZX Futbol
Football Manager, but 128k only and in Spanish.
La Cueva
The Cave', I reckon. A turn-based Snake where the trick is to collect all the goodies without boxing yourself in, and leaving a path to the exit - which you can't see until you've collected everything. Nice idea.
BorielRACE
Smooth sideways-scrolling driving game. Rudimentary if short-lived fun, helped by the inclusion of some slippy-slidey ice levels.
León Willy
More tricky JSW action. This time, Willy's a lion-man.
The Cult
Smooth, fast-paced mazey arcade adventure. Sadly, none of the NPCs sell sanctuary.
Chromanoids
Fun little single-screen actioner with multiple levels. Your little slug-thing has to eat the aliens, but only when you're the same colour as them. Nifty and unique.
Space Invader 2023
An homage to the first ever hand-held video game, apparently. It's a decent Game&Watch style Space Invaders in the end. Lovely.
Retrotrivial
Multiplayer Trivia with Speccy-themed questions. Who wrote this? What year did that come out? Who published the other?
Andres y su Fusil de Aliespres
Imagine Space Invaders, but you can't see the aliens. So you're shooting blindly at the sky, like that bit in Point Break / Hot Fuzz.
Lunar Lander
Straight forward, no frills Lunar Lander game. That makes 11 games in ZXDB named 'Lunar Lander' by my reckoning.
Jetsbot
Hover about in space in this arcade adventure. Personally. I was hampered by what appears to be Airwolf-level difficulty.
Time Sniper
Travel through time, sniping soldiers with your cross hairs as they dash in panic across an open plain.
ParaZXLand
A Boriel BASIC competition entry. Guide your little dudes onto an island. Avoid the floating bombs. Could not be simpler. Inlay cover art apparently created by an AI with no concept of how parachutes work.
Barco de Papel
This one's a pleasantly noisy Flappy Bird, in BASIC. Featuring a paper boat for some reason.
Misterio
Hey, cool, A board game. Looks like Cluedo with monsters in. But it's in Spanish, and I don't know what's going on.
The Dragnet Case Re-Release
A 're-release' of a game that never got released. A gumshoe detective text adventure, now nicely remastered in DAAD and illustrated
Teseo
Admirably ambitious maze game, where you must guide your weird little humunculous thing around a multi-screen labyrinth, avoiding beasties and traps to collect coins. It's in BASIC, and does not handle quite as responsively as it needs to.
Matar al César
Roman Empire-themed text adventure with nice line art. In Spanish, so that's all I can say.
Asteroides Color Power
I feel like if you call your game 'Asteroids', people are going to be expecting a game like Asteroids, which this is not. Instead, it's more of a colour-based Tempest, if anything, where you can only shoot a particular colour when attached to the corresponding wall. Nice idea, but in BASIC and there's no enemies / lose condition. Also the high-pitched beeping on the unskippable instructions page hurt my ears.
Tenebra 2
Terrific puzzle sequel that looks like a rogue-like but isn't. My only complaint about Tenebra was there there wasn't enough of it, and now there's more of it. Huzzah!
5 Keys
Puzzle-platformer with lovely presentation of its single-character graphics. One of the more impressive BASIC games you'll see.
Haoken
Slashy, dashy, double-jumping ninja platform action. Adds enough to the basic traversal to make this stand out from the platforming crowd.
The Dark Veil
Gorgeously illustrated multiple-choice CYOA text adventure. Light on the puzzles, with some insta-death, but it's a Lovecraft game, so thats fine.
Clone Zoo ZX
Zookeeper was my most played Nintendo DS game, so I had high hopes for this. Hopes which are partially met, but a lack of redefinable keys hampers it. WASD-Space? Yikes.
2023 marked 40 years of Manic Miner, still possibly my favourite Speccy game. I even finished it in 2020 ( September 10th, to be precise ). But it's clearly not hard enough, and this is a lovingly balanced harder-but-not-too-hard tribute. Same 20 screens, but reimagined. Sort of like one of those recent Disney movie remakes, but not awful. .
Imprisoned
Classy text adventure that starts out in darkness and slowly reveals itself and its protagonist.
The Mandarin 2
Pretty nifty citrus-themed Star Wars game where you'll be jumping and shooting and flying sometimes.
ZX Terror House
Another Game and Watch, this one with a fast moving horror theme and multiple levels. Sword-fight bats and Frankensteins and mummies and what-not.
Ghostly Capers
RetCon is haunted? Sure, why not. Bright and musical platformer, with an extraordinary death animation.
Pacman
There are already 51 Pacman games on ZXDB, one of them an actual emulator running the arcade machine code. So this has work to do to stand out - and makes pretty a darn good stab at it. Excellent.
SudokuNY
Cute single-level Sudoku, using the 9 letters of Hap New Yor instead of numbers.
Rondure Sorcerer
Pretty nifty citrus-themed Star Wars game where you'll be jumping and shooting and flying sometimes.
Pirate Captain Creed: Adventure on Hallowe'en Island
Mrs. Mojon must be very proud of her boys. Another wildly colourful and eminently playable platformer from the Twins.
Johnny The Ghost
Smooth and devious puzzler, remaking an Atari game
JeT SeT JnR aNd ThE CuRsE oF ThE PhArAoH
A Jet Set Willy mod, starring Mr. Williams' son, Jet Set Junior. Do I need to say that this is astoundingly difficult?
Shangri-La
Good-looking GAC adventure by Luis Perez, this time adapting a 1937 movie and casting you as a diplomat on a plane about to crash in the Himalayas.
Train Your Brain
Brain training with simple puzzles.
The Mijadore Vase
Super-smooth movement, a double jump and a killer soundtrack all elevate this very tricky platformer. A bit of a treat this one, although you can expect to be restarting a lot.
Bell of Witch
The second text adventure in the group to start off in pitch darkness, this translation of a 1995 Slovak original has a peculiar parser and simple language, but has just the right difficulty level.
Eclipsia
Ambitious 3-part GAC text adventure in a mysterious fantasy setting.
Tobit
Biblical mini-games, based on less well-known arrow-dodging, corpse-burying, desert-wandering, fish-wrestling, demon-shooting Old Testament sources.
Orbol Von
There's a lot going on in that loading screen, huh? Typically professional platformer from Mojon Twins, where you have to jump on zombies.
Tapeworm
Oh Lordy, not another Snake game! But! This one has a unique (lack-of-)control system, and is a welcome addition as a result. Has a little something extra for Limahl fans as well.
Parsley Sage and the 7 Bins of Sunak
Politically charged and finely presented Cookie-style arcade action. There can't be many games with such a finely digitised 'Arse!'. Perhaps this is what the UK needs right now?
Rosetta
A single cypher puzzle with a absolutely thrilling payoff.
Pepe's Day Out
Frogger, but backwards. Ruinously unresponsive, but perhaps that's a metacommentary on making a Pepe the Frog game in 2023.
Face Punch Deluxe
A simple, colourful boxing game, with 2 player support.
Cursed Castle
Fast moving and eminently playable exploratory platformer. Little bit Ghosts and Goblins, little bit Jet Set Willy.
Duck Tales - Family Comes First
Pogo-stick platforming action with the World's most valuable still-under-copyright duck.
LOS ANILLOS DE SATURNO
Another aventura conversacional which I cannot understand. Maybe I can learn some more languages as a New Year resolution?
The Ghosts of Blackwood Manor
An exceptional, well-written and atmospheric text adventure.
Blue Diamond
Platform maze game with dedicated buttons for jumping left and right. Unusual.
Poker
This makes 18 games on ZXDB simply called 'Poker'. Incredibly, several of them are dice games. This one manages to be card game, which is a fine start.
Covidians Extended
Impressively smooth for a BASIC game, this is a straight-up Asteroids clone. No excuse for that loading screen though.
Super Cobra
Fast and playable Scramble clone from the Boriel Basic competition.
ZX Futbol
Football Manager, but 128k only and in Spanish.
La Cueva
The Cave', I reckon. A turn-based Snake where the trick is to collect all the goodies without boxing yourself in, and leaving a path to the exit - which you can't see until you've collected everything. Nice idea.
BorielRACE
Smooth sideways-scrolling driving game. Rudimentary if short-lived fun, helped by the inclusion of some slippy-slidey ice levels.
León Willy
More tricky JSW action. This time, Willy's a lion-man.
The Cult
Smooth, fast-paced mazey arcade adventure. Sadly, none of the NPCs sell sanctuary.
Chromanoids
Fun little single-screen actioner with multiple levels. Your little slug-thing has to eat the aliens, but only when you're the same colour as them. Nifty and unique.
Space Invader 2023
An homage to the first ever hand-held video game, apparently. It's a decent Game&Watch style Space Invaders in the end. Lovely.
Retrotrivial
Multiplayer Trivia with Speccy-themed questions. Who wrote this? What year did that come out? Who published the other?
Andres y su Fusil de Aliespres
Imagine Space Invaders, but you can't see the aliens. So you're shooting blindly at the sky, like that bit in Point Break / Hot Fuzz.
Lunar Lander
Straight forward, no frills Lunar Lander game. That makes 11 games in ZXDB named 'Lunar Lander' by my reckoning.
Jetsbot
Hover about in space in this arcade adventure. Personally. I was hampered by what appears to be Airwolf-level difficulty.
Time Sniper
Travel through time, sniping soldiers with your cross hairs as they dash in panic across an open plain.
ParaZXLand
A Boriel BASIC competition entry. Guide your little dudes onto an island. Avoid the floating bombs. Could not be simpler. Inlay cover art apparently created by an AI with no concept of how parachutes work.
Barco de Papel
This one's a pleasantly noisy Flappy Bird, in BASIC. Featuring a paper boat for some reason.
Misterio
Hey, cool, A board game. Looks like Cluedo with monsters in. But it's in Spanish, and I don't know what's going on.
The Dragnet Case Re-Release
A 're-release' of a game that never got released. A gumshoe detective text adventure, now nicely remastered in DAAD and illustrated
Teseo
Admirably ambitious maze game, where you must guide your weird little humunculous thing around a multi-screen labyrinth, avoiding beasties and traps to collect coins. It's in BASIC, and does not handle quite as responsively as it needs to.
Matar al César
Roman Empire-themed text adventure with nice line art. In Spanish, so that's all I can say.
Asteroides Color Power
I feel like if you call your game 'Asteroids', people are going to be expecting a game like Asteroids, which this is not. Instead, it's more of a colour-based Tempest, if anything, where you can only shoot a particular colour when attached to the corresponding wall. Nice idea, but in BASIC and there's no enemies / lose condition. Also the high-pitched beeping on the unskippable instructions page hurt my ears.
Tenebra 2
Terrific puzzle sequel that looks like a rogue-like but isn't. My only complaint about Tenebra was there there wasn't enough of it, and now there's more of it. Huzzah!
5 Keys
Puzzle-platformer with lovely presentation of its single-character graphics. One of the more impressive BASIC games you'll see.
Haoken
Slashy, dashy, double-jumping ninja platform action. Adds enough to the basic traversal to make this stand out from the platforming crowd.
The Dark Veil
Gorgeously illustrated multiple-choice CYOA text adventure. Light on the puzzles, with some insta-death, but it's a Lovecraft game, so thats fine.
Clone Zoo ZX
Zookeeper was my most played Nintendo DS game, so I had high hopes for this. Hopes which are partially met, but a lack of redefinable keys hampers it. WASD-Space? Yikes.
