SuperPod Saga: Aaron's Top 10 Games of 2023
Hi there, folks! My name is Aaron and I’m one half of SuperPod Saga, which is just about two years old. Although I’m a neurotic mess and obsess over every small detail, I couldn’t be more proud of what we’ve accomplished, the community we’ve built around us on social media, and of course for how many loyal fans listen to our show.
I’m normally a pretty goofy guy and I love meeting new people and talking about video games. THANK GOD FOR PODCASTS, RIGHT?
I love video games of all kinds, but I tend to sway more toward roguelikes, puzzle games, JRPG’s, and metroidvanias. I especially love discovering new hidden gems – or games that are underappreciated and overlooked – and sharing those games with anyone who will listen to me.
If you’d like to hear more of what I have to say or want to listen to a video game podcast that doesn’t take itself seriously at all, check out our website below.
OKAY, top 10 of 2023 time!
10. Luck be a Landlord
I’m not a casino guy. The buffet food is always soggy and gross, I don’t like being mean-mugged when I take too long to play something, and I definitely don’t care for sitting around smokers. But I do love me some SLOTS, BABY. This game is a deck-building slot machine roguelike, where you’ve just moved into a new apartment which happened to come with a slot machine. Oh, and that’s how you pay your rent – with the slot machine.
You’ll spin the reels and depending on what symbols you get, you’ll earn coins. After spinning, you’ll choose 1 of 3 symbols to add to your reels. This is where the deck-building comes in. You’ll want to add ONLY symbols that synergize with the symbols that you have. After each spin, your rent increases by a certain amount. So you’ll need to make the most out of each spin.
If that hasn’t hooked you yet, IT’S ON MOBILE. Seriously addictive and seriously fun.
9. Hi-Fi Rush
This one was a really big, very unexpected surprise. I never would’ve expected a hack’n’slash to come from Tango Gameworks. I also never would’ve expected a rhythm hack’n’slash to work either.Hi-Fi Rush is so full of attitude, humor, style, and is just so much fun. The soundtrack is KILLER as well.
The game basically plays like God of War or Devil May Cry. Enemies come at you and you press your buttons to string together combos, jump and juggle enemies in the air, dodge at the right time, or pull-off some sweet super moves! Each area of the game has different beat or rhythm that you can hear at all times. If you time your attacks to the rhythm, you’ll do more damage and get a few other bonuses as well.
The game is so freaking unique and just OOOOOOOOOZES style. It’s on Game Pass, so go check it out!
8. Etrian Odyssey HD
I’ve been a big fan of this series for years. This series is so wildly underappreciated and it physically pains me! So much so that I wrote an article in our blog on our website about it (go read it!). My biggest fear with this series is that they might not transition to consoles without touchscreens too well. But those geniuses at Atlus proved me dead wrong. They brought the first 3 to Switch and they play BEAUTIFULLY.
Etrian Odyssey is a series of dungeon-crawling RPG’s where you start by naming your guild. Then you’ll make your characters, and this is one of my favorite parts of the series or the genre for that matter. You’ll pick your class, your character portrait, and then name them. Your part has 5 spots – 3 in the front and 2 in the back. Your front members will take the most hits, so you’ll want to choose classes that are tankier, evade more, or block attacks. Your back row will be your squishier members, so healers, spell-casters, archers, and much more.
What Etrian Odyssey does differently is how the classes play. Instead of typical warriors, wizards, thieves, etc, you have classes similar to those, but with loads of tweaks and things that set them apart. It also has you drawing your map of each dungeon as you go. When you start a dungeon, your map will be blank. It’s up to you to draw walls, place icons for doors and chests, and a whole lot more. But if you aren’t into the map drawing, there’s a setting for auto-mapping as you explore.
If you like dungeon-crawling, characters that look anime as fuck, drawing maps, and an incredibly addictive gameplay loop, check this series out. You can thank me later.
7. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
DISCLAIMER: I’m not the biggest Zelda fan. But something about BoTW and ToTK really stuck with me. I love how open the world is and how much freedom you have to go anywhere and do whatever. You can approach any encounter in a number of different ways and share your goofy escapades with your friends and compare what you did with what they did. The side quests I could do without though, because I’ll end up trying to complete all of those, get burnt out, stop playing, and come back and beat the game two years later.
What really hooked me is the ability to combine shit with other shit and make a wonky car, a giant mech, a really bad boat, or whatever else your imagination cooks-up! There was no better way to follow-up BoTW. This was a really, really damn good follow-up.
6. Backpack Hero
It’s a dungeon-crawling roguelike! In this game, you wander through halls of each dungeon fighting monsters, finding loot, coming across merchants or other people who offer things for stuff, and way too much more.
In battle, you’ll fight using whatever is in your backpack. Whatever swords, axes, shields, or armor you find along the way can be stuffed into your backpack and will have either a passive ability or can be used in battle to do damage or add block, which blocks damage.
Your backpack has limited space and is similar to the attache case system in Resident Evil 4. It’s on a grid and each item has a particular shape, with swords being 3 blocks long, axes being an L shape, food being one block, etc.
Oh, and there’s town-building elements! You’ll build different buildings and houses to gain different passive abilities, unlock new equipment, and even unlock new characters! Those new characters also have their own unique playstyles that are totally different from the default character.
It’s on Steam and Switch for sure. Check it out!
5. Diablo IV
MORE DUNGEON-CRAWLING. We all know Diablo. Isometric view, your character fights hordes upon hordes of enemies, you become ungodly strong, and loot. GLORIOUS LOOT.
Diablo IV gives you a deeper, richer character customization system backed by your equipment, skill trees, and a lot more. It’s also open world and has many side quests, world events, and other things you’d see in an MMO. I forgot to mention that it’s basically an MMO at this point, complete with the inability to pause the game!
I was addicted to the game for months and lived and breathed it, hoping to create the most untouchable, destructive force in the game.
4. Super Mario RPG Remake
Let’s get this outta the way: I’ve never beaten the original Mario RPG. I’ve only played about an hour of the original, so this remake was the perfect way for me and many others to experience the game.
The remake is so faithful to the original game, looks fantastic, and adds some QOL fixes and some more post-game content.
If you haven’t played Mario RPG, you’d better.
3. Evolings
Oh look, ANOTHER ROGUELIKE. But this one is like if Pokemon met Darkest Dungeon and had an adorable, eldritch monster child.
You start by picking your starter Evoling, then go along the map and pick a destination, and you’ll either fight, heal, buy stuff, power-up your Evolings, and much more.
Eventually, you can fuse Evolings together to make an uber powerful Evoling with game-breaking attacks. As you gather more Evolings, power them up, gather relics (items that give passive abilities), and learn how to synergize your party during battle, you’ll quickly find that the game can become pretty breakable and you’ll plow through floor after floor and win a run!
It’s on Switch and Steam, yo.
2. Pizza Tower
You’re in luck, reader. This one is not a roguelike. Instead, Pizza Tower is a 2D platformer with a gameplay style very heavily influenced by Wario Land 4.
The first things you’ll notice about the game are the art style and the banging soundtrack. The art style has that ZEST of 90’s cartoons. The main character, Peppino Spaghetti, dashes, shoulder-bashes, jumps, and belly flops his way through each level, collecting “Toppins”, power-ups, and then triggers a countdown at the end of the stage. That’s your cue to get the heck out! You’ll make your way back through the stage before the countdown ends, otherwise you’ll get booted out and have to redo the stage.
The soundtrack has some serious Sega Genesis twang to it and each stage has its own unique track. Heck, even the pause screen has a great track.
The boss battles are all very different from each other, having some kind of gimmick that you’ll use to fight them or mimicking the playstyle of some other retro game.
This one is only on Steam, but I bet plays like a dream on Steam Deck.
1. Wildfrost
If you know me, you know that I greatly enjoy deck-building roguelikes. So I guess it’s no surprise that a one made it to my #1 game of 2023. It also has a cool Adventure Time-esque art style.
Wildfrost is very different from the others though. Instead of just playing card after card after card in one turn, you’ll instead play character cards and different items on the battlefield and play attacks, buffs, and everything else from your hand. But you can only play one card per turn.
Each character and enemy has a countdown timer on the bottom of their cards. When it reaches 0, they’ll attack or do whatever action their card says. So each turn, you’ll need to really think about your moves, because this game is incredibly brutal and unforgiving as HELL.
There’s loads to unlock as you play, different synergies to discover, and some other fun twists that you’ll find as you play the game.
It’s on Switch and Steam, ya’ll.