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GOTY Category 8: Most Surprisingly Good Game (Patreon)

Published:
2023-01-28 02:50:01
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

Hey, which game this year caught you by surprise this year? I mean, like, in a good way. Most Surprisingly Good Game hones the typical "Best Surprise" down a bit to get at what we really want to know here: What's the thing you played in 2022 that you weren't expecting all that much from, but ended up blowing you away? Was there some small game that made an outsized impact on your year? Did a long-running game make surprising changes in 2022? Let's hear it!

Comments

Posadist Tutor

Vampire Savior. Looked like a phone game, was a new genre.

alucard1801

Lol i saw All Quiet on the Western Front and played BF1 for 50 more hours.

Jordan Hass

Arcade Paradise, I was thinking "bootleg arcade similar" and the more the music and grinding between laundry and arcade, made it just THE BIGGEST SURPRISE

BEEFCAKE

Kirby and the forgotten land. Playing that with my 4 year old was just a joy.

Kacho

Neon White. While I was psyched for a Machine Girl soundtrack, I wasn’t ready to love a game that had CARDS all over it. I thought I was in for deck building and instead I got a fast-paced Super Monkey Ball kinda thing.

Adam Marcucci

Tunic. I expected nothing more than a cute Zelda clone but received one of the most unique and rewarding game experiences I've had in a very long time.

Merc-a-dude

Sonic Frontiers was surprisingly not a huge dumpster fire. The biggest suprise is how some of the biggest Sonic naysayers on the web were even like "yeah, this is at least interesting" coming from a game that *at best* looked like the usual 3-D Sonic trash that comes at the lowest point in The Sonic Cycle (tm).

Neomerge

Pad of time on WiiU

Anthony Purchia

Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin. I went in expecting to laugh but I came out the other side feeling moved.

Wes Koop

Sonic Frontiers! after all the shit talk and mid reviews, that game felt like mario 64 to me, there is so much to do everywhere

Simon Shaw

Tunic. I saw it as more of a zelda-esque dark souls originally, but once I started getting pages to the manual I was pretty hooked. The combat sections ended up feeling like obstacles I just had to get past so I could look for new puzzles. Ultimately, I started it thinking "This might be fun" and ended up with 3 pages of notes and a sense of accomplishment I didn't get from anything else last year.

Dr. Ryan

Marvel Snap. Didn't expect to get this sucked into a phone card game.

Sifted Sand Records

LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga The LEGO series has been so bad for so long since 2013 or so when the Minifigs started to talk, totally expected this to be awful as well. Shockingly it wasn't! In fact it made my GOTY list.

Jeremy Barrett

For my money, Tinykin was my biggest surprise. I knew I would enjoy it as it seemed like a fun 3D platformer. What I didn’t expect was to be enamored with it for several play sessions and 100%-ing the game. Absolutely one of my favorite experiences from 2022.

Kevin Johnson

Marvel's Midnight Suns gives a terrible first impression, as the dialogue is cringey and the story is rather rote at the start. The excellent deck building and strategic depth of the gameplay helps get you over that hump, however. Your patience is rewarded as you continue playing, with several systems feeding into one other and giving you access to more abilities and bonuses. And while the dialogue is still quippy like a MCU film, it does get much less annoying. 100% a surprise for me.

Pat Baer

Marvel Snap is a game I thought I'd try out for a week at most, instead of something I've been playing just about every day since day 1.

Nathan Holden

Arcade Paradise I ate my prejudice in about the first 2-3 hours.

Ian Zamojc

Neon White. Screenshots didn't do it justice, especially when half of them were of a manga-inspired graphic novel. When I saw it being played it got me interested. By the end, after all the mechanics were unlocked, I was fully invested and I now wish they'd release DLC maps. The style, the soundtrack (by Machine Girl) and the phenomenally tuned gameplay all came together perfectly.

Josh Harper

Marvel Snap and Vampire Survivors are both games that I spent a while assuming they were absolutely not for me, but have now been loving for quite a while

Joseph Tavano

The winner here is Vampire Survivors. This game had no business being this good (or maybe addictive?).

Anthony Riddell

Tunic 100%. Legit just thought it would be a simpler souls-like, but man that game caught me off guard. Got my girlfriend and I excited to play and figure that thing out.

humantree

Norco A game that I don’t believe was on my radar at all, ended up being my #2 GOTY. Sublime writing and an incredible atmosphere that build such a strong sense of place for the game to take place around.

Danial Shaikh

I was never into card games but Marvel Snap got me hooked. Though I’ve fallen off Snap itself it’s opened my eyes to the genre and now I’ve moved on to Legends of Runeterra.

Teigen Pillsbury

1. Chained Echoes - thought it was gonna be some RPG Maker adjacent junk, ended up being one of my favorite games of the year. Managed to delight and surprise the whole way through, and moved at a pretty fast pace. Adding modern amenities + a lot of QoL stuff into a JRPG makes the genre a lot more palatable. 2. The Legend of Tianding - would never have tried this game out if it weren't for gamepass. Nothing groundbreaking here, but it is super easy to jump into, and the combo system is fun. Also has a ton of style.

SatelliteOfLove

Pentiment coulda been very dry or "poor man's HBO period show" even with the pedigree. definately outstripped that huh?

Brian

Scorn. I was so grossed out by all the trailers I saw beforehand, but then I saw Kole Ross tweet "Quiet, lonely, hostile. It’s just you and horrific machinery and no stated goals. You just figure it out." That really piqued my interest, and I'm glad I checked it out. I don't know if I played after a big patch or something because everyone complains about the combat, but I was able to just avoid almost all the enemies (if you wait long enough most of the go back into their hidey holes in the walls). Best surprise / greatest gulf between low expectations and actual delivery.

Steve Francis

Terror of Hemasaurus Marvel Snap World Fighting Soccer 22 What Lies in the Multiverse

PapaNovember

Midnight Suns. Expected it to be crap, had a lot of bad buzz around it before it launched. Came out to be a fun tactical battler.

Joe Carney

Vampire Survivors is probably the winner here. SOP: FF Origin probably deserves a shout-out too. For a game that looked like it was going to be hot garbage this game ended up being... Well, hot garbage... But in a good way? I ended up playing through most of it, and I'll probably drop down to easy to finish the last hours during the summer when there's less coming out.

Parallax Abstraction

Tinykin for me. Came out of nowhere and was one of the most pleasant and just plain fun games of 2022 for me.

Manny Marmol

Crisis Core FFVII Reunion gets this one for me. I already played the original version of the game back when it came out on the PSP, so I already knew the mediocre gameplay and the goofy ass story going in. The part that actually surprised me is the quality that they put into this remake. Squarenix doesn't have the best track record with most of these remakes or enhanced ports, but they definitely brought their A game for this one. I got the PC version and the FPS stays stable at 120. On top of that, a lot of quality of life changes make the combat more fun and actually greatly help with the pacing of the game overall.

christian ates

Signalis. I don’t particularly care for survival horror games, but that game… well, I’ll just say it goes places. Also, I would have never even played Vampire Survivors, but since every podcast I listen to was crazy about it… I did, and well I get it.

Joe Lees

Midnight Suns

lowercase brian

Before I get going, this is strictly a me thing. Everyone else was in on it, but I missed out. Elden Ring. I've played all the other From Soft Soulsborne titles and they mostly miss me. I liked Dark Souls 3, but that's about it. I skipped Elden Ring until last month. I heard everyone gushing about it and chalked it up to doing more of what makes everyone gush about the rest of those games I don't enjoy. What surprised me was the way Elden Ring encourages exploration. I think the previous games in this vein discourage exploration in a lot of ways, but Elden Ring reminded me a lot of Morrowind. I've got a big map, and interesting things on the map result in finding interesting things in the world. If some area is too dangerous, I can run off and level up exploring somewhere else. That was enough of a difference to make Elden Ring really click for me in ways that previous From Soft games have not.

AJ

Sonic Frontiers. The crazy bastards somehow made a decent Sonic game.

Trips

Chained Echoes. Came out of nowhere to be one of the best RPGs I’ve played in a long time.

Cody Mims

Marvel Snap. I don't like CCGs or Marvel but I am so into it.

Mattie Remix

Inscryption and Marvel SNAP. I don't really like card/deck building games but they both drew me in for different reasons. Or maybe that neither had an emphasis on the "deck building" part which interests me the lease.

Sean Ian

Vampire Survivors! I expected the game to last a week or two tops but it's deep system of secrets and unlocks has me clocking in at just over 40 hours, for a game that cost what 3 bucks? Who could have seen this coming?

Rose

Atari 50th collection. There are a ton of these but the love put into this title makes it shine.

Jason R

Into the radius , one of the issues with most vr games is they don’t have much substance your 5th minute is the same as your 5th hour. Into the radius gives you a decent size world to explore and unlike bonelab/works doesn’t include massively frustrating puzzles

u!sel

Marvel Snap. Every once in a while there comes a mobile game out of the blue which totally catches me! The last one that did that wad Terra Battle and that was 2014.

Tefferz

SpiderHeck - the physics, music and weapon selection all combine to make a fantastic brawler - my group picked it up because it was on GamePass and it quickly became the end-of-night game we just keep playing

Aaron J

Vampire Survivors. I’ve always held quiet disdain for passive games that sort of play themselves (clickers, Diablo, etc). I downloaded it on game pass prepared to hate it, and it’s the game I played most this year after Elden Ring.

gwelengu

Death Stranding. Does it count if it came out in 2019? Technically 2022 for Windows so let’s use that as an excuse. Great sim game. Borrows from things like Eurotruck Simulator which I love. There’s something a bit odd about the cutscenes but I enjoy watching them. Guillermo deal Toro as Deadman is my favorite.

Rhett Woody

Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel I’m already seeing a lot of Marvel SNAP in this category (and I totally agree), but I’m going to toss in a little variety. I love TCG/CCG’s in general, but the video game versions I tend to gravitate toward the most are the ones I enjoy, or have enjoyed, playing the physical paper version of (so basically Magic the Gathering and Pokémon). Now, I am certainly aware of Yu-Gi-Oh, but I have never owned a single card and had never read the manga or watched the anime. I had no real ties to the property at all. When Master Duel launched early in the year, it was getting a lot of positive reviews, so I decided to give it a shot. Boy, did it suck me in. I eventually ended up with it installed on my PC, laptop, Switch, and phone and would go in for a match every spare moment I had. I keep up with my personal GOTY list on a running basis, and Master Duel spent a surprisingly long time riding in the #1 spot. It pulled me in so hard that I actually started watching the original anime for a short time. I can fully recommend trying Master Duel, but if you don’t have any nostalgia for the property, maybe don’t try watching the anime.

R. Ballien

Vampire Survivors. No one needs to say why at this point. We all know.

feliscele

Vampire Survivors. I don’t like run based games. I don’t like bullet hell or bullet hell-adjacent games. I don’t like mediocre pixel art. And yet!

DCMaarten

Also Vampire Survivors i thought the art style was mediocre but once i played the game i was hooked.

Aaron Seddon

WWE 2K22 or NFS Unbound were huge surprises to me. Should have been awful by all accounts and are both really good.

Alex S

Vampire survivors. I cooled off on it but I was obsessed with it for a while. Expected to hate it

Retrograde Amnesia

seconded. loving everything about it so far. it's weird in a really fun way.

Kuno Woudt

Far Cry 6 (probably doesn't count because it came out in 2021). Based on the games media discourse around this game, I didn't expect much. But IMO the changes they made between 5 and 6 turned this into an almost perfect game for those kinds of people who enjoy the checklist style of open world games Ubisoft tends to make. It's a bunch of bases you can take over, there's no bethesda style branching narrative locking you out of certain things. It's a well realized world with mostly believable characters . This is probably the best thing I've played in 2022, and that's surprising.

Captain Ginyu

Strange of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin. This game is stupid at its core. Does it know that it's stupid? Who could say. Regardless, the combo of quite satisfying combat, silly "lore" bits, and a bunch of Fantasy Meatheads doing their best to make Over The Top but with Chocobos. I thought I'd hate it, but I really enjoyed the ride.

FameDouglas

Arcade Paradise Saw Jeff playing it and thought to myself, "that's probably nice even if it'll only keep me entertained for a couple of hours". Fast forward to 12 hours later. It's fucking good!

DaddyWarbucks

Vampire survivors: Anyone you tell about that game thinks it sounds dumb as shit, and so did I. But goddamn is it great

coribald

Tunic. been following it for a long time, and it always looked like a very cute, very nice Zelda-like with a cute fox. while it technically is that, it's *so much more*. what a special game. I'm surprised at the number of Vampire Survivors answers here - could be way wrong, but I feel like it misses the spirit of the category. Were y'all actually aware of that game before everyone was talking about it positively? Did you ever really have mediocre expectations? Mine were almost immediately set to 'extremely high', given the word-of-mouth that started spreading right after it came out.

coribald

I totally agree, I actually finished this game and I *never* do that. All the elements (traversal, combat, loot) feel really good, and the pacing is largely up to you as a player. Was great to pick-up-and-play whenever and for as long as I felt like it.

Colby Tibbet

Vampire Survivors without a doubt. i think its the "most unassuming good game, but that's similar to this category

Anders Widebrant

PowerWash Simulator seemed like it was going to be a fun little distraction and turned out to be extremely therapeutic instead

Ben R

Synthetik 1 and 2 (early access). Turns out I was craving exactly the kind of action rogue lite this offers. Rewards careful play and offers a lot of variety in play style based on randomized weapon configurations. I hope they keep iterating on the sequel.

Ben R

Thanks for reminding me of this. Such a great game, but I got a little too obsessed with it and had to take a break, then promptly forgot it existed! Lol

Andy Robichaud

Sherlock Holmes Chapter 1: The Frogware detective games might even fit into the C-game tier. I had a blast playing this game and found the overarching story of Holmes' mother and friend Jon to be quite moving. It actually has decent gameplay mechanics and open-ended case conclusions. Pretty fun.

Bobby Downey

Cult of the Lamb. Could have a deeper experience. Hoping for some DLC or a sequel.

TheChrononaut1

Hands down, Sonic Frontiers. I expected that game to be a flaming or at least gently smoldering disaster, and it actually was a pretty good 3D Sonic, which is apparently an impossible feat, so I gotta hand it to them.

autumn sevier

Vampire survivors honestly. i had originally ignored it after looking at it thinking whatever it just looks like a weird bullet hell with old school style graphics...then it came to gamepass and i said why did i ignore this....ended up buying it on steam n dumped so many hours into it got all the steam achievements and it ended up my goty so for me it really was suprising how good it was/is. if we can't count it since it peaked its head into early access in 2021 then i guess my 2nd would be citizen sleeper , there are great moments in that little package n i diodn't think i would like it nearly as much as i did.

Phantasiu

Star Ocean: The Divine Force. For a series that hasn't had a title I actually felt compelled to complete since the PS2, I ended up really enjoying it. It's still a little janky and a bit budget, but it has just enough going on to be really fun. It helps that the story feels like a "best of" version of stories from the rest of the series.

Jason Loss

Stranger of Paradise did it for me this year, it was a fun romp

David Doel

Sonic Frontiers, it shocked me and is probably the game I've been the most surprised by in my entire life. I've never enjoyed Sonic games, always thought they were terribly overrated, yet I just recently got the Platinum in Frontiers after grabbing the game on sale late last year and expecting nothing. It's nowhere close to perfect, especially the set piece missions, but just running around the world and doing tasks while listening to a podcast was a thoroughly enjoyable experience - they absolutely nailed Sonic's movement. And the story is completely out of left field.. who knew a Sonic game would have a touching plot line about a father and daughter!? What!

Nathan H.

Vampire Survivors, definitely

Ryan Stafford

There was a Zelda II style game called Everblade that had some really good level design that surprised me.

Zain Abba

Outriders It's not a 2022 release, but the game is surprisingly fun. Shooting is fast and the abilities are pretty fun.

Tyler Scheatzle

Ready or not. Incredibly fun find this year. Did not expect it to be as fun as it was

Rakete

Atari 50 After a lot of middling compilations this one stands out in terms of production value and variety. I hope this sets the bar for future collections

nahcq

Lunistice came out of nowhere and plays super well and and looks wonderful.

MunnyShh

Vampire Survivors for me. I'm not fully addicted, but it's surprising how satisfying it really was after my being hesitant with the visual style from all the hype the year prior.

Khetix

Marvel Snap was a good surprise.

Odyssydical

Tunic was a real suprise. Looked okay but ended up in my top 5 of the year

Jagster

Marvel's Midnight Suns for sure. Was hardly on my radar and ended up sinking like 30 hours in during the first week. Close to beating it now at around 60 hours

Grozz

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is my favorite game of the year and I was not expecting it at all considering I only made it halfway through the first game and didn't play 2 at all. Picked it up on a lark because I wasn't really playing anything else around the time it came out and I was hearing good things online, ended up loving it.

Michael Gibler

Technically first came out in 2021, but hit Xbox in 2022. Garden Story was much more involved and in depth then I ever expected.

First Warden

Vampire Survivors I fully expected to hate the concept and gameplay after hearing so many people heap such unexpected and absolutely baffling praise on it but after an hour and a half something clicked and I finally got what people meant when they were talking about it.

Roose

pokey mon

Handamonium

Neon White was a shock. Before I played it, I thought it was on-rails! But it was sooo much better than that and took me back to Counterstrike surfing maps. Except, this time? I am actually good at it.

Luis Gomez

Sonic Frontiers, idk i was able to look past its faults and have a great time with it

Terrycloth Poncho

Vampire Survivors ... More than 50 hours in for $3? Get real.

normal cool adult male

Atari 50. I never could have imagined a world where this was anything but a complete cash grab, but they really did this thing right and it came together better than anyone could have imagined.

The Crazy Man

I'm gonna go with Spark the Electric Jester 3. I wasn't expecting much considering it's a game in the mold of a sonic game, and a 3D one at that! But it's the best implementation of the idea and the story takes some bold as hell twists that I'm not sure pays off but I appreciate nonetheless

Matt

Arcade paradise for me