It’s that time of the year again. Time to look back at a full year of gaming and appreciate the biggest hits. Gamers ate well this year, between juggling updates to ongoing titles like Genshin and Honkai Star Rail to feasting on blockbusters nearly a decade in the making. Major publishers from Nintendo and Square Enix to Insomniac and Bethesda delivered on highly anticipated hits, and small indies didn’t disappoint, either. This may very well go down as one of the best years in video game history — at least if it wasn’t for seemingly endless layoffs and controversies that plagued the $200 billion industry.

We know it’s almost impossible to decide what to play these days and even more improbable to play everything, so we’ve curated a special list of the 10 games you can’t miss from 2023. Inverse reviewed these over the course of a year and lived the lives of these iconic characters so that we could come back to you with the best of the best.

You might have heard that Rebel Moon, the latest slow-motion odyssey from director Zack Snyder, is a smidge inspired by Star Wars. Snyder briefly entertained the idea of bringing his vision to that galaxy far, far away — but once Lucasfilm joined the Disney family, the director of adult-centric fare like 300, Watchmen, and Army of the Dead wisely chose to go his own way.

That’s not to say that Rebel Moon — Part One: A Child of Fire is completely removed from its influences. Snyder knows comparisons to the franchise are inevitable. It’s something he takes in stride.

“People were like, ‘Were you trying to avoid anything?’ And I was like, ‘I mean, yes — but also, how?’” Snyder tells Inverse. “You’re going to knock into it somehow, whether it’s space fascists or swords that light up.”