2022 was a rich year in the gaming world, seeing the release of many large and highly anticipated games. Many new Indie and Interactive video games also released this year, leaving their mark. Without further ado, here are some wonderful games launched this year to take your mind off school, in your free time. Indulge with caution!

Big releases

Starting with the highly anticipated releases, Horizon Forbidden West, a sequence to the very successful Horizon video game series, is a PlayStation 4 and 5 action role-playing game. Fun fact, this series was developed by Guerrilla Games, a Dutch game developer based in Amsterdam. If you are an adventurer at heart and seek amazing graphics, this is definitely the game for you! Horizon Forbidden West does a fantastic job deftly unravelling more of the secrets lingering in the far-off post-apocalyptic world and meticulously connecting all the different storylines.

Elden Ring is a game with an intricate universe full of hidden secrets and 'ecclesiastic lore', as well as one of the largest worlds ever rendered on a console. Every inch of the world map is intentional and, gameplay wise, players are completely free to do whatever they want. You can either complete the main plot and defeat the boss or explore the entire map and take in the game's incredibly hyper realistic graphics or even both! Elden Ring was developed by FromSoftware and released for PlayStation 4 and 5, Windows, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.

Indie Games

In the Indie games category, Stray, a third-person cat adventure game set in a decaying cyber city, was a major hit. It was developed for PC, PlayStation 4 and 5 as the debut of the French indie BlueTwelve Studio. The beautiful aesthetics were influenced by Kowloon Walled City and the gameplay was not only based on research about cats, but was also inspired by Murtaugh and Riggs, the developers' cats. Amongst all the positive reviews and praise, this game has already received accolades at The Game Awards and Golden Joystick Awards. Stray is the ideal video game for all cat lovers out there!

Scorn is an atmospheric first-person horror and adventure game set in an unsettling universe, developed by Ebb Software and released for Microsoft Windows, Xbox Series X/S. The visual art of the game is the most important aspect in creating its horror atmosphere. Gameplaywise, as the players progress through Scorn, they can unlock new locations, pick up new abilities, weapons and gear, as they try to comprehend the sights presented to them. This game was also nominated for Best Art Direction of 2022 at the Game Awards. 

Interactive Media Games 

Immortality is an interactive film trilogy video game developed by Sam Barlow. It was released for Windows and Xbox Series X/S, as well as through the Netflix app for the Android and iOS versions. Immortality has a compelling mystery story about exploring the treatment of women in Hollywood, by following the missing case of the fictional actress Marissa Marcel. The players have access to a full archive of clips, rushes and behind-the-scenes footage from her career, as well as the possibility to freeze the footage and zoom in on details in order to find the answer to the protagonist’s fate.

A Memoir Blue is an hour-long interactive poem developed by Annapurna Interactive and released for Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One/Series S/Series X. The story is delicate and a little simple, yet it has a profoundly intimate quality that makes it universally relatable, complemented by an amazing soundtrack. It is conveyed through a dream in which the protagonist, an Olympic swimmer, revisits scenes in her childhood and observes her younger self at significant moments in her life, to explore why success so often contains the seeds of failure. The young version of the protagonist is rendered as a two-dimensional cartoon moving through a three-dimensional universe. The player guides the narrative along with a pointer that allows a few limited interactions with the world, such as buying train tickets, guiding raindrops in a newspaper to reveal a new memory and moving wood to create a bridge across a river.

I hope this article piqued your interest in some of these games and that you have fun playing them!