Save point: 2023 in review

2023 is now behind us and a bright, shiny new year lies ahead.

That means this week is a time for taking stock, realising what we’ve accomplished, and being happy we made it through another weird 12 months. It’s also a good chance to consider where we want to go in the future and the goals we’d like to set ourselves for 2024.

After taking a break in the summer to focus on work, I returned to the blog with a regular weekly schedule and an updated look in August. There were a few content changes also. While I still very much enjoyed playing and writing about video games, my interests had expanded and I wanted to be able to discuss board games, running and IT best practice too.

Alongside this, there were several changes on a personal level. I switched back to my previous career after realising I’d had enough of working with databases and now feel much more at home in an IT service management (ITSM) role. I also completed my Data Fellowship apprenticeship in September and am due to attend the first lecture for the Advanced Data Fellowship (ADF) this month.

Before I get started on that though, I wanted to spend some time taking a look back over the posts published and games played for a review of 2023. I’ve decided not to focus on views and visitor statistics in the round-up below as they aren’t important to me – but if anyone is interested in seeing that data, please do get in touch and I’d be happy to share it. Hopefully this is the start of a new tradition and I’ll follow up on this post in January 2025 to see how far we’ve come.

Posts of the year

The weirdest finding for me in this review was discovering the most viewed post of 2023. I’ve no idea why Murder Most Puzzling review: putting the pieces together was as popular as it was and why it’s still getting hits a year later. The Jetpack dashboard hasn’t been particularly helpful in figuring out where these are coming from. The only thing I’ve been able to deduce is that someone from either the UK or America must really like jigsaws or photographs of Zelda laying on top of my copy of The Clairvoyant’s Convention.

Regular readers will know about my adoration for the Monkey Island series, so it will come as no surprise that I returned to Sea of Thieves for The Legend of Monkey Island in August. The post covering my experience, Monkey business: returning to Sea of Thieves, turned out to be the most commented-on piece from the year. I also spent some time playing The Elder Scrolls Online (ESO) and the post explaining why it’s like junk-food to me, Junk-food gaming: the addictive joy of ESO, was the most liked of 2023.

It’s hard to pick a personal favourite from those published this year but there are a few I’d like to highlight for different reasons. First is Finding myself in Albion: the personal meaning of Fable, as it was inspired by seeing a talk by someone I really admire. Next is Infectious fun: my favourite zombie video games as it was the first in a series of collaborations with a new blogging friend. And finally, Methodologies and morale: prioritising people was published at the point when I plucked up the courage to write about something different.

Games of the year

Although 2023 proved to be a better year for video game releases for me, my favourite title played in the last 12 months was actually released in 1998. I didn’t manage to finish Black Dahlia when I originally bought it back then due to a game-breaking bug, but finally got the chance to do so in March thanks to help from Pete and friend-of-the-blog Darkshoxx. Making it to the end, even with some help from a walkthrough, made me feel as though something big had been crossed off my gaming bucket list.

If had to pick a favourite from games released last year, it would be hard to choose between two. The first would be DREDGE, which left me thinking about it for a long time after the credits rolled as there was something so beautifully melancholic about it. The other was one I backed on Kickstarter in August 2021 and finally got my hands on in November. I love full-motion video (FMV) adventures and Markus Ritter – Ghosts of the Past was an excellent sequel to The Lost Family worth waiting for.

Only five reviews and one preview were published on Later Levels in 2023, the lowest amount in several years. That’s not to say I didn’t play much though: I tried a total of 67 board games, escape rooms, jigsaws and video games, with a 70% completion rate and several still in progress. Only one review key was accepted, that for The Many Pieces of Mr. Coo. I spent some time in December explaining why I no longer regularly accept free games as they come with certain obligations that I’d sometimes rather avoid.

Events of the year

My favourite ‘official’ event of 2023 was our visit to the UK Games Expo in June. Pete and I have only been playing board games for a couple of years since the COVID-19 lockdowns, but our small collection is slowly growing and shows my preference for cooperative over competitive titles. My favourite purchase from the expo was Arkham Horror. I’ve bought more games from the franchise since and enjoy the way each of them has you wondering just how much worse the impending doom is going to get.

As with previous years, video game events like EGX have proved to be lacklustre. The expos we attended felt empty, had large areas dedicated to retro games or tournaments rather than upcoming releases, and didn’t have enough there to keep us entertained for more than three hours. Their saving grace was being able to volunteer at WASD on the SpecialEffect stand twice. At the first event in March, being paired with a familiar face that I hadn’t seen since 2016 was a lovely surprise.

2023 was a year of non-official events too. I had the pleasure of meeting several bloggers and streamers in person for the first time when we met up at the Birmingham Gaming Market in May. Ellen from Strength in Sarcasm came all the way from the Canada to spend a weekend with us in September. And in November, we held a LAN party with several streamer friends and a conversation there inspired me to write a post about video games that feel like work. Our greatest achievement: making it to the Cheese Wedge.

Photographs of the year

Plans for next year

Although a lot of my time this year is going to be dedicated to the ADF apprenticeship, there are a few things on the agenda for 2024. We have our GameBlast24 stream coming up in February before the #LoveYourBacklog and #MaybeInMarch community events make a return. There’ll also be a monthly streaming project with Darkshoxx starting at the end of January. More news about these things will be coming in a post later this week when I figure out new goal for Later Levels and get myself organised for the 12 months ahead.

I hope 2023 was a good year for you and that 2024 will be even better. What are your favourite games, posts and achievements from the past year?