Recap: The games we played in 2022

Have you ever looked at the clock after playing your favorite game and thought: holy heck, where did the time go?! That’s how we feel now that 2022 is almost over and we’ve been playing our favorite games all year. So we had to ask our team: what console or mobile games did you play in 2022 that made the time fly by?

The result is an awesome games list recap that we’re excited to share with you now, full of great mobile (and non-mobile!) games.

Top Played Games by Our PlaytestCloud Team

Before we dig into the full list, we 're happy to share the top five games our team loved in 2022:

Below, you can see the full list and learn what we’re playing when we're not running playtests, chatting with game studios, or hashing out the latest opportunities in games user research

Alex

Genshin Impact

Extensive world and lore, beautiful character and environment design as well as incredibly fun game play.

Horizon Forbidden West

Same as no. 1, but with a very different, hyperrealistic world design. Great climbing action and a huge open world to explore. Great follow-up to its predecessor, just with a slightly weaker and less intriguing story line.

Pokémon Legends Arceus

Not the most astonishing graphics (duh, it's a Nintendo switch game), but the first ever Pokémon game to almost completely break with the usual system and to introduce addicting and fun capturing mechanics, sneaking, and fun battle mechanics.

Philip

Pokemon Unite

Although I always get aggressive when I play Pokemon Unite on my mobile phone, I kept hours and hours fighting for Aeon in 2022. It's highly addictive, top-level adrenaline, and–yes, surely–a rollercoaster ride of emotions.

Deniz

Elden Ring

FromSoftware surpassed expectations and brought us the greatest RPG ever made.

Christian

Horizon Forbidden West

Aloy is a great main character and the game has a touching story. Good story design. Also a game that gives LOTS of options for accessibility/difficulty management.

The Quarry

Frighteningly fun. Big shoutout for the MANY ways to adjust difficulty!

Diablo Immortal

For the nostalgia :)

Elie

Marvel Snap

Marvel Snap packs bold ideas, deep gameplay, a punchy presentation and lots of love for Marvel.

Rebel Rider

The game was launched in CBT in Germany, which allowed me to play it early! It is a quality mobile game based on my favorite mode in Mario Kart (Battle). The character design is MOBA inspired and the controls feel great!

Jake

Cities in Motion

In this classic transportation city-building game, you are tasked to build a transport network in cities like Berlin, Amsterdam, Helsinki and Vienna. What Cities in Motion does is take what some may consider to be the mundane task of designing public infrastructure and makes it genuinely compelling. Sometimes it feels like putting a puzzle together.

Contraband Police

I am cheating a bit with this one as the beta demo came out in 2022 and the game will actually be released in January 2023. Fans of “Papers Please” are in for a treat with this PC game from Crazy Rocks and PlayWay. In this 3D sim border patrol game, you will need to examine papers, search for contraband, and keep criminals out of your country.

Overboard!

This clever mobile puzzle game from inkle puts you in the shoes of a murderer who has just committed the crime on a cruise ship hours from arriving in port. You will need to pin your crime on another passenger. What is fun is that you will fail the first time around. But you and your character will get many more chances to figure out your caper - remembering and improving on your past attempts.

Peter

SIFU

Mastering SIFU's dynamic, free-flow combat was one of my most fun gaming experiences of 2022. It's challenging, stylish, and so very satisfying. The levels are beautiful, even stunningly so, and often go in unexpected directions. My personal favorite is the Museum stage, with its clean design and dreamlike spaces. Also, stunning enemies by throwing artwork at their faces is just plain fun!

Citizen Sleeper

You play as a Sleeper, a human consciousness placed into a robot body, that escapes the clutches of its corporate owners and has to make a new life on an independent space station. The gameplay is inspired by tabletop RPGs and can feel tense at times, despite its simplicity, but the true star of the game is its excellent writing and characters. A definite recommendation for fans of Sci-Fi stories.

Outer Wilds + Echoes of the Eye

Yes, it's from 2019, but I'm including it because it recently received a next-gen update. Also, not enough people have played this and it's a straight-up masterpiece in my mind. I can't possibly do it justice in 400 characters, so I'll just say that no other game has instilled quite the same sense of discovery and curiosity in me. A truly unique experience that could only ever exist in gaming.

Mohamed

Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel

It's a fun competitive game that I used to play both with real and virtual cards. The possibilities are endless when playing and the community is great.

God of War Ragnarok

Great story and gameplay with a hint of puzzle solving

The Last of Us

The storytelling of this game, especially the last part, is incredibly immersive.

Matt

Stray

Everybody has thought of being a cat, this game let's you do exactly that🐈

Guild Wars 2: End of Dragons

With PlaytestCloud, I was able to use my vacation days and not leave my house for 7 days to enjoy this MMORPG's newest expansion. I don't regret a single second of it🐉

Apex Legends Mobile

Ever wanted to win a battle royale on the go? If you are waiting for the train to arrive or have to use the toilet, you can still play and survive to be the last one standing in Apex Legends Mobile🤖

Gonçalo

God of War: Ragnarok

Improves on the first game in every level, and ends the story with a BANG in every aspect. The scope, the gameplay, everything here is excellent, but it's the writing that's the star and makes the game as special as it is. The story, the dialogue, it really feels like they spent ages and ages refining every single word spoken by every single character as much as they could – and it pays off. For all the spectacle that the game offers (and it really is spectacular), it's its heart and its characters that really make it memorable.

Stray

It's beautiful, moving, and surprisingly political. Come for the cute cat, stay for the strong political overtones and the cyberpunk vibes.

Pokemon Violet

Does it have tons and tons of technical issues? Yes. Is it still unbelievably charming and addictive? YES. Oh, and does it have the best story of any Pokemon game? Y.E.S. For all its issues, Pokemon Violet is still the game many of us have been dreaming about since we were 11. It may be a diamond in the rough, but it's still a diamond.

Gareth

Elden Ring

They only went and did it! They took the winning linear soulsbornesekiro formula and turned it into a somehow even more winning open world game. It’s also the only FromSoft game that I’ve been able to actually convince friends to play.

Grounded

I first played Grounded in early access and bounced off it; now with the addition of a story and progression structure, the whole world positively shines. Also, if you play it solo it’s the most stomach-churning survival horror game. (Oh, and the spider intensity slider is incredible!)

Marvel Snap

I’m still in early days with it, but for a very poor/inexperienced strategy player like myself, the first hours with this are an absolute joy. One of those games where the UX researcher in me is whispering “you need to take notes” while I play.