It’s been a roller-coaster year for video game releases. Early in the year, 2022 felt like it was shot out of a rocket with games like Elden Ring and Horizon Forbidden West. And then, suddenly, the release schedule fell off a cliff until the fall months. But on the whole, it’s been a solid year across the board for AAA blockbusters, little-known indies that exploded in popularity, and deeply imaginative narrative games.

If you recently built a new desktop PC, were gifted a gaming laptop, or have some Steam gift cards burning a hole in your pocket, we’ve got a helpful list. While there are many great games you can spend your time with, here are 10 absolute bangers across a variety of genres and price points you won’t want to pass up.

This simple $5 indie dominated the hearts and minds of several Verge staffers this year, and since it reached version 1.0 in 2022, it seems more and more of us continue getting Vampire-pilled. Vampire Survivors is a basic bullet hell survival game that hides some incredible depth beneath its surface. This game has just one control input: move around the screen with the analog stick to avoid ever-increasing waves of enemies while your weapons auto-fire at set intervals. It may sound simplistic, but it’s just so damn fun. And while there is not a vampire to be seen within its near absence of a story, its characters and settings are weirdly cool enough that you may find yourself inventing your own…