My Favorite Game Trailers of 2023

I'm back with my favorite game trailers of the year. Every year I end up with a list so long it calls into question whether I curated at all. But I think I did pretty well considering I saved 118 to my playlist of Favorite Game Trailers of 2023 (and so many more I added to GameTrailerDatabase.com). It's utterly impossible to watch all the game trailers released every year, so one of your favorites might not be on here. In fact, I guarantee one of your favorites isn't here because there tend to be relatively few mainstream AAA game trailers on my list. Not because those games didn't make excellent trailers, but because I'm always looking to highlight trailers that did something different, drew my attention, or pulled off a very difficult communication goal for a game which is hard to make into a trailer. Here in no particular order are my favorite game trailers of 2023!

Best Epic Adventure - The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Trailer #3 - This is an absolutely epic trailer befitting the scope of the game itself. While the game's key feature of the Ultrahand is a small part of the trailer, this sums up the adventure with a masterful mix of slow and intense moments. This trailer leaves me breathless in a way few others ever have. I wrote a full review of it because there's so much to talk about.

Best Pedigree/Gameplay Reveal - Baby Steps Announce Trailer - There are few games which in one moment can show gameplay, reveal the developer pedigree and make you laugh in one shot. Bennett Foddy is known for his games where basic movement is darn near impossible, but just possible enough to keep you trying. This is a game made to be watched and streamed, so it's no wonder the trailer is a joy to watch.

Best Use of Celebrity - Star Wars Jedi: Survivor - Jedi Coaching Sessions Trailer- This is an incredibly fun trailer with Mark Hamill training Cameron Monaghan as if he was a real Jedi not just an actor playing one in a motion capture studio. If you're going to bring in the star power, this is the way to do it. Very entertaining and made for sharing with your friends.

Best Match Cuts and Flow - En Garde Reveal Trailer - This is a very tightly edited trailer with incredibly smooth match cuts with cinematic shots peppered in to accent and highlight gameplay. It is a joy to see how the character animations flow from one shot to another to tell the story and make it look seamless. The game also does it while communicating story, setting, and character. The definition of short and sweet.

Best Classic Trailer Callback - Mortal Kombat 1 - Official It’s In Our Blood Trailer - Nostalgia is a tricky thing to wield in marketing. If you don't do it right it can feel like out-of-touch pandering, but I think they nailed it here by both calling back a classic ad and updating it for this new Mortal Kombat 1. At it's core it's pretty silly, but it's also hard not to get caught up in the energy.I also wrote a full review for this trailer!

Best Animated - Dredge Date Reveal Trailer - I think the best cinematic or animated trailers use their medium to tell a story within the game's world in a way you can't with gameplay. They also communicate the premise and hint at the gameplay. I wrote a beat by beat review of this excellent trailer and how it expertly depicts the game loop and hook.

Best Cinematic Game Loop - Pacific Drive Gameplay Trailer - Game trailers can get a lot of flak for not using "real gameplay" but it's hard to argue against the power of using gameplay framed and edited cinematically to enhance the look and feel of the experience tell a compelling story. This trailer by Player One Trailers is a standout example of cinematic gameplay and one I'll be watching again and again for years to come (read my full review)

Best Voiceover Storyteller - Lakeburg Legacies Gameplay Trailer - This is another example of a trailer for a game with so much UI that you need to find SOME way to guide the potential player through it without confusing or overwhelming them. My friend Suzanne Wallace of Indie Bard did this and more with the voiceover which both tells a story and walks us through the game's systems and mechanics in a way which is clear and compelling. There's so much UI on screen at all times and yet I'm never lost.

Best Music and Sound - Venba Venba is a short family drama with a lot of heart, but its trailers are full of music, sound and color in a way which really gets the blood pumping. The game and trailers are a celebration of food and family which you can see and hear.

Most Chill - Terra Nil Satisfaction in Reclamation This is a great example of the source material molding the medium. For a lot of games this trailer's runtime would be far too long, but for the chill vibes of Terra Nil it's perfect. If ASMR trailers weren't a thing before, they are now.

Best Indie Revival - Cart Life My friend Shaun Finney expertly cut this trailer for the return of the classic indie game. I love the pace and energy of this trailer depicting the grind of living and working as people running carts and just getting by. 

Best First Person Gameplay/Story Integration - Dead Island 2 - I didn't know how to categorize this. This is just a good trailer which tells the story and intercuts it well with gameplay. Until this trailer I didn't have a good feel for Dead Island 2, but this clarified everything about the story and gameplay. Very clear and fun to watch.

Best Mixed Reality VR - Eye of Temple Quest 2 Launch Trailer - Full Disclosure: I consulted on this trailer. This trailer by mixed reality VR YouTuber and game trailer maker Anaburn does a great job of showing the experience of the player in this Indiana Jones-like VR game. Some key things I suggested for this trailer were closeups on the player's feet and other unique VR interactions. 

Best One Shot Teaser - Summerhill - The strength of a one shot trailer is knowing the game has little to hide. Looking at the trailer it is certainly possible some of the camera angles are scripted to give a better view of the world around, but it could also just be how the game works. Simplicity at its finest and it does a great job of showing the basics of gameplay.

Best Horror Trailers - World of Horror - This trailer and the one after do a great job of picking memorable visuals, directing the eye and creating a mood and feeling. This is especially hard with games with lots of UI and that are very low-fi like this 1-bit game. As ever, the strength of the visuals from the game make the trailer that much better.

Best Quick Escalation - Airborne Empire - That as they say, escalated quickly. I like how this one shot trailer shows the game loop by building and building (pun intended) on each gameplay idea until it climaxes in an attack on the floating city. Very engaging and fun to watch!

Best Narrative Twist - Fable - I'm not a huge Fable fan, but I do love Richard Ayoade and I think the twist at the end of the trailer is great fun. I don't know much about the game, but if it can have a sense of humor as strong and playful as the one depicted in this trailer, then color me intrigued.

Best I-Want-to-Race-Against-Those-People Trailer - Resistor Announce Trailer - This is another short but sweet trailer which is mostly cinematic, but it gives me just enough to care about the character and make me want to race against their colorful cast. Really tightly captured and edited.

Best Visual Novel Trailer - Amarantus Launch Trailer - This one by my friend Gary J. Kings is a really well done visual novel trailer. It's helped in no small part by the design of the game where dialogue options are only visible one at a time, plus the kinetic animation which gives a little oomph usually missing from visual novels. That said, in games which are basically nothing but words, it takes a lot of skill to select just the right ones to tell only as much story as you need to, and this does just that.

Best I Sort of Know What the Game is But Not Really - LORELEI AND THE LASER EYES | Maze Trailer - I looooooove everything that game studio Simogo does, and this one continues that love. Intriguing visuals and some vague ideas that this game will deal with puzzles and a colorful cast of characters is all I need to know to be on board. If this were any other studio I might be more skeptical, but count me in.

Best Cinematic Trailer for Game That's Mostly Wide Shots - Oxenfree II - One of the hardest things about making game trailers can be when the game itself doesn't allow for shot variety. The dialogue, animation, and premise of Oxenfree II makes that all moot because this is still a very tight and engaging trailer. Special bonus points for the subtlety integrated Netflix branding as the camera zooms into the vertical lines.

Best Cinematic First Person Gameplay Trailer - Macabre - I still barely understand what an extraction shooter is, but this one popped up in my TikTok when the game developer contacted me. There are a lot of scenes in this which look scripted specifically for the trailer, but they do a great job of depicting the feeling and moments you'll potentially experience while playing this game. Great sense of atmosphere and also very clear on the genre.

Best ASCII Art Trailer - Caves of Qud - The voiceover of this trailer does a great job of walking you through what would otherwise be a pretty difficult game to understand due to its ASCII art style. That alone is worthy of note, because if you can make a trailer where the visuals are so minimal, you can do basically anything.

Best PR Devolver Delayed - Devolver Digital continues to knock it out of the park with this homage to Nintendo Direct presentations, injected with their subversive sense of humor. What should be a series of disappointing announcements is hard to be angry at when delivered with some much self awareness and honesty.

Best Nature Documentary Style Capture - Jurassic World Evolution 2 - I could link any of the great trailers by the video artist team at Frontier Developments, but I just happened to pick this one that my friend Luke Ritson worked on. It takes so much effort to make these trailers feel like nature documentaries, but they look so much like the "real thing" you may not realize it. When I see these shots I look at the subtle camera movements and the camera person catching the dinosaur animations at precisely the right moments. Really well done!

Best New Multiplayer Game Capture - Hyenas - Sadly this game was cancelled, but they made a really great trailer. The teams for games like Overwatch, Destiny, Halo, PUBG, Apex Legends are already top of their game when it comes to multiplayer capture, but I wanted to highlight this one because with a game with new game mechanics come new challenges. Whomever put this together deservers recognition for their great work!

Best Mixed Media - Alan Wake 2 - This Alan Wake 2 and the one that came after have so much going on in the best way possible. You want to know what the heck is going on with this game and how on Earth it could be actually be a game. Really well edited trailers that make my head spin. Or maybe I'm just easily impressed by very "cutty" trailers. In this case it feels very appropriate to the story and its presentation.

Best Low Key Simplicity - Tiny Glade - The editing of this trailer gives me as much joy as something over-the-top as the Alan Wake 2 trailers. Just a small handful of shots with seamless eye trace and matches on movement/action. Good editing does not mean a million cuts in a massive sequence with dozens of tracks and this is the proof!

Best CG - Spider-Man 2 Be Greater. Together. - I'm already pre-conditioned to enjoy this trailer because I'm a big fan of Insomniac's Spider-Man games. But this trailer was precisely what I needed to get hyped as heck to play this game. An exciting action scene intercut with character building creates stakes and investment while also hinting that you play both Peter Parker and Miles Morales.

Most Modern Presentation - GTA 6 Trailer 1 - This GTA 6 trailer feels very much of our current times with its massive number of memes and internet pop culture references which I didn't even realize were references until I saw those tweets. Even those things aside, the cinematography is a breath of fresh air which feels new and interesting.

Best Gameplay Twist - Dinolords Announcement Trailer - You'd think I would've seen the twist coming, but the gameplay lulled me into a very specific place such that I was caught completely off guard. The only problem with this is getting people to watch for long enough to see the twist coming after what looks like very conventional gameplay.

Best Hook - Don't Scream - I always say it's great if you can communicate your game's hook within the first shot, but very few trailers actually do that. It certainly helps that Don't Scream's hook is in its title and the first bit of text of this trailer which creates suspense for its inevitable conclusion.

Best Oh God Oh God WTF - Slay the Princess Release Date Trailer - A last minute addition to this list. This is a trailer which pulls you in with a quick hook and then it quickly goes places you do not expect. Another great example of “Here’s a familiar thing… here’s how it’s different” in an incredibly subversive and engaging way (if you’re into horror games). This is another game whose premise is made for trailers, and using on screen text to make it more palatable as a trailer is just what it needed.

And that's it for 2023! Fantastic work all around from agencies, independent trailer makers, and game developers doing it all on their own. I'm always invigorated, inspired, and intimidated by the breadth of work I see when I look back on the year. Thank you and I look forward to seeing more in 2024!