Each year, the Japanese magazine Famitsu surveys Japanese developers (as well as some celebrities) and asks them to tell them what were the best video games of 2022, from their perspective.

What makes it even more intriguing is that the selection is not limited to the calendar year’s releases, but what the respondents particularly played and loved during the previous twelve months.

The findings that emerged are quite interesting and give us a cross-section of the tastes of the Japanese industry: emerging and coming out on top was Elden Ring – previously awarded GOTY at The Game Awards 2022 – but chasing it this time is Splatoon 3 ( which you can buy at a discount on Amazon).

Mighty Kratos, with its God of War: Ragnarok (produced by Sony’s Santa Monica) “settles” for third position. Not surprisingly, we also see Pokémon Scarlet and Violet in fourth place, which have been overwhelmingly successful in Japan and are setting sales record after record, regardless of the issues and uncertainties we had already pointed out.

The top 5 closes with Stray, with the adventure kitty published by Annapurna Interactive also winning the hearts of developers in the Rising Sun.

Following is the full ranking published by the magazine, which also includes names such as the likes of Inscryption – recently arrived on Switch as well – to Cult of the Lamb.