On the New York City subway, a dour-faced commuter swipes her way through Angry Birds on a smartphone. In a basement in Baghdad, Iraqi teen-agers huddle around a TV playing Battlefield, a game in which they pretend to be American soldiers. In a Taiwanese Internet café, a middle-aged man, ghosted by lack of sleep and caffeine, goes on World of Warcraft quests with friends he’s never seen in person. Everybody plays; this is one of the fundamental instincts of our species. The ubiquity of video games is no surprise given the increasing omnipresence of screens in our lives. Wherever there are people, there are games.

This year was marked by a fresh diversity of video games, from elaborate productions like The Last of Us, which carefully mimics cinema’s control and grandeur, to curious mini-games like the viral darling Dots, which you play in your browser or on a smartphone. This was partly because 2013 was a transition year for the medium, moving from an older generation of consoles to newer, sharper iterations: the Xbox One and PlayStation 4. The video-game industry has a different creative rhythm than Hollywood or publishing; novelists do not wait for “book 2.0” in order to better render the fruits of their imagination on the page.

Some of the past year’s blockbuster games, which offer vast, intricate environments—and which have production budgets of hundreds of millions of dollars—have caused some to question whether we need a new generation of console hardware at all. No two games more clearly or beautifully illustrated this than Bioshock Infinite and Grand Theft Auto V. The former tells the story of a failed utopian project called Columbia, a city suspended by giant blimps in the clouds, where racism, ideology, and the American dream collide. But its aesthetic wonder was unmatched by its plot and its uninspired shooter-based gameplay. Likewise, Rockstar’s grandiose Grand Theft Auto V rendered an alternate-universe Los Angeles with unsurpassed vividness. From the nib of its mountain spires to the heaving waves of the coast, Los Santos, as the city is called, reflects the wonder of our world like a mirror. It deserves no such accolade, however, for its sub-standard criminal drama, its scattershot satire, or the stultifying missions it presents to players.

Many of the year’s most interesting titles came from the medium’s periphery. There was a blossoming of indie games with purposes beyond mere entertainment, such as Cart Life, a “retail simulator” designed to offer players insight into immigrant life in contemporary America, which won the Independent Game Festival prize in March. It was one of several games designed to elicit empathy and provide experiential insight into the lives of others. Another one was Private Eye, a detective game designed for the forthcoming Oculus Rift virtual-reality headset. Inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rear Window,” players assume the identity of a wheelchair-bound detective spying on a building through his binoculars—and attempting to stop a murder.

Despite gaming’s stigma as a time-wasting pursuit, each entry on the list that follows, in adherence to the novelist Kurt Vonnegut’s rule, does not waste people’s time. This year, some titles perfected earlier articulations of what a video game can be, some offered a signpost to where games may be headed, and some attempted to untangle the curious relationship that exists between a game, its maker, and its player. Video games are everywhere, and these are ten of the best.

1. Papers Please (PC)

It’s November 23, 1982. Your first task in your new job, as an immigration inspector at the Grestin Border Checkpoint, in the fictional European country Arstotzka, is straightforward: deny entry to all foreigners. The huddling, shuffling line weaves off-screen, and you must process as many would-be immigrants as possible, checking their documentation one by one, confirming or denying entry. The more people you process in a day, the more money you take home to your family.

A slew of additional rules arrives each day. As the red tape piles up, the number of people you are able to process by day’s end decreases. The fewer you process, the less money you make—the effect of which is revealed in a harrowing post-work financial breakdown, where, once you’ve paid your rent, you are forced to choose between spending your remaining earnings on heat, food, or, in the event that a family member falls sick, medicine.

Your choices have narrative consequences: Will you deny a mother from seeing her son simply because her entry document expired a few days ago? Allow her through, and the newspapers will report that immigrants are beginning to take local jobs. Grim yet affecting, it’s a game that may change your attitude the next time you’re in line at the airport.

2. The Stanley Parable HD (PC)

Originally launched in 2011, and expanded and further developed for a high-definition commercial release, The Stanley Parable is an example of the kind of art that is only possible within a video game. You play as Employee 427, a man who loves his dehumanizing job in a towering office block. One day, you looks up from your desk to find that your co-workers have vanished. As you explore the block, your actions are commentated on by an omnipresent narrator (played by Kevan Brighting), who, as well as reporting on your movements, offers prompts and clues to guide your decision-making.

The narrator chastises you when you divert from his instructions or spoil the story ahead of time; he sometimes even restarts the game without your consent. It’s ostensibly a game about trust: whether you trust the organisation you work for and, more pertinently, whether you trust the narrator enough to do as he says. As the short game progresses, a complicated relationship forms between you, the character, the game designer, and the narrator, in a fascinating study of pre-destination.

3. Super Mario 3D World (Nintendo Wii U)

How to achieve reinvention without creating alienation: this is the dilemma for Nintendo as it plots the ongoing career of the medium’s unofficial mascot. In Super Mario 3D World, the challenge is particularly tall: not only must the game find new creative ground to till after the Super Mario Galaxy titles plundered the farthest reaches of space, it’s also tasked with selling the company’s ailing Wii-U console.

It is the strongest orthodox game of the year, demonstrating Nintendo’s unmatched talent for spatial-reasoning designs. It shows up developers the world over with a seemingly endless stream of novelties and ideas. Its levels are taut, narrow affairs that progress in a way more reminiscent of Mario’s formative N.E.S. days than of his more recent outings. Contemporary invention comes by way of the game’s social features, which allow up to four players to quest in unison, and even sends your best runs into other players’ games across the Internet. It is beautiful and beautifully crafted.

4. State of Decay (Xbox 360, PC)

State of Decay celebrates the tension of a survivor community in crisis in a post-apocalyptic, zombie-pocked landscape. You hole up in an abandoned house and venture out to connect with other local men and women, inviting them back to the expanding commune. These characters provide your “lives.” If a zombie bites you, control switches to the next comrade in line. If you run out of friends, the game is over, a systemic theme that echoes its story.