SGDQ 2023 kicks off gaming’s purest celebration event for charity

SGDQ 2023 is about to begin, which is a sentence that fills me with both gleeful anticipation at the prospect of some incredible runs and a rather concerned sensation that nearly half the year has already slipped by. Existential crises aside, the in-person celebration of beating the best games as quickly as possible runs May 28 – June 4, and there’s everything from GTA, The Elder Scrolls, and Elden Ring to Pizza Tower and Choo-Choo Charles on the cards, raising money for charity organisation Doctors Without Borders.

Summer Games Done Quick 2023 kicks off May 28 at 9:30am PT / 12:30pm ET / 5:30pm BST / 6:30pm CEST. Open-world game Sonic Frontiers is set to get things underway, but there’s all manner of weird and wonderful games on the cards. You can look forward to customized runs, showcases of the most broken glitches, coordinated teams taking down the best co-op games, tool-assisted speedruns that demonstrate near-perfection, and of course plenty of raw skill and understanding on display.

With a full week of entertainment ahead from Minneapolis, Minnesota, you can pull up the SDGQ stream any time and be sure to find something you’ll enjoy. To help you out a bit, we here at PCGamesN have picked out some of the most exciting highlights on the cards to give you a few possible places to dig in if it all seems a bit overwhelming.

SGDQ 2023 schedule and where to watch

Summer Games Done Quick runs Sunday, May 28 – Sunday, June 4. You can watch the action live via the Games Done Quick Twitch channel, or catch archived videos and highlights after the fact on the organisation’s YouTube channel.

Here are some highlights we think are well worth watching out for, though you can browse the full schedule on the official Games Done Quick website. Note that times are estimates.

• Sonic Frontiers (May 28 at 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm BST) – What better way to open a show about going fast than with everyone’s favorite Blue Blaze. Sonic Frontiers may not have set the world on fire, but you can see it torn apart here.
• Ring Fit Adventure (May 28 at 6:07pm PT / 9:07pm ET, May 29 at 2:07am BST / 3:07am BST) – I was pretty happy with myself for making it through the entire Ring Fit campaign over the course of several months, but seeing a whole world crushed in 20 minutes is likely to put me out of breath just from watching.
• Alien Swarm (May 29 at 8:04am PT / 11:04am ET / 4:04pm BST / 5:05pm CEST) – Valve’s co-op top-down shooter is a great free PC game that gets a little overlooked nowadays, so seeing it get some love is very welcome. Friendly fire means plenty of potential for chaos.
• Peggle Deluxe (May 29 at 11:13am PT / 2:13pm ET / 7:13pm BST / 8:13pm CEST) – As a game that seems like the epitome of random chance, seeing someone who’s mastered the art of Peggle go to work is really something to behold.
• Hi-Fi Rush (May 30 at 8:19am PT / 11:19am ET / 4:19pm BST / 5:19pm CEST) – Tango Gameworks’ surprise rhythm-action game was an out-of-nowhere hit when it launched earlier this year. Look forward to seeing just how good people already are at it.
• The Elder Scrolls Anthology (May 30 at 1:05pm PT / 4:05pm ET / 9:05pm BST / 10:05pm CEST) – That’s all five of the mainline Elder Scrolls games: Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim. In just an estimated two hours.

• Signalis (May 30 at 11:04pm PT, May 31 at 2:04am ET / 7:04am BST / 8:04am CEST) – This atmospheric horror game was a somewhat under-the-radar favorite last year, so hopefully a big showing here should encourage more people to check out its intriguing world and story.
• Choo-Choo Charles (May 31 at 12:04am PT / 3:04am ET / 8:04am BST / 9:04am CEST) – Oh lawd, he comin’.
• Hitman 3 (May 31 at 1:15pm PT / 4:15pm ET / 9:15pm BST / 10:15pm CEST) – Watching someone glide their way through Hitman’s stunning maps, leaving a trail of flawless assassinations in their wake, is one of life’s greatest joys. See the game’s Freelancer mode expertly left for dead in a clean half an hour.
• GTA San Andreas (June 1 at 7:02am PT / 10:02am ET / 3:02pm BST / 4:02pm CEST) – One of the longest planned runs on this year’s card, see just how rapidly Rockstar’s epic crime game can be beaten.
• Pizza Tower (June 1 at 4:46pm PT / 7:46pm ET, June 2 at 12:46am BST / 1:46am CEST) – Manic platformer Pizza Tower is already pretty perfectly suited for speedrunning, and as another relatively new release it’ll be interesting to see exactly what techniques the best players have developed.
• Amnesia: Rebirth (June 1 at 11:54pm PT, June 2 at 2:54am ET / 7:54am BST / 8:54am CEST) – Nothing takes the edge off the scariest games like seeing them completely torn apart by someone who knows their every intricacy inside-out. Watching speedruns was actually what got me into the original Amnesia, weirdly.
• VVVVVV (June 2 at 3:41am PT / 6:41am ET / 11:41am BST / 12:41pm CEST) – Gravity-flipping platform game VVVVVV is one of those games that just works beautifully in the hands of a master. Seeing someone expertly pilot their way through its dangerous levels is a rather mesmerizing experience.
• Celeste (June 2 at 9:05pm PT, June 3 at 12:05am ET / 5:05am BST / 6:05am CEST) – This tool-assisted speedrun is more a showcase of the perfect playthrough of Celeste, but it’s well worth watching, if only for the delightful string of strawberries that grows ever-longer behind Celeste as she bounces effortlessly through each level.
• Kingdom Hearts Final Mix (June 2 at 10:48pm PT, June 3 at 1:48am ET / 6:48am BST / 7:48am CEST) – This race on the game’s hardest difficulty promises to be a whistle-stop tour of all your favorite Disney locations, and you already know the soundtrack will deliver for the occasion.

• Spelunky 2 (June 3 at 4:53am PT / 7:53am ET / 12:53pm BST / 1:53pm CEST) – Beating Spelunky 2’s secret level and reaching the ‘final zone’ remains one of my all-time proudest videogame achievements. Yet I can’t get enough of watching people who are way better at Spelunky than me.
• I Wanna Be The Guy Remastered (June 3 at 10:35am PT / 1:35pm ET / 6:35pm BST / 7:35pm CEST) – IWBTG is perhaps the most notorious troll game, a pixel-perfect masocore platformer that demands exact execution from beginning to end. If you’ve never seen it done ‘right’ before, you owe yourself that much at least.
• Elden Ring (June 3 at 4:35pm PT / 7:35pm ET, June 4 at 12:35am BST / 1:35am CEST) – FromSoftware’s biggest game is just as open to masterful trickery as their previous entries. Despite not using any glitches, this run is scheduled to take just 80 minutes to finish last year’s best game in style.
• Breath of the Wild (June 3 at 8:15pm PT / 11:15pm ET, June 4 at 4:15am BST / 5:15am CEST) – You’ve probably seen just how quickly people can beat the last Legend of Zelda game at this point. But have you seen someone do it blindfolded? Now you can.

Photo credit: Games Done Quick.

If you want to whet your appetite even more, check out the best ADGQ 2023 runs from the last big event. Alternatively, satisfy your own need for speed with the best racing games on PC, or browse the best roguelike games if you fancy something that encourages you to really hone your skills across repeated runs.