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Games: Your personal year in review for 2025
I know Steam Replay isn’t out yet, but I figure it’s still a good enough time to get the ball rolling.
This is your place to share any and all thoughts on your gaming for 2025.
Games you talk about do NOT have to be limited to this year’s releases.
Feel free to share:
- Favorites
- Disappointments
- Surprises
- Memorable moments
- Self-reflections
- Anything else!
Let us know how your gaming for 2025 went.
I've not played anywhere near enough games this year for my liking. It's an important period of my Son's life where I am focused on chauffeuring him around to his various activities, and gladly so to keep him preoccupied and productive. My biggest fear is him falling off the track as I did at his age.
That said, there were a few games I managed to get some hours into.
Timberborn ended up being just what I needed for a while. It's just complex enough to sink your teeth into, but casual enough to be able to pick up and set down with any amount of time between. The graphics are super charming and the game has lots of personality. My only criticism of it is that it often leaves me feeling lost for what I should be doing - but I think it's probably something that would be considered a feature.
I've also played a bunch of 'The Farmer was Replaced'. It's a game where you control a drone that plants and harvests on a grid, which you control by programming it in Python (well, a sub-dialect of Python). It's pretty fun and scratches the leisure programming itch that I normally scratch with Factorio. Which brings me on to...
Satisfactory. I picked it up this time last year and played it all through December and a bit of January before life got busy again. And now I'm hankering for more of it, so it may become a bit of a Christmas tradition that play Satisfactory in December. The factory must grow!
Always love to see love for Timberborn! One of my favorite colony management games for sure. Hours melt away when I play.
Satisfactory too as far as sims go… even just reading it mentioned makes me want to start a new factory.
This year, as with every year, I played a lot of games. I'll omit the ones I picked up for the Backlog Burner event this November, all of which I've already written about at length, and go back to the start of the year, when I bought game pass for one month and frantically played several major releases -- only one of which left a lasting impression.
Obsidian's Avowed, Machine Games' Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and NeoWiz's Lies of P all took up a great deal of my time, but for the first two, that's really all they did. I found both to be kind of fast-food style games: fun, cheap, and insubstantial, but lacking the qualities I usually look for in their close genre neighbors. The Great Circle's immersive-sim elements were its best feature but also were fairly shallow; its adventure story might conjure nostalgia for some, but I don't remember 9/11, so it didn't leave a mark on me. And Avowed was, like The Outer Worlds before it, a good time with some notably excellent design decisions, some notably gripping scenes and ideas, but as a whole, it still felt bland and pre-digested. Lies of P, on the other hand, proved to be a challenging and delightful time; its exquisite boss design, and its well-paced and constructed levels, have made it maybe my favourite souls-like of all time, sparring with Remnant 2 for the spot, in the same year I played Shadow of the Erdtree. I still haven't played Lies of P's DLC; when it goes on sale, I look forward to it.
This year I played quite a few independent games, too, of course. Signalis and 1000xResist in the earlier part of the year; both games feature futuristic lesbian clones in a dystopian setting; though Signalis is a PS1 style horror game, and 1000xResist a walking sim, both became instant favourites for their fantastic writing. 1000xResist, in particular, fed my heart through a blender several times; if its political commentary was on the nose, its story about family, trauma, and growing up broken -- and the ways our brokenness can break the world, too -- challenged my most core beliefs about empathy and forgiveness, and spoke to me in a way that few works of art have. Throughout the year, I gradually chipped away at Sifu, too -- an hour or five every month -- I found I had to be in a particular mood to play it, a sort of irritable and listless mood, but for those few time, it was a lot of fun, and though the character action elements pushed me away a bit, I still really enjoyed it by the end.
I decided to give Obsidian another chance, and picked up Pentiment, which everyone says is their best-written work by far. Everyone is right. I have never played another game like Pentiment, a game that is sharply written, incredibly unique in its presentation, impressively reactive, and grounded in close and careful examination of a historical period that was largely unfamiliar to me. Pentiment is a story of the end of an era; a dawn of new social structures, new modes of creation, new views on religion and power. And its commentary on all these themes is incisive, affecting, and novel, with a lovable protagonist and a twisty plot.
Abubakar Salim is one of my favourite voice actors in the business, but I found his debut action-platformer (with Metroidvania elements), Tales of Kenzara: Zau to be lacking both in sharp, unique deisgn decisions and affecting story beats. What stood out to me was the art direction, which was consistently beautiful and striking, and the gameplay systems and the visuals were more than enough to propel me through the 12-hour game.
I played Zau because, this year, I accepted that Hollow Knight: Silksong was never going to release, and decided to play other metroidvanias instead -- including Nine Sols, whose combat was so engaging that I realized that, like, who even needs Silksong, anyway?
Probably my game of the year this year, Hollow Knight: Silksong, was then nigh-shadowdropped. Conversations about this game have largely been consumed by conversations surrounding its difficulty, to which I can only say, I agree with every ciriticsm anyone has made of this game, and I would see not one frame of it changed the slightest bit. Vibrant, beautiful, challenging, and, in a flow state, delightfully fun, Silksong is possibly the most intrinsically rewarding game I've ever picked up. But what shocked me about it was its cohesion. Unlike Hollow Knight before it, Silksong has a clear plot, strong themes, and the unified vision to make them land with a surprising deftness. Hollow Knight had the world design, the atmosphere and the set pieces it needed to make me feel, but its sequel's ideas often made me think, as well.
When I played everyone else's game of the year this year, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (a game I'd been eagerly awaiting since its first teaser trailer showcased an incredibly strong art direction), I was sorely disappointed both in the game and the state of the conversation of the surrounding it. Clair Obscur felt to me like an unpolished debut effort, a six or seven out of ten if you want to hear a score, with incredibly strong and exciting and unique ideas, but none of the skill or deftness required to execute on them, leaving me with a strong feeling of missed potential: of unexplored themes; of combat that never pushed me to my limits; of a story that failed to do its characters justice; of a world that never felt sufficiently real or, after The Twist, sufficiently constructed. But the conversation surrounding the game seemed at many times, even coming from critics I otherwise tremendously respect, to fall into fanfiction; to act as though the games triumphantly grappled with ideas it only ever grazed the edges of in subtext; to act as though its characters were complete, its world was coherent; as though it was an unequivocal masterpiece born from the head of Zeus, which only thirty people ever worked on, which had no institutional backing, which really put a boot up the ass of all these unsustainable triple A studios. In small ways, it made me come to hate a game that I initially enjoyed, and was arrested by, enough to play twice straight through. I felt the same way about Baldur's Gate 3 a couple years ago, albeit to a much lesser degree, but I wonder whether the reaction to Expedition 33 communicates, what I feel it does: the immaturity of games and games criticism as a medium, or whether I'm the one who's in the wrong here.
No year would be complete without me playing gacha live service games. This year, I mainly played Limbus Company and Reverse: 1999. The latter, a left-wing gacha visual novel, contained a couple of chapters -- "Folie et Deraison" and "1987 Cosmic Overture" -- that are genuinely, genuinely, some of my favourite stories in any game -- fuck it, maybe, some of my favourite works of literature. Reverse is a game that is constantly grappling with the art, the stories, and the ideas of generations past, and in this wrestling, if it never illuminates some new vivid truth, it at least conveys so acutely the joy of the struggle. Almost never dramatic, bombastic or heightened, the game's structure as almost a magical realist short story collection allows it to present a wild buffet of fascinating stories across a variety of genres spanning the twentieth century, and when it stumbles and drops a dud, it never takes long to recover and blow me away again. Reverse is so good that it might genuinely be partly to blame for how much I disliked Expedition 33, actually; comparing the scenes from Reverse's best chapters, which blew me away so, to segments of Expedition 33, released at around the same time, to touch similar themes, it was like night and day. Claire and Obscur, one might say.
Limbus Company never blew me away thus. Its relationship with classical literature is never so nuanced and thought provoking; its takes on Faust, on Moby Dick, on The Stranger or Don Quixote or "The Metamorphosis" often feel more like adaptation or fanficition than serious engagement. But there is value to taking these stories and characters into its almost comedically bleak, dystopian, SCP-punk world, to intensify and lightly modernize them -- and there is value, too, in the fact that all the game's gacha systems can and are intended to be bypassed via grinding, which gave me a lot of time to listen to some of the audiobooks which did blow me away. Steam says I've played 650 hours of Limbus this year, most of which would have been grinding. That's a lot, a lot more than any other game, but it was worth it, because I listened to so many fantastic books during those hours.
Before the end of this year, I aim to finish Wanderstop, to buy UNBEATABLE, and to take a swing at Promise Mascot Agency, three more indies I meant to play this year but haven't quite gotten around to. Wanderstop has been fun so far; I make tea or espresso every morning, and its extravagant and nonseniscal tea machine does a good job at simulating the relaxing ritual these routines can become. Davey Wreden, Wanderstop's writer, is to blame for breaking my brain with The Beginner's Guide, and while Wanderstop probably won't be such a shrill and brutal experience, I'm so far finding it to be very nearly as impactful.
I'm sure there are other games that I've played this year and failed to mention, but these were the ones that stuck with me the longest. Right now, I'm craving some Minecraft, so hopefully the Tildes Minecraft server ends up relaunching some time soon!
I'm not really familiar with gacha games at all, but I really can't imagine how that works with a visual novel? Do you get characters and then go through their stories?
It's best in this context to think of "gacha games" as "content-driven live services;" as opposed to "gameplay-driven live services," eg live service shooters; the reason to stick around in a gacha is the regular addition of new core content: new story chapters, new regions to explore, etc. In Reverse 1999's case, the game's genre is "visual novel;" it's a linear story game told with Live2D character models on static backgrounds. "Gacha" is the content and monetization model; it means the game adds a new major story/content update every six weeks; the content is available to everyone for free; it's monetized by "pulling" characters from the story -- obtaining them in a system involving random chance, where you can buy more in game currency to get more pulling attempts.
With Reverse, a story game, the question is, well, what do you use the characters you pull for? And Reverse answers this by having a very light turned based battle system, where you deploy three or four character teams to tackle enemy cops, cultists and cryptids. You might say, "combat? Well, how is the game a visual novel, then?" I stick with the visual novel label for Reverse because, though there are battle nodes in the main story, usually it's like five or ten trivially easy one minute battles in a three to six hour story, and often the battles feel contrived, or are abstractions of other nonviolent conflicts. In one recent story chapter, battle scenes represented 1). Scrubbing a stubborn stain off a pot 2). Purifying the air with a ramshackle air purifying machine and 3). Playing a difficult musical instrument -- they're there to give you something to do in story segments, like, say, the trial minigames during Danganronpa. That is, they're minor diversions that exist in service to the story.
You might wonder, "well, if the combat is so easy, what's even incentivising me to spend money on the game?" What indeed. Reverse 1999's CEO recently did a Chinese-language interview where he implied that Reverse's per-player revenue was well below that of big hitters like Genshin Impact. The idea is that tougher, non-story endgame combat challenges will give you extrinsic motivation to pull, and your attachment to the characters resulting from the remarkably written story will provide the intrinsic motivation. But the endgame stuff is all still fairly easy with rag-tag teams and a little strategizing, and long-term players can collect most characters without spending any money at all, so the developers have recently mostly opted to monetize the old-fashioned way: by selling skins at fixed prices, and by making sure older characters are still meta-relevant so that you'll use them and have cause to want their skins.
The fact that you can more or less ignore its entire monetization system and just experience the sometimes-incredible story, for free, might be one of Reverse's core strengths. It's incredibly accessible.
Posted my reply in the wrong place: reposting here.
I haven't played Expedition 33, but based on the comparisons you made to Baldur's Gate 3, I don't think you are in the wrong. I've been struggling to explain to several of my friends who can't get enough of BG3 to try to explain how the game seemed to me to be deficient at a deeper level, and what you're saying made a lot of sense to me. Let me know if you've reviewed BG3 on this site before - I'd love to read your review!
It's been a really long year for me, and I've kinda forgot of a lot of games I played this year so I'm going through my Steam/Switch/Phone library right now as I write this!
The biggest game for me this year for sure has been Hollow Knight: Silksong. I played the original a couple of years ago and fell in love, so when they announced the Silksong release two weeks before the actual day, it actually pulled me out of the depression I was going through at the time because I had something to look forwards to for the first time in a couple of months. It did not disappoint. I ran through to the "bad ending" in about 20 hours and then realized I had another 40 left anyways. It was an incredible journey with great mechanics and it felt really nice to get lost in a world again.
In terms of multiplayer, the Monster Hunter Wilds release was probably my most played this year. I LOVEEEE hunting with friends and grinding to perfection every new arch tempered or savage variant with friends is so satisfying. I even got to play with friends I've meet on this site! (Shout out to @immaterial for hunting with me for a couple of hours even though our time difference is huge!) The combat was definitely a lot easier than World and Rise, in my opinion, but the game is just so fun and so nice. (Peak is an honorable mention here, I played it a lot with friends to get me out of a funk)
My shut off my brain and just grind game this year has been Megabonk. I'm definitely not great at it, but it's literally the perfect game to just set a goal and grind for a couple of hours while watching a show or podcast. It's not very deep at all but the gameplay loop is just so addicting. (Ball X Pit would be my second choice for this, and a forever mention will be Slay the Spire because it's my favorite game ever)
On the subway since moving I've been absolutely glued to Luck Be a Landlord. What a simple yet insanely addicting game. There's something so satisfying about getting the perfect combo and just running ahead of the curve. I used to play solitaire on my transit/commuting times on the plane but I can see myself just making random runs in Landlord for hours now. (honorable mention to Clover Pit here, even though it's not a commuting game, it's very similar in concept)
A quick shoutout to Dispatch, I really enjoy the old telltale style of gameplay and I really enjoyed looking forwards to something every week. It was a fun time and I mostly wish it was longer. Because of it, I've downloaded Telltale's Batman game again, and Danganrompa 2 (which I should be getting through soon if I wasn't so addicted to Megabonk right now)
Split Fiction is a game right up my alley for me and my friend that lives across the country and only plays games on his PS5 (and doesn't like to buy new games) The last level was incredibly memorable, and we spent hours trying the secret level (that we didn't end up beating sadly). It took me back to the days where we were literal kids, playing games for hours and hours until our parents yelled at us for staying up till 4AM. (2 player co-op games that I also really enjoyed this year was League of Legend's Arena Mode, me and another friend would just play random bravery champs and got about 50 to 1st place, before they wiped our progress sadly)
Wanderstop was another game I was really really looking forwards to when it was announced. All of Davey Wreden's games honestly taught me something and Wanderstop is no different. I love the cozy, slow gameplay with no pressure, no need to look things up, no need to rush through for any reason. In the world of running a rat race, it's so important, especially coming from the NY/NJ area where speed is everything.
In terms of physical games, I didn't play as much Flesh and Blood this year, but I had a great time playing and teaching @C-cab how to play Magic this year! It was a great time and I hope he remembers how to play lol. We also got through some of my favorites, though I think Slay the Spire The Board game was last year for us. Moonrakers hit the table a couple of times this year too, and I still love that deckbuilding negotiation game. Scythe was another game that I played once that was super memorable, and I think every time I brought out Captain Sonar, at least someone in the group was incredibly obsessed with it. I also played Betrayal in the House on the Hill a couple of times this year, and I personally loved it a lot, it's really dynamic and very replayable!
I just woke up so these are just some preliminary thoughts, but I'll probably try and edit this if I think of anything else. Looking forwards to seeing what other people think!
This year I pretty much spent the least amount of time playing games since I can rember
I properly played Skyrim for the first time ever in January(-ish), finished it, then went back to minecraft (tildes MC server), but I got huge minecraft burnout and barely actually touched it. I was passively online 24/7 but almost exclusively for chatting. Made a few awesome friendships outside tildes thanks to that, though, so can't complain. I did play Stardew Valley on my switch for like a month or so (August) but then got bored of it because I had achieved everything I wanted. So I again ended up not playing anything agaim until I got a steam deck in early November or so.
Which is, all in all, not "much" compared to before.
Old Skies was one of my favs. It's not very long, there aren't things you really influence in the story, but it was just a nice story, well paced.
I've had a pretty bad gaming year, all things considered: only two true game "clears" over the whole year, Yakuza 0 and Shredders.
Yakuza 0 Review
4/5 = :)This was my first Yakuza experience, and I'm by no means a 100% player. The game is super easy to get into, even though there's some quirks that hurt the experience.
Narrative
This is a prequel to the first Yakuza game. Prequels aren't always the best way for a newbie to get into a story, but the writers seemed very intentional about making this accessible without knowing anything. You have to make a few assumptions about characters and how the world works, but that's mostly because the story trusts you to get the hang of it without explicit exposition, which is nice. You play as two separate characters, and while their stories do eventually line up, it takes a long time before you get that payoff... it works very well though. The tone of the main story is very intense, teetering on over-the-top without ever dipping too hard into it.
The main story is basically all serious, with the comedic elements being confined to the sub-stories. They're a lot of fun, but I never quite felt like I had time to slow down and really chew on some of the side content, it rarely made sense in the context of the main story. Luckily, there's a post-story free roam mode to explore, so this isn't that big of a deal. The side-stories are also the only place for player choice, the main story is on rails. This isn't a bad thing, the story is carefully crafted, but be warned that the characters will make dumb decisions and you will have to sit there and watch.
Overall, the plot is great; it's an emotional power struggle and political mystery told through two badass characters.
Yakuza 0 is unbelievably horny. Just about every sub-story I came across during the main story was sexual in some way, and a decent chunk of the minigames and NPC interactions have some level of horniness (if they're not outright softcore porn). This is mostly side content that you can ignore if you don't care, but it can get tiring. This is mostly a symptom of the fact that this is a beat 'em up gangster game set in the 80's, because the other problem with the story is that there's exactly one female character with any amount of depth. It makes sense since the game is a power fantasy, but it's disappointing that most of the women in the game are some combination of helpless, dumb, and eye-candy (typically all three at once). Also, If you're sensitive to themes of sexual assault, don't play this game because that card gets played a lot. Sure, it's always bad guys doing it, and you generally get the chance to pummel them, but still.
Gameplay
I played this game on easy, since it was labelled as being "for people new to the Yakuza series" and I'm not that interested in gameplay challenge in narrative games. I died a few times, but by the mid game you're so rich that healing items become trivial, and you can tank any fight with a full inventory of them. I was never bored, however, because the combat is super engaging. You've got 3 fighting styles per character for a total of 6 (there's secret fighting styles, apparently, but I did not use them). You're encouraged to switch them around depending on the situation, and they each have unique animations and battle music. Filling your 'heat' gauges and doing special moves is very fun every time, and you upgrade your character with cash you get from fighting (literally 'investing in yourself'), which is super cool. I'm sure that there's plenty of depth if you want to learn all the movesets and strategies, but I thoroughly enjoyed this game as a button-masher. There's quicktime events during combat, with a heavy emphasis on 'quick'. This isn't Heavy Rain, you should be ready to miss a lot of them. There's also has a ton of minigames (bowling, claw machines, disco, karaoke, etc.), and they are all very, very detailed. I would absolutely pay for a Wii Sports style Yakuza minigame compilation.
There's a few mechanics that I didn't like, particularly a persistent overworld enemy that... encourages you to spend your money before you encounter him, but the gameplay is super solid overall.
Audiovisual
While not graphically impressive, Yakuza 0 looks great. The warm glow of 80s japan is fun to run around in, and cutscenes are nice to watch. The game has a bad case of NPC-face, though, which adds to the goofiness of the side missions. It runs well, my Steam Deck never broke a sweat on 1080p high, 60fps the whole time.
The soundscape is very immersive, all kinds of details that add to the bustling city vibe. Fighting is punchy too, impacts feel good and it's satisfying to hear the health bar shatter when you defeat an enemy.
The soundtrack is good, mostly serving as an emotional aid. There's certainly some bangers in there (the title theme especially), along with some nice mood-music, but not every game can have a god-tier soundtrack, and that's okay.
Final Thoughts
I'm definitely going to keep chipping away at side missions when I'm bored, and I have the subsequent games wishlisted. I'm excited to see where these two characters go. My recommendation is to watch the trailer for the game, then watch a few out-of context clips of your favourite streamer/youtuber playing it. If you like both sides of Yakuza 0's tonal coin, you'll get your money's worth.
Shredders Review
5/5 = :DI don't know anything about snowboarding, I have not seen snow in my adult life. With that said, everything about this game is almost perfect.
Gameplay
Gameplay is kinda the only thing that matters in a game like this, and it's extremely satisfying. The easiest way to describe it is this: I have a lot of fun being bad at Shredders. Flicking your analogue sticks to pull off grabs and spins is satisfying every time, and my only gripe is a slightly degraded sense of "precision" in some cases, rails particularly have some trouble with detection. Or maybe that's just a skill issue...
There's a whole bunch of missions to conquer, and they're all pretty well designed, though they also lack precision with some of the mission triggers failing to clear. It can be frustrating on occasion, but it's mostly fine and a good way to learn the game.
Narrative
The Shredders campaign is awesome. It's completely silly and has zero stakes, voice acting and dialogue is bad across the board and I love it, it's very very charming (love you little scotty!). The only thing that would make it better is if there was more of it, and more back and forth between the characters.
Audiovisual
Shredders looks great, it's not photorealistic but it's more than good enough. Performance is pretty mid, which is a bummer but I can get a solid 40fps on my steam deck and 60+ on my PC. I wish there was a night-time mode.
The UI is where the art direction of the game shines, it's the perfect modern evolution of the pro-skater-esque edginess. Super clean, bright, contrasts great against white snow and blue skies.
The soundtrack to this game is "Nowhere, now here" by Jennifur. It's got a clean-ness that matches the visuals perfectly, but there's not much of it so it gets a liiiiittle repetitive.
Final Thoughts
If Shredders 2 is this game with more polish, more meat, and better performance I will be a happy happy camper. It's worth full price if you like these kinds of sports games, and it's worth sale price for just about everyone.
I'm also working on the Ace Attorney Trilogy on 3DS at the moment, having recently started Justice for All.
This year I've tried to cut out mindless entertainment from my life to varying degrees of success, but I'm still struggling with actually putting focus and effort into my non-creative downtime, which sucks because I feel like I'm missing out on all kinds of awesome games/films/shows etc. I picked up a PS3 recently hoping it could get me over my graphics/performance/optimization obsession which seems to take over my gaming time, so I'm hoping to work on that until the Steam Controller comes out, after which I'll switch back to gaming on my HTPC. That and a few games from the 3DS library are my goals going into 2026. If anyone has any tips for just shutting up and playing games I'd love to hear them.
Wow, what a year for games. Lot’s of thanks before diving in. To the generous folks like @Protected, @xavdid, and @kfwyre I really appreciate you sharing your games and spreading so much joy! I’m much more of a casual gamer, and to me the industry is just absolutely packed with amazing, affordable games. I’m just in awe about the quality and creativity of modern games. That and how much cozy games have taken off. Love me a cozy game.
My highlights were Dredge, Dave the Diver, A Highland Song, and Hollow Knight. I had no real disappointments. 2025 was a banging year for games! I’ve written up each game I played below. I’ve tried not to include any spoilers, but if any have crept in I’m sorry. I did these in order of when I played them, incase you're like "why are they arranged this way?!?"
A Highland Song 9/10 - Total play time 21 hours - Completeness: 90% - Courtesy of @Protected
I think A Highland Song is a total sleeper of a game. It’s been my constant return to comfort game in 2025. I think I’ve run through the whole game about 16 times. It’s got a banging sound track, a really engaging storyline, and impressively fleshed out characters for how little actual dialog there is. I’m about 90% through all the peaks and side quests, and have a fastest time of 3 days. It’s really relaxing and cozy.
As a fun aside I learned about Beltane through this game, the Celtic holiday that kicks off the start of summer and is one of the points when the veil between our world and the spirit world is at its weakest. Without giving anything away, there are Selkies in the game that arrive on Beltane. I swim every morning in the ocean here and this year on Beltane there were two mother/pup seal duos in the shallows of the cove we swim from! It was pretty magical and just made me feel even tighter with the game. I played another runthrough that evening.
Papers Please 7/10 - Total play time 5 hours - Completeness: 30% - Courtesy of @xavdid
Very fun concept and beautiful, brutalist art style. I’m only 30% through but it’s a fun game to come back to. Just not after a long day of admin work haha. Definitely worth checking out!
Dredge 10/10 - Total play time 24 hours - Completeness: 100%
Dredge is probably my game of the year. It was incredible. The art. The storytelling. The atmosphere. The creatures. 10/10. Learning it was made by only 3 people made it all the more impressive. There were so many little decisions that made the game incredible. I bought all the additional DLC and I still crave more. I heard they have reached the extent of what they can do with the open world - like physically - but am hoping for a sequel. The only other game that has touched Dredge in the last few years has been Wytchwood.
Her Story 7/10 - Total play time 2 hours - Completeness: 100%
It was a really interesting concept and the acting was great. If you’re into mystery solving I think this is a great addition to the genre. It made me want to checkout the Rootrees are Dead.
Dave the Diver 10/10 - Total play time 42 hours - Completeness: 95%
Probably my second favorite game after Dredge. I played this for an unreasonable amount of time and have been trying to 100% it. I love the story line and the side quests. It’s just pure silliness and fun. I was a huge fan of the early game when everything was still quite difficult. By the end it feels like a little bit more of a grind as dives can last up to an hour. Overall all the mechanics and the diving vs sushi restaurant are really, really fun. Oh and great characters!
Paper Trail 8/10 - Total play time 5 hours - Completeness: 70%
Another really unique concept and beautiful art style. It was a fun puzzle game and had some really really challenging levels. It also plays like a cozy little movie. I really enjoyed my time playing it. Not much else to say than give it a go!
Hollow Knight 9/10 - Total play time 30 hours - Completeness: 60%
So I saw all the hype about Silksong and decided to try the original. Usually sidescroll jump and slash games aren’t my favorite, but Hollow Knight was excellent! Like the other games I’ve mentioned, they did a great job with the art style, the atmosphere, and the story telling. The creatures were also incredibly engaging - be it sometimes frustrating - and you really do have to “git gud”. I actually bought a controller specifically for this game because using the arrow keys just didn’t give me enough reflex for some of the elements (particularly all the down slashing). Honestly, it’s probably a 10/10 game but the other games knocked my socks off so much it’s getting graded on a curve.
That's a fun game, recommended!
Awesome, I'll check it out!
I played and loved the Dredge last winter (with no DLCs) and have scheduled one more play through with DLCs this winter break. They are on sale right now and already in my cart :) My kids are looking forward to it, too. Guess this will be our ultimate cosy Christmas game, what a weird bunch we are.
As you said, everything about the game is good - the atmosphere, the story, the gameplay.
I'll have to check Wytchwood, since I already own it (huh, how did that happen?).
I think I only did Bloodborne PC + DLC and Outer Wilds + DLC this year, both 10/10 games. I also started Expedition 33 but didn't got very far with it. I think I'll stick to my strategy of playing games way after their release date.
This is the way.
Played the Golden Idol DLCs with my SO and it was a blast. If anyone here likes puzzle games and haven’t heard about it go check out Rise of the Golden Idol.
In 2025 I set my record for most game completions. I've finished 43 games across 10 different platforms. 10 of those 43 games released this year. One thing I have found helpful in completing games only having one game active per console, but allowing myself to jump between consoles depending on what my mood is. I also try to focus on shorter experiences, about half the games I beat are 5 hours or less.
2025 Highlights:
Older Releases:
I have played so much Arc Raiders! I’m absolutely enamored by it. It scratches the itches that DayZ and Hunt Showdown scratched without being nearly as sweaty or time consuming as either of them. The PvPvE works really well and the community (on PC at least) is really good. Having days (usually weekends) where everyone shoots on sight or lies about being friendly can be quite demoralizing, but I think that risk keeps the game interesting. My only complaint is the gear management is still a bit wonky right now. I’d really love to see them make crafting and re-gearing after a wipe more seamless. In other extraction shooters I struggled with gear fear, in Arc I struggle with “regear fear”; I have plenty of gear/materials I just don’t want to take the time to craft and equip it again!
Can you explain what you mean by feigning friendliness when this is a PvP game? I don't know what that PvPvE tag means when it comes to the culture and conventions of this game on the ground. PvP is always offputting to me and I'm curious as to how much emphasis it has in the game. Would it be suitable for people who much prefer PvE?
So PvPvE means you can kill players, or you can kill the “environment”. In extraction games this takes the form of some NPC that adds a layer on top of it being purely PvP. In Tarkov and Marauders, these are NPCs that look like players but are generally much dumber and easier to kill. In Hunt Showdown these are zombies; it also has bosses which make the game loop much more interesting than most extraction shooters. In all of these games there is some balance between killing players versus killing the NPCs, and that balance is largely dictated by the risk/reward. ARC I think positions itself in a way that PvE feels like the default, so much so that many people in the community see those who do PvP as “villainous”. Obviously that’s a little extreme and the game mechanic exists so it’s a valid way to play, but the result is the community leans much more towards friendly and helpful interactions (relative to other games).
Would it be suitable to someone who prefers PvE. Yes with the big asterisk being can you stomach the PvP i.e. can you be okay with players killing you. If so go for it! I am in that camp myself and on the rare occasions I’ve chosen to hunt other players I feel terrible about it. I primarily help players, and only PvP out of defense and I have a good time. I do get frustrated when I feel like I’m encountering an inordinate amount of PvP (and losing), so I think it may depend on your threshold for that and what players you run into. The robots (aka the ARCs) are very fun and engaging to fight in this game.
Also using mic is a must in this game and you can get a lot of fun interactions and random team ups if you do
Thanks for the very helpful run down and explaining where ARC sits relative to other popular titles. I've never played an extraction shooter, but this game was recommended to me recently. I think I could live with a little bit of PvP and mostly just playing as you do. Might look into it for Christmas...
There are plenty of opportunities to have PvE fights and even cooperative PvE happen naturally.
But you will get shot by another player and you will lose an entire run worth of inventory and it will happen again. People will snipe you, people will betray your kindness, and people camp extraction sites.
I've seen a lot of people get angry at being shot at, both in game and offline and it always strikes me as odd. It's part and parcel of the extraction shooter genre that you will meet demise at the hands of other players, it's to be expected.
Arc Raiders did manage to create a sufficiently hostile PvE environment with enough loot opportunities for players that it's more common you'll have multiple runs in a row you cooperate with strangers to take down the big bad robot instead. You can absolutely engage this game in a PvE fashion and get out unscathed more often than not. And I mean that literally, I can end 5 out of 6 runs without any shootouts.
My point boils down to knowing what you're getting into. PvP is inherent, though not pervasive. And unlike other games in the genre it's less likely to happen, but it will happen.
Thanks for elaborating, I think I've got a good sense of it now. It's interesting to me that a PvE preference is the default, I wonder if the devs anticipated that. My only problem is not having enough time to play games!
With how much of the game is tied into the PvE aspect I'm sure they wanted to nudge people in that direction but to what extent we'll never know. What we do know is that it's more PvE than veterans of this genre expected.
this was the year of Death Stranding for me. i picked it up for iOS at the end of 2024 just because i thought it was technically impressive (and to justify my xmas present to myself, a Backbone controller). after making it past the "tutorial" area, it really just made me want to play it on a big screen, so i put 60 hours in shortly after new year's. 5-starring first prepper and veteran porter were 10 hours on their own!
of course DS2 came out mid-year, and i did back-to-back playthroughs starting on regular and bumping up to very hard difficulty, which kept me busy all summer. when i decided to be finished, i celebrated by recycling all my gear, save for boots, and walked from Sydney-ish, to Perth-ish, back through the portal, and back home to Sam's shelter. i tend to min max my routes and that was the first time i really just walked and appreciated the landscape.
a week ago, a friend i've been begging to play the first one finally committed so…i started a new DS1 run the next day.
i never got into Metal Gear Solid although i am aware of most of the tropes, twists, and general facts via cultural osmosis, so DS was my first Kojima game, and i found it incredibly surreal. the attention to detail, the world building, the straight up wackiness, the 4th-wall breaking, the emotion that one can generate from a piece of media dismissed by some as a walking simulator…it all hits just right in a way that few other games have for me.
for any existing fans of the series, the most fascinating bit of my playthroughs was my second DS2 run, where i also turned off all social features. don't get me wrong - i love when the social strand system puts a good chunk of resources into a road, or drops someone's zip line or vehicle charger exactly where i need it. however, DS2's soundtrack and immediate access to the music player was ruined for me every time i passed through the signs people love to place going into a distro center, or on a built road. so a very hard run, plus i had to build out my own infrastructure was an excellent challenge.
however, it made playing the game feel less like i was part of the world and more a traditional 1P game "hero" type. like i couldn't unburden myself with the game, like i was truly alone instead of sharing it with my fellow PS5 owners. i really enjoy experiencing it all through the tiny interactions like the mushrooms marking…uh…"claimed" territory (or maybe you just wanted to make a clingy BT disappear!) or the shared lockers having just the right gear/materials when i need them.
so here i go again with DS1, dragging my buddy along who gets legit paranoid at some of the more cinematic BT sequences, just so i can relive it with him and get him to the more cozy parts like drop-kicking MULEs and soaking in a hot spring with BB.
Its been a pretty tough year and I sort of retreated into games to take off the pressure. Also my kid is the same age I was when my mom let me play Tetris on her clunky old gameboy. So I'm hoping she remembers sitting with me on the couch and playing Slime Rancher on the clunky old Steam Deck.
I also made a point of not replaying any old games. Mostly because I've noticed a lot of my friends get sucked into nostalgia traps and all they talk about and play is the same handful of old games. There's only so much Quake 3, L4D2 and TF2 I can play.
The biggest highlights for me were Blue Prince and Silksong. (Major spoilers obviously)
Blue Prince combines my love of mazes, design, mystery and worldbuilding into a neat little package and even sprinkled some smooth jazz in for good measure. I wish I could have saved the physical conspiracy board I made in my office or recorded my reaction to every breakthrough panning out. It took nearly 170hrs over 4 months to finally find the true ending in The Drafts and realizing that it had a red herring door was just a beautiful ending to the whole saga. There were also times I just take a few rounds to draft a house for the fun of it. I remember at the time being frustrated that the game lacked a lot of conventional design sensability like more permanent upgrades or in-game note taking but it hardly mattered for me in the end.
My grand theory of this world is that it is a simulation within a wider narrative, simply because the month names make no sense in the context of the world and the The Drafts exist. I can let suspend disbelieving in the modular house for a while, but The Drafts existing is a whole other thing. Also Christmas. My brain doesn't trust that they also have it on December 25th.
Blue Prince is also where I started taking notes when playing games and I think it paid off when playing Silksong.
I was "lucky" enough to break my foot a week after Silksongs release and it was bitter-sweet playing one of the most agile characters in gaming while relying on crutches. But I got to enjoy a lot of time in bed just fully getting into the game and it is so good to celebrate developers just delivering excellence. The last time I was so surprised by such ambition and scope was Hollow Knight and I'm glad that this game can stand next to it on its own merits. And I have little notes to remind myself of just how it all came together. There's half page dedicated to "2 MASK DAMAGE IN THE FIRST HOUR!!"
There was a lot of frustration and WTF design at first. But like Blue Price, I just stopped judging the game by what it wasn't. And it did work out better to play on the devs terms sometimes. Some of my favorite fights were First Sinner while using Beast Crest and the second Savage Beastfly after all the hell it gave me the first time. I don't think the game ever uses the "get good" voice line, but its very much implied when Hornet is the only character in this situation that thinks this is easy. Seriously, everyone is so adamant that this is a hopeless quest, and she's like "You should see the last god I dealt with." It's nice to play a character with such a strong personal identity and I was constantly motivated to adopt a more acrobatic play-style. Not just force fit the brute force tactics from the Knight.
On that note, the most unexpected surprise was the scope of characters in this game. Hornet being able talk and share opinions really opened up the social part of the narrative. Even just her enjoying the job board while seeing communities grow and improve because of that is a lovely touch. But the other bugs you meet are just fun in their own ways. It's best seen in the parallel journey of hornet cutting her way to the top of that tower and Sherma getting there on pure vibes. Frustratingly good writing. Don't think its intentional, but its very fitting that the little guy never resorts to violence, but Hornet needs to learn to play an instrument to open doors. Also, I'd love to have even a short DLC (that hopefully doesn't become another 8 year wait) where you play as Shakra. She's such an interesting character and I'd love to know where they go next. It's a far more complex character design and there's so much potential for cool animations with different weapons. I still get surprised by how dynamic hornet is and it comes from a that massive library of unique movements.
Also Bellheart might just beat Majula in my list of "chill spots in games". And I love fundamental UI elements changing. And Hornet facing down Grandmother Silk the same way the Knight did the The Radiance. And all the hints of other civilizations in this world. And the big flea. And Bilewater music. And the Pinstress fight on top of the mountain. And the Zero Suit Hornet level in The Slab. And Trobiooooo. I really want Trobio to be a failed juvenile from the Grimm Troupe.
I could genuinely gush about this game for hours.
There's also Expedition 33. That I haven't finished yet. I'm not the biggest fan of how Act 3 was presented but I've got two more side activities and I'll fun the last story mission. It's an amazing game and trumps anything AAA from the last few years. But to me, it doesn't seem any greater than the sum of its parts. Sort of like Metaphor Re Fantazio. A game that I'm also sitting at the last few chapters. A game that's also very inspired by Persona. Another game where I haven't finished the final chapter.
It feels like there's something happening there but I don't know what it is.
One thing I didn't expect to enjoy was canceling GamePass and other pointless subscriptions and putting some of the money towards any interesting small projects I came across. Honestly, its so much better than being spoiled for choice but not playing any of it. And it may actually go towards helping a small team or solo dev.
Highlights here would be
Metal Garden: A 90min FPS adventure that's a mix of Halo and Half Life. Feels like a proof-of-concept that could flesh out into something interesting.
Nitro Express: A fun little side scroll shooter with more guns than playable levels.
Receiver 2: An FPS where you need to intentionally manipulate every control of your firearm. Very forward with the message of responsible gun ownership and themes of suicide.
Missile Command Delta: Mix of escape room and a retro puzzle game that's published by Atari and makes for a fun afternoon.
Turbo Overkill: Probably the best Boomer Shooter next to Ultrakill.
It's also the third year running where I've not gotten any AAA game from a western studio. I honestly can't see myself getting GTA6 after the whole union busting situation there. There are so many cool things to play and none of it needed hundreds of millions of dollars or excessive AGI to develop. I gifted 6 copies of
Silksong for less than the price of some cosmetics in other games.
Hollow Knight: When I saw Silksong about to release I just had to know what the hype was for this game, saw it, kinda liked the idea, and got hooked. I'm not quite done yet (need to beat the three guardians, etc), but it's a great game. Kinda like a Souls-lite, with the death cycle at benches, recovering your shade, etc. I've managed to avoid major spoilers for Silksong so I can enjoy it much the same, and playing mostly through HK has made me want it more. I'm willing to put this up as my GOTY, just for what I've played.
Hades: Another killer game with a sequel leading for GOTY (with Silksong). After Balatro I fell in love with the roguelite genre after realizing it isn't all Binding of Isaac or Vampire Survivors (Love the second, have bounced off the first for a decade). Satisfying progression with enough challenge and fairness to make losses not feel bad, pulls its punches with the death mechanic to keep things fun. I've almost beaten the game once after two months, which I think is great.
Megabonk: Vampire Survivors-style game, collect items to try to power up as much as possible and auto-kill stuff as you run around. It feels 1:1 to VS, despite the smaller scale, but dominated my gameplay through most of November.
Avowed: Somehow was exactly what I wanted it to be, but not my perfect game. I love it, and need to go back to finish it (probably next year), as I'm through a good chunk of the second act. Really well made, feels phemomenal on gameplay and the story is really great.
Dispatch: Every streamer I watch on Twitch played this and I tried not to have it spoiled in case I wanted to play it. I sorta like this sort of superhero media that considers alternatives of organized superhero policing in society, and their place in a greater context. The story was interesting in a similar way to My Hero Academia or One Punch Man's approaches, and it was funny that the whole thing took place in Torrance, only 30 miles away (and has a dumpster referencing Long Beach band Fartbarf, who are a favorite of mine). The story, and the outcome I got, both made me want to go back for more to find the other ending possibilities I've seen people talking about, and to game the mechanics to get there (maybe with "unlimited hacking attempts" on, because some of those are just brutal with no explanation).
I have one minor complaint that kept pulling me out of cutscenes, light spoilers if you're not past Episode 3
The use of "them" referring to the character you cut from Z-Team bugged me. I emphatically support gender inclusivity in games, but the problem I have with this is it makes my decision feel completely arbitrary, and wouldn't have been too difficult to have the gender preserved with respect to the decision to keep things more immersive, especially since there are only two choices. It just pulled me out every time. It's small, but felt like a big oversight, something I couldn't look away from.
Very productive year for gaming-wise. If gaming could ever be called "productive!" I've been trying to track game finishes the last couple of years because sometimes I'd forget that I finished a game. Even though it doesn't happen all that often.
Except for this year, where I've finished thirteen of them so far! A few of these games were really short. Like finished in a few hours short. And at least one -- Cobalt Core -- needs to be played several times to really complete the game, but I did complete a full run without getting destroyed for the first time last month. Which I think counts.
If you followed the Backlog Bingo posts and read my progress, this shouldn't surprise you...but 8 of the 13 were detective games. I don't watch true crime TV shows, podcasts, and such. Just don't really care for the genre, even find it a little distasteful, but somehow detective games were my jam. I guess it's because these aren't actual real criminal cases.
My one goal for the year, that I probably won't achieve, was to finish Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero. This is a JRPG that's part of a multi-JRPG universe that's technically one gigantic story. I started and mostly played in May, but haven't gone back. I just needed a break and wanted to play other things. Hoping to get back into it before the year is over, but I doubt I'll finish it by the end of the month.
My favorite game that I completed in 2025 is probably Frostpunk. It was actually someone here on Tildes, I think cfabbro, who, a few years ago, suggested that I give it another shot. So I did. And I'm glad I did. It was pretty challenging, due to often being under the gun timewise, while having to figure out which residents or factions have to be prioritized. And people die in that game; there's no saving everyone. Which can be detrimental and stressful when trying to rush some project or whatever. But it was incredibly satisfying once I did complete the missions and the game overall, including the DLC. I need to go back and try Frostpunk 2 again.
Favorite game overall? Don't know if I have one since I've played a lot of good stuff this year. But most unique one is likely the browser game Corru.Observer. Someone posted it here some months ago and I gave it a go. And I got pretty hooked, ngl. The lore and story sucked me in. There were some nights I was staying up way too late trying to move forward. I'm not done with it, and I think the game and story isn't done either. It's still being actively written and worked on. And I also haven't played in a few months, but that's another I'd like to get back into soon.
There is one trend for me that I'm a little disappointed with: I haven't played that many multiplayer games this year. Other than FFXIV anyway, but that's a single player game in a multiplayer world, if that makes any sense. I did play some Barotrauma, Satisfactory, and The Headliners with friends, but that's about it. We play Barotrauma practically annually at this point, so that was fun for a couple weeks. But Satisfactory, after a few days, turned into each of us three just doing our own thing in-game, hardly actually playing together. We'd even log in at different times. And even The Headliners was only played for like 2hrs. The new hotness in the group is BF6, but it looks like just another generic shooter to me. I don't play shooters that much so I'm def not gonna pay $70 for it. Feels like I'm losing that gaming "commonality" with friends, which is a little sad. Idk, that's its own separate issue, with other deeper things, but it affected my gaming this year. That's prob why I was able to play and complete so many single player games in 2025.
Anyway, looking forward to gaming in 2026. GTA VI is finally arriving, after all!
This has been a slow year for me, with nothing new purchased despite a credit large enough on Steam Wallet to outright buy many indie or AA titles and GOTY Editions of AAA titles on Steam Sales. I play on four platforms, Steam (Linux/Mac_, Xbox Series X, Nintendo Switch 1, Apple Arcade (Mac/iPhone/iPad). Rather than go through every single game I've played this year, I'll go through just a few and the platforms I play them on.
Endless Sky | Steam
I don't think I can sufficiently explain this game. It's a loving homage to the Escape Velocity series by Ambrosia Software, and I love it. I mostly end up being a cargo hauler or running passenger missions, but sometimes I'm a corporate spy or spy for the Free Words, and once in a great while I'm a pirate hunter. It's such a good game it's almost absurd that it's free. Requires a keyboard and mouse, no controller support I'm aware of.
Powerwash Simulator | Steam / Xbox / Apple Arcade
Brain off, clean grime, listen to podcast. Controller supported, prefer keyboard and mouse.
Grand Theft Auto Online | Xbox
Another one I cannot sufficiently explain. For some reason the GTA series has had me in its thrall since I was about 19, back with the original Grand Theft Auto. This one has far and away my most play time, I usually manage to log 5 or so hours a week with this one, which may not seem like a lot until you realize that's like 250 hours a year, and I have to pay monthly for the privilege. But it's a place where I live in nice houses, I am a fashionisto, I drive/fly incredible vehicles, almost all of my problems can be solved with extreme violence, and pretty much all of my problems are bad people who deserve the psycho I'm about to unleash on them. The narrative of the game does not shy away from the fact that my character is pretty much unhinged and has done some awful shit to some awful people to get to where he is. It's the most honest Capitalism Simulator I've ever encountered. Controller supported, keyboard and mouse supported, genuinely just use the controller now.
Planet Crafter | Steam
This got some big updates this year, and in all honesty I haven't really played it much since the beginning of the year, but this scratches a certain itch that Minecraft does not, and it's very PvE in a way that I dig. It's from a smaller publisher and I bought it way back when it was just kind of a neat concept and watching it grow to what it has become has been excellent. There are other games that you might think "it's just like this game" but for some reason the presentation and execution just hits for me. I haven't played it in close to a year, though, but that's more reflective of me not wanting to turn on my big gaming machine due to its absurd energy consumption than anything to do with this game itself. Genuinely wish it was Mac native. Play the demo and see if you like it. Controller supported, personally prefer keyboard and mouse.
I think that's good enough for now. (No Nintendo Switch games because in my house the Switch is known as "The Zelda Machine" because guess what is the only thing I play on it?)
Favorites
Overall, I'd say Escape from Duckov is my GOTY. I find it perfectly balanced, with an excellent sense of progression, and enough quests for 40+ hours of enjoyment. I'm hoping for more content, and maybe even maps and quests from the community if the devs open their tools.
The Slormancer is a neat distilled "numbers go brr" ARPG, but it got too repetitive after 50 hours. Still, for that price I'm more than satisfied.
ARC Raiders strikes the right balance between exploration/looting (definitely my favorite genre at this time) and PvP. I'm surprised I'm enjoying it, though I need to be less trusty of other players.
R.E.P.O. is a joy to play if you manage to gather 3+ people. It's even funnier when you fumble and get stupidly killed.
Disappointments
Surprises
Memorable moments
Discovering new maps on ARC Raiders and Duckov. It always brings me joy and takes me back to my teenage years when I was exploring maps on Half-Life mods and finding new nooks and crannies. I love feeling lost in a new game.
Self-reflections
The only games with a story that I've played this year are Lies of P and Mouthwashing, and I found them both forgettable. Actually I only remembered them when looking at my purchase history. So for the last 2 years, most of my games have been loot-based with short gameplay loops for quick dopamine hits.
I also managed to get a group of semi-regular gaming friends, which is neat, after nearly 20 years of only playing with randoms. It's been nice for my mental health.
The least amount of gaming I've ever done in a year. I've only played and completed one so far: Bokura.
My gaming time got swapped with watching anime.