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'm planning to launch Tildes Minecraft season 3 some time mid November. What mods should we add or remove? Any other recommendations or requests?

Edit: As per the majority of the feedback, season 3 will be delayed until the beginning of January.

Edit 2: Server goes online January 3rd, 2026 at 11am Pacific time.

Definitely a well deserved GOTY. I haven't gotten around to it yet, but my friends have been raving about it!

Lots of indie games nominated this year. Really feels like we're in a golden age of indies.

Let me define a campaign as an episodic story with a clear hook, rising action (or actions), climax, and ending. It would ideally be a story that goes for multiple (at least 4 or 5) play sessions so as to distinguish it from a one shot.

How do you, as a DM, develop and run these?

Over the years in my group we've all taken turns running campaigns, one shots, sessions, etc and what's always fascinated me most is how everyone's planning style is so different. Some get into ridiculous detail, while others (guilty...) tend to improv.

Ive been playing nonstop for the past two weeks basically, took last week off work so I could play. Lvl 67 as of this morning and I’m a little behind my clan mates who are 80s pushing 90s

Thoughts in general? Thoughts on salvaging nerf this am?

Haven’t played in years and think it sounds neat? It is. Bond up and play, sailing is a meta skill so you can lvl up while you level up but watch out for random crates of alcohol in the sea cause while you get xp from sampling…. Sometimes they tele you to the abyss cause Jagex is pro troll

His Christmas present is going to be a custom-built arcade cabinet. The internals are simply a Nintendo Switch, an 8bitdo arcade controller, a computer monitor, and some speakers. Pretty simple stuff!

He has next to zero experience playing video games and I haven't really exposed him to my games either (screen time and all). So, he's probably got about zero coordination when it comes to using controllers or playing platformers, etc. Also, he tends to get very frustrated with himself if he can't do something, causing him to want to give up.

What are some recommendations for Nintendo Switch (1, not 2) games that will ease him into gaming?

Thanks!

After this Tildes post I was curious about the review scores, Steam Deck compatibility and ProtonDB ratings for the first Digiphile bundle and figured it's worth sharing. I've added two extra columns compared to the Humble Bundle posts:

• Early access because some of these games are "early access" releases.
• All Time Low sourced from isthereanydeal

Digiphile - Return of the Immersive Sim is now available with the following games, grouped by payment tier.

$9 Tier (aprox £6.85, €7.77)

$13 Tier (aprox £9.89, €11.23)

Everything in the $9 tier and the following:

$20 Tier (aprox £15.22, €17.27)

Everything in the $13 tier and the following:

$5 DLC add-on (aprox £3.80, €4.32)

They all sell this as a separate addon for an additional $5:

Does anyone have experience with any of the games and, if so, would you recommend them? Is there anything in here that you're particularly excited to play? Should we post other Digiphile bundles or is this a terrible selection compared to Humble Choice?

Hey all I own a pixel 8a if that's relevant and am looking for a controller that is Bluetooth and costs 50 dollars or less on Amazon. I'm not too picky as long as it can hold the phone and is of good quality. Thank you!

I've been learning Godot for the past few months and I'm happy to report that it's been going well. Little by little, things are clicking into place. (I hugely, highly, undoubtedly, recommend GDQuest courses)

I'm ready to start working on a small project to test out my skills, and it's going to be a top down pixel art game.

But to be completely honest, I suck at drawing. I suck at drawing as in, I can make stick figures at best. So forget any fancy software for drawing in general like gimp or photoshop.

What I'm looking for is a software meant for pixel art and that makes my life easy, in both drawing and animating. Bonus points if it allows me to trace (I'm not planning to copy/steal art, but I do need reference points, at least for now)

Do you guys have any recommendations? It can be free or paid. I don't mind paying as long the software is worth it.

I get the feeling that, outside its own communities, Overwatch has mostly slipped out of the wider conversation.

We've had:

• Blizzard’s various incidents/controversies

• The shift to OW2 and all the confusion/anger around that

• The battle pass / shop pricing / F2P monetization complaints

• Cancellation of PVE mode

• General live-service fatigue

Most of that hasn’t really been “fixed”, but I'm not seeing nearly as much noise about it anymore, good or bad.

My own (slightly biased) view as someone still playing:

As a now free-to-play, live-service game with ongoing updates and "events", I feel like OW2's cosmetic pricing is (unfortunately) pretty standard compared to similar big titles. I'm not saying that's good, I think aggressive monetization is a wider industry problem, but within that landscape, the model itself doesn't feel uniquely outrageous to me if the goal is keeping a big, polished game running long-term.

I also doubt the actual dev team has much control over pricing, so that part lands more on Blizzard/ABK as a company (shocker).

Setting that aside: purely in terms of gameplay, the game currently feels the best it ever has to me. There's a good variety of modes, and things like the new Stadium mode feel very different from the usual Quick Play/Comp loop while still keeping the core of what makes Overwatch fun: the heroes, the readability, how smooth and well-designed everything feels.

What I'd like to hear from you:

Especially if you're not deep in the OW ecosystem anymore (or never were):

• Do you think about Overwatch at all these days?

• Did you drop it because of Blizzard, OW2’s launch, monetization, balance, something else?

• From the outside, does it feel “fine now”, “permanently tainted”, “kind of irrelevant”, or just background noise?

• If you never really played it: is there anything that would actually make you try Overwatch 2 in its current state?

And if you are still playing or following it closely, I'm also interested in how you feel about the state of the game vs peak OW1 / early OW2, especially whether it's earned back any trust or enthusiasm.

Not trying to rehash every incident in detail, just curious how the game and its reputation land for people who aren’t immersed in it every day.

I have been working on adapting the Mul from AD&D 2e's Dark Sun into my general AD&D 1e campaign to coincide with the deletion of gnomes (they deserve it). I chose to not simply take them 1:1 since even the dwarf has different mechanics in Dark Sun. I took into consideration what the dwarf is good at, as well as how the half-elf and elf relate, and tried to model it in the same way.

What I'd like is opinions from people with experience in the pre-WotC editions of D&D that are pre-disposed to picking demi-humans on whether the mul is something they'd pick.

Note that the Runecaster is a Fighter subclass from a 2e supplement that I've ported back and the Occultist is a personal creation that combines the cleric and magic-user with additional abilities in the way that the 1e bard does with the fighter and thief.

• Requires Strength 8 and Constitution 6
• Gains +1 to Strength and -1 to Charisma
• Gains +1 to poison saves per 4 points of Constitution
• Can detect certain aspects of stonework within 10'
  • At 30%, detects grade/slope, new construction/passage, moving walls/rooms
  • At 25%, detects traps relating to pits, falling blocks, etc. as well as approximate depth underground
• Thief adjustments as follows
  • -5 to Open Locks and Read Languages
  • +5 to Move Silently and Climb Walls
• Infravision 60'
• May qualify and check for psionic ability per the PHB Appendix 1
• Classes Allowed (Level Limit), with dwarf for comparison
  • Cleric (U), 6* for dwarf
    • Druid (6), NA for dwarf
  • Fighter (8), 7* for dwarf
    • Runecaster (9*), U for dwarf
  • Thief (U), 10 for dwarf
  • Can qualify for Occultist, NA for dwarf
    * Having a prime requisite of 17 or 18 will increase this limit by 1 or 2 levels, respectively.

I have a friend who plays in my regular D&D game and has a pretty significant stutter. The rest of the party are great about this and are very patient and understanding, so I'm not looking for advice in that area, but this friend has also expressed a desire to create and run a campaign. I would love to play in his game, but I know he worries that his stutter would severely restrict his ability to be an effective DM. Unfortunately, at least as far as traditional DM-ing is concerned, I think he's just objectively correct. But that got me wondering - are there ways to work around his impediment or rearrange the typical flow of a D&D session that could allow him to do it?

Things we've considered:

• Asynchronous play by text (in Discord): This technically would work just fine, but it obviously doesn't feel the same as real-time play where everyone is in the moment together. IIRC, the last time we talked about this, he didn't really sound interested in pursuing it.
• Him doing the writing and prep and me actually running the game: This also would technically work, and I told him I'd be honored to do it, but I'm sure he'd prefer to not have to filter his ideas through someone else and trust that person to execute them faithfully. I know I would feel bad every time I failed to deliver something the way he intended. I also wouldn't be able to be a player for him if we did this.

Things I've wondered about but not suggested yet:

• Is there some sort of text-to-speech (TTS) engine that he could use to help him run the game in near real time? I'm thinking like a Stephen Hawking situation. This would relieve the social pressure of having to overcome the stutter, and it would also allow him to write chunks of speech ahead of time and just paste them in at game time. There would of course be delays as he types out improvised parts, but it would still be closer to a traditional experience than something like asynchronous play.
• Is there a way we could pull off a kind of co-DM arrangement where he's more involved in the moment, rather than simply writing and planning? This would still take me out of his pool of potential players, but it would be better than me just running the game by myself. What could this look like?

Are there possibilities I'm not considering? What tools and strategies could he/we use to mitigate this and help him be successful as a DM? Is there a way to dramatically reimagine what a D&D session looks like that might still be fulfilling for him and everyone involved?

Edit: Should have mentioned we play online, so computer-based tools would be excellent options. They'd fit in very naturally.

Obviously the solution will be highly specific to him personally, and I'm not trying to solve all his problems for him without taking into consideration what he wants. We've talked several times over the years about his stutter and his attempts to eliminate it, and it's a conversation we return to every so often. I'd just like to have some ideas to suggest next time this comes up.

Thanks in advance, everyone!

Recently, I discovered a desire to play some small, easy-to-pick-up, not-demanding-on-hardware video games with short gameplay sessions that also require some skill to master. Many years ago, I played a few games that I liked very much. But now their online lobbies are dead, so I have to discover something new. So, what indie competitive games do you play?

I spent a lot of hours on CS2D and Altitude. CS2D is like Counter-Strike, but with a top-down view. It simplified the necessary skills for a shooter but was still fun to play. This game had all the modes from classic CS, but with small additions. I liked two modes the most: capture the flag and deathmatch with lasers. CTF mode had quite long sessions, even lasting for hours when teams were balanced. It was also fun to build turrets, walls, and spike traps, which made it possible to play a completely new class compared to CS — the engineer. The mode with lasers was fast-paced chaos that actually had its charm.

Altitude was a 2D shooter with airplanes and a side-view. I played a lot of the soccer mode. In this mode, two teams spawned on a football field with two goals at each end of the pitch. The ball was magnetic, which helped to catch it, and you could shoot it, allowing you to pass. I liked how each class of airplane was pretty well-balanced for this mode, allowing players to fill specific roles on the team and enabling dense and fun gameplay.

I'm looking for something similar that I can run occasionally on my laptop and that has an active community.

I've had my Steam Deck a few months so I'm comfortable getting around. That said, it could do a lot that it isn't. Partly because the default desktop experience is so barebones and has kinda bad ergonomics.

I know there's emulation and such that I'd be interested in. I'm a linux nerd so don't be shy. I'd say the main thing I'm looking for is for the Desktop mode to be more of like a "default to Couch Mode: unlocked, but can go to a (nice) desktop if need be". I really like the idea of playing my GOG games, emulators, etc all in one menu that's ergonomic to controller. I have a file server handy as well, anything good to do with that in conjunction?

Besides that, what good/cool uses have you found?

While I ate breakfast, I watched a YouTube video speaking to how death becomes an inconvenience in D&D 5e as early as 5th level, despite the amount of weight that people generally put behind it in the moment. Here's a relevant transcript.

Well, the obvious answer to this is to ban the spells that take away the permanence of death; that way there's stakes staying all the way through 20th level. The problem with this answer is that D&D isn't balanced around those spells not existing at later levels.

I love Risk of Rain 2 but my biggest problem with that game is being 30 minutes into a run and getting one-shot, dying, and having to start all over. I couldn't imagine having that same feeling after playing FOUR YEARS in a campaign.

I don't necessarily disagree with the first paragraph, but the second one is wild to me for two reasons.

• First, Risk of Rain is a roguelike whose entire game loop is "do stuff, die, unlock/purchase meta progression, do more stuff, die, etc. etc.".
• Second, the idea that you've been playing four years in a 5e game that's presumably weekly and somehow haven't hit 20th level. For context, 5e wants you hitting 20th level after 36-52 typical 4-hour sessions.

This kind of sentiment really does highlight how distant the way I ran the game those eight years I spent with 5e and how the game wants to be run is to the way people appear to be running the game, and I'm not sure I'll ever be able to square that circle. Not to imply any kind of superiority to it, it just continues to be extremely weird/interesting to me how the culture surrounding D&D is so different from the expectations laid out by the very rules text people don't read.

I dream with a new mainstream handheld console that is neither an extension of a regular console experience, a smartphone, or a wine-powered Linux machine

When I was a kid in Brazil, we had a manga and anime club in my town. It was somewhat official. At our gatherings, there were lots of manga and VHS tapes that we exchanged and duplicated when possible. There were always two or three kids, each with a Nintendo DS. Sometimes more. For us, they were the rich kids. Back in 2005, it was unimaginable for most kids to own a DS, or even a Game Boy for that matter. They connected their devices and played some kind of Pokémon. I pretended I did not care and did not pay them overt attention. My envy knew no bounds.

At least a decate later, when the PSP was already going out of fashion (and was therefore much cheaper), I managed to get a PSP Go. It came fullly cracked with hundreds of games. I loved that cheap little thing. I eventually graduated to a PS Vita, which I believe was the finest piece of hardware I ever had in my hands. But the proprietary memory card was pricey, and so were the games. I didn't have lots to play. It's a bittersweet memory.

Seeing how the Vita became an emulation powerhouse makes me regret selling it.

I never owned a Nintendo DS, but a friend of mine lent me his for several years. I loved that too, but the stylus felt like a gimmick, and I would have gladly swapped it for regular controls. I was not a fan of the dual screens either. But at least it was interesting, you know? They were trying to do something different, and I respected them for that.

Now I have two retro handhelds, the Miyoo Mini Plus and the RG35XX H (Anbernic). Cheap Chinese products, but decent enough. Setting them up correctly was not hard, but it was laborious.

Maybe I am crazy, but I still think handheld consoles could work in the mainstream. It won't happen, of course. But it would be awesome to be excited by hardware once again. Something unique that is not a phone or a way to play Windows games on the go. With games that are developed explicitly for handhelds, with UIs that are adequate for small screens and crazy features that wouldn't make sense in the living room. A sturdy piece of tech that is always there for you, suggesting nothing but escapism.

One can only dream.

Party

• Lee, Grey Elven Fighter 5, Magic-User 5, Thief 5 (~70k XP)
• Moya, Halfling Thief 7 (~47k XP)
• Oryn, High Elven Magic-User 5, Thief 6 (~73k XP)
  • Henchman Takeshi, Human Ranger 4 (~16k XP)
• Varda, Human Cleric 6 dual-classed into Magic-User 6 (~75k XP)
  • Henchman Rudy, Halfling Druid 3, Thief 4 (~12k XP)
• Vordt, Half-Ogre Cleric 4, Fighter 5 (~56k XP)

Looking over their map of the dungeon of the Temple, they realize there's a couple of rooms in the Water Cult's area that they never investigated, so they start by prioritizing those rooms. The first appears to be some kind of salon, for there are themed carpets, draperies, couches, serving dishes, and a... fishy-smelling incense burning. As they turn the room over, they find an embroidered cloak depicting a decapod sewn in with gold thread, among other things.

They entered from the east, and see a door heading south. Entering, they see a bedroom of sorts, with a writing desk, bronze chest, and an ornate trident hanging from the wall with a massive aquamarine set in it. Upon the desk is a tome that appears to be some rituals the Water Temple would engage in. Rudy notices and accidentally triggers a needle trap within the lock of the bronze chest, but is deftly able to avoid it (between being a druid, a halfling, having a ring of protection, and a high Dexterity, Rudy tends to pass poison saves on anything other than a 1). Well worth the risk, however, as in the chest was a coral box containing many small pearls.

Lee lifts the trident from the wall and then believes it to be a good idea to go for a swim. As a matter of fact, he must go submerge himself right now and begins to walk off. The party exchange quick glances and spring into action; Vordt blocks the door with his robust frame as Moya pulls out her rope of entanglement and commands it to hogtie Lee. After some discussion, the party resolves to finish exploring the last couple rooms and then leave to deal with Lee's presumed curse.

Back in the hall outside the first room, they move to the other door across from it, and it's locked. Moya is unable to pick it, but then Rudy comes along and gets it open. Within is a lounge furnished similarly to the salon, though (thankfully, some said) without the incense and with a desk covered in writing materials. They found a hidden compartment in the back of the desk's drawers containing a scroll with three cleric spells on it: resist fire, neutralize poison, and true seeing.

Similar to the salon, there is a door on the southern wall that they enter through, containing another bedroom. Flanking the bed are a couple of chests, which Moya and Rudy work on picking. Moya fails to pick her chest, while Rudy gets through theirs. Within Rudy's chest was a handful of platinum and a vial with liquid labeled as a potion of water breathing with two doses. Oryn attempted the chest Moya failed at, also failing. Rudy, confident in his ability to come in under the other two and succeed in their stead... also failed. Vordt approaches with a crowbar and pries the hinges off. Within are some books and miscellaneous treasure items.

Done exploring the second floor, they leave the Temple and drag Lee back to town to try and fix his curse. Most of the time he's spent tied up he's been begging the party to just let him take a quick swim, and he even suggested a few times they allow him to use the potion of water breathing. They tried a remove curse and dispel magic on him, but neither freed Lee from his compulsion to submerge himself in water, nor were they able to pry the trident from his hands. They try letting him enter a nearby pond and waiting a few moments before levitating him out, but this did not cure him either. Intending to enlist the help of more powerful clerics, the party packs up and gets ready to travel a couple of days to a nearby city; Vordt sits next to a hogtied Lee and begins to read the ritual tome they found in the Temple. By the end of the day, Vordt learned what the trident is, how the curse works, and how to remove it. It is a trident of yearning, and the curse is removed either via wish or by having some effect of water breathing put upon the affected while they are submerged.

The party reverses course back to town and, at about 2200, are standing near the pond, illuminated by many active continual lights. Varda enters the pond with Lee and allows him to submerge himself while supported. Varda quickly administers the potion of water breathing to Lee and then pulls him back above water as Lee roughly tosses the trident away from himself. They retrieve the trident with a grapnel and Rudy spends about a half hour carefully picking and prying at the gem with their tools, avoiding touching the trident itself, until they've pried the gem free. Oryn then tests whether the trident is still cursed. It is. Another dose later, Oryn is also fine. Unsure of how to dispose of the trident safely, they take it to the local temple of Rook (LG deity) and leave it with them.

All of that handled, the party returns to the Temple dungeon, intending to breach the third floor. They work their way down and enter into a room whose entire floor is coated in fertilizer and mushrooms of varying shapes, sizes, and colors. An armor-clad woman immediately calls out that they should stay still and check on their companions, as some of these fungal growths can cause insanity, and she begins making her way through a winding path towards Lee and Vordt, the ones who opened the door. Unbeknownst to them, Lee failed his resistance to charm, as well as the saving throw, against a charm person she wove into her words, though Vordt succeeded against a suggestion. The woman, glowing short sword drawn, attacks Lee from behind and lands a touch across his head, draining a point of Wisdom, breaking the charm on Lee. She then turns to Vordt and does the same, but between Vordt's retaliation and Moya's timely backstab, the true form of the lamia appears dead before them.

This is where we ended the session, with the date now being Rose 24; we'll pick back up there next week. Notable treasure: trident of yearning, potion of water breathing, a cleric scroll, and some miscellaneous high-value items. Gold shares were about 2.5k each.

A "Silksong" = a game that you waited a long time for and that met your very high expectations.

• What was the game?
• How long did you wait for it?
• What were you expecting?
• How did it deliver?

(And yes, Silksong can be your "Silksong")

This post is full of spoilers of Silksong

I’m a married, working person so the time I can allocate for gaming is not much. I’ve been enjoying silksong very much and tried a spoiler free gameplay, having played hollow knight before and knowing how much team cherry loves secrets.

I’ve followed the normal gameflow and beat the boss. After that I wanted to keep playing and following leads I had before the ending.

Investigating missing parts, the boss runback in bilewater destroyed my nerves so I looked up if there was a bench closer to the fight - there had to be one since this was outright ridiculous. Turns out there’s a secret bench that’s so hidden I don’t know if anyone other than the most determined secret hunters could find. The boss was also as hard as it gets, felt kinda unfair.

Looking up bilewater opened a can of worms for me. I kept seeing spoilers and continued looking up info. After a day I found out there are 3 other endings, a whole another act, and bunch of unlockables.

I love when a game doesn’t handhold you and forces you to enjoy it. I get it. But I think this is too much, too obscure. It requires meticulous backtracking and there’s never an indication when you’re capable of taking on a new quest. Finding new items, you don’t know who should it be given to. You don’t even know if there are still areas you haven’t been to.

I guess team cherry wanted the player to have a play log each session and we should’ve kept logs of weird stuff we’ve seen along the way so that we remember to go back. Well, as fun as that might’ve been, I did not keep a log and forgot a lot of early game stuff.

I believe they should’ve prepared a guide themselves, spoiler free, which could include some info the game does not offer so the player can keep unlocking new stuff and would’ve known generally what to expect. Existence of act 3 honestly shocked me, and I don’t think I’m someone who doesn’t pay attention.

In their quest to be anti-handholdy gaming, I believe team cherry went too far. Onerous backtracking and note taking shouldn’t be the solution.

I loved the game and it’s easily GotY for me. I’ll keep playing it even after seeing spoilers but I can feel half the fun being gone now that I’ll just be chasing objectives I’ve seen online. If I hadn’t looked stuff up, I’d have switched to bananza or hades 2.

With October approaching, it's time to play some horror games! Horror is my favorite genre. It's chock full of emotion and creative game design. It's a genre that has to continuously reinvent itself to avoid getting stale, which leads to dozens of incredible games.

The games I'd like to play for the first time are:

• Silent Hill 2 - I was holding out for a proper remaster for over a decade. It's finally here, but it's $70! I'll probably have to bite the bullet.
• Resident Evil Village - I've been meaning to play this for years and already own it! On sale for $10.
• Resident Evil 4 (Remaster) - I played the original but not the new remaster. On sale for $20.
• Dead Space - Just bought this on sale a few weeks ago. It looks really good! On sale for $12.
• Alien Isolation - Alien is one of my favorite movies of all time, so I should really play this.

Now for some recommendations:

• Resident Evil (REmake) - This is where you start if you're new to horror. Absolutely iconic, and not too scary thanks to its cheesy B-movie script, which can be humorous. On sale for $5.
• Resident Evil 7 Biohazard - This game was a true return to form in the horror department. Absolutely loved it. On sale for $8. Genuine steal.
• Inscryption - Not very spooky. Has a fun card game and a lot of intriguing ideas.

Are there any games you're looking forward to playing?

Do you have any recommendations?

Hi! I'm looking for some fun and interesting casual puzzle games. Some of my favorites, in no particular order, are:

• Sudoku
• Nonogram - like the recent Every 5x5 Nonogram or Picross.
• Tetris - Apotris on GBA is great!
• A few from the Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection
• Sokoban
• Catrap on Gameboy, a bit similar to Sokoban
• Dragonsweeper and Mamono Sweeper that people recommended here a while ago.
• Chip's Challenge - Lexy's Labyrinth is a browser-based reimplementation.

Wondering if we have tilde fellows playing it. I’ve become addicted since last year and it’s fully taken over my regular board game nights… I’ve been storytelling and doing custom scripts and characters.