I was just reflecting on games I’ve played in the last year, and wondering when Steam’s year-in-review thing would be happening (probably within the next week).
However, I thought it might be interesting to ask this question before that drops, because I’d expect that people will respond differently before they’ve seen the data, and I think that subjective aspect of the reflection is interesting. So tell me what games you’ve played in the past year that have most stuck out to you. I think it’s more fun if you try to go by memory, but if you want to go check stuff like whether you first played a game in December 2024 or January 2025, that’s fine too; just try to not get too deep into the data, I’m interested in the vibes here.
For me, a recent highlight was Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. I didn’t expect to be able to play it for a long while because of its cost, but a friend got it for me in November, for my birthday. I like that I’ll always associate it with them for that reason. The game is also very me, what with its artsy fartsy themes and the like.
Before that, I played a heckton of Hades 2, which I thoroughly enjoyed, even if it didn’t quite scratch the same itch that the first game did. I’ve not 100%ed it yet, but I plan to. My favourite part of the game is the music — the boss fight that incorporates music in a cool way is so awesome
And before that was Hollow Knight, partly motivated by hearing all the hype in the runup to Silksong’s release. I’d been weirdly resistant to playing Hollow Knight for years. I think it’s because when something is so universally lauded, it makes me feel oddly anxious. Like, if I don’t enjoy it, does that mean I have bad taste? What if it is objectively amazing, but it just doesn’t click with me, and I feel sad that I’m missing out on whatever magic everyone else is experiencing? Or what if everyone else is wrong, and the game is way overhyped? They’re silly thoughts, but this is fairly common for me (this is why I resisted watching Breaking Bad for years). Fortunately I loved it, and I expect that Silksong will be one of my highlights of 2026. Beautiful soundtrack that I’ve listened to so much that it was in my Spotify wrapped.
The most interesting part of my year is that I branched out more and played smaller games, outside of the typical stuff I’d play, and for a delightfully silly reason: this Venn diagram(Source).
I stumbled across that when I was voraciously consuming as much Disco Elysium analysis as I could back in 2024, when I played it. I had already played Pathologic 2 (largely due to hbomberguy’s video essay on the first one), as well as Planescape:Torment (because so many had cited that as a clear influence on Disco Elysium). This gave me enough points of reference on that venn diagram that I became determined to play all the games included (i.e. Disco Elysium, Pentiment, Felvidek, The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante, Planescape: Torment, Pathologic 2. The middle section is not a game, but a book (which I haven’t read): Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose)
I was utterly enchanted by this Venn diagram to an absurd degree. According to it:
- Pentiment = Disco Elysium - Pathologic 2;
- Felvidek = Disco Elysium - Planescape: Torment; and
- The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante = Felvidek + Pentiment Based off the first two statements, I felt like I could approximate the vibe of Pentiment and Felvidek, but I was intrigued to test that, and I played two games I don’t think I would have otherwise.
Pentiment was delightful. I played a bunch of it when a medievalist friend was visiting me, and they verified that every weird and wonderful animal drawings were actually drawn from real medieval manuscripts. They worked with multiple historians to ensure the history depicted was accurate, and it made for an incredibly immersive experience. I loved how the text in the speech bubbles were written in a different script depending on how the protagonist perceived them — more educated people speak with a fancied script than peasants, for example. It really grounds the game in the protagonist’s subjective perspective, which synergised so well with the historical setting. I learned so much from this game and from analysis content of it. Apparently Josh Sawyer studied history as an undergraduate, and he’d been wanting to make a game like this for years; I’m so glad he got the chance to make it.
Felvidek is a much smaller game than Pentiment — small enough that I would have felt grumpy at its price if not for the fact that it was clearly a labour of love by a small team. It’s a JROG based in a psuedo-historical version of Slovakia, which I found cool, because I knew next to nothing about Slovakian culture. I still don’t, because it’s not really that kind of game, but I felt like I came away understanding more. It’s the kind of game where I felt close to the developer, given that it was such a small project. If you were going to try any of the games I mentioned here, I’d recommend this one, because I’d wager you’ve not heard of it. If it looks like the kind of game you’d play, I’d advise you go in blind to maximise the impact of the generally absurd vibes. The soundtrack was a highlight for me — it really drove home the absurdity.
Having completed these two pillars of the Venn diagram, I was finally able to complete my quest with The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante. However, I find myself running out of steam and unable to write much more, but it was a fun little experience. Not quite as out there as Felvidek, but definitely something I wouldn’t have played ordinarily.
Experimenting with new games also encouraged me to push myself out of my comfort zone further, with games like Fear & Hunger, and Signalis. I’m not great with horror, but that’s part of why this was fun.
Anyway, what games have been highlights for you guys? Don’t feel pressured to write anywhere near as much as I have — I mostly just wrote this much because I appear to be procrastinating making dinner.
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Sonic Racing Crossworlds, Hellish Quart, and Warframe’s newest frame Uriel.
ほら♡
He fwoofy♡
I played a lot of games this year, but there were main ones that “stuck” more than others. I’m a patient gamer, so most of these aren’t new releases.
I was playing a lot of Satisfactory earlier in the year. Not much more recently but I know I’m not done with that game. I started a second save to organize things better, though not sure how well I’m accomplishing that. Though this second one uses more trains while the first one had more of a road setup, including a raised highway to access the oil area in the south east. Still nothing like some of the megaatructures I see in other builds online. I try to plan for expansion, so don’t tend to “finish” buildings, but rather build up a frame that can be added to in any direction. I’d give the game a 9/10 overall.
Another game I got into for a bit was TCG Card Shop Simulator. It was fun for a bit but then dropped off hard as the novelty wore off. I think that’s how “pretend to work a job” games generally go for me. Fun and satisfying at first, but then repetitive and unrewarding later on. I’m going through something similar with Ship Graveyard Simulator 2 right now, though I’ll get to that. I’d rate it about a 6.5/10, though it feels like an 8/10 at first before dropping off to more like a 4/10 once it gets old.
I’ll give Healed to Death an honourable mention, even though I moved on from it pretty quickly. It’s a great concept IMO, since sometimes I want to do a “healing the raid” type activity but don’t want to invest the time into a MMO to get there again. But this one isn’t just playing the healer, you also need to manage a constantly revolving party’s gear and switch them to follow mode (where they do no attacking even if they are ranged) to move them out of the fire during fights. So it’s basically healer simulator but your party is always the worst. If they (actually it’s one guy I believe, so impressive job even if it is lacking overall) added better AIs that didn’t need to be micromanaged, it would be much better. I’d give it a 4/10 in its current state but it could be a 9/10 with better execution.
TMNT: Splintered Fate is very similar to Hades (in fact, I’d call it a clone). I liked it but didn’t stick with it for long. 8/10.
Schedule I is another one of those “work that is fun at first but gets old”. Though they’ve added a bunch of stuff since I last played, so I will probably check it out again at some point. Game loop is basically find a spot, produce drugs, maybe modify them by adding shit to them, then selling them either directly or via a dealer. Then use the cash to produce more drugs or get new places (both areas to produce drugs and businesses to launder the proceeds, though I don’t know if laundering even makes a difference at this point), hire workers or buy vehicles and weapons. I believe they added competing cartels in an update since I last played, so it could be more interesting now. 7/10.
Then had a short period where I was interested in speed running, though mostly just against myself, since I’m nowhere close to the top charts on anything. Did a bit with Subnautica (best time to leave in rocket was under 10 hours now iirc) and Grim Dawn (I think I got my best Act 1 time to beat the record full game time lol). No rating for speed running in general (though it does not go well with ADHD unless you hyperfocus on one game), but Subnautica 10/10 and Grim Dawn 8/10 (it’s similar to Diablo).
Widget Inc was another, it’s pretty much an automation game without logistics, where each new production building rises in cost exponentially and prestiging to increase overall production. Apparently they just released a major update yesterday (looks like it adds enemies). Not sure I’ll look into it. 6/10.
Did House Flipper for a bit, which followed the job game pattern of being fun and engaging for a bit and then repetitive. At first, I intended to get the second game, but my interest in the whole thing waned before that. It was cool that they had Kame house in the game, with hidden dragon balls to find. 7/10.
Also was playing some Dark Souls this year off and on. I realized that there was a lot more to the world than just a hard path through tough enemies. Like there’s shops, blacksmiths, and a ton of hidden things. I also tried builds other than highly mobile swords builds and found 2H is actually easier because your hits often stagger the enemies (and do way more damage), so instead of dodging and timing carefully, you can rush in and overwhelm opponents, eliminating members of groups before the others can even react. Got stuck on the gargoyles, though there were some close attempts and I’ll probably get farther the next time I pick it up. 8.5/10.
I 100% Particle Fleet: Emergence. This game is great if you like systematically picking apart an opponent’s position. Took 15.8 hours to get 100% of achievements, though there’s also a bunch of other maps without achievements that I haven’t done yet and will return to when I feel the itch that those games scratch. 7/10.
I didn’t play it for very long but tried Breathedge, going for a subnautica kind of experience. It does feel like it, but I don’t think the game is tuned very well. I’m not sure if it changes later on in the game, but the part I was playing had me constantly returning to the start. I could go farther out as I upgraded, but progress felt stagnant and I gave up on it. The game did set goals at points of interest, but they were pretty far between and I felt like either I didn’t know what to do to extend my range that far or that it would be tedious as hell doing it the way I could see was possible. I’ll give it a 7/10 on the assumption that part of my issue was needing to git gud, but if I was right about it being the tedious route, I’d drop it to a 5/10.
Played a bunch of Dota 2 for a few months. They give you free dota plus access when you start, which gives access to some useful meta information, but then when it expires, the amount they want for a subscription is kinda high. I’ll give credit for coming up with a f2p system that can generate revenue without any p2w (between the dota plus and cosmetics), but the price turned me off and I didn’t feel like playing as much without that info. Maybe I’ll return to it eventually, as I did enjoy the game itself and like that the full hero list is free (unlike LoL with a rotating set of free ones, though I also don’t mind that monetization system, but I’m on Linux so LoL doesn’t really exist anymore). 7/10.
Stuck in Time is an interesting idle-ish game. You play a regressor, so a character for whom the world resets and plays out exactly the same (depending on your actions) each loop, and as you loop, you get better at doing everything. You give a series of actions to perform each loop and can tweak that list as you go for the next loop. 7/10.
Icarus is a survival game on an alien planet that was teraformed and seeded with a bunch of earth life. You start out with stone age tech (though with a modern understanding, like you can build stone age tools for water purification). I like that, even though there’s oxygen on the planet, they still have you in a atmospheric isolation suit because the air contains microbes we can’t breathe safely (though no idea how it would be safe to consume food and water in those conditions, but hey, it’s still more accurate than most “visit alien planet with oxygen” fictions are which usually just do analysis that says it’s safe to breathe the air). The open world mode is very well done, a nice combination of freedom to do what you want plus missions to do something more specific for a reward or direction. I’ve more or less mastered the forest biome and have started branching out into the arctic biome. The wildlife can be tough to deal with before you figure out how to fight certain animals (like bears and polar bears), especially when you’re stuck with stone or iron age weapons. I almost rage quit the game a few times due to a scenario that spawns a bear, which then tends to stick by your corpse and gear. But there are multiple strategies to handle them, so I suggest sticking with it and even looking up how others do it if you’re really stuck (I did for bears, though they get easier to handle with shotguns). 9.5/10.
Nova Drift is a recent game I’ve been playing, a bullet hell roguelike, so far 2.8 hours in, it’s a lot of fun. 8.5/10.
And Ship Graveyard Simulator 2 is the latest in the job games I’ve been playing. It’s following the trend, as I’ve finished tearing down the biggest ship in the vanilla game and am now on the fence about whether to a) finish up the smaller ships I skipped along the way to the biggest, b) buy some DLC with more ships, or c) just move on from this game. I will say that it is more satisfying than other job games I’ve played, but at only 23 hours in, it’s hard to say if it will have more staying power than the others. 8/10.
And on my playstation, I’ve been playing through FFX remastered. FF7 was always the “main” FF in my mind, but I think I like the FFX gang better now. I’m not as into JRPGs and the turn-based combat as I used to be, but don’t mind it so much in this game. 9.5/10.
Clair Obscur was extremely fun for me as well. Free DLC came out last week if you didn’t know. Little Nightmares series was good too. They go on sale for .99c regularly
I am using a 7-year-old video card on a 5-year-old machine and have been notified my health care premiums are going up 1000%.
I’ve been playing small, cheap, low-res social games with friends and family like Misery or RV There Yet and those are nice. But I feel like gaming broadly is starting to recede in my rear-view mirror. Too many real-world problems and stresses and not enough pay.
I am not sure what all these huge companies are going to do when nobody can afford anything anymore.
Probably a tie between getting a Dreamcast copy of Sonic Adventure for a good price on eBay. That, or getting close to finishing New Vegas for the first time, which really kicked off over the summer more than anything. Real highlights.
Though starting an account on Toon Town Rewritten and creating King Miles Purplewhatsit maybe a month to 2 months ago might also be a highlight as well. A toon town in need and all that. The cogs ain’t gonna splat themselves with pie.
As for what Steam would say, no clue because I purposefully don’t pay attention when something like Steam does some form of year in review, let alone when my phone does a weekly time spent on it review.
Discovering the open source remix of 1997’s Total Annihilation was a gaming highlight of 2025 for me.
The game I’m speaking of is Beyond All Reason.
I played a decent number of games this year, and a lot of games that have huge fan bases. God of War 2018, Bloodborne (my first ever soulslike), Baldur’s Gate 3, Disco Elysium, and more. But the one that keeps gnawing at me is Subnautica
I remember when it was in early access I watched Markiplier play it, and it piqued my interest enough that it was the first time I ever bought anything in early access. Which is very unusual for me (I think the only other time I’ve done that was Hades, which was also great). I played through as much of the game as there was at the time, or at least as I could find. Which was still mostly in the safe shallows, no deep areas. Still out in a dozen hours or so and was satisfied given the price so I moved on.
In 2024 i recommended it to my wife, who loves marine biology and base building games. She, in turn loved the game and I watched her play through it. I got to see all of the deep areas. After watching her play it and the DLC I got the itch to go back to it, so I started a new file in late 2024.
By mid-January 2025 I was about halfway through that file. My wife visiting her friend in another city, so I had the house to myself, I think I took some PTO too. Single-digit temperatures Farenheit outside. My wife had taken our only car, so I was loaded up with plenty of weed, drinks, food, and snacks. So I had a few days to focus and finish that first file. I had such a great time I did something else I almost never do: I immediately started a new file to play it again. While I had so much fun, I also learned so much and had so many ideas of what I could have done better. Better places to build based, exploring in a different order, knowing all the great spots to farm resources and get blueprints and everything.
So I played through again. The soundtrack is phenomenal synthwave that perfectly suits the game, but by the time I had built my cyclops and was ready to plunge down into the depths I was also ready for a new soundtrack. I put on one of my favorite albums, which is also one of the most appropriate: Oceanic, by Isis.
I strongly recommend this to anyone who likes Isis or Subnautica. Just absolutely sublime. It’s like peanut butter and chocolate.
Silksong - I had hyped myself up way too much, yet it still delivered. Absolute masterpiece.
Dispatch - I finally understand why people enjoyed Telltale games so much. The writing is great, the characters are interesting, just all around a great experience.
Lies of P - Overture - I finally finished Lies of P & played Overture a few weeks back, after dropping off the game twice in the last years. Wow, that was great! And honestly more emotional than I’d expected.
I’ve heard so many good things about Lies of P that I think I’ve been avoiding it in a similar way to how I was irrationally reluctant to play Hollow Knight. It’s a bit of a moot point at the moment, because I don’t currently have the brain space to get my teeth into a Soulslike, but when I do, I should resist that silly instinct of mine.
I’ve not heard much of Dispatch, I should check it out
Then I’ll hold off on adding even more to the pile, but I can definitely recommend Lies of P.
Oh man, brace yourself! Dispatch is amazing. Came out of nowhere for me, and blew me away!
Void Stranger, all of the ways it fucks with you even up to the end made it very memorable. The catharsis of finally getting it, and turning insurmountable challenges into not even a bump in the road was incredible. Place your faith in the void and jump in blind.
Your pitch has sold me on it. Yet another game to add to my wishlist
Not much new for me this year.
I had a lot of fun with Soulstice, Assault Spy, Hi-Fi Rush, and Hellsinker.
NieR:Automata, The Surge, Death Stranding, and Scarlet Nexus were disappointing.
Every time I stepped ever so slightly outside my comfort zone I ended up regretting it. I will still flirt with action RPGs, but no more open world or soulslikes. If relatively linear action is not the core, I’m out.
Next year, I intend to invest more in indie action games. Currently eyeing Genokids, Spirit X Strike, and No Straight Roads 2. Also indie shmups: currently, Devil Blade Reboot, Birdcage, and Gunvein are on my wishlist.
For fighting games, I intend to get into Granblue next year. Possibly also Melty Blood and Blazblue.
Looking forward to fleshing out my library with more of my favorite genres.
Expedition 33, The game came out on my birthday. I never had the time to get around to playing it. I just downloaded it on PlayStation for their black Friday sale. I am currently only six hours into the game, but I fully get behind the hype and the enjoyment of this game. It does have a high level of skill when it comes to combat but slowly, but surely I’m getting it down and I am enjoying it so far.
Despite the high skill level required, I actually found that it was quite forgiving for people who were learning. I barely did any parrying until I was well into Act 3, for example. I like the way that the feedback for dodges work — I started trying to parry more when I realised that I was consistently getting perfect dodges, which meant that if I had parried, it would have been successful.
I also like the way the difficulty works in the open world. It reminds me of games like Fallout: New Vegas, where the enemies aren’t scaled to player level, so you can be dumb/brave and wade into encounters that are way beyond your power level. Sometimes that works out surprisingly well, but often you try fighting a difficult enemy and get pwned so thoroughly that you accept that you’ll have to come back later. In Expedition 33 especially, it is super viable to just go and explore elsewhere and come back with more levels, better weapons and better pictos. The beautiful world also means that exploring is fun even without the mechanical perks.
I’ve finally bitten the bullet and tried emulation. I can just say the sheer amount of possible playable games is enough so supply multiple lifetimes.
Did you ever play them back in the day? I emulated old games for years before I realized how much some of them were designed to be viewed on a CRT. CRT shaders have gotten to be pretty good these days, and it does a lot for the experience for me.
Emulation seems neat to me, but I know behind every comment on it there’s a whispered implication: Piracy. Very few people are imaging their own game discs. That unfortunately makes it less appealing to me, especially as trustworthiness shifts at many of those sites.
roms aren’t really a virus vector, though. The worst they can really do is try to trick people into downloading and executing something that isn’t a rom
I mean, if you can find and afford the games, yeah, buy them. Problem is most of the games people need to emulate are unavailable or astronomically expensive, and that’s even if you live in the west/Japan… if you live in the rest of the world, forget it.
Yup, Nintendo in particular has a bad habit of just sitting on a bunch of old games, keeping them unavailable on modern system despite the fact that there’s clearly a market for it. And occasionally they’ll reach into their great big bag of classics, pull something out and say “we’ve done the bare minimum so you can run this on our current gen system (Switch), that will be 50 dollars for a 20 year old game”.
Most of those games are no longer being sold outside secondary markets (used games, collectibles, that sort). Neither the publisher nor the developers will ever profit from a “legitimate” sale.
For other games that are still being sold on first-party marketplaces, which is more or less limited to Switch 1 games, you tell me why Nintendo deserves to be treated charitably.
Depending on the system it can be really easy to dump/rip your own discs. Hacking a Wii for homebrew requires jumping through a few hoops but then you can dump Wii, GameCube, and even Gameboy games. You can dump WiiU games by inserting an SD card and going to a single web page in the browser!
Hmm, definitely Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. Best game I’ve played in years. Loved the first one and waited many years for the second game and well, to not be disappointed was great! Now that the DLC’s are done, I’m about to start a new run. Really curious what they’ve done with the monastery.
I can’t take the game awards seriously because they didn’t win anything. That game is an actual masterclass in pretty much everything. I usually hate the term “immersion”, because maybe i was just never really immersed in a video game. KCD2 absolutely did it. I think i played that game for like 20 hours before i even started a main mission. There are so many things to do and to see in this game, i absolutely loved every minute of it. The mission where you got drunk as fuck and went to look for more booze, had me genuinely laughing. When i learned that when you steal the lute for example, it’s not enough that no one sees you stealing it, when the see it’s gone and you were sneaking around there, they still figure it was you. The map and the ui is stunningly beautiful. I never loved listening to NPC’s as much as in this game.
Oh yeah, you’re right, and the side content is actually so good too. Very little worthless filler and fetch quests. The NPCs really are a highlight in this game, they’re so well-written. The Miller is amazing with his dumb bullshit about golems, and I loved the Striped Tonies!
They did the stealing thing really good. If you steal stuff and then immediately parade around in it in town, they will still go after you, because shocker: people recognize their own clothes.
It’s also one of the very few games I played where I enjoyed the horse riding.
You’ve reminded me that I still need to finish that. When I started it, I played it so much that I burnt myself out on it a tad (not in a bad way, just in a way that requires I take a break and play something else for a while). I’m looking forward to getting back to it.
I didn’t play the first game, but I remember seeing a lot of the promo/development stuff about it because my partner at the time was super interested in it. My impression of the first game was that it was ambitious and interesting, but rocky in its implementation, but the second one is a refinement in all the ways you would expect a sequel to be. Certainly I have enjoyed it thus far
Edit: Steam tells me that I have 133.5 hours in this game, bloody hell. In my original post, I mentioned that I expect that the actual data in the Steam year-in-review will differ from what I remember of 2025, and this appears to be a great example of it. It seems like this was one of the games that completely dominated the first half of 2025 for me, and I didn’t even remember it
I loved the first one. I never noticed any rocky parts myself. It could be a bit difficult and it doesn’t hold your hand, but that’s what I loved about it.
I do remember that many people complained about the diffuculty of combat, but most of those issues could be solved by training and learning master strikes asap.
I would really recommend playing it. The story is great, it lets you know more about certain characters and it has some really awesome and funny quests, for example the one where you meet/get to know Godwin.
It’s certainly worth it if it goes on sale.
After years of trying to get into Sekiro and hitting a wall and just quitting, I finally stuck with it and not only did I finish the game, I also got all the achievements.
God I love that game! Don’t really care for the other Fromsoft stuff but Sekiro is something else.
Nice! I haven’t attempted Sekiro yet, but it’s high up on my list. I am saving it for when I have the brain space to take a proper crack at the game. I remember that my first exposure to Fromsoft games was in 2017, when I attempted Dark Souls 3 during a Summer where I extremely burnt out due to doing a soul-sucking internship. I bounced off of it so hard, and that taught me that I need to be in the right headspace to play certain games.
Most definitely. I’m currently going through some stuff, so my go-to games end up being puzzle games or something else that can be played in short bursts. Currently played “Is this seat take?”
