I played a lot of games this year, but literally none of them matter in comparison to Deltarune. Deltarune Chapters 3 and 4 released at some point this year and hijacked my mind like an evil fungus. It was simply incredible. The music is unparalleled, I truly believe that if you don’t like a single aspect of Deltarune you will like the music anyway. Listen to the soundtrack if you haven’t. Some highlights are Guardian, Ruder Buster and the Third Sanctuary. None of these are my favourite one, but my favourite comes with a very very cool narrative moment and I think its best to go in completely blind. The Third Sanctuary is unlike anything I’ve ever heard.

I don’t want to say too much about the story because if you haven’t played Deltarune, and Undertale was of any interest to you whatsoever, you need to play it unspoiled. Suffice to say that Kris might have unseated Asa Mitaka as my favourite character in fiction. I’m obsessed with them. Also they’re the most visible nonbinary protagonist that I know of and helped me realise that I was nonbinary back when chapter 2 came out.

Undertale was a generational masterpiece. If you recall ten years ago, a popular discussion among journalists was whether or not video games are art, and people would always point to Undertale as proof of the artistry of video games. It was a paradigm changer. I was utterly obsessed with Undertale, and it was a very obvious 10/10 for me. So when Deltarune was announced, I was pretty cautiously optimistic, because nothing can really live up to Undertale.

But Deltarune is better than Undertale in every single way. Its the easiest 10/10 I’ve ever seen in my life. I thought it would be impossible to surpass Undertale, but Deltarune goes so far above and beyond. Its an incredible achievement.

Its one of those games where, when the credits roll, you know you’ve had something permanently changed in your brain chemistry. You’ll never be able to relive the feeling of playing this game for the first time. Its like Disco Elysium or Nier: Automata, where the ending credits make me realise I’ve just witnessed something beautiful. Deltarune made me feel like this, but with the caveat that the game isn’t even finished yet, its only halfway there. Seeing the message from the narrator and hearing Neverending Nights still gives me chills.

I’m always aware that the creators I love can fail even when they make something incredible. Tatsuki Fujimoto wrote my favourite manga ever, Chainsaw Man, and unfortunately I think part 2 just isn’t as good as part 1. No one is infallible, and I’m always aware of the possibility of disappointment. But Toby Fox might be infallible I’m not gonna lie. Given everything that Undertale and Deltarune have delivered, I can’t possibly imagine being disappointed by the final three chapters.

My list is a little weird this year. Here are some of the standouts:

• Eco: I found a nice private server when my work burn out was bad and then made it worse by plugging in nearly 300 hours over half a year just to feel some semblance of accomplishment. This caused me to have a couple of months when I was struggling to play more than an hour of games before lying on the couch and spacing out the rest of the evening.
• Megabonk: I did most of the achievements/quests and now I’m addicted to global scoreboard metas. Over 110 hours and counting. But I’m having fun, it won’t turn into another Eco.
• Promise Mascot Agency: An incredible 15 hour RPG with absolutely zero replayability that was still worth every penny. I recommend going in blind.
• The King is Watching: Rougelike city builder, and one of the few games I played where I don’t realize how much time is passing.
• Umamusume: Yeah, I’m playing the horse girl gacha slop even though I’m vegan. The world would be a better place if this kind of thing took over real horse racing and gambling, how’s that for a hot take? At least with gacha gambling, everyone knows they’ll never see their money again.
• Clover Pit: Is gacha gambling too unethical/life ruining for you? Then give fake gambling a try, this one is fun fake slots with rougelike elements.
• ENA: Dream BBQ: While there is a… unique… youtube series that came out first, I think it’s funnier if you go in completely blind to the series. Game is 100% free and only chapter 1 is out now.
• Sorry We’re Closed: Not normally my genre, but this shooter RPG has a really nice style and is pretty gay. The trailer gets right to the point.

Honorable demo mentions:

• Hell Maiden: Bullet Heaven with an actual plot. Art style is gorgeous 90’s anime with great attention to detail.
• Raccoin: A coin pushing fake gambling game with rougelike elements. Cute art style.
• Half Sword: My partner plays this like it’s a full release game, but I never got great at the physics. It’s a medieval dueling game, but so far only single player.
• There are no ghosts at the grand: Go in blind, including no trailer. It probably won’t be what you’re expecting.
• Scritchy Scratchy: A lottery ticket fake gambling game that was fun but hurt my wrist after a while, oofie ouchie. Hopefully they add disability settings before full release.

• I think everyone was surprised by the new Tokyo Xtreme Racer releasing into early access at the very beginning of this year, it’s a shockingly good game. Unfortunately iRacing Arcade got pushed back to 2026, it had the potential to be another great arcade(ish) racer for this year.

• Sektori was another massive surprise, an all-time twin stick shooter by an ex-Housemarque dev. I can’t stress enough that you need to play this if you’ve ever enjoyed Geometry Wars.

• Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii was pretty good, far from the best in the series, but it was a Majima spinoff game and everyone wanted that. It was mainly let down by there being too much ship combat for how basic it was.

a LOT of elder scrolls online

2025 in the chinese calendar is THE YEAR OF THE GAMER

roughly in chronological order:

-dV Rings of Saturn: 2D space mining game, kinda fun to just float around for a while then chomp down on the big rocks and carry it all home (hopefully).

-Talos Principle 2: Got pretty far in this one, but eventually moved on to others things… It felt almost too easy, if that makes sense? TP1 had, at least subjectively, a lot steeper difficulty curve, with the optional and hidden puzzles being even harder to find let alone solve. TP2 felt a lot more easy-going for the main puzzles, the only really challenging stuff seemed to be the optional stuff. Idk, I’m not even hating, I did enjoy my time with it, and I might actually come back to it eventually.

-Citizen Sleeper 2: I enjoyed this more than the first installment, contract system was a nice addition to the gameplay formula and I’m just a sucker for these types of sincere, heartfelt characters that may not be the most realistic (in that gritty Nolan-esque sense of the word), but I can’t help but feel enraptured by them

-Clair Obscûr du l’Expédition 33: don’t care, didn’t run. Was sitting at literally unplayable FPS, even while interpolating it up from a stamp-size worth of actually rendered pixels. Maybe I need to move on from my 970 but maybe people need to optimize their games a bit better if they’re gonna make some hype title everyone keeps yapping about for the entire year. I’m not angry, you are

-The Alters: This one actually ran just fine, but I didn’t stick with it beyond the first ‘proper’ area. I will probably come back to this, but the narrative theme of ‘roads not taken in life’ hit a bit too close to home´for the time being. Good game, from what I’ve seen.

-Tiny Glade: Just building me tiny glades some times. Is cozy.

-Trash Goblin: Played this for a couple days. It’s not deep, but it’s cozy and you get to chisel some gems out of trash and put them on a little mask for a mushroom sorta fella and they pay you and you get back to chiseling.

-Hades 2: It’s good but I bounced off after a couple hours. I guess I got my fill for the time being, but I’ll probably be back eventually.

-Dispatch: Fun comedy game thingy, was a good time.

-The Outer Worlds 2: Played a bit beyond the prologue, so far I’ve not met a likable character really, and that’s kinda where I stopped. Might return, might not. Runs fine though, which is nice.

-Duskpunk: It’s citizen sleeper but steampunkish and you build the revolution. Had a lot of fun with this one, though it shows the limits of this sort of ‘push the clock with rolls’-type CS gameplay towards the late game. Felt a bit mechanistic there at the end, but I had a great time overall. I’d definitely recommend this to anyone enjoying citizen sleeper, and even those that explicitly bounced off cs for anything other than gameplay reasons. You might still very much enjoy this one unless you hate rolling dice entirely.

-Hi Fi Rush: It’s fun to play a dumb guy and blast stuff with guitar powers. Got cracked recently, I think? Runs fine, blast to play, my feet keep the rhythm

-The Roottrees are Dead: Playing currently, really fun detective puzzler type, reminds me a lot of Obra Dinn and I’d highly recommend to anyone who’s into deduction puzzlers / figuring out who’s who on a group photograph.

oh, and also Peak: The only game I paid for this year. sunglasses emoji Peak is very fun with friends, and I do still have some cowboyhat emoji

It only took my 22 years to beat Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga for GB. The only other interesting things were the Forest and Civ 6.

Most played game this year was definitely Peak (2025). It’s the first time for me playing a first person game without getting intense motion sickness, so I was really happy climbing up a hill with my little ragdoll character. A lot of fun, both with friends and in single player mode. Would recommend to anyone who hasn’t tried it yet, it’s just lovely. Also, don’t forget Rule Zero.

I’ve also played Dragon’s Dogma 2 (2024) for the first time this year and while I thought it was a terribly difficult game for someone who’s not used to this much involved combat, I had a lot of fun stabbing dragons with my tiny daggers. I barely managed to beat it, but it was a lot of fun.

Games I’ve played before and went back to this year:

• Dragon Age Inquisition (2014): Ever since Veilguard was released, I was really upset about Dragon Age in general, how pointless the first three games suddenly felt and I barely touched Inquisition for almost two years. Then I managed to get my mods working again, and decided to play one of my favorite games and pretend there’s no follow up game.
• Mass Effect Legendary Edition (2021): There’s an unwritten rule in this household that there’ll be a month per year when I replay the trilogy, and I have yet to break it. I love these games so much, and I’m an opportunistic paragon player, meaning I will definitely stab certain people in the back but always cure the Genophage.
• The Witcher Wild Hunt (2015): At this point, I’m playing to unlock the rare and hidden achievements, but this remains my favorite game
• Grand Theft Auto Online: I suck at this, but I love driving in the snow around Christmas haha, and driving around the map and listening to podcasts/audiobooks.
• Disco Elysium (2019): Yearly replays are mandatory to me.
• Baldur’s Gate 3 (2023): Currently, I’m trying to save my golden dragonborn dark urge from becoming Bhaal’s thrall again while at the same time, he is trying to save his lovely wizard boyfriend from blowing himself up. Upped the difficulty this time as I’ve realized I’m getting a lot better at the game, but I’m too chicken to try Honor Mode. Maybe next time.

Factorio: I briefly tried it in the totally completely legal way before I switched to Linux, it was great! But, post-Linux I lost interest in acquiring it in the totally completely legal way again.

Risk of Rain 2: It’s always fun, the new DLC that released this year was a hit. To me the game feels complete without mods at this point.

Hearts of Iron 4: I was gifted the new DLC that added content for the People’s Republic of China, perfecting the strategy for early ahistorical expansion and victory on ironman was quite engaging.

Minecraft (Modded): This year I got the idea for making my own mod pack that turned it into a factory building game with a persistent enemy threat similar to Factorio. In December I finally got through my attention deficit to write my first functional lines of code, I feel quite proud of myself.

Signalis: pain and suffering

Atomic Heart: I was gifted the game on my birthday and it was beautiful, the retro-futuristic Soviet environment really comes alive with all the little details the artists put into the game, it will definitely be a big source of art inspiration for the future.

I overall scaled back my consumption of video games at the end of 2025, the goal is to eventually replace video games with consistent daily drawing and illustration practice.

The only game that came out this year that I played was Gears of War: Reloaded which doesn’t even really count since it was just an incredibly lazy re-release of Gears of War Ultimate from 10 years ago, this time on PS5 and Steam. I played the multiplayer for a bit, then went back to Gears 5. Instead of the remastered campaign I just played the 2006 PC version. 40 dollars well spent, thank you Microsoft

All the other games I played were at least 5 years old. At the beginning of the year I finally played the first two Machinehead Wolfenstein games. The New Order was one of the best FPS games I’ve ever played, The New Colossus was kind of a giant turd.

I also played a ton of cool PS1 and PS2 games I hadn’t played before. I would’ve played more but I started playing RDR2 and that damn game monopolised my gaming time for like six months

A lot of No Man’s Sky. Amazing game, it’s the game I’ve wanted since I was a kid watching Star Trek TNG on first run syndication. Trek meets Minecraft meets Heavy Metal.

Hades 2, which is one of the best sequels I’ve ever played.

I played Outer Wilds and became one of those cultists who tries to get all my friends to play Outer Wilds. (play Outer Wilds)

I also played Subnautica. Never got to playing Below Zero because of a very specific phobia, but I’m still looking forward to Subnautica 2 despite the drama.

Blue Prince was my GOTY - the puzzles were a lot of fun but I mostly think about the way the game encourages you to decide your own ending point, despite the game going on and on and on. I never quite reclaimed the throne but I definitely got my fill of the game.

Control was okay I guess - I’m a big SCP fan and I liked the exploration, but the combat was so swarmy and tedious that I stopped playing. I really want to like it. Maybe I can mod it into something fun - even turning it into a walking sim might be fine.

I also finally kinda figured out Kerbal Space Program. Sorta.

I also played a lot of Balatro. Too much Balatro.

Honorable mention to The Sexy Brutale for being the worst waste of an excellent premise I’ve seen recently - the game plays kind of like a reverse Hitman game, where you use time shenanigans to sabotage attempts at killing the guests. It’s a lot of fun and at first looks like it’s going to build up into some perfect time loop where you run all over the casino saving everyone, but after the first couple rescues it becomes clear that everything is just spaced too far apart and the whole game is just broken up into levels. Disappointing.

Night Striker Gear was a fantastic sequel to the Taito arcade game by Hiroshi Iuchi, the creator of Radiant Silvergun and Ikaruga. Iuchi did write in his blog that this was his least favorite project of all time, which probably explains why there are fewer stages than the original game (although they’re longer, so there’s probably about as much content overall). Still, I thought it was a great modernization of the concept with good pixel art and music.

Notable games I played this year:

Persona 5 Royal - Hands down the best game I’ve played this year and one of my all time favorites (even if I haven’t finished it). Absolutely phenomenal game.

VRChat - I play this every year. Also it’s not really a game. So why mention it? Earlier this evening I went to a live voice training lecture for people transitioning and then a maid training event for future work at a virtual maid cafe. This kinda stuff is why I bring it up again, and you don’t even need vr to play it btw.

Ball Pit - Newer game I started playing. It sorta feels like a roguelite breakout rpg? Hard to describe, but it’s pretty addicting.

Batty Zabella 1+2 - Gameboy homebrew games that are sort of a first person adventure with a campy b-horror theme. They are pretty fun.

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance - Got into this again and this game has aged very well. Very fun tactical rpg for GBA if you’ve never played before.

Burnout 3: Takedown - Got this working on a PS2 emulator and holy shit do I love this game. Amazing soundtrack also. Apparently there’s a homebrew multiplayer online server someone set up, but I haven’t tried it out yet.

Look Outside - Very cool and creative horror RPG with multiple branching game paths and endings. Feels like a 16 bit rpg or rpg maker game. I highly recommend if you’re into that sort of thing.

Super Lesbian Animal RPG - Also feels like an rpg maker game (which I obviously like) but is super cute and super gay on top of that.

Webfishing - Super fun and cute game to play with friends online. Is also pretty gay, or at least the community is.

The Seance of Blake Manor - A pretty fun supernatural murder mystery game set in late 19th century Ireland. Setting is interesting and the puzzles and character interactions are good.

Not a lot this year. Technically there were quite a few games I installed, ran for a tiny bit didn’t return to, but not many I actually played. I’ve had a hard time getting into things - I don’t want to learn a new system, I don’t want to dedicated the next 40+ hours to a story and I don’t want to spend a lot of time fiddling with things.

Citizen Sleeper 2 - It’s not as good as the first, but it’s still a short, narrative based game I think I completed in just a night or a day off or something. I appreciate that. Though maybe it is as good as the first post-DLC, it’s a rare game where I think the best time to play it was right at launch as the additional content added in patches robbed a lot of the impact from the alternate endings. 7/10

Dispatch - Another short, narrative based game. It’s just superhero popcorn filler, and an extremely linear “choose your own adventure” but it’s very competently done with some excellent vocal performances. Me and my partner had a great time with it. 8/10

Fortnight - My partner likes it so I got roped into it when we had to spend a few weeks apart as something to do together online. I fucking loathe so much about this game. The predatory cash shop. The constant, massive updates. The fact it has that fucking Unreal Engine stutter that everyone swears is the fault of lazy devs but even Epic can’t fix in their own games. The horrific, aesthetic whip lash. The fact that it performs like shit and looks so blah. The fact that it is buggy as all hell. 2/10 and I only gave it any points because I enjoy my partner enjoying things.