2025 In Video Gaming

I bought a Steam Deck this year. This was a great decision, since it let me play a ton of fresh, innovative, and interesting indie games this year.

Here's what I played this year (bold indicates an A-level hit):

1. The Bazaar (Tempo). A really interesting draft/board-builder/autobattler with some innovate mechanics. Plagued by balance and monetization issues.
2. Rosewater (Grundislav Games). An old-school pixelart point-and-click adventure game in a wild-west that wasn't quite. Really nostalgic feel and some innovative sections.
3. Murders on the Yangtze River (OMEGAMES). The first Chinese game I've ever played, and quite a refreshing take on the investigative/murder mystery genre. Satisfying mixture of real history, beautiful watercolors, and courtroom drama.
4. Blue Prince (Dogubomb). A critical darling, and it's easy to understand why. An almost perfect blend of Myst-like sequential discovery puzzles, mysterious and melancholic backstory exploration, and a tile-laying drafting game.
5. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive). "What if a well-funded French startup studio made a JRPG?" Well, you'd get the other critical darling of the year, a big, beautiful, messy, sprawling, creative twist on the JRPG formula.
6. Expelled! (Inkle). A followup to the delightfully wicked Overboard!, sees you trying to maneuver a young woman at an elite boarding school through a thorny situation involving a prefect falling out of a stained glass window.
7. Citizen Sleeper (Jump Over the Age). A narrative RPG that takes mechanical inspiration from the tabletop RPG phenom Blades in the Dark and weaves a satisfying and emotional cyberpunk-in-space story around it.
8. A Golden Wake (Grundislav Games). An older, old-school pixelart point-and-clicker during the Florida real estate boom. Not as compelling as Rosewater.
9. Wordplay (Game Maker's Toolkit). A satisfying rogue-like scrabble-style game? Excellent filler-fair and some really creative uses of upgrades and bonus tiles.
10. Storyteller (Daniel Benmergui/Annapurna). A charming little game of deciphering hints and assembling a picture-book fairytale scene.
11. The Roottrees are Dead (Evil Trout). An outstanding narrative mystery game that sees you piecing together a family tree from scattered clues in order to determine who most deserves to inherit the Roottree family fortune.
12. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (Machinehead Games). One of two AAA titles I played this year, this is a very satisfying take on Indiana Jones (by way of the Uncharted series), with lush locations and a satisfying number of fascists to punch. Ultimately a little too long for me.
13. Black Ops 6 (Treyarch/Activision). All the pieces for a satisfying cold-war conspiracy-rich game are here, but man the gameplay is just stale. I was looking forward to the heist and investigative scenarios from the trailer, but they lacked all confidence in the player and too-firmly hold your hand.
14. Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile (Microids). A disappointing adaptation of one of my favorite Christie stories. I didn't really care for this one, sadly.
15. The Seance of Blake Manor (Spooky Doorway/Raw Fury). An outstanding gothic-horror occult-mystery story, with a confident presentation, genuine spookiness; it manages to engage with gothic tropes and maintain the element of surprise.
16. Road to Empress I (New One). If you pine for that 90s era of FMV adventure games but wish the FMV were shot in gorgeous 4K with the budget of a high-end C-Drama, well, this is the game for you! I love everything about this presentation but wish there were a little more "game" here, instead of game-like chrome.
17. Scarlet Hollow (Black Tabby Games). This is a deep, rich adventure game of Appalachian/Lovecraftian Folk Horror. Scarlet Hollow is Eastern North Carolina's Twin Peaks—but the real star here is the branching narrative design cooked up by the game's writers. I don't think I've seen an adventure game with this much freedom.

So that's the list! I also started but DNF'd a few games: Case of the Golden Idol, Casebook 1899: The Leipzig Murders, Disco Elysium, and BallXPit. I'll try to return to those later.

Game(s) of the Year

All that said: which of these are the can't-miss highlights? Well, let me stack them into "Honorable Mentions" (games worth checking out if the premise seems interesting or they go on sale), A-levels (excellent standard-bearers for their genre), and S-levels (either an innovative new pinnacle within their genre or otherwise definitely worth a look).

Honorable Mentions: Road to Empress I, Citizen Sleeper.

A-levels: Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Expedition 33, Expelled!, Murders on the Yangtze River.

S-levels: Blue Prince, The Seance of Blake Manor, Scarlet Hollow, The Roottrees are Dead.

A really high hit rate this year, with several titles that restored this jaded old-timer's faith in the industry and desire to make games. Here's to 2026! I've already got a bunch of cool looking recommendations in the queue.