Hahaha whoops guys, I forgot to post this! I clearly had it done months ago when it was a normal time to post a game of the year list, and just didn’t hit the publish button, silly me!

Ok, fine, I’ve just been busy or lazy or something but IN MY DEFENSE, this is the most new games I’ve ever played in one year (58 games!!!) so it took a while to write. Sorry to all the johnscovic.cool-heads I’ve let down. Anyway, here’s almost 9000 words about the coolest games of 2025, from worst to best.

NAH, YOU’RE GOOD
(50 word limit)
The “Nah, You’re Good” category consists of games that I don’t think you need to play. It consists mostly of known quantities, bad entries in otherwise good franchises, and games I simply didn’t enjoy.

58. Miside
AIHASTO

“Look how many bespoke mechanics we jammed into this game, isn’t that impressive?” No, not really! I’d rather have a couple good mechanics than 85 bad ones. This could have been mitigated with a well-written story to tie everything together. Instead, the writing made me actively mad throughout.

57. Star of Providence
Team D-13

The worst sin a roguelike can commit is making it feel like you aren’t making meaningful choices run-to-run. The bizarre ammo system means you just use whatever weapon it gives you until it runs out of ammo, but are never keeping anything long enough to craft a cohesive “build.”

56. Merge Maestro
Stingless

ANOTHER sin a roguelike can commit is not differentiating each run enough. Merge Maestro kind of always feels the same regardless of what “build” you’re doing. The lines where certain symbols were designed to go together are obvious, and the whole thing sort of feels like going through the motions.

55. MLB The Show 26
San Diego Studio

My biggest takeaway from playing my first The Show in over a decade is man, these games are HARD. The difficulties seem to be “you are the god of the league, immediately” and “you have to have the reaction time of a real baseball batter” and neither was particularly fun.

54. TMNT Tactical Takedown
Strange Scaffold

Releasing a TMNT game where you only control one of the Turtles on any given level and never get to see them team up is unforgivable. Plus only 2/4 of them were fun to play as! There are cool ideas here, but it felt like it needed a bit more iteration.

53. Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 3
Strange Scaffold

The writing is the highlight here, and is generally very good, but it felt like I was slogging through gameplay to get to more writing. The match-3 combat didn’t feel like it had enough new ideas to justify itself as the main mode of play.

52. Ball X Pit
Kenny Sun and Friends

The most fun part of a roguelike to me is the feeling that at any point you can get the perfect combination of abilities that makes you a god. This instead feels gated by permanent upgrades and you just have to keep doing runs until you have a chance of winning.

51. The Rogue Prince of Persia
Evil Empire

There are cool ideas here, but it feels unpolished. I felt consistently betrayed by the controls assuming they knew what I was trying to do and moving things for me in a way that I wasn’t expecting. You can’t have this much platforming in your level designs and not have it feel good.

50. Pokemon Legends: Z-A
Game Freak

I kept waiting to get out of what I assumed was the guided tutorial of the game, and eventually realized that was the game. The new combat is neat when you do get to actually play it, but the ratio of hearing inane NPCs spout nonsense to actual gameplay felt something like 90:10.

49. Assassin’s Creed Shadows
Ubisoft

There wasn’t anything actively bad about this game, but there wasn’t anything that made me want to keep playing it either. After all the mechanics are introduced about 10 hours in, it’s kind of just 90 more hours of the same stuff you’ve been doing. At least it looks really nice!

YES, BUT…
(100 word limit)
Games in the “Yes, But…” category are games that are good, but I need to know more about a person before recommending them. These are games I have quibbles with or are for a specific kind of person, but are generally well-made and solid.

48. 9 Kings
Sad Socket

9 Kings is a fun genre mashup, taking elements from tower defense, deckbuilding, and city building games to make a pretty unique little auto-battling roguelike. I liked the mix of passively watching your build idea manifest while also having a little bit of active input. Even if your active power isn’t making a HUGE difference, it makes the whole thing feel more in your control rather than just hoping your number is bigger than the enemy number. The game still has a ways to go in terms of early access-ness, but this is a good foundation to build on.

47. Rematch
Sloclap

In a strange ouroboros sort of deal, Rematch takes Rocket League’s pitch (what if soccer, but cars) and turns it back into a game about soccer with people. It similarly zooms in on controlling one player on a small team, and is all about precise ball control and outplays. It feels like the kind of game you can keep getting better at forever if you dedicate the time to learning the movement and utilizing all options at your disposal to mix up your opponents. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any friends that got into it and lost steam on it pretty quickly.

46. Ninja Gaiden Ragebound
The Game Kitchen

I love that a game released in 2025 that lets you fight a bunch of demon ninjas on a moving train and has a ninja motorcycle sequence in a sewer. It’s one thing to harken back to old gameplay from a series’ history, but this game (more importantly) nails the vibe and tone of 80s and 90s arcade-style sidescrolling action games. The gameplay isn’t particularly exciting, and is balanced in a strange way where just finishing the levels is fairly easy but getting all the collectibles and challenges will reeeeeally test your patience. It’s a cool game, but not always a fun one.

45. Megabonk
Vedinad

I’ve described Vampire Survivors and games like it before as the McDonald’s of video games- I would never call McDonald’s my favorite food or even call it “good,” but sometimes it’s exactly what you’re craving. If you want to turn your brain off and run around while skeletons explode, this is the game to do it in. Your mileage will definitely vary as far as the meme-y “humor” in the game (I don’t think any of it’s funny), but it’s easy enough to ignore as you start your next run. A great brain-off dopamine game, but not much more.

44. The Alters
11 Bit Studios

This is a complicated entry to write. There’s a world where this game works flawlessly for me (and doesn’t have an AI controversy, if I’m being honest) and ends up in or near my top 10 for the year. Instead I ran into multiple progression-breaking bugs that either never got fixed or would have required me to replay an entire act over to apply the fix, and I never finished it. I loved what I played- stressful resource management, systemic character relationships, beer pong- but I’ll probably never know how my playthrough would have finished. Bummer!

43. Metroid Prime 4
Retro Studios

When games have very public troubled developments, it can be tough not to see the seams of the time constraints, creative indecisiveness, and lack of cohesion. All of these are clearly on display in Metroid Prime 4. Rather than the series’ traditional interconnected dungeons and shortcuts, the handful of “dungeons” in the game are completely disparate locations connected by an empty flat desert. Half of the bosses are some sort of floating orb that opens up and lets you shoot it. Overall there just isn’t anything memorable or exciting. At least the art and music teams were cooking.

42. Nubby’s Number Factory
MogDogBlog Productions

I feel similarly about Nubby’s as I do about many of the other “ok” roguelikes farther down on this list than it is… but Nubby’s ends up above all of them on the strength of its aesthetic. Every item is some sort of disgusting 3d rotating object you’d see on a 90s geocities website, and the whole thing has a sort of fever dream quality that I love. On top of that, it feels good when the Numbers Go Up. I felt like I had seen everything the game had in the first couple hours, but I liked what it had.

41. Civilization VII
Firaxis

It’s long been a known quantity that the Civ games (and a lot of similar 4x/Grand Strategy franchises) launch worse than the previous entry, and only become better than them through updates and expansions over the years. Civ VII continues this pattern of being a little less cohesive and fleshed-out than end-of-life VI, but I appreciate that if they’re going to hit a reset button on a new entry, they at least took some big swings. I love the meta-progression outside each game and thought the change-civs-as-you-go system was neat, but I didn’t stick with this one long term.

40. Avowed
Obsidian

The Pillars of Eternity franchise has always been one I’m excited about theoretically, and then kind of get a little bored with and fall off of. Avowed, which takes place in the Pillars universe, unfortunately, continued this trend. I don’t have much bad to say about this game- the gameplay is sort of fun, the story and characters are sort of interesting, it looks pretty good. But nothing about it was interesting or notable enough for me to play more than half of it. 100%ing the first region felt like a complete experience on its own, I guess.

39. South of Midnight
Compulsion Games

When evaluating “ok” games, they kind of fall into two categories: everything about them is ok, or some parts about them are awesome and some parts are actively bad, which averages out to an “ok” overall package. This is the latter. The visuals, characters, art, and music of this game are absolutely fantastic, and extremely memorable. But man… the combat is ROUGH. Every encounter is the same, the upgrades aren’t interesting, and none of it feels good. When I think back on this game I’m sure I’ll remember the good parts and completely forget the intensely frustrating and unnecessary combat.

38. It Takes a War
Thomas Mackinnon

What a fascinating little game. It’s clearly made by an extremely small team for about $18 worth of asset store models, and is only about 60-90 minutes long, but does a great job doing something unique with it. It’s a game about online gaming relationships- planning game sessions with people who like different games, the divide between real-life friends and online friends, when to check on your online-only friends’ real lives to see how they’re doing. It’s that great kind of magical realism where it’s using the magical elements to heighten the real feelings and human elements it’s portraying.

37. Baby Steps
Bennett Foddy, Gabe Cuzzillo, Maxi Boch

This is 2025’s I Respect It More Than I Like Playing It game of the year. It’s a game where you walk by controlling the character’s legs individually. Any slight misstep means falling over and tumbling down the 20 minutes of mountain you had just carefully picked through. It is an intensely frustrating game. The storytelling through gameplay is immaculate though- it’s a game about going out of your comfort zone, moving forward even when you don’t want to, and learning to ask for help. I didn’t have the patience to go all the way through it, but I love what it’s doing conceptually.

36. Pocket Boss
Mario von Rickenbach

Pocket Boss is another cool 1-2 hour long game that’s really just a series of comedic minigames wrapped up in corporate satire. You get texts from your boss asking you to “fix this graph” or “boost these numbers” and then have perform interactive tasks like dragging bar charts taller, removing sections from pie charts, and changing colors of things to make the “data” look better for “the company.” It’s fun and funny, but fairly slight and doesn’t have much more to say than “aren’t corporate tasks nonsense?” Your “boss” also tells you you’re doing a great job, if you’re into that.

35. Promise Mascot Agency
Kaizen Game Works

I loved this studio’s previous game, Paradise Killer, but the only part I didn’t really like about it were the little anime references and weebiness snuck into it. They felt out of place, and weird coming from non-Japanese devs. I was worried that their next game was going all-in on that aspect, making a game about a former yakuza in japan and all his wacky mascot friends- isn’t Japan quirky??? Cringiness aside, this is a solid open-world checklist game that I had a pretty good time with. If you like Yakuza side stories and minigames with none of the substance, this is for you.

34. Date Everything!
Sassy Chap Games

I really only check in on the Dating Sim genre when there’s a big crossover hit that breaks out of its bubble- which this one did. It hits a good mix of sincerity and “look, we know this is stupid, just go with it.” Dating anthropomorphized versions of all of your furniture around your house allows for great variety, which is the game’s strength as well as its weakness. In including over 100 datable characters, there are going to be some hits as well as some BIG misses. Luckily, they let you not only explore love and friendship, but rivalries with the characters you hate.

HELL YEAH
(150 word limit)
Hell Yeah games are games that I have very little reservation about recommending- if it sounds like something you’d like, it probably is! These are well-made, complete packages that I have few complaints about.

33. Keep Driving
YCJY Games

Keep Driving is a good example of relatively simple/derivative gameplay being secondary to good vibes and theme. It was clearly designed from the ground up as a coming-of-age road trip game. The roguelike gameplay and card-battling stuff is only ok, but it’s not the focus. It’s about picking up hitchhikers and listening to their life stories, trading CDs at rest stops, and scraping together a few bucks for gas. It’s a very loose and freeform game- you have an ultimate goal from the start, but you’ll constantly get distracted by the next little task that crosses your path. This prioritization of tasks really makes it feel like a game about being in your early 20s- you know there’s something bigger you SHOULD be doing, and you’ll get to it eventually… but maybe it’s enough to just cruise around and turn the radio up today.

32. Despelote
Julian Cordero

Despelote is a story from the perspective of an 8-year-old in Ecuador living through Ecuador attempting to qualify for its first ever World Cup in 2002. It’s a semi-autobiographical story, which combines the developer’s own memories of the experience with historical records and a little embellishment to tell a story about community, growing up, and memory itself. The game is presented in a series of interactive vignettes- you walk around town, kick a soccer ball around a little bit, all while the World Cup qualification run continues in the background. The voice acting is very naturalistic and relaxed, and it’s fun to just live in another place and time for a while. The ending goes in an interesting meta-textual direction about the nature of memory and autobiography that feels reflective on the process of making this game, which caps it all off nicely.

31. Marvel Cosmic Invasion
Tribute Games

Marvel Cosmic Invasion is exactly what it claims to be- a slightly modernized 2D brawler with tons of Marvel characters and good multiplayer. The developers recognized that a lot of people’s exposure to Marvel characters in arcade games is not limited to brawlers, but that the Marvel Vs. Capcom games are also a touchstone for a lot of people. That’s why they adapted the assist calls and tagging out from those games here. It isn’t transformative, but it’s a fun gimmick and a good way to make sure players are trying out more of the cast. There’s a good amount of variety among the cast, from fast and mobile characters to big slow grapplers, and picking 2 characters that complement each other or cover each others’ weaknesses adds a little more decision-making into what is usually “pick whoever you think looks the coolest.”

30. Keeper
Double Fine

Double Fine is the type of studio you want to root for. It may be the unprecedented access we get to their day-to-day and the personality of the developers there due to the behind the scenes documentaries about the making of their games, but they’re just so damn likable. It’s also because their games have so much personality. Keeper is a game about a sentient (maybe?) lighthouse that you control, waddling around and aiming your light with the right stick to solve simple environmental puzzles. It’s not too taxing, there’s very little friction about where to go or what to do, but it’s always cute and charming. The art is the real standout. It’s a sort of Tim Burton-esque darkly whimsical style, and is extremely creative. All of that said- I think I’m over the “evil sludge is destroying the whimsical forest as metaphor for environmental crisis” trope.

29. Deep Rock Galactic Survivor
Funday Games

There are a handful of games on this list that are “Vampire Survivors + X” but this is by far the most successful one for me. The “X” addition here is terrain, and the ability to dig through it. It sounds simple, but the ability to kite enemies around and create your own escape routes adds an element of strategy and active gameplay that Vampire Survivors and other adaptations lack for me. Instead of just feeling like the numbers of your build either beat the numbers of the enemies health or they don’t, you actually feel like you can “outplay” enemies to some degree. To me that adds just enough of an attention requirement that I find it much more engaging. It’s not so much that I feel like I can’t have a podcast on in the background, but it’s not so little that I feel like I don’t even need to look at the screen.

28. Word Play
Game Maker’s Toolkit

The year is 2025. The only genres left are Vampire Survivors and Balatro. This one’s a Balatro. This time instead of poker, it’s words! Each round you’re given a target score to reach, an amount of words to do it in, and a collection of letters with Scrabble-style scoring based on the ease-of-use of each letter. You’re trying to make as long and complicated of words as you can to hit the target score, and along the way you’re also collecting new abilities that might make you play in different ways, like “your 4th letter is worth double points” or “if you include a double letter, you get double word score.” This is just enough to make it a little more interesting than just playing the longest word you can every time. If it wasn’t clear from the length of these lists every year, I love words!

27. Mario Kart World
Nintendo

I mean, this is kind of just spending $500 to be able to play more Mario Kart. I’m not mad at it, I’ve gotten a lot of love out of my Switch 2 in the months following its launch, but it’s hard to separate Mario Kart World from being (more or less) the only big game available at the Switch 2 launch. Luckily, it was a solid first showing for the new hardware. It feels like an impressive visual upgrade over MK8 on the Switch 1, especially in splitscreen where that version really struggled. The open world stuff is a neat bonus, but maybe not the big marquee mode they were hoping it would be. I actually think the biggest success of this game is that they finally landed on a 2nd mode besides Grand Prix that’s actually good- Knockout Tour is different and exciting, and a great way to remix the existing tracks.

26. Clover Pit
Panik Arcade

Clover Pit is definitely standing on the shoulders of giants- it’s a lot of Balatro, a little Inscryption, Lethal Company’s “make this much money or you die” mechanic, some PS1-y low-fi graphics, but it all fits together pretty well. Instead of modifying cards in a deck to play poker hands, you’re modifying symbols on slot machine reels to try to tweak the odds to your advantage. All deck building or deck building-adjacent games are about odds mitigation to some degree, and tying that directly to the “I’m due, one more spin” nature of pulling slots is a great thematic marriage. Many of the mechanics in the game are about pushing your luck as far as you can without blowing it. Slot machines are inherently unfair, which means you have to take risks and make decisions that go against the odds or the “correct” strategy to try to pull out an unlikely win.

25. No, I’m Not A Human
Trioskaz

This game gets by almost entirely on its weird, offputting vibes. The sun is too hot during the day to be outside, so people come knocking on your door at night looking for shelter. The kicker is that some of them are Visitors- mysterious otherworldly imposters that look more or less like humans and want to be invited in to kill you and your other companions. Every day you wake up to new propaganda on the tv about how to identify Visitors among you- look for bloodshot eyes, dirty fingernails, yellow teeth. It’s just vague enough that it’s easy to apply your own real-world metaphors- like, say, ICE raids rounding up anyone who fits a description. There are a bunch of different ways the game can end and I might feel differently about it if I hadn’t gotten the best ending, but the story and vibes really worked for me.

24. Battlefield 6
Battlefield Studios

There isn’t a whole lot to say here except that I’m glad my Call of Duty Friends went back to Battlefield instead this year- I’ve always been way more a fan of its flavor of modern military shooter gameplay than CoD’s. The class system and the way you get points for helping in ways that aren’t just shooting make it easier to feel good about the average game where you’re part of a larger unit, rather than Call of Duty making it feel like only the person getting the most kills and carrying the whole lobby matters. The game looks nice, there’s a lot of variety in the weapons and gadgets, the maps are fun. It’s just Battlefield, but it’s good Battlefield. There’s still always going to be a ceiling on how much I can care about a game with modern military aesthetics and generally pro-military sentiment, but this comes pretty close to that ceiling.

23. Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles
Square Enix

Prior to this remake I had never played the original FF: Tactics, only the GBA and DS sequels. This is one of those games that you go back to and suddenly understand the inspiration that every other tactics game of the last 25+ years took from it. It’s simultaneously clear why this game is so influential and beloved, but also that it’s a remake of a game from 1997. It allows for wild creativity with its gameplay systems, letting you layer class abilities and gear in ways that can completely break it in your favor. I respect the hell out of this game and what it did for the genre, but I also didn’t finish it because it felt at a certain point towards the end that I needed to use specific busted strategies to succeed, and I couldn’t be bothered to go level up different characters and soft-start over.

22. Monster Hunter Wilds
Capcom

This is a weird game to evaluate, because what should be the core of the game is fantastic. Learning and mastering your chosen weapon’s moveset to fight giant, cool-ass bosses that are all extremely distinct from each other feels phenomenal. You have to be methodical and intentional with your every move to succeed- you’re going to struggle if you just keep swinging away like a traditional action game. The problem is that this is a game that can’t seem to get out of its own way. The campaign, which is kind of just an extremely long 15 hour tutorial, is half gameplay and half cutscenes and story that aren’t just unnecessary, but are often laughably bad. If you skip all the story and don’t mind the convoluted hoops it makes you jump through to play online with your friends, there’s a super fun game in here.

21. Peak
Aggro Crab, Landfall Games

“Friendslop” has become the umbrella term for all of these casual session-based proximity chat multiplayer games that have been popularized in the last couple years. Peak is, well, the high point of the genre so far. It’s a game where you’re playing as a group of up to 4 scouts who have crashed a plane on an island and need to try to work together to climb a mountain. Along the way you’ll find goofy items like energy drinks that give you unlimited stamina and grappling hooks that help you get up otherwise too-high ledges. You manage stamina, hunger, and injuries as a group to try to get everyone to the summit. It strikes the exact right balance of requiring you to pay attention and make smart decisions and also putting you in situations where you say “Well, let’s see what this does” that usually end in hilarious tragedy.

20. DOOM: The Dark Ages
id Software

The dark fantasy bent of this game is such a good fit for Doom that it’s a little shocking they didn’t think of it until now. It’s still sprinting around at Mach 5 blowing up demons, but now it also has swords, shields, and dragons. One of my personal favorite guns is a… machine-gun-shotgun sort of thing that mulches up skulls and shoots the bone fragments in a wide spread to mow down dozens of enemies at a time. One of the later levels (slight spoilers, if you care about that sort of thing) involves the protagonist dying, going to hell, being too angry to die, and fighting his way back out. And that’s just the one level, not like a main plot point or anything. After Doom: Eternal almost entirely whiffed for me, this one was a great return to the sandbox-y combat arenas and irreverence of Doom (2016).

19. Metal Gear Solid Delta Snake Eater
Konami

This is essentially a fresh coat of paint and a little bit of quality of life added onto one of the best games of all time, so I guess with the “this is a remake and not an original game” penalty that puts it at… #19 for the year? Something like that, yeah. There are moments of the story and dialogue that don’t entirely work if taken seriously, but the game benefits from the fact that the campiness is endearing and a huge part of the series’ charm. There’s a man made of bees and a 2 foot long alligator hat that helps you sneak around better. It’s also about nukes, government corruption, mentorship, and masculinity. This dichotomy is the heart of what makes Metal Gear Metal Gear. It’s goofy, it’s sincere, it’s cool guy action stuff, it’s a little bit sad. I had a great time revisiting it.

18. Elden Ring: Nightreign
From Software

This game is proof positive that more studios should be remixing their own assets and series to take weird, wild swings at new modes and spinoff games. I never would have asked for From’s next game to be a 3-player session-based multiplayer game with battle royale elements. I’m glad they did it though, at least as a stopgap between their big traditional single-player releases. The game’s biggest strength is letting you experiment with different playstyles- in the full-on single player Elden Ring, you’re kind of committing to a weapon/build for over 100 hours. With Nightreign’s 30 minute sessions, you can finally try that spellcasting build, or daggers, or just go Big Bonky for the 100th time in a row. I would have had an even better time if I was playing with friends instead of randoms, but you can always just re-queue and never see the bad teammates again.

17. And Roger
TearyHand Studio

This is a game that’s hard to talk about without spoiling its main conceit. It presents itself as a horror game. It intentionally obfuscates what’s going on and what kind of situation its main character is placed in. There is a “twist” of sorts, where everything clicks into place and recontextualizes the rest of the game. All of that said, it’s only an hour or two long so I don’t think it’s worth revealing here. What I will say is that this game is a masterclass in the marriage of gameplay and storytelling. Your interaction with the game is through a series of bespoke minigames, and it does a great job limiting and amplifying your control over those mechanics as the character’s situation changes. I know this all comes off as vagueposting, but if you like short, artistic games that are a little dark and contemplative, this is well worth playing.

16. Consume Me
Jenny Jiao Hsia

Consume Me is a great example of the execution of an idea transcending the idea itself not sounding very exciting on paper. It’s a simulation/resource management game where you play as a teenage girl struggling with disordered eating. It’s not as dark and sad as it sounds, mostly due the whimsy provided by the art and writing. The entire game is presented in almost MS Paint-level 2D art, but done with a cohesion and intention in a way that makes it incredibly charming. It’s also an extremely funny game, in both the writing and the mechanics. It strikes a great balance where it isn’t making light of anything, but is more just that the character herself is funny. It’s a semi-autobiographical story that seems to pull heavily from the designer’s own life, but the situations and struggles still feel universal to the experience of growing up.

15. Q Up
Everybody House Games

Q Up is a well-made Numbers-Go-Up build-crafting game, but more importantly is a very funny parody of professional esports. It’s a game about flipping a coin- two teams of 4 players load into a match together and are assigned either Q-side or Up-side (heads and tails). Then, you flip the coin a bunch of times and see which team hits 3 coins on their side first. The depth comes from having a character and a build- the healer gets bonuses for losing flips, the gambler gets bonuses for calling flips correctly, etc. As you climb the ranks, you get emails from the company making the game that teach you esports skills like how to blame your teammates and how to complain when the game is being unfair to you. It’s clear the developers are big esports fans that also realize how dumb the whole thing can be, and it’s equal parts authentic and cheeky.

14. Silent Hill F
Neobards Entertainment

Silent Hill has always been an anthology series with only loose thematic ties connecting the games, but Silent Hill F is the biggest departure so far. It differentiates itself from the series not just in protagonist and setting, but in its gameplay and combat as well. You play as a teenage girl in 1960s Japan, dealing with problems at home, bullying from classmates, and the general misogyny of the era. The gameplay also differentiates itself by being completely melee-based. Silent Hill has never been a gun-focused game, but it usually at least gives you one. F instead has a stamina bar, timed dodging, and a variety of breakable melee weapons. This up-close-and-personal nature of the combat adds to the panic and dread when enemies approach you, as well as giving a stronger personal connection to Hinako and her struggles. The story is dreamlike and surreal, and the characters and performances are the standouts.

13. Skin Deep
Blendo Games

Whoever wrote down on the whiteboard “immersive sim, but slapstick comedy” deserves every award the industry has. Skin Deep is a game about sneaking onto space stations to rescue trapped cats from the space pirates that have taken them over. The cats have insurance, you see. As Nina Pasadena (one of the all-timer protagonist names) you have to use items you find on the stations to distract, disarm, and de-head the pirates. You can activate a soap dispenser and throw a lighter at it to create a fireball. You can turn on a radio really loud and leave a banana peel in front of it so when someone goes to turn off the radio, they slip and fall. Immersive sims have always been about trying out funny ideas and getting hilarious clippable moments- this is just the first one that has the rest of the game’s tone match the gameplay hijinks.

12. Donkey Kong Bananza
Nintendo

With this game being Donkey Kong’s first starring role in a 3D game this century, it was hard to predict what it was going to be like. It keeps some of the collectathon aspects of Donkey Kong 64, but the star of the show here is the destructibility. Of the four face buttons, one is Jump and the other three are different types of Punch, which should tell you something about how the developers want you to interact with the world. You can punch through almost everything, climb anything, and really just rampage through the levels however you want. It’s an extremely frictionless game. Similar to Mario Odyssey, it rewards you every couple of minutes with a Banana or other collectible, and tells you you’re doing a great job. It doesn’t do much to challenge your dexterity, or your brain for that matter, but it always feels good. Brain-off gaming at its finest.

11. Strange Antiquities
Bad Viking

I loved Strange Horticulture, but this follow-up is an upgrade in just about every way. The plants in the first game had a couple different ways they could differentiate themselves- colors, leaves, flowers, etc. Focusing on miscellaneous magical artifacts instead allows for many more avenues of differentiation and puzzle solving. You can analyze the color and shape of the items, feel them to learn what materials they’re made of, and listen to them to see if there are any demonic voices speaking to you. There are extra layers added on with multiple books to cross-reference, a city to explore to find new items, and a parade of strange characters requesting to borrow cursed items from you to solve their problems. The story branches pretty heavily and has a lot of different endings based on who you choose to help or hurt, and the overall vibe is a great blend of spooky and relaxed.

MUST-PLAY
(250 word limit)
These are the best games of the year. Run, don’t walk!

10. Hollow Knight: Silksong
Team Cherry

The original Hollow Knight is considered a stone-cold classic by most, with me seemingly being the only exception. I’ve tried to play it something like 5 times and every time have given up a couple hours in just from… not really liking it. I didn’t like the basic movement or combat, and I thought the exploration was a little too aimless. It’s a little strange that I ended up liking Silksong at all given those complaints. Nothing about the game is a dramatic departure from the original, but it improves or mitigates everything I didn’t like in very significant ways. The first and most important is that the feel of the movement and combat is much better here. Hornet is much more mobile and capable right out of the gate, and has much more range to her attacks. Similarly, the map and exploration are much more straightforward and I had very few moments of not knowing where to go. Getting past the basic hangups I had with the original let me experience the high highs that people have been evangelizing for almost a decade- there are so many great boss fights and cool areas. Another underrated improvement from the original is letting Hornet actually have dialogue and character- I just wish all the meaningful story wasn’t in the hard-to-access Act 3 that half of players won’t even get to. I still have complaints here (and I realize #10 may seem low for some), but they’ve changed from fundamental issues with the first game to minor annoyances here.

9. Dispatch
AdHoc Studio

It’s impossible for me to talk about this game without being a liiiiiiittle bit mad that I had this idea first, 3 years ago for a month-long game jam (https://johnscovic.itch.io/random-acts-of-justice). There are so many similarities that it hurts: both are games about managing a roster of superheroes and assigning them to realtime Events around the city, both have individual stats on the heroes that make them better or worse at certain types of conflicts, both have hero injuries, conflicts, and drama. The difference is that this game had a BUDGET. The animation is great, the voice acting is fantastic, and it tells a fun (if predictable) original superhero story. The writing and characters are charming. Word behind the scenes is that this was originally pitched as a superhero workplace comedy for Netflix and then adapted into a game, and that shows through in the final product. It’s separated into episodes and paced like a season of tv, with ups and downs throughout. The choices and branches in the narrative seem to be relegated to a couple major differences rather than a complicated web of consequences, but if you’re just playing it through one time you’re not going to notice. The dispatching gameplay is also about as fun as I thought it would be when I MADE IT FIRST. There are a million tiny changes I would make, but at the end of the day I’m just happy that something close to what I wanted got made.

8. Ghost of Yotei
Sucker Punch Productions

I like to jokingly (but not really jokingly) describe Ghost of Tsushima as The Best Assassin’s Creed game. And this one’s better than Tsushima, so I guess this is the new best Assassin’s Creed game. Rather than filling an enormous map with 300 hours of side content, 90% of which amounts to nothing except filling your time, the Ghost series is instead streamlined into a 30 hour or so experience where damn near every quest is unique and meaningful. Even the Bounty contracts to hunt down dangerous bosses- which are typically some of the lowest-level most generic activities in open world games- all have unique characters and dialogue that give you more info about Atsu and the world. And let’s talk about Atsu, because she’s awesome. My main complaint about the first game was the protagonist. Jin was a boring-ass wet blanket of a character. Atsu, instead, is extremely well-realized. She fits into a familiar archetype of whole-family-was-killed-in-front-of-her-as-a-child-and-she’s-dedicated-her-whole-life-to-revenge sort of deal, but the writing and performance elevate her. Her arc over the course of the game is also a familiar one, about learning to accept help and leaning on the strength of community to overcome insurmountable odds, but it’s rolled out slowly and organically in a way that feels fresh. This applies to the entire game- nothing about it is revolutionary or anything you haven’t seen before, but it’s all so refined and polished that it transcends its on-paper description. This is a AAA mass-appeal open world game done right.

7. Absolum
DotEmu

We’re living in a side-scrolling beat-em-up renaissance right now, and this might be the best new-gen version of the genre yet. This is one of those rare games where you can tell it’s going to be a banger within 30 seconds of taking control of the character. It just feels good. Beat-em-ups and fighting games have the characters moving and attacking so fast that they can be difficult to animate fluidly while retaining the input responsiveness necessary to play those genres well. This one hits the sweet spot of great-looking art and animation while also feeling perfectly snappy. The way enemies are juggled off the walls and your moves flow into each other is very natural and intuitive, and the system for countering different types of enemy attacks makes you use your brain a bit without getting too complicated. The real innovation of the game though, is codifying the “restart from the beginning when you lose” nature that beat-em-ups have always had into Hades-inspired roguelike mechanics. Doing well on a run gives you currencies to spend on permanent upgrades like max health, item damage, and even extra lives. There are also “quests” that want you to take different paths and interact with different characters. This combined with unlockable characters, unlockable moves, and different upgrades and items every run, and the requisite variety for a good roguelike is there. This also lessens the frustration that can come with repeating levels and dying to the same difficult bosses attempt after attempt.

6. Death Stranding 2: On the Beach
Kojima Productions

Y’know, looking at it now, there’s a pretty strong theme in this year’s top 10: half of them are sequels that I like more than the original. Death Stranding 2 in particular is the biggest gap between how much I like this one and “liked” the first one (which is to say that I actively disliked most aspects of it). The parts I did like in the first one were the traversal and trip-planning elements- both of which are greatly improved here. I love the map-based route planning: you pick your objective and draw a path from your current position to the target, deciding which enemy areas to avoid or engage with, which mountains to climb, and which rivers to cross. You then decide what to bring with you, from weapons to ropes to ladders to cargo vehicles for whatever suits the job. There is definitely an element of having to find your own fun here, but if you do choose to engage with all of its systems, it rewards your creativity. The aspect of the game that is most improved is the story and characters. The change from only ever having Sam interact with one other character at a time to having a full team base in this one makes a huge difference. The characters feel like they have agency and relationships outside of their relationship with Sam/the player, and it makes it much easier to buy in on the story (which is still nonsense, but in a fun way.)

5. The Roottrees Are Dead
Jjohnstongames

Long-time johnscovic.cool readers may remember that my game of the year in 2018 was Return of the Obra Dinn. In the wake of that game we’ve gotten a slew of other similar deduction/detective games, but Roottrees is by far the one that comes closest to those heights. Rather than playing as an insurance adjuster in the 1800s, you’re playing as a private investigator in the early 1990s, tasked with piecing together the family tree of a family candy empire after a plane crash ends in 4 of their deaths, including the current company president. Your task is to match every name with a profession and a picture of the person, as well as to place them on the family tree in relation to their relatives. You find information about them by using a facsimile of an early 90s computer search engine- digging through news articles, magazine covers, books, music, and more to learn everything you can about the titular Roottrees. The best genre innovation that the game does is eschewing the need for external note-taking. Any text can be highlighted and saved to your in-game journal to refer back to later, and can even be marked up with notes or right clicked to be used as a search term. It’s very easy to chain search terms together and it gives the game a lot of forward momentum towards solving its puzzles. I devoured this game in just a couple of sittings, and will be keeping an eye out for what this developer does next.

4. Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector
Jump Over the Age

It can be an easy trap for narrative-heavy games to fall into where they’re so focused on presenting their Very Good Writing to you that it comes at the cost of meaningful choices or gameplay mechanics. The Citizen Sleeper games are a notable exception where the writing is verbose, flowery, and complex throughout without sacrificing player agency. Like the first game, Citizen Sleeper 2 uses a tabletop-esque dice system to govern what you can do- the dice you roll when you wake up are spent on actions throughout the day. It’s primarily a resource and time management game. You never quite have enough energy or money or ship fuel, but you keep scraping by. The biggest addition to the sequel is the away missions you can undertake, called Contracts. They task you with going to a space station, wrecked ship, asteroid, etc. to retrieve or fix something, and are their own little mini-campaigns with their own ticking clocks and resource management problems. They’re further complicated by the character relationships. The characters you can invite to accompany you on these Contracts are complex and hard to read, keeping you on edge the whole time. You might get betrayed, they might be up front with you and tell you they have their own goals, but they’ll always complicate the mission in interesting and stressful ways. That stress is ultimately the point of the game, and it factors in top to bottom in narrative, choice, and gameplay systems. A masterfully cohesive game.

3. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Sandfall Interactive

Expedition 33 wears its inspirations on its sleeves. The grand party-based narrative reminiscent of early 2000s Final Fantasy, the stylized menus and flashy animations of Persona, the returning to camp to hang out with your party of Mass Effect or Dragon Age. Its setting and story are unique and novel, the characters are memorable and fleshed out, but its biggest innovation in the party-based RPG space is in its combat. When enemies attack you, you can manually time dodges and parries to try to avoid taking damage. It’s fully possible to get through any fight, even bosses, without taking any damage if you’re locked in on the attack patterns and timings. This is a huge departure from JRPG dungeon-crawling of the past, where it could feel like a war of attrition to use potions or healing spells to keep your party topped off while they take guaranteed damage from every fight. Instead, how much damage you take is fully up to your skill. This also allows for more variety in build-crafting. When you don’t have to worry about always taking damage, it’s easier to go all in on glass cannons doing a ton of damage, or setup characters who take a couple turns to buff themselves before cashing in, or even tanky characters who don’t mind missing a parry or two. I think this will be the lasting legacy of the game: finding ways to make turn-based JRPG combat more engaging moment-to-moment than just selecting options from a menu.

2. Blue Prince
Dogubomb

Blue Prince was clearly supposed to be a game for sickos. Not only is it a pretty hardcore puzzle game, all but requiring you to keep pen and paper and a collection of screenshots outside the game, but it’s also a fairly punishing roguelike. The game reviewed well enough that it sort of broke containment, and ended up with a lot of frustrated people who wanted more instant gratification and clearer goals. Luckily for me, I am the exact overlap of the puzzle and roguelike sicko venn diagram, and I absolutely loved this game. It’s a game where you’re exploring a shifting mansion, where every run gives a new layout of rooms and you’re trying to manage a limited number of steps, keys, and gems to make a path to the “end,” the mysterious Room 46. It’s a mistake, however, to treat getting to room 46 as the end-all be-all final objective. It’s a game where you’re best-served having many side objectives and things you want to investigate, and rolling with whatever the randomization gives you rather than hyper-focusing on one larger objective. There are always more secrets to discover, more patterns to notice, more rooms and items that you haven’t seen before. And this is a game that kind of just keeps going- charitably, I think getting to Room 46 is somewhere between the 25% and 33% mark. There are many different off-ramps along the way, but the spiral keeps going deeper and deeper for those who want it.

THE GAME OF THE YEAR
(as much as I want)
It’s the best.

1. Hades 2
Supergiant Games

Alright, I know I basically promised last year that this would be my game of the year this year when it came out “for real,” and I understand that might shake your trust in the johnscovic.cool platform’s objectivity. It’s not my fault that Supergiant has never missed! Bastion, Transistor, Pyre, Hades, and Hades 2 needs to be discussed as an all-time run of games by one studio. This may be controversial to some, but I’d even argue that each one has been better than the last. The gameplay is undoubtedly better than the first Hades here, mostly due to the variety of builds and playstyles within each weapon. The first game sort of just had “bow build” or “sword build,” but this one has multiple different fun strategies available for each. The addition of a second path with its own set of 4 areas also adds to the variety. I’ve played hundreds of runs of the game, and no two were exactly the same. There’s always a new ability, a new build, and new dialogue. I also really enjoyed the new supporting characters and the new protagonist Melinoe. I understand some people initially bristling against the shock of going from Zagreus’s nonchalant flirtatious charm in the first game to Mel’s prim and proper seriousness, but the inversion of their characters really worked for me. Zagreus is the archetype of the chill, charming protagonist- you lean in and pay attention in the rare instances where he’s pushed to seriousness. Melinoe is the inverse- usually polite, respectful, and proper, with the significant moments becoming the times where she lets herself lighten up and smile a little. Zagreus was an angsty teen to whom nothing mattered, learning to care about things and push himself. Mel is the person who was born with a goal in mind, trained from childhood with one purpose, learning to open up and let others in. I love both of them, especially in relation to each other. Hades is one of my favorite games of all time, and easily my favorite of the last decade, and Hades 2 is better than that game in some ways. EASY game of the year pick.

Even with 58 games played this year, there are a ton that I missed or meant to get to:

Seems Cool, Would Have Liked To Have Gotten To:
Kingdom Come Deliverance 2
Seance of Blake Manor
Unbeatable
Sword of the Sea
Shinobi: Art of Vengeance
Wheel World
Dead Letters Dept.
The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy
Rift of the Necrodancer
Ninja Gaiden 4
Wanderstop
Sunderfolk
Blippo+

Games That Are Significant Releases, But I Didn’t Want To Play (Don’t @ Me):
Split Fiction
Schedule 1
Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves
Dune: Awakening
Umamusume

What are you still doing here? Go home!