For my 2025 game clearing project, and hopefully for any future ones as well, I decided to do something a little different. In the past, I had basically just been randomly choosing from my entire backlog to find games to play. While this certainly caused my numbers to be higher, I got through significantly more games this way, I also was just like. Playing uninteresting games I did not, in fact, want to play. And a lot of games I really wanted to play were, as a result, getting put on hold indefinitely until I just randomly rolled them. This was fine, mind, but I found myself wanting for a more structured game clearing experience, one where I'm playing games that I actively want to play, at least until I run out.
Thankfully, Backloggery's overhaul that happened... I believe earlier this year, might've been last year, introduced the idea of a "high priority list". One where you could curate a selection of games you actively want to play and just roll from that list. This was a boon for me. I had way more fun clearing games this year and it was a very competitive year. I only actually played three games I disliked this year. I got to play some of the greatest games of all time, a lot of games I've wanted to play for like over a decade and never got around to, games that I never finished. It was very fun watching the Top Ten list evolve over the year, seeing games I thought were locks back in June just get ousted from the list. This was such a competitive year that 8/10s are struggling to make the top 30 list! And I only played just under 60 games this year for my "official" game clearing (I played many more but they were like short little browser games). So, this is the ten best. Without further ado...
Ed's Top Ten Games of 2025
#10: DREDGE
DREDGE is a Lovecraftian horror fishing game where you play as a fisherman who finds himself washed up on a mysterious island in the middle of the open sea. There is a small fishing town on said island, one that offers to replace his boat if he'll become the local fisherman. We are tasked with completing some favors to help pay off our debt for the new boat, going out into the sea to fish up some fish we could potentially sell. It becomes quickly apparent, however, that there's something inherently wrong with this sea. At night a fog rolls in, consuming everything on the sea. This fog is tricky. Makes you see things. Hear things. Spending too much time in it will drive you mad. Make you see ghosts, make you see monsters. Or maybe... you're doing more than just seeing them. When you return to the town after finishing you errands, you meet a mysterious treasure hunter who tasks you with traveling across the ocean, facing all its demons, and collecting the treasures scattered throughout. In exchange, he grants you mysterious powers from his book, powers that will make you a more effective fisherman to accomplish his goals. What does he truly want? What else hides in this sea? And why do the people of this land speak in whispers of the old fisherman and the old mayor?
DREDGE nails the atmosphere it's going for. The game is obviously going for the Eldritch horror, it prominently features unknowable, ancient monsters hiding in the depths, awaiting the opportunity to awaken. It's the kind of unsettling horror that exists just out of the view of the audience, the kind of horror that makes you consider how insignificant they are. It's excellently done. But what I think is potentially more poignant is that DREDGE aligns perfectly with the tall tales of old sailors. People who were forced to work long days and rough nights for months, maybe even years, away from home and so went a little crazy. People who would tell stories of islands they didn't really exist, monsters that they believed to see, stuff like that. DREDGE fully puts itself in line with this idea, literally using the cover of the fog to change the world around you, make you see things that aren't there, feel things coming after you that don't really exist. It's almost a horror game specifically about the stories sailors used to tell of what is out there on the open sea, and it's brilliant in this respect.
DREDGE is also an incredibly fun fishing game. When I wrote about this game before in the Halloween marathon post, I talked a lot about how it worked as a horror game, its atmosphere and its scares, but it's also just a really good fishing game. You go around the sea finding fishing spots and completing little timing minigames to pull up fish (I was bad at these). It's a very satisfying way to handle fishing that a lot of games have utilized. DREDGE combines this gameplay with a sort of Resident Evil style inventory management system. You have very limited inventory space and the fish are in certain shapes you have to organize to optimize your haul. As such you have to make a lot of hard calls, especially when you pull up an aberration, a bizarre mutant fish that is noticeably "wrong". You're also on a race against the clock, as fish will rot if you don't make it to port to sell them, a quest the sea is actively working against you to accomplish as it will send unknown parasites to "corrupt" your haul. DREDGE is so good, y'all, just an excellent blend of horror, fishing, and survival elements, I'm such a massive fan of this game.
#9: Broken Age
Broken Age is a point-and-click adventure that is told from two vastly different perspectives in two vastly different worlds. Vella is a young girl living in "the Badlands". The Badlands, decades ago, were set upon by giant Lovecraftian creatures known as "the Mogs". Every so often, the people of the Badlands sacrifice their of age maidens to the Mogs, this ensures peace for another several years. Vella, however, believes that they can fight the Mogs, that their world isn't doomed to continuously sacrificing its people, and so breaks free from her ritual. She then sets off on a quest to find a way to kill the Mog and try to end the cycle of sacrifice. Along the way she'll adventure across the Badlands, meeting the colorful cultures and characters therein as she tries to find a way to kill the Mog, having to confront the traditions of her world and convince people to break their norms.
On the other side of the coin, you have Shay. Shay is the "captain" of a spaceship who is on a long-term deep space mission attempting to seek a habitable planet after the destruction of his original home world. Shay is kept safe and entertained by the ship's two AIs, nicknamed "MOM" and "DAD", the former of which infantilizes Shay and entertains him by sending him on mock missions that involve ice cream mountains, tickle plants, and gummy bear rollercoasters. Shay craves independence, desires to be treated as an adult and is exhausted by MOM's overbearing nature and the way his life seems to be stuck in an endless loop. Until one day he discovers a stowaway hidden within the depths of the ship, a stowaway who informs him that his mission is far more important than he ever could've imagined and that, in fact, the fate of the entire universe is on his shoulders. Shay must break free of the cycle he's stuck in and forge his own path to allow the survival of the entire universe.
If you couldn't tell, the key theme in both stories is "breaking tradition". It's a theme that Broken Age handles incredibly well, the thing that ties these two seemingly unrelated stories together. It plays with the juxtaposition between these two settings, the fantastical and the futuristic, so well, unifying the narrative into a single thing despite these two seemingly unrelated universes. The game treats tradition as nothing short of complacency, that in both Vella and Shay's stories their guardians stick to the "predetermined way" and bare little consideration for if that is the best way. And, they argue, that said tradition leads to apathy, that the people of these universes could and should be doing more to prevent all their problems but instead just keep doing things the way they've always done them. It's an all-too-relatable theme for many of us, the quest for independence in the face of traditionalism, seeing our friends and relatives become complacent in doing things because it's easier to go with the flow than to try and make the world better. And when the two stories eventually do collide, because unsurprisingly they do, it creates an interesting second act that shows the positives and negatives of radically breaking tradition.
The writing in this game is top notch. Double Fine's writing is always the best part about their games, mind, not only is it incredibly clever but the worlds they craft are so unique. In particular Vella's world is so much fun to explore. It feels very Adventure Time, these specific, fantastical places that all have a singular theme/purpose that coexist but aren't really connected. Like Vella comes from a town whose economy is built on baked goods, her neighbor is a place whose economy is based on feather clothing, there's a fishing village further on which literally builds everything out of fish. We don't get to see much of the world but it's incredibly fun to explore. The jokes in this game are also unsurprisingly really solid, it's a very specific sense of humor, some would say a very "millennial" sense of humor, but it works really well for me. I unfortunately played this too early in the year to remember a lot of the gags, but I remember chuckling at quite a few of them. In my opinion Broken Age is Double Fine's best. I still have a lot of Double Fine to get through, mind, I haven't even played Psychonauts 2 yet, but Broken Age is just so good.
#8: The Walking Dead - A TellTale Game Series
The Walking Dead is, as you would imagine, an adaptation of the long running comic book series of the same name which was also adapted into one of TVs longest running "prestige dramas". Rather than focusing on the story of the comics, the story of the post-apocalyptic cowboy Rick Grimes as he survives the zombie apocalypse indefinitely, we are introduced to a new character who is sort of having his stories concurrently with the comic book, Lee Everett. A former US history professor at the University of Georgia, Lee was on his way to prison the day the apocalypse began after being convicted of killing a senator who his wife was sleeping with. After a car crash releases him, he stumbles into the local neighborhood and meets Clementine, a young girl who was being babysat when things started going poorly and who had to outsmart her zombified babysitter to survive. The duo quickly decide to team up, with Lee becoming Clementine's de facto guardian, as they team up with other survivors and attempt to make their way to salvation.
I have talked at length about the Walking Dead on this blog before so I'm going to be kind of brisk with this entry. The Walking Dead is a truly revolutionary game, the blueprint for the kind of cinematic adventure games that would follow it, games like the other TellTale games but also games like Life is Strange. Despite being one of the first, however, it remains one of the best. It tells a gripping, emotionally resonant story that remains compelling to this day, perfectly utilizing its horror setting to tell a very real and human story. I sometimes struggled to even write about it because I was left utterly speechless at the endings of some episodes.
It also manages to at least create the illusion that your choices really matter, I'm sure if you played it and really explored every option you'd realize things like "hey, saving this character doesn't really matter because they just die thirty minutes from now so that the game doesn't have to actually account for having an entirely different plotline with this additional character". But for a one time playthrough, the choices seem so emotionally and dramatically important. It manages to make what you do feel so significant, which is impressive because this was really only the second time this kind of game existed in the grand scheme of things. It's a very great game that stands the test of time and I'm very glad that people are now either looking back or looking to it for the first time with the success of Dispatch. I would be down for the TellTale revival.
#7: Card Shark
Set in 18th Century France, Card Shark stars a mute boy who is initially serving drinks at a tavern in southern France. That is, until, the eccentric and flamboyant Comte de Saint Germain enters his life. The Comte asks the boy for his assistance in pulling off a con at the tavern and, after an incident happens at the establishment, flees with him into the night taking him under his wing. At first it seems only that you are conning people for coin, but the Comte's goals are soon revealed as you participate in more and more jobs. The Comte is seeking audiences with specific high ranking members of the French nobility to uncover what they may know about a conspiracy, a conspiracy whispered only on the winds. The Twelve Bottles of Milk. This conspiracy is very valuable, as whatever information is hidden within it, it could lead to the complete upheaval of the political state in France. Throughout the game, alliances change, people are swindled, and the truth of who our boy is and what power he truly holds is revealed.
Card Shark is another game I have talked about at length on this blog. I obviously go more in-depth over on that blog entry but the cliffnotes is that Card Shark is one of the most mechanically interesting games I've played possibly ever. It takes a very simplistic idea, a vast majority of the game is just shuffling cards, and teaches you over two dozen tricks to fix any situation to your benefit. You'll learn how to stack the deck, how to collect cards so it's already stacked for you, how to get your opponents to stack the deck for you unwittingly. All the while trying to learn these sleights of hand so you're fast enough at them to not rouse suspicion, as being caught cheating leads to a hefty punishment in this era of France. Especially with people this powerful and this eager to keep their secrets hidden.
Card Shark's core mystery is also very cool. I'm not going to spoil it for you, obviously, I do that enough in the Diary post if you want to read it. But what the Twelve Bottles of Milk is and what it means for France is a super compelling mystery. Along the way you will meet various important historical French figures and have your alliances change. Some people you thought you could trust sell you out, others you believed to be enemies end up aiding you. As you uncover more and more, more questions arise, more things to answer. It's difficult to talk about a mystery without giving parts of it away but it's super well done and really elevates Card Shark from being another cool indie game to, in my opinion, a must play title that is mechanically unique, narratively compelling, and just all around fun.
#6: Sonic Mania
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Sonic Mania is a true return to form in every way including its plot. Sonic has, famously, become very complicated over the years having a deep seeded lore and featuring the character becoming something of a god killer. Mania, in what I feel is one of its primary strengths, takes this back to the very simple formula the Genesis games had. Dr. Ivo Robotnik finds a mysterious gemstone and deploys an army of egg robots to obtain it to kickstart his next goal to industrialize the world and enslave all the native wildlife within. The ruby has incredible power though, giving sentience to the Egg robots and flinging Sonic back in time. Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles must now work their way through old zones, defeating familiar faces and new foes along the way, to get back to their present and stop Eggman once and for all. Simple, concise, effectively explains why we're going back to old levels, focuses on the cartoon-esque dynamic between Sonic and Eggman. It's evergreen.
I'll fully admit, I was a tad skeptical going into Sonic Mania. I was sure it was going to be good, don't get me wrong, but Sonic Mania is ostensibly a game made by the fans for the fans. And, in my experience, games made "for the fans" tend to be a bit weaker because of it. The issue with targeting fans as a primary demographic is that they're usually the people who have hard existing biases and wants that might conflict with those that non-fans may have. So I was kind of worried that Sonic Mania would be kind of incomprehensible for someone who isn't a devotee of the Hedgehog. But just strictly speaking, this is the best Sonic game. They hit this one out of the park.
A big thing, in my opinion, is that rather than trying to invoke the ideals of the truly classic games, Sonic 1, Sonic CD, even a bit of Sonic 2, they took the more measured approach Sonic 3 & Knuckles has. I love Sonic 3 & Knuckles too, for the record, I beat it the year before I started having a blog and so didn't do a Top Ten list that year but it was my 8th favorite game I played in 2023. Sonic 3 & Knuckles is, in my opinion, the most accessible of the four classical titles for a new player because while it still contains the design ideology of "exploring a level through replaying it and finding the best possible route through" that the others have, it does not put hard caps on the player's ability to move fast if this is your first time. Sonic Mania takes this approach, while you will obviously benefit from repeat playthroughs and blast through these levels, Sonic Mania also understands that people will only play this game maybe one time in their life (it me) and if they're choosing to play like that, it would be for the best to allow them to feel like they're going fast.
The level design is also insanely charming and really fun. Combining a mix of classic Sonic levels, levels that never made it into the final games they were meant to, and brand new stages, Sonic Mania is a love letter to everything classic Sonic. You start off with the bangers, Green Hill and Chemical Plant, but then you have excellent levels like Studiopolis Zone which recontextualizes the "Sonic casino level" as a movie studio with one of the most iconic songs in modern gaming, Mirage Saloon Zone which is great, Press Garden which is really fun, Flying Battery, Oil Ocean, Hydrocity. Just so many good stages, a great collection of old and new. And something I love is that while the old stages will often play like they did in their original games for Act 1, Act 2 will be an entirely different thing that flips the level design on its head and creates something way more modern with it. Sonic Mania is so good that it even made me like a Sonic CD stage, I think that game is garbage but Stardust Speedway in Mania is like really high up there for favorite Sonic levels. What a good game, glad I took a chance on it.
#5: Yume Nikki
Yume Nikki doesn't really have a plot. Like there is an overarching goal, there is an "ending", but that's not the point of Yume Nikki. Yume Nikki is about what you bring into it and what you get out of it. Calling it a game almost seems insufficient, it's a dreamscape more than anything. It's just a place for you to endlessly vibe in, experimenting and exploring and maybe, just maybe, finding an objective. It's the kind of game that you play as a teenager because your niche internet friends found it and you become obsessed with it. It's amazing how evergreen it is, a lot of RPG maker games in particular do not age super well because their visual style proves insufficient but not Yume Nikki, Yume Nikki is eternal.
It's also an effective "horror" game, though calling it horror is insufficient as well. Many people expect horror to be trying to scare you, understandably given the connotations horror has, and that is not Yume Nikki's vibe at all. Yume Nikki is, instead, unsettling. There's a lot of intense, spooky imagery that loops over and over. Enclosed spaces with shadow people who go in and out of being visible. Tight areas where you're chased by the very few aggressive mobs who immediately send you back to the hub if they touch you. It's not scary in the way a lot of proper horror games are, but it's super surreal and atmospheric in such a spooky way, I really enjoy it. It's very effective.
Yume Nikki is the kind of game that gets in your head. It makes you want to do things, want to feel things. Makes you want to create. There is a longtime project I have been piecing together for half a decade now that I never wanted to jump into more than after I beat Yume Nikki. It is not difficult to see why this game is so beloved, its legacy so long lasting. It's truly a masterpiece, a work of art not only in the medium but also in general, our own modern day Dali painting. Love it.
Honorable Mentions:
"Ed, why are your honorable mentions in the middle of the list?" Mostly to be annoying. A friend of mine complained about Honorable Mentions always going between 2 and 1 on Top Ten lists and so now they're between 5 and 4. That'll teach you to question the natural flow of a list. You know who you are. Love you buddy, lol. Worth noting, these are not like the list of games that comes after #10. These are just games that are kind of interesting and I felt like deserved little blurbs on the list. A lot of games that I like better than these aren't going to make it on the list because like, what does one even say about Spyro 2, you know?
Back to the Future: The Game
It's very fitting that, in the year I played TellTale's most important cinematic adventure game, I also played their most important LucasArts style point and click. Back to the Future: The Game is a game I've played the first couple episodes of in the past and just never got around to playing the subsequent episodes. It's good, it's very solid. I think the unfortunate thing is that TellTale was kind of at their worst when they were making the LucasArts style games. I know a lot of people love this era and I have a certain nostalgia for it too, but they really did hit their stride when they moved to the Walking Dead style of game. But Back to the Future: The Game does work. It's a very good "Back to the Future Part 4", albeit in a way that plays better if you're familiar with the Back to the Future films but haven't watched them recently. It fulfills the most interesting idea behind Back to the Future especially, the idea of "what would it be like to befriend an important adult in your life when you two are the same age". Fun game, liked it.
Shantae
This is the year I finally got around to any of the other Shantae games. I played Risky's Revenge forever ago and liked it well enough but I own all the Shantae games except the GBA one and just haven't gotten around to them. This is also one I've written about playing, if you're reading this and are interested in more in-depth thoughts on it. Fun little Metroidvania. I really like Shantae's vibe so of course this is going to gel with me, I will say I think the original game is only particularly noteworthy because of how good it looks. It's definitely an, albeit really good, original Game Boy game so it's kind of funky now. But it's fun, I like the whole shapeshifting mechanic and I enjoy this world and these characters. Excited to get around to the other Shantaes!
Tomb Raider
Another retro game I played for the first time this year, the original Tomb Raider! Yet another game I wrote about my experiences with, while it's definitely aged quite a bit, I found myself really loving its gameplay. Everything is so precise and motivated, it definitely laid the groundwork for the style of adventure game where movement itself is a puzzle. And you can't not love Lara, she is one of the coolest characters in gaming history, she has so much charisma, of the like "classic adventure story leads", OG Lara might be my favorite. I love the Survivor Trilogy games, don't get me wrong, but I wish some of classic Lara's cool was more present in that version of Lara.
Wild ARMS
I played a lot of retro games this year. Wild ARMS is one of the most interesting JRPGs in gaming history, setting itself in a world heavily based on the "Wild West". Its theming is its strongest point by far, it is mostly a fairly standard RPG, but its Wild West theming really brings it to a different level from its mostly fantasy contemporaries. This is yet another one I've written about at length, my wanting to talk about Wild ARMS is actually what caused me to continue the "gaming diary" format I kind of started with Paper Mario last year. But it's really fun, I really enjoy that this is a JRPG that treats guns like they are D&D spells that you have limited uses of and need to rest to restore.
LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga
In what is the funniest thing I could've possible done, LEGO Star Wars is how I experienced the Original Trilogy for the first time. This is still the best LEGO game. LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga is basically the only LEGO game that's "required reading" if you want to call it that, everything great about LEGO games is here in full force. If I had played it as a kid instead of as an adult who already has a rocky relationship with the Star Wars franchise, this would probably be one of my favorite games of all time, it is legitimately one of the best kids games of all time in my opinion.
Hidden Folks
I like hidden object games a lot, I've played a lot of them over the years. I almost never register them in my game clearing documentation because they're usually like 15 minutes long and I do them over having my coffee in the morning. Hidden Folks is the best one. It creates such lively ecosystems to look around in and having genuine puzzles to solve to find some of the characters is very nice. I think the only problem with it is that it lacks a proper "hint" system, so if you're stuck on a puzzle you're just stuck forever until you find the last person you need to progress. But Hidden Folks is great, it truly does enhance the "hidden object" genre in a lot of cool and interesting ways.
Arcade Spirits
The only dating sim I played this year, that's sad. If anyone who knows me is reading this, yes, I haven't actually played Date Everything yet, I'm sorry, I'm a poser. Arcade Spirits is incredibly well done. It's set in a cool alternate history where the video game crash never happened, the industry is still centralized in America, and Arcades are still ubiquitous. You play as a young adult who was recently fired from their job and downloads an AI assistant app to find a career path, said assistant leading the protagonist to an arcade where they begin finding their place in the world. It's a dating sim about self-actualization that doesn't treat the self-actualization like a consequence of the dating, the protagonist doesn't want to be better to impress someone or because they have to because they're responsible now, they want to be better for themselves. It also gameifies the dating process in a very unique way, assigning stat buffs and debuffs to most answers you put forward. Super well done. really enjoyed Arcade Spirits.
Bayonetta 3
In a better world, Bayonetta 3 would've made the best list. Bayonetta 3 is almost the perfect hack and slash to me, it's fun, it's intricate, it's over the top. It is everything I love about Bayonetta. There is just one very glaring problem that keeps Bayonetta 3 from not only being on the best list but on my favorite games of all time list. But this game is still great, the gameplay is the best its ever been, it does so many cool and unique things with the Bayonetta formula, it has Viola. Just one of the most fun hack and slashes ever made, I kind of wish I could love it more. Also shoutouts to the weird Train girl Bayonetta, she's my favorite.
Pikmin 3
Pikmin 3 has been a long time coming. I played up until the final area of Pikmin 3 like a decade ago and just never beat it. Pikmin 3 is such a fun Pikmin game. I love how much the three captains and the Gamepad really add to the experience. And the areas in this game are just gorgeous, probably my favorite looking Pikmin game. I've talked before about my opinions on the Pikmin series as a work of art and in that I was pretty harsh to Pikmin 3 but it's just fun, you know. Just a fun video game, glad I played it, it's probably going to be my last Pikmin game if they continue in the direction they're going due to how much Pikmin 4 just wasn't anything I wanted.
Year Walk
Year Walk wasn't on the high priority list for a long time. I got it off a Humble Bundle forever ago, one of their rare bundles that wasn't for PC games, and thought it would rot on my WiiU forever. And then I found out it was a Simogo game and I had to jump on that. It's a great little horror game, one heavily built on Swedish folklore for all my folklore and mythology girlies out there. It's atmospheric, it has a couple great scares, some really clever puzzles, it's super cool. It being a Simogo game also means there's a super cool metanarrative for you to uncover as this all is going on as well, so the game "ending" is kind of the game starting. Big fan of Year Walk.
Celeste 64: Fragments of the Mountain
What an adorable little game. Celeste 64 was released as a bonus for one of the anniversaries for Celeste and man is it good. It's an attempt to take the core gameplay of Celeste and adapt it into an N64 style 3D collectathon platformer a la Mario 64 or Banjo-Kazooie and it's amazing this was made in like a week, it's super well done. Of course, it also wouldn't be a Celeste game if it didn't touch on themes of anxiety, with this being about Madeline trying to find the strength to move forward on her next project (something that's very sad looking back with the cancellation of Maddy's actual next project at the time, Earthblade). Also, the bit they did for the bonus level music is hilarious, I was reeling the first time I heard it.
Radiant Historia
A playthrough that was a long time coming. Radiant Historia was the last original DS game in my game library I had yet to either beat or abandon, it was just sitting there for 14 years from when I bought it new. What a good little RPG. It's not the most significant RPG of all time, in many ways it's pretty basic. But with a very unique plot and world, a super cool battle system, and some really fun characters it's well worth a playthrough. This is another one I've written about in depth, as of the time of writing this it's my longest piece every. Sorry about that, game long, I worry what will happen when my backlog stops playing nice and decides to finally shuffle me out Persona 5. I really liked this one, I even held off on finalizing my best list in December because for about half the playthrough I though it was going to be a late addition to the Top Ten list.
Venba
This was one of the most emotionally poignant games I played this year. Venba is a cooking puzzle game which deals with themes of cultural identity and assimilation and racism in a very nuanced way. It's a game I haven't been able to stop thinking about since I played it, the puzzles were clever, the story was brilliant, I just love it. If it were maybe longer and had more to it, it probably would've made the best list this year easy. If you're going to play any of the games on my honorable mention list, play this one, it's superb. I've also written about it but I just go in DEEP so play it if you care about that sort of thing first.
Resident Evil
Yet another classic I played for the first time this year, I LOVE Resident Evil 1. I played the remake specifically and this game still holds up as one of the best horror games of all time. Admittedly I do think RE1 tends to be more goofy than scary, it has a very B movie tone, but its tense atmosphere, tight resource management, and locked camera angles really do a lot to make it effective. It's hard to overstate the influence that the original Resident Evil had on the industry, like, every horror game owes so much to Resident Evil, it's just great, y'all. Also I missed out on the "Jill Sandwich" voice clip because I was too good at the game, RIP me.
Shovel Knight: Specter of Torment
Specter of Torment is the thing that finally made me "get" Shovel Knight. I've played the original Shovel of Hope and the first DLC, Plague of Shadows, in the past and while I've liked both of them, I didn't love them. I LOVED Specter of Torment. One of the most unique platforming experiences I think I've ever had. The way it's built around this really interesting angular movement makes for some great movement tech and level design. Specter of Torment even overhauls a lot of the levels from base Shovel Knight and they're just all better here, I still haven't played King of Cards at the time of writing this but I think Specter of Torment is probably the best of the Shovel Knight games. The fact that it also has a totally redone soundtrack helps a lot too.
En Garde!
I sincerely thought En Garde! was going to make it all the way. En Garde! was on the best list since May and I think only got knocked off during the Halloween marathon? This game is incredibly cool. It's stylish and funny, playing out almost like a living cartoon. The combat in this game is amazing, the dodging and parrying is super fun. It really does make you think like a fencer. This is another one I've written about in-depth if you want to read more of my thoughts, but yeah, loved this one a whole lot. Also it's gay! Love a game that's both good and gay.
Night in the Woods
Night in the Woods was a long time coming. Like, I've seen people play Night in the Woods in the past, my friend Sab who I've talked about previously played this as one of her first gaming stream playthroughs. And it's just always something I've been meaning to get around to but never have. I adore how this game combines the death of small town America with Lovecraftian horror. It's remarkably well done, you can tell there was a lot of passion put into it. It's also such a honest look at returning back home to your small town feeling like you're a failure and being confronted with the fact that not only have you not changed, but no one else has either. In a year where I played worse games, this would proudly be on the best list, in 2025 it entered at #11, this year was stacked.
Rise of the Tomb Raider
This year really started me on my Tomb Raider journey in a big way. I had played and really enjoyed Tomb Raider (2013) in the past but this was the year where I finally sat down and started playing these games. And Rise is just truly excellent. I don't just think Rise is the best of the Tomb Raider games I've played, I think it clears all of the "cinematic action-adventure" games I've played. Like, it's funny these games get called Uncharted ripoffs because I do think Rise clears Uncharted. While this version isn't as cool as the one in the classic games, she is a more rounded and empathetic character I enjoy seeing. This is another one I've written about more in-depth if you want to read it, I love Rise, I thought it was going to make the best list this year easily to be honest.
Jet Set Radio
Jet Set Radio was the very first game I played this year and it was on the best list until November. I truly believed it was going to go all the way. Jet Set Radio is fantastic. Truly one of the most stylish and fun games ever made, it manages to hold up better than like any other Dreamcast game. Soundtrack is amazing, the depiction of Tokyo is superb. I got jumpscared by Dragula. It's not hard to see why Jet Set is one of the most in demand games and why so many people find themselves trying to recreate it. I hope whatever Jet Set project Sega is currently working on is good, we need a Jet Set 3 so badly.
Cave Story
This was my big replay this year, I spent a lot of the early year making my way through Cave Story again. It's astounding how well Cave Story still holds up. It was basically the first of its kind, a pioneer in indie games and a vastly important game in the revitalization of Metroidvanias as a genre. Like, Cave Story is a huge deal and rightfully so. But a lot of old games and, especially, "pioneers" tend to age rather poorly. Cave Story is still as good and as fun now as it was in the 00s. Maybe a little floaty and imprecise, it definitely has some rough edges. But it's just such a brilliant game that it's hard to have those impact it. If I counted replays for my game clearing data tracking, Cave Story would be #3 on this list, it's a masterpiece.
#4: Gravity Rush 2
The Gravity Rush series is a series of open world superhero games built around gravity manipulation. In it, you play as Kat, a mysterious young woman who wakes up with amnesia in the floating town of Hekesville with superpowers and decides to use her powers to become its protector. The sequel sees her instead adrift out in the world, being forced to do labor for a mining colony to make her way as she has been separated from her powers. Until one day, her archenemies, the Nevi, attack her mining colony and she is reunited with her pet cat Dusty, her "familiar" who returns her powers. Now equipped with her full suite of Gravity manipulating abilities, she's determined to protect her new found family as she looks for evidence of her missing best friend, Raven, and try to find a way back home. Along the way she'll uncover political corruption, help the poor stage a revolution, and find herself being usurped by another superhero whose intentions might not be as noble as they seem.
One thing I love about the Gravity Rush games is their approach to gravity manipulation. When you think of games that have a gravity manipulation mechanic, you probably think of like, Mario Galaxy, where there's a natural flow to how gravity works and you're always following it. Kat doesn't do that, instead, what Kat can do is alter gravity to change what she is clinging to. So if you use her powers and then say "the gravity is on the side of that building", Kat will fall towards that point, clinging to the side of the building. You can also use this gravity altering power to "fly", by moving Kat's point of gravitational pull to a far away point, forcing her to fall to said point. It's a super unique take on gravity manipulation that, while it can be clunky, ends up incredibly fun when you've mastered it.
Gravity Rush 2 adds to all this by adding "gravity styles" for Kat to utilize. Kat will, as the game progresses, gain the ability to alter her personal density, either reducing her weight by half or increasing her weight by 2.5x. This allows Kat to gain a whole host of new abilities and changes her movement considerably. While Kat is at half weight, she's very floaty, allowing her to jump higher and farther and even kick off from a standstill to "fly" across places. This comes at the cost of being considerably weaker and more vulnerable in combat. The 2.5x weight style is, as you could imagine, the opposite. Kat is so heavy it considerably restricts her movement, but she's more resilient and deals way more damage. It adds so much to the game to be able to switch between these three different densities and have a much more nuanced movepool.
The presentation on Gravity Rush is one of its best parts, and 2 being fully developed for more modern console really allows it to shine. Gravity Rush goes for this French cartoon/comic book aesthetic, it's a very French-inspired game. It has this absolutely gorgeous cel-shaded style that makes the entire world look like a European animated film, it's so beautiful. The music too is just superb, really leaning into the French style, lots of strings and accordion. It's such a wonderful presentation, I don't talk enough about how amazing the soundtracks to the Gravity Rush games are and I should, I've been doing some clean-up on 2 on the side as I finish my last game clears for the year and I'm just overwhelmed by how beautiful the soundtrack is. Especially the magical theme song these games have "A Red Apple Fell From the Sky", which Kat sings in this game.
I also just love how the world reacts to Kat. The world is not kind to her, even as she's saving them all, the people of Hekesville tend to look down on her. Telling jokes at her expense or being creepy to her because she's an attractive young woman. It's a rough world for her, made even moreso when a hero people do love and respect arrives in town and takes up much of her spotlight. But Kat is such a fun-loving, jubilant optimist that helping people is not just what she does, it's who she is. She saves people who treat her poorly and while she can be sassy about it, she will always do what is right. I love her so much, she's just this adorable little Superman cinnamon roll and I could follow her forever. Gravity Rush is so good, play Gravity Rush y'all, just a near perfect duology of games. I wish Sony would make them available on PC and other consoles to reach a wider audience.
#3: ENDER LILIES: Quietus of the Knights
ENDER Lilies is dark fairytale set in a gothic fantasy world where a cursed rainfall known as "Blight" ravages the countryside. This rainfall is a corrupting force, twisting the people of this world, fusing them with the animals, plants, and things around them until they become horrible beasts. You play as Lily, the last of the White Priestesses, a group that has the ability to purify the souls stricken by the Blight. Your sisters in the priesthood have long since disappeared and it's up to you to find the current acting White Priestess, Etriea, and find a way to escape from the Blight. You are accompanied by the Umbral Knight, a spiritual knight who Lily can summon to fight for her at any time. As you make your way through the game and battle more enemies, you find more souls who join you on your quest to find your Etriea and escape this horrible twisted world. Much heartbreak and sadness awaits you.
One of the things I love about Ender Lilies is how beautifully sad it is. The atmosphere of Ender Lilies is oppressive, corruption and decay is present everywhere. But there is beauty in the tragedy. The endless rainfall and solemn music make the world somewhat peaceful in spite of how horrifying it is. It really does feel like a gothic fairy tale in this way, there's a serenity, an air of whimsy about it that carves out hope in the macabre. Even as you battle horrible monsters, knowing they were once simply people who are now suffering, the game never truly loses its sense of childlike wonder and whimsy. It's very well done, the atmosphere in this game is among the strongest of the albeit few Soulslikes I've played.
The individual storylines for the monsters whose souls you can purify to recruit are also very nice. As you explore the world in Ender Lilies, you will occasionally run into souped up versions of monsters you fight regularly, serving as "minibosses" of sorts. These minibosses are the people who are still fighting, still trying to reclaim their humanity in the midst of the Blight, and having to face the fact that it may never return. When you purify them, you get to learn a little bit about their stories. A farmer who tried his best to protect his cattle only to be fused with them. A knight who stood steadfast to guard his kingdom only to literally become on the gargoyles defending it. There's kind of this "Beauty and the Beast" quality to their fates, cursed to be what they loved in life. The one that really tugs at the heartstrings, though, is the dog. In life, the person fused with the dog was Lily's loyal companion, her only friend from before the Blight began descending and Lily was locked away. Now, she's the only one who doesn't fight the young girl. Her place is to be loyal to Lily, and that's true if she is human or beast.
I also just love how excellent of a Metroidvania this is. It has this huge but very palatable world to explore. It doesn't overstay its welcome at all in the way some Metroidvanias can by getting like "too ambitious" with the world, y'know? I think it's one of the most memorable Metroidvania worlds, at least to me it is, because there's such a clear logic to how it's built. Like the town surrounds the castle, the caverns are under the town, etc. It makes for what is a very real feeling world, one that even someone like me who is usually VERY reliant on maps in Metroidvanias can get a feel for and begin to navigate without a map. It also does what every good Metroidvania should do in my opinion and have the player double back through areas to get to new ones at the time where they would have access to the tools to complete said area. It's such a well designed game, loved Ender Lilies to death.
#2: Return of the Obra Dinn
In Return of the Obra Dinn, you play as an inspector for the East India Company in the early 19th century. You are tasked with investigating the Obra Dinn, a ship which had disappeared 5 years prior on a voyage to Formosa (modern day Taiwan), but has now mysteriously reappeared off the coast of England with not a single living soul on board. Your job is to go through the log book and piece together what happened to each person aboard the ship, if they survived, who or what killed them if they didn't, that sort of thing. To aid in your task, you received a mysterious watch from one of the passengers on the ship, the ship's doctor who contacted you before you were to head out to the derelict vessel. This watch allows you to see the exact moment where each passenger aboard the ship died, a snapshot of various moments that would lead to the ship's abandonment. By viewing these snapshots, you uncover a mystery that involves murder, greed, and the sea itself enacting revenge upon the unsuspecting boat.
Return of the Obra Dinn is yet another game I've talked about in considerable depth on the blog already. If you want to see me piece together the entire story, I'd go there, it's one of my favorite pieces I've ever done to be honest. Something I love about Obra Dinn that I talk about in that one is that I love how you never truly need to guess. Every crew member, even those with uncertain identities and/or fates, can be determined just from the clues in the game and, if they can't, it is only because there are significant clues to disconfirm their identity to where you are able to eliminate every potential suspect of their own identity until there's only one person they could be. It's an incredibly well designed logic puzzle box that is so satisfying to solve piece by piece.
I also love the structure of the mystery a whole lot. I really enjoy how the game starts at the end, showing the last moments of the captain and his handful of remaining crew mates as they attempt a mutiny to reclaim control of the ship. Showing the captain taking out each of them one by one and then, realizing that he's alone, ending his own life, showing the definitive "end" of the story of the Obra Dinn. But then, in our next memory after this section, we get thrown right into the action as we see the ship assaulted by a Kraken. A complete change of pace that creates intrigue through its juxtaposition, communicating to the audience that this isn't just a story of betrayal and mutiny on the high seas, something BIG went down, and its up to you to piece together what it was. It's an incredibly compelling mystery that presents a lot of questions and asks the audience to determine whether or not they were answered. It's not difficult to see why Return of the Obra Dinn regularly ranks on lists of the greatest games of all time, it's truly incredible, a landmark title in both the puzzle and mystery genres.
So uh... I kind of already put the honorable mentions in the middle of the list so I can't exactly build up tension for what the number one is. This is awkward. You know what, how about we do the bottom ten too, just to have a little buildup. It's not like I'll do a bottom 10 list anyways.
A Quick Bottom 10 List:
#10: Final Fantasy XV
This one is sad. I almost really love Final Fantasy XV. The gameplay is very fun, this interesting blend of JRPG tropes and Route 66-esque Americana is very fun, I like most of the party members except for Noctis. But the story? The side characters? The entire second half of the game? Awful. Like everything about Final Fantasy XV outside of the gameplay just makes me so sad. It has some of the worst depiction of women in the series since literally the NES days, it does such a bad job of communicating its plot to players that they literally had to put in an update to have a character explain what is going on, the story is incomprehensible without like eight DLC campaigns and a literal novel. I love so much about the first half of Final Fantasy XV that it ultimately balances out, but Final Fantasy XV is legitimately a game where the more distance I have from it, the less I like it.
#9: Freedom Planet
I do not dislike Freedom Planet by any stretch, there are certainly things I do like about it. The combat is an interesting addition to the Sonic-esque formula, I liked the characters well enough, the levels were really creative. On the flip side, though, I found the story to be kind of a drag, the levels tended to overstay their welcome, and it just becomes an annoying game to navigate. I mentioned previously in my entry on Sonic Mania that I was worried about it being a game made by and for fans as those tend to have an uphill battle for non-fans. Freedom Planet is kind of there for me, a game that insists upon itself due to the expectation that the audience playing it is an audience that will already like it. It's not my thing. I can see why this is a good game but it's not for me.
#8: Castlevania
2025 was the year I began my Castlevania journey. Castlevania is a pretty big blindspot for me in gaming history, I've known about it for so long but outside of playing the intro to Symphony of the Night I had never played a Castlevania. The first game sure is an NES game. Me disliking the original Castlevania is not particularly noteworthy. It's a combination of a game that, while good, has definitely aged considerably, my methodology of playing it creating a lot of problems (I played it on Anniversary Collection on Epic Games Store so I couldn't even use an NES controller), and my own patience for NES games, especially earlier ones, wearing thin as time goes on. I look forward to playing other Castlevanias as time goes on, but the first one didn't do it for me.
#7: Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a Darklord
This one was a long time coming. Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King was one of my fondest memories of the Wii era, the cute city builder where you craft your own cozy JRPG town. I've not only played through it multiple times but it is the first game I ever purchased DLC for I used to love it so much. My Life as a Darklord ended up being purchased as a result but ultimately would sit in my backlog for years. And it's just kind of bad! It's a very mediocre tower defense that has bizarre spikes in difficulty and I feel like it kind of wastes its premise of viewing the longstanding conflict in the Crystal Chronicles series from the perspective of its villains by making our main character an unsympathetic spoiled brat who just wants carnage. It's an unfortunate sequel and I wish it were handled better.
#6: Fluidity
Another WiiWare game! If you were around when the Wii was current and you cared about the burgeoning indie scene, you've probably heard about Fluidity. It's an incredibly unique game, a full on Metroidvania where you play as a pool of water that you have to guide by tilting the world around to complete platforming puzzles and battle enemies. Fluidity is one of those peak Wii games where you're either really charmed by its unique, novel concept and are willing to overlook the fact that as the game goes it, it just gets more and more frustrating; or you grow to be really frustrated by its gimmicky motion controls and just want the game to end. I feel like I have too much space away from the Wii at this point to have enjoyed this project, sadly, with it being pretty miserable to play after the first world.
#5: KARAKARA 2
I don't know why I played this. An argument could be made that I didn't play this, as it doesn't have any gameplay to speak of. So, you ever play a game and then you're like "I didn't hate it, so I should probably play the sequel someday" but then you change so much as a person that by the time you get to the sequel you can't tolerate anything about it. That's KARAKARA. It's also Xenoblade Chronicles but that's another blog post. I played the first game when I was a more weeb-coded teenager/young adult and thought it was fine, played the sequel a decade later and I was UNCOMFORTABLE. I just can't get behind this type of anime art style anymore, every character looks like a small child and the narrative makes them say and do sexually provocative things, it's a lot. Every character is as thin as their sprite work, it's one of those harem setups where they don't give remotely good justification for why all these women are interesting in the main character and there's not even really a game here. Awful. Dreadful.
#4: Mega Man X
Here's the part of this list that's going to make people made at me: I don't like Mega Man. I like Battle Network fine enough, I grew up with it so there's a nostalgic attachment there, but as a franchise I do not like Mega Man. X is not going to be the only Mega Man game on this list. Mega Man X was actually my second attempt to really give the Mega Man franchise a shot, by the point I played it I had already figured out that I despise classic Mega Man so I wanted to know if X, with its more interesting movement and more involved narrative, did anything for me. And in a way it did, but I think Mega Man X is still too reminiscent of classic Mega Man design that I just don't like it. I don't actually like the whole "choose any stage at the start" thing, to be honest, because it feels so often like gameplay stagnates in the mid game. I was hoping X would be different, it wasn't, I'm indifferent about it.
#3: Mega Man 2
Meanwhile I hate Mega Man 2. This has been one of the biggest hanging threads in my gaming life. I bought Mega Man 2 in the midst of NES nostalgia being the biggest thing online. Like many games I bought into at the time, my personality in like 2009 was just parroting other people's nostalgia it was so annoying, Mega Man 2 was considered one of the undisputed best games of all time and was often propped up in a way to kind of dig at "modern gaming" and what they were doing wrong. I've played Mega Man 2's robot master section so many times over the years but between me being a Wii kid and me finally beating it, my tastes changed considerably and uh. I hate this game, actually. I think it's really boring. I would honestly have not beaten Mega Man 2 and shelved it like I did the other classic Mega Man games if it weren't for the fact that I had played through the majority of its content so many times over the years. It's just not for me anymore. It's really awkward to be standing here, a couple weeks after a new Mega Man game was announced, and saying openly "I hate Mega Man" but that's the way things go sometimes.
#2: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
I just strictly shouldn't have played this. I am not a Star Wars fan, I literally have not seen episodes 5 and 6, and outside of games that are otherwise noteworthy and/or important for the medium I tend to be indifferent to the Star Wars universe (I do want to play the KOTOR games eventually but that's about the extent of it). But I did remember playing the Force Unleashed most of the way through at a sleepover back in the day and I guess I wanted to finally finish that hanging thread. This game has not aged well. There are an overabundance of mediocre to bad hack and slashes from this era, everyone was trying to be God of War or Devil May Cry. The Force Unleashed is one of those mediocre hack and slashes but it makes itself so much worse by having like all these systems that, while accurate to the source material, make the game bad. Having to guard with your lightsaber constantly is correct, but you end up in all these stand offs with enemies where they won't stop firing at you and you have to damage sponge in order to get in to kill them. It sucks, I'm glad not every game is trying to be this anymore.
#1: Dead Rising
This one hurts me. I have legitimately wanted to play Dead Rising for so long. Back during the Wii/360/PS3 generation, Dead Rising was one of THE games I wanted to purchase a 360 or PS3 to play. This zombie game where literally anything you could find could be used as a weapon was super interesting to me, so much so that I excitedly covered the Wii release's trailer on a now deleted YouTube channel. It would take until now to get to, though, as I never did buy a PS3 as I was intending, due to the lack of Kingdom Hearts III coming out on the console. And when I finally did play Dead Rising it was bad. Like I just truly hate this game. It's like all the worst parts of survival horror games, hack and slashes and open world ARPGs rolled into one. The novelty of using anything as a weapon wears off incredibly quickly as you find out how useless the majority of things are as weapons. I not only did not finish Dead Rising, but I bounced off it in record time, putting about 5 hours into the game before I quit. This was my least favorite game I played in 2025, unquestioningly.
Okay, now, without further ado, the number one game I played in 2025. Let's do this.
#1: Mother 3
Mother 3 primarily tells the story of Lucas. Lucas, the only instance of Smash Bros.' commitment to character accuracy also incidentally being a character assassination, lives on a distant island far from any other land mass. It is a world of beauty and of kindness, an idyllic rural utopia where people live off the land and provide for each other. It's a world without greed, arrogance, or pretense, a world where a community provides for each other and ensures everyone has their best life. It is a world that knows not sorrow, knows not anger, knows not death. It is, at least in the mind of the game's auteur Shigesato Itoi, a staunch opponent of the capitalist system we live under, utopia.
And then it all goes wrong. A force from outside of the island enters itself into the ecosystem. It destroys the forest, mutating many of the animals found within along the way, and, for the first time since anyone can remember, brings sorrow, anger, and death. This force is an all-consuming corruption, a militant group known as the Pigmask Army. They not only throw off the balance of the natural world, but they begin slowly corrupting the citizens on it as well. They introduce money into their world and, moreover, things with which to use it. They tell the citizens that they must buy into their way, that they're better for doing so, and more and more the resistance to the Pigmask ways crumbles. Simple curiosity about this new technology turns to greed and selfishness, the town develops a class system, and the kind world Lucas grew up in becomes a thing of the past. Instead, what arises is an increasingly authoritarian capitalist state, one which literally destroys the lives of those who oppose it and frames this practice as simple acts of God.
But hope is not lost. Lucas discovers that he, uniquely, has the ability to fix all this. Underneath the island he calls home is a massive dragon, a being that could destroy the world if it is awaken. The dragon is pinned to the Earth by needles which are scattered across the island. Whoever pulls most of the needles can determine what kind of being the dragon reawakens as and will be granted a single wish. Lucas must go on a quest, racing to the needles to awaken the dragon before the Pigmask's mysterious general can do the same. Along the way he'll make new friends, fight familiar foes, and discover the secret behind the Pigmask Army. Describing it that way makes it seem like this is just a fun adventure, and it is, but like... I can't really do justice to how heartbreaking this game actually is without spoiling it.
Mother 3 has one of my favorite battle systems in RPG history. I love Earthbound, in my post about Mother 3 on this blog previously, I touch on my history with Earthbound and how Mother 3 stacks up, and one of the things I love about Earthbound and, by extension, Mother 3 is how they handle turn-based battles. Mother is, on the surface, a very standard JRPG battle system. Characters move in turns, you select their movement, the turns play out. Mother, though, was very unique for its day by caring about the position of enemies on the battlefield. Enemies exist on multiple planes on the battlefield, and your moves care a lot about positioning. Some moves only hit one row of enemies, some only a singular enemy, some will just randomly hit, it's a very simple battle system but very satisfying in practice.
Scrolling HP is also a prominent feature of the Mother games. Rather than you getting hit and losing all your HP immediately, your HP begins scrolling down to the point where an enemy has hit you. Similarly, if you heal, your HP will begin scrolling back up and if, say, the enemy hits you to where your HP will be less than what it will be after healing, you'll either stop or begin scrolling down again. This allows you a lot of opportunity to respond to enemy actions in a way most turn based games don't give you. If you are fast enough and play well enough, you can recover from any fatal hit. It also adds just this very nice real time element to the battle system but in a way that's a lot more accessible for more people than like ATB. The battle system still operates in turns, you just have these little options to respond quickly to problems.
Mother 3 also has one of the most brilliant uses of the sound in an RPG. Music is very important to the Mother series, the series tends to balk tradition in many ways but one of the biggest ones is its soundtrack. Mother 3 is probably the most "traditional" of the trio and it still is mostly inspired by 60s psychedelic rock than the more classical inspirations of other JRPGs. What Mother 3 does so well specifically is how it incorporates the music into the gameplay. Every song has a certain rhythm to it, a beat that you can pick out if your ears are good. And if you hit on the beat successfully, you start a combo, allowing up to 16 hits in a single go around. The hits after the first one never do a ton of damage, mind, but it's such an interesting way to make the music matter.
Without spoiling the game entirely, it's almost impossible to articulate what makes Mother 3's story so good. It's a story about overcoming loss and grief, about finding the courage to keep on as everything in your life goes wrong. It's a biting social commentary, one that treats capitalist society as not only selfish and cruel, but also childishly simple. It's a story about how easy it for a totalitarian regime to convince people that it's a good thing because it's "providing" for them, even if they were providing for themselves just fine before. But despite its serious topics it never loses the thing that makes it Mother. It's still goofy and jokey and fun. Mother 3 is almost a perfect game, while I myself personally prefer Earthbound over it, it is very close. Mother 3 lives up to the hype in so many ways, and I'm proud to name it my Game of the Year.
That's this year's list! Thank you all for reading. I really like this era of game clearing more than what I did previously. I don't think I'm going to shake it up for 2026, I'm just going to keep on going with what I've been doing. It's been a very fulfilling year for me in terms of doing video game content. Like, I didn't abandon this blog after a year, that's a huge accomplishment for me. I've had blogs in the past and abandoned them after a few months. But even though posts are infrequent because of the structure of the majority of posts, I find this process really fulfilling and I'm glad I've kept up with it. I promise there will be more essay content in the future, I'm almost done with a few of them. Here's to 2026 and more fantastic games on the horizon. And who knows, maybe I'll play a game that released in the year I do my list for once! Thank you all, and until the next post!
