Games of the Year 2025

It's that time of the year, again, again! Again!! They keep happening!! But instead of writing my list of games that Did Something For Me This Year, I recruited my friends to do it instead. Below are 8 200-400 word pieces that my friends and I wrote about a single game we played this year that...did something for us. And to not show favoritism, I sorted them randomly, and then a few more times until I got the order I wanted (this last part is a lie). 

I didn't edit any of these by the way, despite telling folks I'd give them feedback. Turns out you're all amazing and I'd rather your raw thoughts than something I changed!!

Infinity Nikki

chosen by Daphny (from the streams)

INFINITY NIKKI is going to be my game of the year for 100 more years so maybe this year ill talk about the best annoying sidekick ever momo: momo is a chubby talking cat who wears a cloak. a cloak you can customize. you can make momo look like a little mushroom, or put a gem on his head, or wrap him in a towel, or make him a cute little bunny with floppy ears. i like to think about what outfits embarrass momo the most. i hope they add a voice line when i put momo in the thumbs up outfit that was offered for free because so many people gave infinity Nikki the "thumbs up" on one of the five websites ruining everyone's lives. but they should add a voice line where momo says 'aww Nikki, dont make me wear this in front of my FRIENDS". momo follows you around and thinks you're the best ever but talks shit on literally everyone else. when a mushroom race discover philosophy by discussing the meaning of 1+1 momo will scream at all of them "MATH IS MATH WHATS THE BIG DEAL" and then in the next breath momo will comment about how on point your outfit is. but momo tells everyone else to GET to the point. Momo has never been a poor judge of character, I trust him. He is the opposite of sidorovich from STALKER in this way. and possibly more. sid would not give a shit if you drowned. Sid wouldnt wear a fluffy pink robe. i wouldnt gush about sid in my infinity nikki profile! you can have a short blurb and mine is always things like "what if momo was in the beach boys?" "momo used to post on the stileproject forums" "let momo wear high heels". these are things i believe and questions i truly want answers to. I have never cared about a wisecracking sidekick in a videogame but if you make them the cutest fluffiest little chubby cat with OUTFITS I CAN CHANGE then you can make me care. and boy howdy do i sure care about momo. I've got over 300 screenshots of him to back that up

Star Trek Online When Played With Veronica

chosen by MightyMothra (Tumblr)

Star Trek Online When Played With Veronica (STOWPWV) is a stunning improvement over its predecessor, Star Trek Online When Played Alone And Sad ( ST:[ ), and I'm happy to report it is my Game of the Year. Now I'd be lying if I said Star Trek Online didn't ab-soo-LUTEly suck the dick clean off a donkey, so mired is it in strata upon strata of gacha wormshit from twenty or whatever the fuck years of this paypig being passed around to various packs of salivating jackals. It does truly, truly fugging suck as a video game. There is nothing of value to go do, no interest to encounter or challenge to be had, the people playing the game at best want to be be left tf alone. BUT, it is very Star Trekky! There are Star Trek ships and Star Trek sounds and Star Trek guys getting in big Star Trek fights!

This is where the "Played With Veronica" part comes in, because now you're cooking up fun characters based on Diane Duane's wonderful Rihannsu TOS series, you're pulling in details from Honor Harrington and Sewer Sharks, you're spending sessions piecing together your crew to fit the story you've begun to weave together. You're sitting there trying to build Kirk's hated Irish pipehitter nemesis Finnegan as a viable security officer, so he can lunge-kick some borg dickhole, which is funny every single blessed time you see it. MMOs often purport to let you create your own story, but no more true is this idea than in STOWPWV, and the secret was this: Do not have an actual functioning game present. Have an empty cardboard box with a starfleet logo on the side. If anyone asks you to fill the box, tell them to go fuck themselves. You will soon find two cats tornadoing around that dinky little box, ripping goofs and spinning together fanfiction threads. They'll have a blast. Eventually the box will give out and they'll scatter! And hell, I WISH most MMOs had the decency to have an end point!

Great game. Will never play again.

Carto

chosen by My Pal, diane (Website): 

i actually started my playthrough of Carto in the beginning of the year, maybe even as far back as mid-2024, but i put it down when life became so hectic. Picking it back up again, after a huge chunk of time, the characters i was supposed to know still felt familiar to me, which i think speaks to good design. In the game, you live with your grandmother on a traveling airship, you're separated in an accident, and over the course of the game you make your way back to find her, hopping between remote islands and using your Mapping abilities to change the world. Each island has different families on it - Blood as well as Found - and no matter where you go, you're greeted with grace and hospitality.

Carto is really charming. It has a sense of humor, and these islanders really all care about one another. i believe its target audience is children, so the narrative and the puzzles are pretty simple, but i was still engaged until the end. it got me thinking about family, and while i'll never have children of my own, i think it would be a beautiful game for some parents to bond with their kids over. Each island has a different way of life, a different climate, and a group of people that are effusively grateful to Carto when she helps them out through ingenuity. It's got plenty of secrets and fun, and some of the delicate foliage really stuck out to me as nice to breathe in. I recommend it.

Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins

chosen by Blithen (from the Discord)

Late in the year I bought a Retroid, an android device that lets you play retro and emulated games on it. I've mostly been playing Game Boy's greatest hits. One game I went back to and finally beat as an adult is Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins. In retrospect, the fact that I didn't have the patience to beat this game as a kid is quite sad (Although, not terribly surprising, lack of patience is a consistent character flaw of mine hahah). It's easily a 3 hour affair and that's if you have to grind a bit. It's a great game, controls are exactly what you'd expect, environments are unique with cute details at each world. My one complaint is Mario is a bit floaty, but you get used to it and it's consistent. The biggest thing it reminded me of though is that short games fucking rip. I just want to sit down after dinner or work, play a quick game of something and be done with. This fits right into that, get the 6 coins beat Wario's ass and you're done. I really recommend it! Also Amazing Penguin is in the same realm. Bring them back.

Öoo 

chosen by Grandpa (Website)

Öoo is maybe one of, if not the, smartest and most well-designed puzzle games I've ever played. Your little caterpillar (hence Öoo, get it?) finds itself trapped inside a bird, and has initially one and soon two body segments that act as bombs, that can be detonated to propel you upward, laterally, or to destroy barriers. And that's it. At least, at first blush. You'll use those basic skills in ways you can't possibly imagine later on, but the game never tells you what to do, opting instead to carefully design the levels and puzzles in escalating fashion, trusting the player to experiment and figure it out. When you drop into a new area, there are often two paths before you - one seemingly impossible, and another much longer one. There's no prize or weapon or doodad at the end of those longer routes - only a fast travel door to send you back to that initial fork. But what you do gain from that route is the knowledge of how to immediately bypass that previously impossible route. And that's kinda great!

Path of Achra

chosen by powerful hag:

Path of Achra is my favorite of the modern roguelite trend because instead of replacing one kind of complexity (systems) with one that’s more marketable (twitch action gaming) it actually simplifies the traditional sprawling “your whole ass keyboard” roguelike UI down to a few basic verbs while still keeping the kind of “what’s the weirdest way I can do this?” sandbox play that these old roguelikes do so well. I also love how it forgoes roguelite trend aesthetics for a 90s graphical sprite based PC game Sumerian epic vibe that it commits to down to most of the UI messages sounding like a priest is chanting them at you.

Achra succeeds by boiling the complexity of something like Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup into a few verbs (move, stand, summon, attack, hit, get hit, pray, pick up item) that are all potential triggers for your abilities (which can themselves then trigger other abilities.) This offers a surprising amount of customization and player expression while being puzzle-y and rewarding enough to master that the loop of making new little guys to throw into the dungeon continues to reward me with surprising interactions. 

[NOTE: READ THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH IN THE VOICE OF JONATHAN FRAKES]

Do you want to summon so many snakes every time you move that enemies are crowded out of the dungeon? Do you want to blend those snakes in the giant gore-tornado surrounding you to heal yourself? Do you want to stand still so hard 60 astral lasers fire out of your Perfect mind and annihilate everything on a floor before turn 1? Do you want to be a bird or a tree? Do you want to shed the skin off your body so it can walk around and beat guys up for you? Do you want to be an Ape who is only at maximum power when he’s fully nude?

Failed runs barely feel like it because they give you more critters, classes, and creeds to combine and play with, making the massive amount of options a bit easier to get your mind around at first. Runs are 20-30 minutes at the most, reducing the joyous “will this stupid idea work?” idea-build-test loop of games like this down to a lunch break, encouraging experimentation instead of trying to discover a “meta” that will let you clear the game with minimal amount of time lost to permadeath. Also it’s like $10 so just try it already. O cursed egg! O withered earth!

Chess

chosen by Cania

Beastieball

chosen by Justin

Beastieball is the first pokemon clone I’ve played that felt like it was trying to be its own game, and I feel that it succeeds. The story is a bit more environmentally focused than usual Pokemon fare, and it feels like the gameplay and story are in harmony. It goes all in on what sets it apart from other monster battlers, and that confidence in its concept makes it stick out a lot more in my mind. 

It’s still in Early Access for now, but the main story is done and they have cute sketch placeholders for the “Beasties” that don’t have all their animations yet. If you keep using the same beasties on your team, they can become rivals or friends or partners in game and get special combo moves, or even learn regular moves from each other, and the volleyball-esque scoring system provides a welcome reprieve from Pokemon clones that take the battle system whole cloth. Meeting with your team in the locker room before a big match and getting a line from each of them about how they feel about the upcoming battle does help you get attached to them a bit, and the connections your team makes can reflect in that dialogue as well. The Beasties have unique designs that actually stuck out to me after I finished the game, where I usually feel like a lot of non-Pokemon monster designs entirely leave my brain after I’m done.  The music is delightfully bouncy in a way that lends energy to turn-based sports battles, and still has tense tracks when the story calls for it. I even want to play it again to try new strategies/Beasties or one of the challenge/randomization modes that are built in. It didn’t have much of a post-game once I finished it, but I felt like it didn’t overstay its welcome.

And that's it! Thank you to everyone for contributing, it meant a lot to me that y'all would take time to write for this little project. And for the reader: thank you for reading! I know I don't post a lot, but I plan on continuing to put cool things here now and again. 

Let's talk again next year :)