2025 in Games

The other day I got a message from Steam reviewing the games that I played this year. I decided to use that as starting point to take a look back at the stuff I played this year.

January

Valheim is a survival game where you are a dead Viking, fighting against creatures of Norse Folklore. This is one of my favorite games that I revisit every now and then. The fighting and building is really fun (if a bit monochrome), and the game can look quite beautiful sometimes in its own lowpoly way. Last year I set up a server for me and my friends, and it was our thing for a while. I'm looking forward for the final biome to be released next year.

If you, dear reader, is also a Valheim fan, send me a message on mastodon, and I'll be happy to invite you to our server!

February

Necesse is a super janky survival game, and kinda ugly too XD. But it has a cool system for filling your town with NPCs that can help you farm, mine, and creat items. It is really fun watching the little guys being busy. I didn't play it all the way to the end, though, it got a bit repetitive after a while. I might come back to it after a while.

Mind Over Magic is a base builder/RPG where you create a magic school. The students in the school can graduate or become the next generation of teachers. It is also published by Klei, so I was really looking forward to this game. I gave it a really fair shake and played all the way to the end. It has some really cool ideas, like the keyword system that forces you to build a school with a really wonky shape. Unfortunately, the RPG battles are kinda boring, and a really really big part of the game.

March, April

Oxygen Not Included (ONI) is one of my favorite games ever, and in March they released a DLC including dinossaurs and a giant meteor threatening their base! I had to drop everything to save my dupes <3 (ONI is a base builder where you control a small group of clones surviving inside an asteroid. Its key characteristic is a really complex head management system that you have to manage using lots of small moving parts.)

May

Timberborn is a cute city builder, where you control a group of beavers living in a post-apocalyptic barren land. The beavers have to build dams to preserve pure water and divert bad water away, while also trying to plant food and build things that make them happy. The game has a difficult start, but once you get yourself stable it gave me big "Sim City 2000" vibes, where you just relax and try to build your little perfect village. I highly recommnend this one!

Factorio is my problematic fave. In many ways, it hits all my right buttons. On the other hand, it has devs that are proud of stepping on rakes, which makes it hard to recommend the game to others. I spent a bit too much time playing its new DLC.

June

DELTARUNE is an RPG / Narrative Game / Meme Factory / Rhythm game / sucessor to Undertale. It released chapters 3 and 4 this year, and it was. so. good. The music was rocking and the memes were memorable. I really look forward the next chapters, and highly recommend this (if you're ok with playing incomplete games).

July

Expelled! is a narrative mystery/puzzle game from Inkle. It is the second game in the Overboard! series. Overboard is one of my favorite short games, and Expelled is not far behind. I highly recommend overboard. If you like it, go play Expelled too!

August

Rimworld is a pretty fun sci-fi base builder that takes inspiration from Dwarf Fortress, but tries to go more personal. It tends to derail itself into an RTS over time, but the starting game is pretty solid. This year it released a shipbuilding DLC which was quite fun.

September

Silksong was amazing - It completely drew me in during the September break. The musics, the visuals, the controls, the world, everything in this game was an spectacle. The game has a reputation of being ultra-hard, but I thought that, if you give it its due respect, it is actually quite fair, at least until the "regular" ending. A funny thing is: I was not actually a huge fan of Hollow Knight (the game Silksong is a sequel of). I liked it, sure, but it was not the first game that would come to my mind or anything. Silksong, on the other hand, really won my heart this year.

October

Hades II, on the other hand, was quite the opposite! I was a big fan of Hades I, so I was really looking forward to this one. And don't take me wrong, it was a fun game... it was just... more hades? I felt like I was playing Hades I again, which was nice, I guess? Maybe coming out of Silksong made me feel like this about Hades II. Or maybe it was the stress mounting up as the end of the year approached.

November

Caves of Qud is a Roguelike for sickos. It is AMAZING. I had actually played a bit of this game years ago, and got hopelessly lost. But this year after meeting one of the authors of the game (a super cool dude), I decided to give it another chance, and it was awesome! I got my groove on with a character that was an electric spider with dozens of arms and legs, wings, three heads and a scorpion tail. This game deserves a post all of its own.

December

I played a smattering of other games in December, but I got a bit tired of writing, so I will leave you here for now~~