1/4/2026, 12:38 PM
Game of the Year is such a farsical categorization, and i think nothing shows that more than the final grand winner of Geoff Keighley's Videogame Olympics for 2025. seriously, which of us knew what Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 even was before it won GOTY? because i know i sure didn't! videogames are such a subjective thing to judge anyways, you can't scientifically prove what the best game of all time is. we know this to be true, because when Brian David Gilbert tried to, he ended up with Fortnite as the answer. on top of that, innovation has really stagnated in the mainstream videogame scene within the last 20 or so years. like, i think we could reasonably agree that if we HAD to choose a GOTY for 1996 it would be Super Mario 64, or for 2004 it'd be Half Life 2. Astro Bot won GOTY 2024 for making the big innovation of giving the PS5 a good exclusive. and sure, Balatro could have (AND SHOULD HAVE) won that award, but it didn't for the plain reason that, compared to Astro Bot, it didn't have the same presence in the mainstream. all of my friends were playing it, but little Timmy Gumdrops probably doesn't even know what Poker is. i think it's more interesting to see what individual peoples' games of the year are, anyways. that's the reason people love talking about their Spotify Wrapped so much, it lets you get a feel for their personal tastes and what they liked the most. so today, i wanna run down my list of the top 10 games i played in 2025. notice that wording, played, not came out. admittedly i don't play a whole lot of modern games, to the point that i don't even think i could come up with a lost of 10 games i played that came out in 2025. so this list will be including games that are certainly much older, and that i played for the first time or had a particularly memorable experience with in the previous year. so let's get started with...
wow Mot, i already hear you saying. you're really pulling out the big hitters right off the bat, huh? you're such an old lady! but i have my reasons. back in February i had a bit of a crisis, and to leave out the unpleasant details, i felt like my brain was dying. i needed something to give me a sense of reassurance, something to keep me sharp, something to work into my daily schedule, and Brain Age was exactly what i needed at the time. it's weirdly fun to check in every day, give it your all, see it compared with your other records, and most importantly, get that big, juicy stamp on your calendar. there's also a lot of charm put into this game, in my Brain Age: Concentration Training review i said that the DS Brain Age games are relatively sauce-less compared to BACT, and while BACT definitely goes a lot further with its personality, the DS titles aren't completely lacking either. there's something comforting about the way Dr. Kawashima reassures you whenever your record is worse than the day before, or is impressed when you set a new top score. i wanna give an honorable mention to Brain Age 2 for this specifically, i ended up playing more of BA1 because i preferred the exercises there, but BA2 has a lot of good dialog from Kawashima, and the expressions he pulls sometimes can be really entertaining. i think if i'd played BA1 at literally any other time in my life i would have liked it okay, but because of the dire situation i was in when i played it, this one has a really special place in my heart now.
i'd definitely dabbled in Tetris Attack or Panel de Pon or Puzzle League or whatever you wanna call it in the past, but it never clicked for me. i always felt like i was missing some kind of important thing to know when playing it, i'd be able to line up blocks and make matches, but setting up combos felt really unintuitive and difficult, and i could never get a score past 1000. that is, until RetroAchievements came along. y'see, RA has this thing called Achievement of the Week. each week they choose a random achievement from a random game and put it on the front page of the site, and if you get that achievement, you get bonus RA points and a little badge on your profile. it's a nifty way to get people to try out games they otherwise wouldn't. (for example, one of the AOTW picks was to beat the first mission in Killer7, and watching everyone experience that for the first time was a total treat) for a while at the beginning of 2025, i tried to keep up with the AOTW as best as i could, and as i'm sure you could guess, one of them was for Panel de Pon. all you had to do was beat the game's arcade mode, and for some reason, this time it finally made sense. the limitation of only being able to move blocks horizontally can feel pretty limiting at first, but once you know what you're doing it starts to feel natural. after getting the achievement i still kept playing just because i was having fun with it, and i even watched some speedruns of Tetris Attack to try and gain more knowledge. now, i didn't even get close to sniffing the bottom of the shoes of that type of gameplay, but still, the fact that it got me interested enough to look up stuff like that should say a lot. about a week ago on christmas day i bought myself a copy of Dr. Mario + Puzzle League on GBA, and that's been a mainstay in my DS for Puzzle League alone.
this one is kind of cheating because it's a remake of a game that i played and beat for the first time years ago, but i have my reasoning. when i first played OFF, i was a dumb kid who didn't really get it. i knew i liked the music and artwork, but that's about all i got out of it. however, with the remake that came out a few months ago, it gave me a good opportunity to give it a good replay, and it captured me so much more this time. the writing is equal parts funny and haunting, the story hit harder than ever now that i was actually paying attention, and the new stuff the remake added was so damn cool. OFF is already one of the most stylish indie games out there, and the new graphical effects and battle animations possible with the new engine only serve to enhance that quality. i know a lot of people bemoan the new soundtrack, but like, come on folks, this is the best example of "oh boy, two cakes!" there is. it's not like you can't go back and listen to the old soundtrack anymore, it'll still be there. plus, if you REALLY need it in the game, i'm sure modders have already got that for you. and while admittedly the new soundtrack loses some of the defining aspects of the original soundtrack, it still has so many great songs on its own. at some point i was trying to nail down exactly what it was that was different, and i think i know what it is; the Silent Hill inspiration. the original soundtrack for OFF, as well as the game as a whole, has been stated to be heavily inspired by the Silent Hill series, and you can definitely hear it in the music the most. like, if you played Rainy Day (and meat) for a Silent Hill fan, they'd ask you what random spinoff Silent Hill game it was from. additionally, OFF somewhat famously is kind of lacking in the gameplay department, and i think they did a fantastic job tuning it up in the remake. the battle system is a lot more engaging and satisfying with the critical system they came up with, and having a super-charged version of every special move is a super cool idea that makes for a lot of clutch moments. the new side content is also pretty neat, it gives you some REALLY challenging bosses to fight with the new battle system and moves.
Crazy Taxi was a game i always kind of steered clear (ha) of due to the learning curve of its controls. to steal a phrase from Tim Rogers, it feels very stick-shifty (ha) in its way of controlling your car, and it was kind of intimidating as a newcomer. but oh man, when you're able to learn how to effectively drive your taxi, there's nothing else that feels more satisfying. dishing out crazy boosts repeatedly to gain insane amounts of speed, weaving between other cars to keep up your combo, getting a passenger to their destination JUST on time before the clock hits zero, all with The Offspring aggressively shouting late 90s anthems through your speakers, it's like if they made crack cocaine in videogame form. not to mention Crazy Box, a series of challenge levels that test you on your ability to make your taxi your bitch and maneuver some of the trickiest courses i've ever seen in a racing game, to the point where it feels like they just put a car in some Monkey Ball stages. i loved my time with Crazy Taxi, and it kept me coming back for more for WEEKS, which is insane for basically being an arcade game with two modes and a couple of challenge stages.
since playing a certain other famous RPG series for the first time this year (we'll touch on that later) my love for Pokemon started to fade away for a while. compared to more contemporary RPGs it just felt so basic and stripped back, at least in terms of single player. and sure, i could try out the multiplayer scene, but that wasn't what i wanted from an RPG at the time. that was, until i finally sat my ass down and beat Pokemon Colosseum. i've always had a soft spot for this one, since i watched a let's play of it as a kid that i had fond memories of, but i never really beat it from start to finish myself. and man, why can't every Pokemon game be doubles for the whole game?! Colosseum is such a unique take on the admittedly pretty stale Pokemon formula, and i really loved my time with it. i think double battles are just way more interesting and less slap-fighty than single battles, and the mechanic of only being able to catch certain Pokemon by stealing them from trainers makes for a game where you'll probably be using Pokemon you'd be unlikely to use in any other game. limitations breed creativity after all, and your options are VERY limited here. plus, i think the setting, story, and character designs are way more interesting than any of the mainline stuff. you don't play as some bright-eyed 10 year old kid who's just a stand in for yourself, you play as Wes, a badass outlaw who has a backstory, personality, and motives. you're an anti-hero, Wes' original plan was to steal the Snag Machine so he could go out and take trainers' Pokemon for himself, and only ends up saving the world because he gets forced into it. it's cool as hell, i love it! speaking of characters, Colosseum is also home to the best antagonist in the whole series, Miror B. i could just stop talking there, but i do have one major problem with the game... the speed. dear lord, everything in this game feels like it moves at a snail's pace. the battle animations are all very cinematic and there's no way to turn them off, your walk speed is pretty sluggish, and in certain areas walking back to heal your Pokemon over and over again can get really tedious. even so, i loved my time with Colosseum, and i'm so glad i finally committed to beating it.
i already wrote a massive review for this game for this site, so i'll keep this one brief. i had played Wild World before 2025, but i never got as sucked into it as i did this time around. i was playing it religiously every day, getting all the bugs and fish i could, writing letters, setting up times to play with others over wifi, exploring every single feature and nook and cranny i could, even trying to fill out the catalog at one point like an insane person. it all came at a very dire time in my life, just like Brain Age, and it was a very healing game for me at the time. i don't think i can picture associating my experience with Wild World with any year other than 2025.
being a HUGE long time RPG Maker nerd, i'm kind of surprised it took me until this year to finally beat OneShot. i mean, i know the reason why i didn't play it, but i'm angry at myself for waiting as long as i did! see, i do this thing whenever i get recommended a game over and over again, especially if its one where people say it has a really good story. i start to dislike it more and more without even playing it, i guess just because i feel like it's better than me(?) i dunno. OneShot was that game for me for a long time, (now it's Hollow Knight!) i knew people liked it for its characters and story, and it felt like everyone was telling me to play it. then, one day i randomly decided, "fuck it, i'm finally getting this out of the way!" and i do not regret my decision at all. it's got some of the most "how the FUCK did they do that" puzzles in any game, Niko is wonderful and adorable, the music is so god damn beautiful and soothing, the locations are gorgeous, and it was all done in the same engine as Five Nights At Fuckboy's. OneShot is one of those games that gives me the feeling of, "damn, i really want to make something that has the same impact on someone as this game had on me," which is a rare feeling for me to get.
as a huge Chulip/Moon/Love-de-Lic fangirl, when i heard that a lot of people from the Moon team were working on a new game that was essentially a spiritual successor to Moon with aspects of Undertale thrown in as garnish, you know i was instantly excited. and man, it lived up to my expectations. Stray Children is a total love letter to basically everything Yoshiro Kimura has ever worked on, as well as standing great on its own merits. it's so funny how Undertale was inspired by Moon, and then it ended up inspiring the creators of Moon to make a new game inspired by it. i know some people might see this as a bit tacky, but as a ravenous fan of all of Love-de-Lic/Punchline's work, seeing all of the cute direct references to other games had me giggling and bouncing in my chair and pointing at my screen yelling "THAT'S GAMAKATSU FROM MOON!! I HATED THAT FUCKER'S FISHING MINIGAME!" all with a huge smile on my face. i think the only issue i had with Stray Children was that some of the battle puzzles could feel really obtuse and unintuitive, and since there were no guides as the game had just released, i had to resort to trial and error more often than i'd have liked. still, in the end i loved Stray Children, and i think if i had to choose from only games that came out in 2025, it'd be my number one.
i know this is kind of cheating, but i think these both belong at the same slot in the list for different reasons. 2025 was really the year of Final Fantasy for me, i got into it in May and it took over my life for months after. that's all due to me playing Final Fantasy 1 on a whim and becoming completely obsessed with it, it was the game that got me into the series as a whole. and while i do still like FF1, i definitely prefer other games in the series over it now, specifically FF5. if i had to put it simply, i like FF5 more overall, but FF1 had a bigger impact on me, if that makes sense. again, these are games i wrote whole reviews for on this site, so i'm keeping it brief here.
so, what was my number 1 thing i played this year? Extreme Evolution is one of the most fascinating things i think i've ever played, and captured me like almost nothing i'd ever played before. in fact, i was going to write a review of it for this site, but i never got around to it because i was too distracted playing more of it!! from an outside perspective it looks completely incomprehensible, so let me explain myself. Extreme Evolution is a collectathon platformer where you play as... a number of different forms. you start off with just one form, a slow-rolling egg, but as you explore you find new forms that you can shapeshift into, (given you have enough mana, or max mana for that matter) allowing you to explore new parts of levels that you couldn't before. here's the thing though: level designs are so abstract and your abilities are so strange and unique that you kind of have to make up your own solutions to problems. and like, its not even a simple matter of "oh you can use the fire arrows to light torches OR you can use Din's Fire" no there's like a million different ways to get around every single obstacle in this game using all the different forms which can all have really wacky properties. there's one form that drains your mana SUPER fast, but it makes you grow infinitely larger until your mana runs out. there's one form that can only move horizontally, but that also means you literally cannot fall, giving you what is essentially flight. there's one form that turns you into 9 different balls that can all spread out and go in different directions, which sounds useless at first until you realize that changing into another form will teleport you to the center average between all the balls, allowing you to go through walls if you're crafty enough. and that's just three i could think of off the top of my head, there's like 30 forms or something, and they all can be useful!! there were so many times when i was playing Extreme Evolution that i just kept thinking to myself, "wow, this is one of the coolest fucking things ive ever played," and all from a game that looks like a real, actual, LITERAL acid trip. speaking of which, the only real word of caution i have is that i do NOT suggest you play this game if you are at all photosensitive, it has some of the most abrasive visuals of any game i've played. but if you're willing to deal with that (or turn down the effects in the menu, which even with them all the way down they can be a bit difficult to look at for long periods of time), it's one of the most unique and awesome indie games i've ever played.
okay i need to wrap this up before i dissociate even harder than i already have while writing this, honorable mentions to Zork, Okage Shadow King, and Ao Oni for being games i played this year that i really liked but either didn't finish (Zork, Okage Shadow King) or being total dogshit (Ao Oni). oh, and happy new years, everyone! i suppose this is my first update since 2026 started. here's hoping this year isn't as much of a dumpster fire for me as 2025 was! and for the record, there are a lot of things i've wanted to write about for this site, but i've been wrangling mental health stuff and just haven't had the drive or ability to write. sorry about the lack of updates!