Year in (mini-)review - 2025 Video Games

Upon self-assessment, I probably put too many hours into low-value games that are not mentioned here (looking at you suite of Netflix, LinkedIn and New York Times puzzle games), which took away from the time I could have spent in other hobbies.

But 2025 was a good year for video games, for me personally. I played plenty of good games, a few not-so-good ones, and used them to connect more with my friends and partner. Here are the ones I played through.

Split Fiction (March 2025) – PS5

Hazelight Studios – EA

Split Fiction is Hazelight's third game in their series of “forced dual co-op” where you and a partner play young, amateur writers 3D platforming through a series of VR worlds based on the stories the characters have written. Each world has a different gimmick and each character interacts with that gimmick in different ways. It keeps the game fun and interesting and allows for set-piece action events. There are plenty of platforming and puzzles that require a degree of coordination with your partner, but none of these felt insurmountable.

However, I did have one big, ironic issue with Split Fiction which is that while the story is about writers and bringing their ideas to life, those who wrote this game clearly are not writers, and likely are not massive readers either. The conceit is that the two young writers get trapped together in the “make your story into VR” machine, creating bugs in the software. The corporation running the machine are not happy with this as they are not-so-secretly trying to steal the ideas of the writers plugged into the machine. But any writer knows that ideas, good ones even, are not hard to conceive. Everyone has ideas, it’s the execution of those ideas and getting them onto paper which is the hard part. The technology of being able to put people into a purely imagined VR world is the selling point, not the world-building cooked up by a bunch of young adults.

The two characters also don’t make sense as one is a sci-fi writer (dystopia, action, lasers and pessimism) and the other a fantasy writer (dragons, sword, bubbly worlds, optimism), with an active derision for the other genre. Anyone who writes knows those two kinds of writers tend to go hand-in-hand. The dialogue and the worlds are also full of tropes and clichés which can be a little hard to swallow at times (not helped by the Whedon-esque dialogue).

On the plus side, this poor writing was offset to an extent by decent themes. Overall, Split Fiction is a fun and novel 3D platformer, where can often laugh at the dog-shit writing together – and isn’t that one multi-player games are all about.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (April 2025) – PC / Xbox

Sandfall Interactive – Kepler Interactive

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is made by a French studio, with French as its core language, set in a world with French motifs such as the Eiffel tower, berets and probably baguettes. Despite it’s French-ness, this is a JRPG-style game; turn-based combat with a party of characters, lengthy cut scenes and an overworld map. However, I would say the turn-based battles are a step above your typical JRPG by being more dynamic through its parry and dodge systems, as well as requiring more strategy.

I feel Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has hit the zeitgeist as it’s a AA game with solid gameplay, deep characters and writing, and a completely unique fantasy world based on Belle Époque, which is a strongly contrasted style from the reality of the setting. Every year in the world, a god-like woman called the Paintress counts down a number on a giant monolith, at which point everyone in the world older than that age disintegrates. Your expedition is the 66th expedition to attempt reaching the Paintress and stop whatever she’s doing (noting the previous 65 have been unsuccessful). You have to battle through strange creatures and find allies among equally strange creatures to reach your goal.

There’s a mystery at the heart of this game. Your characters and you as a player are continually discovering the true context and facts of the world and the mystery of the Paintress. While this mystery is the primary driver the game, the secondary driver are the characters who are having to face the premature mortality of themselves or the people they love, either through the expedition or the implication of their failure. The characters conversations often involve discussing those they've lost in the past, how they feel about the people back home, or what the latest discovery means for their expedition.

Beyond the writing, bulk of the gameplay is turn-based combat. You have a skill tree which you can develop throughout the game, different distinct weapons and equip-able and impactful perks called "Pictos" – leading to some fun builds and character combos. I tried to make the perfect build that allows combos between characters but eventually stopped as the number of options of how to do this was overwhelming (and taking me too long to figure out).

All the various parts of the game are well-executed; a game that’s better than the sum of its parts, which is not something you often find. My one criticism is that the third act of the game isn’t really a third act, it feels more like a concluding phase in which you can wrap up other stuff you’re doing before defeating the boss. My impression is that they didn’t have the budget to do a proper third act and so just left it as a final battle.

I can definitely recommend Clair Obscur as a well-done, non-Japanese JRPG that completely lets loose in terms of ideas, world and France.

The Blue Prince (April 2025) – PS5

Dogubomb – Raw Fury

The Blue Prince captured me from the very start with its simple, escape room style puzzles, the “progress as you learn” mechanics and re-playability through the rogue-lite mechanics. Like the board game, “Betrayal at House on the Hill”, you build your house, room-by-room, with its different combination of doors, dead ends, rooms types and mechanical boons as a result of those. I really enjoyed building out my manor houses and figuring out the best combination of rooms and unlocking permanent upgrades.

However, the entire time I was playing I had a niggley annoyance at the back of my mind: This game was going to take me a long time to solve (if my understanding was correct about the metagame). The “gameplay feature” which had made this game super popular was also the gameplay feature which, over time, really started to grind on me. To turn it into a rogue-lite, the game uses random number generation to determine what rooms and items appear. The random generation of rooms artificially pads the game out as you are relying on luck to solve the immediate- and meta-game puzzle narratives. Progression relies too heavily on getting the right combination of rooms in the right order while also drawing the right items. There should have been more ways to circumvent or manipulate the rooms you're dealt in the late game to offset the time sink.

Despite this, I was keen to solve as much as possible before the grind wore me down. My last run was easily my best. I solved 3 meta-mysteries (trademarking that phrase), accumulated another 20 monies per day in allowance and permanently unlocked/upgraded a whole bunch of my rooms. It was an amazing run, each of which was taking between 30 to 150 minutes at this late-game stage. I wrapped up my day. When I picked it up again, I found my progression had not saved and, given the chances of my having that run again were very slim, I phoned it in – not a great way to finish my playthrough.

That all being said, Blue Prince is still well executed and has great sound design that recognises your progression and helps build up the tension. I definitely recommend around 20 hours of play, but also for people to stop playing once the game is no longer fun, or if you have a game-stopper moment like me.

Dune: Awakening (June 2025) – PC

Funcom – Funcom

Dune: Awakening is where the majority of my limited gaming time has been going to since June. It’s survival-crafting cross MMORPG, with a huge emphasis on survival. You’re dumped on alternative timeline Arrakis (one where Paul Atreides was born a girl per the original Bene Gesserit plan) with a mission to find the Fremen, a surprisingly engaging story given the type of game.

Surviving the Hagga Basin in Arrakis continues to be the biggest challenge, even 80 hours in. Staying hydrated is the first problem, but thankfully you can slake your thirst with your own processed urine and blood of your enemies. Staying out of the sun is the second problem, which can cause sunstroke in minutes. Thirdly, the majority of the people you meet on Arrakis want you dead, probably for your blood. But the biggest challenge is Shai-Hulud, the sandworms. Each area in the Hagga Basin has its own territorial sandworm and if they swallow you, you lose everything, your weapons, clothing, tools, and whatever you’re driving. I lost a very expensive ornithoper while harvesting silt sand. It means that crossing the desert or harvesting spice is always a massive risk.

But the game balances this well by making the crafting relatively streamlined. Components are relatively easy to find, harvest or buy and base-building is very flexible that there’s room for customisation and creativity.

While the game does have the standard Funcom jank – character models are a bit stilted, and weird choices have been made around the UI – the environmental design is fantastic. The desert feels varied and the vistas look amazing, whether it’s a massive guild ship hovering in orbit, or an aurora dancing across the sky. And the sound design is off the charts. Turning your shield on and off sounds great and the worms clicking underneath the sand are ominous.

My only real criticism is that as you head towards the PVP end game to compete over spice harvesting, it starts to feel more grindy and your progression stalls. I don't particularly want to engage with the PVP and therefore the game has a natural stopping point for me.

Having played a limited number of survival crafting games, Dune: Awakening’s quality of life aspects, interesting story and amazing visual and sound design make it stand out in the genre. While it does feel like it descends into more of a grind towards end game, there’s a still lot to be had here and I’m keen to see where it goes given it's life service.

The Alters (June 2025) – PC

11 bit studios – 11 bit studios

In The Alters, you play Jan Dolski, a worker and the last survivor of a crashed exploration craft on a distant planet searching for a mysterious, reality-bending substance called Rapidium. You also play Jan Dolski, and Jan Dolski, not to mention Jan Dolski who is supported by Jan Dolski.

The Alters is a survival-crafting, base building game where the survivors, crafters and builders are alternative versions of Jan Dolski prime. While each Alter is a genetic clone, they have all been imprinted with an alternative personality derived from a theoretical alternative path you could have taken in your life (not a spoiler). It’s not quite the same as alternative realities as each Alter didn’t exist before you created them, but for them they feel like they’ve lived an entire life before their moment of creation.

Each Alter has a different talent they can lend to your overall survival as you struggle to find a way off the planet. Their skills range from resource mining to scientific researcher. The interesting aspect of this premise is the relationship management and choose-your-own-adventure elements it poses. Each Alter has different goals, a different history and a different take on their immediate crisis, as well as their existential one.

The Alters took me about 25 hours to complete, but it was a breeze to play as the survival, crafting, base building and what sort of counts as combat are all streamlined so you can focus on the choices your Alters pose. While in your big, single wheel base, you're moving around on a 2D plane, but then you explore a 3D world to gather resources. The objectives are all paced well so when you complete one objective, there’s always two more in progress. The survival challenge comes more from whose desires you prioritise, the resources needed to back those desires and then the extra time you spend with them out of hours, which includes playing beer pong and watching movies. Key note: The movies are all amazing - they're sci-fi themed short films that are well-written with great comedic timing. The Alters is worth it for these movies alone.

While the setting and narrative sit squarely in the science-fiction bucket, it does what the best science fiction does in my opinion which is to explore the emotional and interpersonal ramifications. With up to eight different versions of yourself, there’s implications relating to past choices made, the road not walked and what it means to technically not exist.

The streamlined survival crafting and base building means you can really focus on the chose-your-own-adventure narrative and explore the scientific and emotional implications of you alternative selves. The “just one more day” feeling this game invokes means the 25-odd hours just flew by.

Dead Reset (September 2025) – PC

Dark Rift Horror – Wales Interactive

I played this Dead Reset with a group on Halloween as a democratic choose your own adventure. Dark Rift Horror appear to be a maker of intentionally cheesy, C/D-level horror movies and I believe this is their first game. It’s a horror choose your own adventure game that is purely done through live-action VFX. It reminds me a lot of the old choose your own adventure novels where you would be posed with 2 or 3 options at a critical moment that send you on different story branches, either pushing you forward in the story or leading to your death. The conceit of Dead Reset is when you do hit that “dead end”, you then reset to a prior point in time, but the novel part is that your character is aware the resets are happening.

When it comes to these kinds of choose your own narratives, I feel the success comes from maintaining the illusion of choice and effect. Do you feel like there are choices, and do you feel like these choices have effect on the world, or progress the narrative, or at minimum, enhance your experience? For the most part, Dead Reset achieves this by narrowing the number of choices and then has larger branching narratives (at least from what we could see in the milestone list in the menus – we only played through once). The start is also very strong where you go through a series of quick time resets where you character references things from the prior timelines – you feel the impact of your choices. From a film production point of view, there is a lot of content due to the branching narratives, but also due to your character referencing prior events in the same scene. For example, there was one set piece in a morgue where we were trying to escape and there were around five different kinds of deaths, sometimes from the same action.

In terms of game-time, it only takes 3 hours to finish the game, supported by good acting, fun and economic set design. It did feel like it dragged in the middle in terms of pacing, and ended a little anti-climatically, but I had a fun time. Admittedly, I was getting a bit boozy at the same time, but that’s maybe a good way to participate in a D-grade anything.

Hades 2 (September 2025) – PC

Supergiant Games – Supergiant Games

Having played 80 hours of Hades 2, I have now rolled credits, reached a post credit ending, and am ready to put the game back on the shelf. Like the first game, Hades 2 is an isometric, action Rogue-lite, but there are more weapons, options in battle, witchery, characters, levels, abilities and powers, enemies and bosses, and general customisation options.

You play Melinoë, the sister of Zagreus from the first game and disciple of Hecate. This time, instead of breaking out of Hades, you are trying to break into Hades to defeat Cronus who has taken your family hostage.

If you haven’t played either game, Hades has you going through a series of bullet-hell arenas where, after beating an arena, you gain a temporary or permanent currency/resource, a power-up, or a boon from the gods. These boons are all pertinent to which god grants it and are essential in gaining the power you need to defeat the bosses along the way and the big boss at the end. The boons can enhance your attack, special attack, spell circle, dash, enhance your weapon or even grant additional abilities.

The gameplay is quick and dynamic but can also vary highly between runs depending on your starting loadout. The mechanics are tight and refined and, while being different from the first game, are nothing too ground-breaking. What does set Hades apart on a mechanical level is the importance of death. Every time you die, you have the opportunity to spend your collected currencies or resources on enhancing concoctions, weapon enhancements, home camp décor or NPC relationship building. This is not a game you can beat in one run and it’s the continuous dying (and dying under certain circumstances or at different levels) that unlocks new character options and enhancements that are pivotal to completing the game. The failure of death is offset by the joy of returning to camp, having some new conversations, seeing what rituals I can now cast, weapons I’d unlocked or can upgrade, prophecies I’d complete, and all that. Without trying to spoil too much, there is even a point where the game significantly expands in scope, making it feel like they combined two games into one.

All the other things that really sets Hades apart are the art, music, writing and voice acting. The game looks amazing from the character art to the environmental design, which is enhanced by otherworldly voice-acting that really uses the scripts and a backing soundtrack that’s a banger in its own right. My one criticism for the game is that the story isn’t quite as good as the first. It’s larger and grander in scale, more of a “save the world” kind of story and so loses some of the intimacy and refinement that comes with a smaller story. Despite that, it still pulls off a surprisingly effective and emotional ending that did feel intimate again.

This is my personal game of the year.

Honourable Mentions

Games that I also played throughout the year, although were released prior to 2025.

• Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye (2021): Given Outer Wilds is one of my favourite games of all time, it took me a while to get around to playing the DLC. I heard it had some jump-scare elements which is generally a deal-breaker for me. Having now played through the DLC, I can confirm the jump scares are indeed scary. Nothing gory or “horrific” per se, but light and darkness are key puzzle mechanics on the Halo-esque space station called, ‘The Stranger’, and so not being able to see more than a meter in front of you can lead to some shocking surprises. Asides form the scary stuff, Echoes of the Eye is a good expansion for Outer Wilds as it's another, slightly smaller Outer Wilds-style story within the main game. Just like the main game, you progress via exploration and gaining knowledge of the world around you and how it works. Once you understand everything, it’s possible to complete the DLC within a single loop (Outer Wilds is a time loop game). I do wish there was less of horror element to it, but there is an option in the settings to tone down the scary elements at least.
• Baldur’s Gate 3 (2023): I did it. I finally did it. I completed Baldur’s Gate 3. Probably not much more to say beyond what everyone else has said. BG3 is the best representation of the D&D experience you can have without a DM (and in some cases, is mechanically stronger). There is complexity in the choices you are given, the outcomes of those choices, and then the flow-on effects to the main campaign and side quests. Towards the end, I did start to see some fractures in the complicated web of interactions (like NPCs commenting on things you never did, or some choice outcomes being very random based on the dialogue options presented). However, that was a small price to pay for what the game was able to achieve. My main criticism is regarding the third act. The third act feels like it’s paced weirdly. I spent an equal amount of time in each act in my playthrough, so it’s not the literal pacing, but it felt long. I think it’s because at the start of act three, the game signposts via quests and discussions what you have to do for the main quest, and what you have to do for each companion quest. It’s very easy to understand the journey ahead and therefore feel pre-emptively exhausted at the extent of “stuff” you have to do. The other acts had a bit more of the unknown to it. Despite this, the 160 hours I played did not leave me wanting.
• Flower (2009): Playing Flower in 2025 is a strange experience. It takes me back to a time where indie games were just starting to blossom (pardon the pun) and so their prevalence in the gaming realm was still completely overshadowed by well-made AAA games and interesting AA games. Back in 2009, indie games were all about puzzles, walking adventures and storytelling ranging somewhere in-between vague metaphor and over-wrought metaphor. Playing Flower really took me back to when I was playing Journey (same developer), World of Goo and Braid, and brought on some strong nostalgia. Judging Flower by today’s standards: it’s fine, but definitely not something I would recommend people go and play. You’re a petal in the wind flying through meadows picking up other petals and bringing colour or nature back to the meadow (again vague metaphor). And that’s all it is. Indie games have come so much further and are doing so much more now. There is no way I could recommend against the thousands of other games that are being released all the time.
• Slitterhead (2024): Slitterhead is an interesting idea of a game that feels like it ran out of money a third of the way through development, and a bunch of odd decisions were made to develop the game with the remaining assets. You play a spirit that can inhabit various Hong Kong citizens to discover and destroy Slitterheads, shapeshifting alien creatures reminiscent of The Thing. Some of the people you inhabit are special and grow weapons from the body, as well as other special abilities that either use your spirit energy or their own blood. You end up collecting a bunch of these special humans to take on the hidden Slitterhead invasion while also cycling through a three-day time loop. So why isn’t this game very good? The core of the game involves third-person combat encounters requiring strategy finesse, but the controls and responsiveness are just too unrefined and janky; the time loop mechanic just makes the story more complicated and doesn’t add anything except allowing the developers to re-use the same three or four levels; those three or four levels are limited and superficial - it feels like they were doing an open world originally, but pivoted to a series of early 2000s Hitman levels instead; of your eight special people you get, only two or three of them feel consequential to the plot, like the rest of the stories were cut; the motivation behind the key antagonists make no sense – tortured, conflicted or just plain crazy, who knows; for no reason there are three different tracking mechanisms in the game, including a scent trail, directional vibes overlay, and a memory echo; if you deviate from a specific path in the open levels, the game pauses, turns you around, or tells you to stick to the quest area / path. Rant over.
• Norco (2022): I really enjoyed what I played of this game a few years ago, but put it back and forgot about it until recently. It’s a point and click adventure at heart about a young woman, Kay, who returns to her home town of Norco in Louisiana in a dystopia, near future where the town is controlled by an oil company called Shield (legally distinct Shell). You play both Kay in current day, and her now deceased mother in the close past, as they attempt to undercover secrets underpinning the company and other groups surrounding Norco. Kay is also looking for her brother who has disappeared. While much simpler, the writing, themes and zaniness wouldn’t be amiss in Disco Elysium. The gameplay is one level above “apply object to person/object” with some more intuitive puzzle solving and fun mechanics to enable that. While also pretty basic pixel graphics, the visuals do an amazing job of conveying the environments and tone of the world as it goes through societal and environmental collapse, while also maintaining a surreal level of magical realism the entire time.
• Untitled Goose Game (2019): I finally played through Untitled Goose Game and it was, simply, a lot of puzzley fun. It feels very open and sandbox-ey by giving you a set of goose-tools from which you can cause all your mayhem. The fun is in how people react to yourself, different actions you take and objects you steal from them. The world feels very alive (despite everyone being on repetitive loops), interactable and in good humour. Also, always good to support Melbourne-made games.
• Star Wars Outlaws (2024): After playing 70 hours of Star Wars Outlaws and its DLC, I can say with confidence it’s a good game, underrated even – a definitive Star Wars video game experience, and it manages to be so with almost zero reference to the “Force”. It’s the walking around cities, gambling at cantinas or speeding across desert dunes that makes this game highly immersive. You play a thief and rogue, Kay Vess, accompanied by her animal companion Nix as they put together a crew to finish a heist that went wrong at the start of the game. You spend your time across multiple planets (including Tatooine) sneaking, splicing, shooting, grappling, deceiving, speed-racing and star-fighting your way through nefarious quests and missions. A lot of the game, especially out in space, looks amazing and is beautiful even. This is an Ubisoft open world, so you can expect some of the usual trappings – but not so much an Assassin’s Creed, more of a Watch Dogs – which I found was more subtle and focussed than other Ubisoft games. The RPG mechanics are done via “trainers” and achieving certain criteria which is clever and I found the economy was very balanced throughout – I was never flush in resources or cash. My main criticism of the game is a big one – which is the main character and their story suck. Kay Vess falls into this new wave irreverent and sarcastic protagonists – nothing breaks immersion more than playing a character who sounds like they’re sick of the world they inhabit. And the story is uncompelling – it starts off strong and ends in a meaningful way, taking on a strong vibe Vin Diesel-level “Family”. But the middle is completely devoid of the plot or emotional beats needed to make the ending the well-deserved. But, the game was fun to play, and there was enough set piece action scenes, character banter and a great gambling game to keep me engaged. It also helped me realise why I like all these Ubisoft games – I like playing a familiar game in different worlds. It has become a comforting style of games to play.
• The Case of the Golden Idol (2022): This another one of Netflix game services game, until suddenly it wasn't; I suspect Netflix are slowly pulling the plug on the games store given this is one of a few higher-profile departures. The Case of the Golden Idol is a deductive reasoning game where you have a cartoony scene at the point a murder has occurred and you have to deduce: who is everyone present, what happened, and maybe something else about the world like the background events that led to the murder. The game is clever by having you explore and investigate the 2D scene, discover all the key words, examine people's pockets for notes and coins, and paying attention to their single dialogue line they say in the moment. Some scenes get more detailed as you can explore entire houses, or regions. Where the game fell down for me is the overall narrative playing out across all the murder cases is relatively convoluted and also requires you to understand and remember names and old motives, who belongs to what faction, and other minor details to be able to solve the later cases. While I don't think solving the cases get much harder on a technical level, I was playing disparately on my phone across a few months and so by the time I got to the end, I couldn't remember enough to piece together what was going on (I also couldn't be bothered looking over my old solutions to help me remember – so that's on me). Definitely recommend this game as a binge.
• The Gardens Between (2018): This is an Australian indie game that became available on PS Plus. I'm always keen to throw my support behind Australian Games. The Gardens Between is a short puzzle game that takes about two and a half hours to play through. The core mechanic is that you are walking across a linear path spiralling around an abstract mountain, taking an orb of light to the end of a level. Going forward moves time forward and walking back reverses time. The game is pretty clever on how it uses this mechanic to create a series of different puzzles. For example, you might need find a certain sweet spot to hold something in time or use moving boxes to take your light around plants that eat it. However, at the same time, the puzzles are limited given there’s really only a forward, backward and interaction button at most – which is probably why the game ends up being relatively short. There’s also a story throughout of two children remembering the time they have spent together. I don’t think it’s the strongest of meta-narratives and didn’t really tug my heart strings (probably due to personal experience), but it does tie into the visuals and even defines some of the puzzles. It was a pleasant way to spend a couple of PG hours.
• Astrobot (2024): For a game that basically started as a tech demo and advertisement for PlayStation, Astrobot is a pretty amazing modern 3D platformer, right up there with something like Super Mario Odyssey (or maybe even a bit better). I’d argue it’s more focussed and streamlined than a Nintendo 3D platformer: the levels are more like courses, obtaining 100% of the collectables is very achievable (and the goal), and the mechanics are very simple. There is a jump, a hover, an attack and an ability button, depending on the level. That’s it. You die if you’re hit once, or if you fall down, but you’re back on the level in seconds. The enemies also die if they’re hit once, with the exception of bosses who are the standard three hit challenge that is more like a puzzle than proper combat encounter. The simplicity means you can focus on the fun level design, the platforming, and all the different Astrobots dressed up as various PlayStation characters.
• Viewfinder (2023): Viewfinder did the rounds back in 2023 as that photo-taking, perspective-based puzzle game. You wander around manipulating the world using photos, pre-existing images or just the perspective on which you observe the 3D world. The main feature of this game is that you can impose a photo across the world, replacing what was already there with whatever was in the photo. This puzzle mechanic grows and develops, as does the complexity of the environment. The puzzles were never unsolvable or unintuitive as it does that great puzzle game thing where it slowly escalates difficulty, so you never feel overwhelmed or that you're just going through the motions (looking at you Talos Principle). Only criticism I have of the game is that its overarching ‘save the environment’ narrative by exploring this VR puzzle world doesn’t really match the game and was delivered via boring messages or audio logs. It also felt a bit vague as it doesn’t really go into the detail as to what’s happened to the outside world.