Video games - 2025 review

I felt like 2025 started really strong on games. But it took a big dip when we started making games more seriously. I got through a few things in my backlog like Citizen Sleeper and Pentiment. Then Blue Prince happened… and I didn’t really play anything else until the Switch 2 came out. That game just really took over our household upon release, which hasn’t happened since Shadow of the Erdtree.

Blue Prince

This game is just very good. I don’t want to elaborate too much because it is one of those games where it feels great to make every discovery on your own. I went into it knowing basically nothing about it, just that the boys on The Besties really loved it and the early reviews were full of praise.

When we got Blue Prince my wife and I started our own save files and played on the PlayStation. Then something weird happened, my wife’s game stopped saving, she was playing the same day over and over again (Each “run” in Blue Prince takes one in game day). After some research she found that there was a bug in the PlayStation version that could hit around a certain number of days played (~80). My own save file was getting close to that number of days as well. So we bought a second copy for PC so we could continue to play on a safer system.

We thought about waiting for the PlayStation fix but we were pretty hooked. We had nearly put in 50 hours together at that point so of course I was happy to give Tonda Ros more money.

So we restarted on the PC, this time playing from just one save file. We quickly caught up to where we were on our PlayStation versions but still ended up putting in 60 more hours on the PC. The PlayStation bug has now been fixed but it took many more weeks than expected so I’m happy we didn’t wait. I would still highly recommend playing on PlayStation because syncing your PlayStation account to another device (like a phone or iPad) where you can see all your screenshots without having to close the game is a great time. Even with screenshots you will end of taking lots of notes as well.

There are many stopping points in Blue Prince, which I feel is a common feature of games these days, at least in ones I’ve been playing. For Blue Prince it almost feels like the game doesn’t fully start until you get First Credits given how much game is left after that. So while first credits is a good stopping point it leaves a lot of questions unanswered.

The fandom breaks the game down into multiple layers/arcs. Stopping at the end of any of the arcs can give you a sense of the game being over, if you’re ready to accept that. But wow the last puzzle is really something else. We kept pushing on and trying out every random theory we could think of and managed to find it. There unfortunately isn’t a scene or credits at this “real” ending (but there might be now because Tonda did talk about adding a little more to the end) so it was still hard to believe that we had finally finished the game. But after that and lurking in the Blue Prince Discord it did seem like we had uncovered every mystery that was possible to solve.

Best feel good achievement of the year?? Maybe… I haven’t tried for the last few achievements the game has to offer as they feel a bit like time sinks and less like they contribute to the overall experience of the game. But because I’ve been talking about Blue Prince a lot the last few weeks I am feeling a pull back towards it.

Top 3 (after Blue Prince)

Hades 2

I’ve been excited for Hades 2 since it was announced and refused to play any of the Early Access stuff because I had loved going in blind with Hades 1. I wasn’t prepared for the surprise launch date and it very much interrupted a bunch of things I was working on.

I’m now post-credits in Hades 2 and trying to wrap up all the lose threads. While also trying to, just maybe, beat it on the hardest difficulties needed for some achievements… I don’t think I’ve achievement hunted in any game besides Hades 1 and 2. The last difficulty level is brutal though so I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it, feels silly to turn on god mode when trying to do a skill challenge instead of just trying to get through the story.

It’s weird to see all the debate about whether Hades 2 is better or worse than Hades 1 as my general feeling about it is just “yay more Hades!”.

Citizen Sleeper

Citizen Sleeper had been on my backlog for a few years. When it came out I was pretty sure it would be something I’d like but it took me a while to get around to it.

It’s largely a solo-dev project made by Gareth Damian Martin, who doesn’t (didn’t?) know how to program. They made the whole thing using visual scripting in Unity. The central concepts are nice and straight forward but when I think about the visual scripting I’ve tried to do I often feel like learning it is as hard as it would have been to learn C#.

The writing in Citizen Sleeper is very good, a bit of a slow burn given the gameplay limits how much progress you can make in your daily loop, but it makes it feel more meaningful to spend more time there connecting with the characters. The visuals of it are also just very good and overall aesthetics is very much my thing. And now I’m sure I’ll put off playing the sequel for a few years too even though I’m excited for it.

Pentiment

Pentiment was another one that I kept saying “I’ll play that someday.”. Well I got really sick and needed chill games to help pass the time between the Bad Times. Pentiment is definitely one of a kind. The setting, the visuals, the storytelling, rarely are things combined in such a way, or at least executed on such a high level. I actually watched a documentary on the making of Pentiment before I played it but had to stop in the last 20 minutes to avoid spoilers and hearing about how it was created made me enjoy it even more. With the main thing being now knowing just how badly Josh Sawyer wanted to make a historical video game.

What caught me off guard about Pentiment was that it was actually much longer than I expected. I thought it would be a 5 hour story game but I think it was closer to 15-20. And it stays interesting the whole time due to constant reveals or countdowns. The only downside to the length of the game is that I am very curious about how the story can go with different branching. It feels like you can get a pretty different experience with different choices. But I don’t want to put 20 hours into re-playing the whole thing.

Conclusion

I realize that none of these games were on Switch 2 even though that was a big release I was excited for. I played the new Mario Kart and Donkey Kong and enjoyed them both but they both are kind of good in that reliable Nintendo good way. Mario Kart had moments of pure delight and discovery in the new gameplay modes they introduced but it’s hard to compare these to genre defining games. The thing we’ve played most of on the Switch 2 is probably Animal Crossing New Horizons by starting a new island.

I was about to write that all my favourite games were indie games this year. But Pentiment was made by Obsidian Entertainment, though they did just work with a team of 13. And Supergiant seems so successful now that they feel a step above traditional indie. But it’s true that “indie” is kind of going through an identify crisis right now.

A few games I’ve been excited about for years came out but closer to the end of the year, when I had little time to play games D’: I did get to play a lot of Hades 2 but I haven’t been able to pick up Skate Story yet.

Now that we’re making games more full time I am spending a lot of time in indie game spaces and learning about games I want to play almost every day. This year I broke my “don’t buy it unless you are playing it today” rule and now do have some games in my backlog… I’d like to say I’ll play more games in 2026 but I’ve really been enjoying reading more to get away from screens so not I have a backlog again D: But I suspect the library might run out of books for me in 2026 so maybe that will get me playing some smaller games. Which might just mean buying some old games on original Switch… but also we have a Steamdeck now so I feel a bit of choice paralysis because of all the games that are available!

I tried playing some older games on Steamdeck and they aren’t great though. Basically anything published before the Deck came out doesn’t seem like it has great defaults for the system so I may not be able to play the older games I’ve been putting off on it.

But now for the holidays I’m a little hooked on Ball x Pit which is a game that I feel like I can see the DNA of when I play it. It’s hooky and nice to look at but I’m mostly playing it as a “turn my brain off game” as there is basically no skill to it. But also over the next 2 weeks I hope to play Keeper as something a little more engaging.

Now that Steam is doing a ‘year in steam’ review at the end of the year now would be a good time to share some number… but I play most games on my wife’s account because it’s the one hooked to our gaming PC. So my own Steam numbers are just “You played Peak this year. You must really love Peak.” :’D