So Many Games
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I don’t hand out 5-star reviews lightly, but there really is no better word than “perfect” to describe Star of Providence. In mere tens of hours, it captured my heart while repeatedly kicking my teeth in, daring me to come back after each aching defeat and keep learning how to speak its language.
Like some of the best narrative games in recent years—I’m looking at you, Citizen Sleeper, 1000xRESIST, Spiritfarer, and Celeste— Many Nights a Whisper is ultimately a meditation on what it means to be human. Why we put ourselves under the stresses and burdens that we do and what ways we look for when it comes to finding ways to get away from those. And it succeeds in a magnificent way: not by telling us what to think but by making us question things we take for granted.
How to begin summarising an experience like Without a Dawn? For all its brutality, there’s a gentleness, even something delicate about how it presents its themes. Mental illness can be the harshest of things, but telling these stories can’t be as rough, as people wouldn’t be able to listen. Jesse Makkonen sticks the landing beautifully, though, with a game that’s as thoughtful as it is creepy. I found myself recognising so much of my own mental health struggles, without ever feeling attacked. No, I felt seen and understood, and that’s all you can ask of art. To make you feel seen and heard in a way that’s mesmerising and haunting.
The way colours are used throughout to contrast the emotions of each person is astounding, paired brilliantly with the core themes of expression through art and what happens when our own colours stop shining through.
Hollow Knight: Silksong is, like its predecessor, a masterclass in video game design. From a fully realised world to polished combat, it's hard to find fault outside of some general gripes around the increased difficulty. Pharloom may march to a different beat when compared to Hallownest, but it sings a similar melody all the same.
Hades II is a rare example of a game that takes the best of its previous entry and morphs it into something spectacular. Combat remains sleek and responsive, while the story and the various twists that present themselves throughout are refreshing plays on a well-established mythos. You can also smooch people, which is always appreciated.
Relatively minuscule nitpicks aside, consider Absolum a must-play for any fan of not only beat ‘em ups but action games in general. Its build system is masterful, offering near infinite replayability, and if 2025 is the year of fantastic parry systems in video games, Absolum stands tall with the best parries of them all. This is the follow-up to Streets of Rage 4 that I’ve been waiting half a decade for, and it just so happens to have arrived in the form of a roguelite; arcade-styled games don’t get much better than this.
Having not been all that good at video games for most of my life, I fell in love with games that focused on great stories, usually with interactions a bit more limited than in fully fledged RPGs and the like. It’s why I still adore series like Life is Strange and (most of) the Telltale games. AdHoc Studios takes the foundations of those games and brings them up to the next level. The polish is astounding, with perfect performances, brilliant art and music, and fantastic, thoughtful writing hidden underneath a heap of swear words. Dispatch is brilliant, and you should play it.
The game asks you once again: who do you trust? And who are you willing to fight for? Are you ready to face the consequences of the choices you’ve made? Do you even realise how serious those consequences can get? Just like Sybil, Kaneeka’s mother, Scarlet Hollow seems to be answering questions by raising even more questions. But answers are coming, and you might not like what you’ll get.
As someone who usually steers clear of horror, Reanimal is one of the few games have been actively excited for – as a fan of the first two Little Nightmares games, I expected nothing but the best from Tarsier Studios and they delivered spectacularly. An unsettling, well-paced horror that serves up both a stunningly designed world as well as enough subtext to keep video game essayists in work for a decade, Reanimal is a must-play.
I was utterly charmed, delighted and enraptured by Key Fairy’s gorgeous hand-drawn visuals, achingly beautiful writing and dynamic movement mechanics. It gave me butterflies, or perhaps they were fairies, in my tummy. Such is its beauty. It’s a game full of love and compassion that I hope brings as much joy and comfort to others as it has to me. We need more games like Key Fairy in this troubled world of ours.
I am completely smitten with the world of Wax Heads. It has so much to offer, and it feels like a game that was made for me and my particular tastes. The game delivers on all fronts, especially as an innately human experience, much like music itself. And like a good record, this game elevates your day by spending time with it, getting in touch with its intricacies, and allowing itself to open up to you.
Mixtape’s series of musical vignettes is a breath of fresh air and yet another example of how indie games can do it better. There’s so much variety in the activities you actually perform, but in the end it all boils down to a story about three kids who don’t have the easiest lives, find each other, and now have to face an uncertain future. It’s a hell of a throwback, with the soundtrack to end all soundtracks, and it literally brought me to tears through its fantastic writing and, like Stacy, knowing which song to play at just the right moment.
This probably sounds supremely, plainly obvious given the way in which I write about them, but I love video games. More than that, the best ones I’ve ever played go beyond love; they leave me with an itch, as if an electric current is running beneath my skin and reminding me of what I like about being alive. And baby, Sektori sure did leave me with an itch.
The team’s incredible hard work has produced a wonderfully unique, deep, and rewarding game that fulfils its ambitious scope and has easily been seated as my favourite visual novel of all time.
Despite there being a lack of big emotions and intriguing environmental storytelling, there is an absolute gem of a puzzle game to be found.
Wanderstop is a distinguished work of art. While the pacing was a bit hit or miss at times, the game uses its tea-shop sim mechanics and introspective narrative to create an unprecedented meditative space for players. The wit, whimsy, and wonder of the game aesthetic are charming to the core, encouraging the player to drift into a comfortable rhythm of self-reflection.
The most profound truth Expelled! offers is that our most meaningful personal growth often happens when we stop performing for institutions and begin the harder work of deciding who we might become when freed from their expectations. Sometimes, walking away from this judgement becomes not a defeat but a liberation from external definitions of success and worth.
StarVaders is a game that takes the best influences from the genre—the seemingly simple basics that can be iterated on to make it as complex as you want, mostly—and adds its own unique twist. Maybe the best way to describe the game is ‘what if Cobalt Core leaned more into Space Invaders,’ with this one taking the best from both of those classics without being a copy/paste job. The game looks classy, plays wonderfully, and sounds amazing.
Despelote will extend its hand to the player and invite them on a Virgil-like walk through the ever-increasing tension that permeated Ecuador in 2001. While the gameplay is not adrenaline-fuelled, its earnestness serves to be equally captivating and the primary motivation to see the game through.