my favourite games of 2025

December 28 2025

2025 is coming to an end, and it was a particularly busy, a bit rough at times, tiring year for me. But a rich one too, as i met new friends, worked on new projects, reconnected with a particularly old project that's meant to be a present for a member of my family, read a lot, travelled just a bit... and played a lot of new games too: 87 of them to be precise, plus the ones i had already started earlier and kept playing this year.
I've always loved a good list, so this year i figured i'd try to make one of my favourite game discoveries of 2025, each with one sentence about something more or less specific i enjoyed about it. Many of these games were actually released before 2025, and there's quite a few of them that i haven't played all the way through yet, but that didn't stop me from obsessing over them and enjoying them! Here we go then, have a great end of year and i hope 2026 will treat everyone kindly (or at least a bit kindlier than 2025). Love you!

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I loved the feelings of flying downwards from the top of a high cliff to cloudy pastures below, and giving my floating sheeps funny names.
2025 was a year during which i played a whole lot of Sonic games, but Sonic Adventure impressed me the most with its joyful energy, its fragmented storytelling and its train workers' strike (click here for more words from me about this game).
A game that unfolds at its own slow pace, one day at a time, one history test at a time, one friendship at a time, one combat turn at a time, and one floor of its seemingly never-ending tower of Shadows at a time.
What a great title! Also a clever, short puzzle to untangle.
I'm not sure i intellectually understood everything the story was telling me, but i felt the angry, passionate teenager vibes flowing to me through its mix-media visuals.
I played the first two games of the Anthology of the Killer collection back to back, its weird world intrigued me, i haven't played the rest of it yet but its mood and peculiar writing style are still very present in my mind.
This year, i started reading more blogs about game development and games analysis again, and a lot of essays; this one about internet culture, big tech and all the niche, hobbyists subcultures that populate the web is one of the richest i've read, and it's a game in itself with an aesthetic that further enriches its topics.
An endlessly surprising game (i was still discovering new mechanics 40 hours in) with one of my favourite turn-based combat systems, for an actually pretty cosy journey that reminded me of old-fashioned science-fiction movies (and for one, i really liked getting lost in its overworld map of apocalyptic Tokyo).
This may as well have been but a pretext for its author splendidland to draw another one of their colorful bestiaries of whimsical monsters, and honestly? It's all i could have ever wished for.
Yet another one of those games that i picked up, smiled at and ran through and finished in one session, and there was still the whole rest of the day to enjoy.
I had dreamt of this kind of flow of movement for a long time, and regardless of whether or not i'm actually making progress in the game, it's a joy to play every time just because the movement feels so nice and the city i'm moving through is so colorful.
A game to take some rest from the world and other games when i needed it the most; i'm still playing it very slowly but it's like reading a big, lovely picture book, one of my absolute favourite games this year (that i've also written a lot more about last month).
Next to Final Fantasy IX, it might be a much scrappier PS1 turn-based RPG, but it remains magnetic, mysterious and intriguing; and the music that plays during battles is very very good.
I would have been so passionate about Klonoa if i had played it when i was a kid! I doubt i would have gone to the end though, the last level in the Moon Kingdom was very pretty but very hard.
This game might be the one that's reconciling me with horror games? I played it in the peaceful mode without enemies and i was charmed from beginning to end by its spooky theme park, especially the Fairytale Town area, its visuals and its deadpan main character Mara.
I like it so much when a seemingly-horror story ends up not being about horror at all: loved it with Gone Home, loved it with Max Porter's novel Lanny, loved it with Carimara (and it was really nice unraveling and exploring the tiny cabin & backyard everything happens in).
Playing Angeline Era seems pretty straightforward, and yet the game's scale feels immense, like it's hiding so many buried secrets that i'll never grasp it in its entirety - but i'm enjoying carving a way through it and feeling like i'm discovering things that others may not have.
I got reminded of the Point & Clicks i used to play at my grandma's when i visited her as a kid,notably the Putt-Putt games, but with a world that's both cute and eerily dark; played it in one sitting, just like i did with Putt-Putt at my grandma's.