I think we’re all the physical embodiment of Thomas C Lea III’s The Two-Thousand Yard Stare after that year we’ve just had. Both in gaming and outside of it. That’s providing we’ve survived 2025 after the delay of GTA 6, everyone shouting “World War III: Tokyo Drift,” the spaff that was shot up Sandfall Interactive’s back, Kojima’s foot fetish, and too many games.

As always, because it is the internet and some people don’t understand this, my top games will only be the games I’ve played and feel I have an opinion on, so if I didn’t play them this year, they do not qualify. Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, Avowed (if you’re weird), The Outer Worlds 2, Ghost of Yōtei, Dispatch, Death Stranding 2, Borderlands 4, and Mafia: The Old Country, all passed me by. So I’m not praising things like Split Fiction and such simply because I haven’t played them. Any complaints otherwise go to the usual place, the bin. With that in mind, let’s talk about games I did play this year.

Honorable Mention – Idle Waters

I’m going to give an honorable mention straight away to something that I didn’t think I’d ever enjoy, then I played the demo and just had to go pick it up. Developed by Ignita Games, Idle Waters is one of those idle games that sits at the bottom of your screen as you work and can be a bit distracting sometimes. The famous example was, of course, Mister Morris Games’ Rusty’s Retirement, a game that I was only properly introduced to as part of a certain small streamer’s stream while they were playing something that I’ve already covered here on the site.

Said streamer thinking it was far more important to sit quietly, faffing about with their little farm occasionally, and being about as engaging in conversation as a grave stone covered in turds. As you might guess, that’s not how to be introduced to these types of things, which I’m still hesitant to call games, as a lot of them don’t feel like it from their pitches. That’s where Idle Waters comes in a little to spoil the distracting neon-based nonsense. Put simply, Idle Waters is a fishing game that you’ll occasionally click on, build up money, things will automate, and you’ll leave for a little bit.

At least, that’s the surface-level of this adorable pixel-art world of a small Red Panda infinitely fishing on your command as you do work. The truth of the matter is, you are also completing quests and unlocking further things to improve your fishing, get rarer fish, find certain items, and maybe, on occasion, offering a fishy sacrifice to the gods. I don’t love the discourse of what makes “a proper game,” but to me, this is what I think is engaging and a fun idea. You aren’t playing because the ADHD diagnosis hasn’t come in yet; you actually have things to do.

Despite its simple ideas, Idle Waters feels as deep as the ocean. With a compendium as detailed and strange as DREDGE, and lots of places to explore, on top of quests to complete, items to find, and so on. I might have been convinced of this idle gaming nonsense just a little bit. Even as I write this, I’m sitting with my Red Panda fishing away, sometimes pulling my attention away from work.

3rd place – Door Kickers 2: Task Force North

With more than 800 recorded hours playing Door Kickers 2, it is difficult not to at least include this one in here somewhere. I love a tactical shooter, I love a bit of nitty-gritty gear management, and I love a game that makes me feel like I’m grinding my face straight up a brick wall laid by a man with wonky eyes. Task Force North is exactly that, and early this year, it released out of early access to a rather tepid response, as far as I could gather.

Nonetheless, I’ve played it every few days when I’m still waking up, when I’m going to bed, and when I’m between doing something that could actually be productive. A bit like Idle Waters, really, but with blast overpressure turning a man with a turban and funny ideas of Islam into flying mince. In some respects, Door Kickers 2 is a puzzle game as much as it is an action game, with the only problem you’re solving being that the men with guns and suicide vests are good at killing you.

However, the puzzles for Door Kickers 2 aren’t 1+1=2, thus the brown man falls down with lead poisoning. It is: There are men with guns in there, there are civilians, and there are hostages. How do I kill the ones with guns, save the non-combatants, and rescue the hostages? That, but timed as well, especially on the bomb threats. It is a delightful little bundle of blowing a hole through a wall and truly painting a room red with a man’s blood.

Dishonorable Mention – Sports: Renovations

I feel like a horrible person for even saying this. I don’t think I’ve played anything that was genuinely horrific this year, maybe the performance of Rise of the Ronin? However, if I could just moan about the technical issues of a game, it would have probably been Ubisoft’s 2017 title, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands. I played it for 65 hours, and it suddenly decided after that time, “you’ve played enough – I’m going to brick myself and crash every time you try to play me now.” However, I can’t do that, so let’s have a moan about the problems faced by Goat Gamez and Sports: Renovations.

A PowerWash Simulator-esque idea where you tidy up and fix different sports, particularly in a Euro-Americana-centric sphere. It sounds like a great idea that should work in every aspect, until you play it, of course. Then you’re assaulted in the ears by the “Irish” woman, who sounds as Irish as green Guinness being vomited into the green Chicago River, which had only recently been turned brown by the Dave Matthews band. I mean this with the politest snide comment, Sports: Renovations wanted to be a dad-sim without understanding the most important thing about a dad-sim.

Every single one of the jobs where you revamp boxing gyms, swimming pools, minor league baseball arenas, and so on has lengthy and uninteresting podcast-like stories attached. Be it the local man on the radio telling you the history of the building, or the owner/family member explaining something about their life. Like a contract killer or the serial cleaner that I was last year, I don’t care. I’m here to clean up blood and fix the broken stuff.

Mechanically, Sports: Renovations isn’t terrible, but like the aforementioned (or aforehinted) Crime Scene Cleaner, there is a bit of jank. Mechanics that function but don’t always satisfy. The music felt generic. The art was fine, but nothing spectacular. This is why I say it feels unfair to give my dishonorable mention to Sports: Renovations this year. It isn’t bad like Highway Police Simulator was terrible, but the one thing that it tries to do to stand out is not only aggravating. At times, it made me want to stop playing.

The biggest crime Sports: Renovations commited is when I said ultimately it was fine, comparing it unfavorably to PlayWay’s occasional missteps. The unique aspects are rarely, if ever, the high points of an otherwise fine game.

2nd – South of Midnight or Atomfall, how about both?

This one is tricky, simply because I could put almost anything here and it would qualify. Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is great, Sniper Elite Resistance was more Sniper Elite, PowerWash Sim 2 is exactly that as well, A Game about Digging a Hole is a game about digging a hole, Silksong is again more Hollow Knight, Wander Stars has me deep throating Dragon Balls Z again, Snake Eater is a fantastic remake/remaster, and I’d be repeating myself with Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4. However, I wanted to reserve this one for one of the games that represented with some unique flair, so it has been a toss-up between South of Midnight and Atomfall.

It is not every day that you get a game about a young Black woman set in the American South with a parent whose family owned a plantation, and a family whose ancestors came from that same place. The magic and charm of South of Midnight is something to behold. I’ll say it now, it isn’t the greatest game ever created. In fact, I’d go as far as to say it is a late PS2 game with some of its gameplay ideas. However, there is no getting away from the fact that it is a game that is made with love, care, and a desire to tell a fictionalized/fantasy version of that history.

If we’re honest, this is what could be said about the other game I had fighting for space this year, Rebellion’s Atomfall. Set in the “North” for English people, the game is directed by a Scottish man and features the “Falkirk Battle Rifle” – it is like naming a character Keiran. From accents, the look, and even the setting, to the shop with its four candles. Much like I said of Watch Dogs Legion, Atomfall feels like a comforting bit of homely warmth… with a side of historical nuclear disaster attached.

Both games here are diametrically opposed: One is a non-linear open-world sort of thing with survival and crafting, the other is very linear both in gameplay and story with a typical action-adventure feel. Yet both games represent an often-overlooked bit of gaming entirely. Outside of fighting/multiplayer shooter games, there really are very few playable Black women: Clementine, Alyx, Nilin, Aveline de Grandpré, Billie Lurk, Frey Holland, Sheva, Jade, Antea Duarte, Windleaf from Shadow Madness, and that’s about it. However, South of Midnight’s Hazel Flood is not just unapologetically Black, but the game is about Black and Brown culture in the gothic American South.

For games set in the north of England? Jeff Wayne’s The War of the Worlds, Test Drive games, Driver, Resistance: Fall of Man, Thank Goodness You’re Here!, and, of course, Forza Horizon 4. Outside of Football Manager and FIFA/EA FC, an Age of Empires II scenario, and maybe a hint here or there otherwise, it is difficult to say Falkirk is mentioned in a lot of video games. So to have something that feels so close, not just things you know but the looks and feel of places, to quote the kids, “it hits different.” Atomfall, unlike many other games set in the UK, is that distilled idea of Great Britain that lampost climbers ignore in favor of the poisoned view of a frog-faced man.

Neither game is perfect; there are “problems” more or less with both. The combat of South of Midnight doesn’t have nuance and, at times, feels slow in places like dodging, while Atomfall can sometimes fail to direct the player perfectly. The faults, however, don’t take away from the unique and, quite frankly, difficult to replicate aspects of each game; the atmosphere and culture that is rarely represented.

Early Access Honorable Mention – Schedule I

One of the only games outside of Clair Obscur (and the other one) to properly disrupt the larger industry this year, and I can’t blame it because I put in 20 hours during a single week. Stylistically, story-wise, and even some of the mechanics for TVGS’ Schedule I are a little rough, with characters straight out of the rejected cast for Rick and Morty, but by god, I couldn’t put it down. I start playing for a little bit, and suddenly I’m blowing up rivals with pipe bombs and driving a van around with $250,000 of product.

I think what makes Schedule I stand out among the other “crafting” style games is that it has an almost GTA-like crime element. Sure, you’re “crafting” the product, but that product is illegal, and you’ll be arrested with a light sentence if you’re White, and shot dead if you’re Black. Or maybe I’m just thinking about America again. A bit like the BBC’s Ideal, it is grimy, it is weird, and I do love it; no men with cartoon rat masks on though.

Game of the Year – Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

What can be said about Clair Obscur: Expedition 33? What can’t be said? There is a reason everyone is riding this one like a prize pony (9 from Geoff), and it isn’t because it offers blowjobs and chocolate. I’ll admit that over the last decade and a bit, RPGs have progressively crept into my rotation of regular games. Yet, very few stand out like Sandfall Interactive’s Clair Obscur because I’ll be honest, aside from that chant for completing quests in The Witcher 3 or that opening to Fallout 4, I don’t remember the soundtracks too well. Despite playing both at an unhealthy frequency.

If I told you the number of times I’ve listened to “Lumiére” you’d understand why I can sing that acapella and in French. The art, the gameplay, the music, and story, there is not a game this year – and I’ve played 65 releases – that managed to tie everything together so well. The closest might be Metal Gear Solid Δ: Snake Eater, but that’s kind of cheating, being perfection alongside Sons of Liberty since 2004. Restricting it to this year, I’d have to say Atomfall and South of Midnight were in the running, but you’d find it so difficult to argue against Clair Obscur‘s near perfection any year, no less in 2025.

In the prologue, there is a line from Maelle: “Ooh, dark. Sophie would approve.” There is a lot of darkness as well as bleakness that I’d compare to Dark Souls sometimes, but to say that Clair Obscur is a dark game might be wrong. I’ve tossed and turned on saying so for months now, as I knew this one was Game of the Year within hours of playing. To which I have to say, all the people screaming, “You’ll never guess where this is going,” please go read a book and work your brain cells a bit more. Clair Obscur isn’t predictable, but if you pay attention, you can see which direction it is taking you.

Understanding French helps, as does history and art, but that’s something else that I think I blew my editor’s brain with. The point is, the story of Clair Obscur isn’t doing anything too special other than being told well, and everything else falls into place around that. Effectively, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 sees you following the 68th (spoiler) expedition to the continent after the city of Lumiére (Paris) was thrown to sea, where, after The Paintress started painting numbers on Barbie’s legs, causing the Gommage. Each Gommage wipes out an entire age of people.

However, once you get that first scene in “Act 1,” it is a horror movie, not a typical JRPG-inspired adventure about eco-terrorism and everything else Final Fantasy is about. Gay emo boy bands, last I checked. It isn’t a happy-go-lucky skip through fields of wheat, or rather red and white roses. You march through battlefields of previous expeditions, where the bodies are piled ten high, just to get your group together and march after the Paintress.

Clair Obscur is very much big emotions and a fantasy setting, everything I usually hate. In fact, I was replaying Final Fantasy VII Remake at the same time as playing Clair Obscur. Now, if you know me, then you know I’m typically real-time over turn-based every day, come rain or shine. Clair Obscur is a better turn-based game than the Final Fantasy VII Remake will ever be in general. Come on, I had to annoy someone somehow; if the Dark Souls comment wasn’t enough, this will do it.

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