The 2025 Game Surprises
Again, 2025 was a game changer for the games industry. Uncertainties around last years layoffs were only further fuelled by the constant threat of Gen-AI looming in the background. And it feels we lost one of our big 3 console manufacturers in Microsoft, whose business decisions only managed to alienate its biggest fans. But game-wise, this year was an absolute banger, with suprise hits just appearing seemingly out of nowhere. Here are my 11 games that stuck with me the most from this impressive year.
Indika
I love it when people enter the gaming space from movies and really want to shake up conventions. It has a certain arrogance to it resulting in games that clunkily fumble around in established formulas shaking up the experience in unsuspecting ways. Indika is such a game. It is not shy trying to be weird, boring and cryptic at times, absolutely content with not delivering a great play experience if it is in favor of the narrative. And while this does not result in fun necessarily, Odd Meter really crafted something unique. I enjoyed the war-torn adventures of the tormented nun Indika a lot for that and think more people should play it too! 🙏
Arzette and the Jewel of Faramore
Crafting an homage is a difficult balancing act. On one hand the goal would be to improve flaws of an old game but in the process you might erase what made the original feel unique and different. You need to make sure the homage doesn't lose its identity. I’ve barely ever seen this so masterfully executed as the Zelda CDI homage Arzette and the Jewel of Faramore. Arzette is a joy to play, but it constantly looks and feels like absolute terrible Phillips CDI jank: It retains baffling transitions, amazingly bad animations and weird glitchy platforming. The people at Seedy Eye Software really studied their source material! I adore this game.
Sandland
The death of Akira Toriyama in 2024 was quite a shock to the whole manga world. So the timing of Sandland, which came just months after, was very unfortunate. Seeing how much care the dev team at ILCA put into bringing Toriyama's characters from his short story to live in 3D was genuinely moving, so I knew I had to play it to rekindle with my childhood once more. Now, Sandland is not the best open world game by a mile. And it is going insanely off the rails after the original story concludes half-way in. However this is still a wonderful romp for its world, characters and surprisingly smooth tank battles. I think Akira Toriyama would be proud of it.
Umamusume: Pretty Derby
Well hot damn, what a weird trend this has been. Two years after its Japanese debut Umamusume took the western world by storm this summer. Frontlined by the most unlikely of influencers, like middle aged Northernlion, suddenly everyone talked about running training anime girls and the convoluted real world horse racing lore behind. What strange times we live in 🐎. Umamusume is still a very tedious Gacha game at its core, but the team at Cygames is to be applauded for its tenacity of creating the most boring old-men activity into a damn unique universe.
Aurelia
Warning, Aurelia is a very NSFW adult game, expect 🍆🍑💦 etc. And it is also one of the most gorgeous pixel art games I’ve ever seen. I mean look at that dithering! To me it is insanely inspiring that such a personally hand-crafted game exists, especially in the adult space. 2025 was overall an interesting time to see so many adult creators, like Myrthal here, keeping the indie spirit alive by chipping away at insanely inspired works on their own (and a patreon) with no clear guarantee of success or even being able to release on popular platforms. And Aurelia is the release that really shown this like few others. Now lets hope the inevitable 2026 sea of hentai AI slop will not drown that all creativity away…
Lil Guardsman
Here's something I didn't witness when it originally dropped: Lil Guardsman! This little gem of a game takes the best elements of old school Lucasarts humor and Papers Please game play to create a surprisingly sincere, heartfelt and engaging mix. With a neverending stream of charming characters, the hours among the kingdom of Sprawl just flew by. Also let me just say its also nice to have a game with a healthy and charming father daughter relationship going on, you love to see it. And I am grateful for Super Rare Games taking this game from Hilltop Studios in their lineup because I don't think I would have discovered it otherwise. An absolute gem.
Laika: Aged through Blood
These lists aren't numbered in an order, but this year, my top pick would be easy: I can't even describe how utterly impressed I’m with Laika: Aged through Blood. IT is a masterpiece of idea, mood and execution. I also once had the idea of doing a story based game with “Excite Bike” mechanics during my study course. I deemed it silly and impossible. Well call me an idiot: Laika is one of the most moving and impressive games I’ve ever played. Brainwash Gang’s revenge story about a coyote mother is insanely beautiful, has a killer soundtrack, heartfelt but gritty storytelling, a fantastic skill based core gameplay and my clear game of the year!
Hollow Knight Silksong
At first I didn't want to mention Silksong. It has also been widely praised, talked about and insanely successful. But goddamn, the surprise isn’t that the quality is good, I can't get over how Team Cherry knows how to build anticipation. Who would have guessed just refusing to talk to anyone for five years would result in one of the biggest and most hyped launches of the year, that even crashed Steam payment for a few minutes. Well, now it's finally here. And yeah, I love it.
Blue Prince
Talk about an insane puzzle design: Blue Prince has you explore a shifting, rearranging mansion as heir. Every day you make a new room layout yourself, the initial goal just simply being to reach the last room of the mansion. Like this is combines the most addictive parts of a rogue like deckbuilder with runs and a cryptic open world puzzle game. And boy does debut developer Dogubomb not hold any punches. You will need a notepad, pictures from your camera and a close to breakdown madman attitude to understand whats going on and beat this game 😵💫. For a week I sat in a pile of notes, convinced I’d reach the bottom of the well if I had just one more more run. Like the best in its genre, Blue Prince will have you dream at night about possible solutions and have you suddenly jump up at dinner to scribble down an idea. Brilliant.
Consume Me
Late in the year I finally got to Consume Me. Expectations were high, I heard much praise for how it tackles such a sensitive but widespread topic as eating disorder, compulsion and teen identity. Doing this justice would be a challenge in a game in any case and I hoped it could use game mechanics to cleverly give a taste on how it would feel. But what I wasn’t ready for is how insanely charming and uplifting the game actually is. Consume Me is so damn good on a craft level it blows regular serious games away. What a fantastic game, thank you for giving us a glimpse of your world and struggles Jenny Jiao Hsia.
Some Honorable Mentions:
This year I just want to shout out a few titles that dropped off the list last second:
Claire Obscure: Expedition 66: Insanely passionate, Sandfall feels like a creative tour de force let off a leash. But several hours in, I can't get over how linear it is.
Section 1: Wow did this blow up. I dont think the game really works past a few initial sessions, but it's nice to finally witness a new rags-to-riches indie game story.
Shotgun King: I’m glad that someone asked himself “what if chess but with turn based shooting and rogue-like progression?”. The result is great fun
Peak: What peak achieved by really dialing into fun with friends was impressive. It even coined “Friendslop” as a term. In the end it didn’t stick in my friend group though.
Caravan Sand Wich: Stupid name aside, the game is clearly a very sincere and honest attempt that just slightly falls short of expectations. I hope the team can try once more.
Fading Afternoon: I dont know who Yeo is, but this game really looks damn inspired. If you are into River City Ransom and Yakuza drama, play this!
Hades 2: What a great game and definitely shows that it was worth doing a sequel. Considering how good Hades was, this is a big feat
