2025 In Brief

A look back to all the games and content experienced through the year.
talk
minecraft
game
review
Published

January 1, 2026

A year ends, and a new one begins. So many things happen and it’s easy to forget what happened recently, let’s then take a look back to imprint in memory what was seen during the year and regroup all the reviews in one place. I’ll first list all the elements of a category, then have a handful of titles for the more memorable ones. However because something is listed isn’t equivalent to a mark of quality, or a lack thereof if it’s not awarded a title. It’s worth seeing for yourself if something would feel interesting or not, I will add an excerpt to help giving an idea.

Of course this is a wholly subjective evaluation and might include elements from before the current year because I experienced these first this year. Before deliberating on how impactful each was, I will do honorable mentions of every element for even being part of what I had the chance to try. Well done on having been made! Creation is a difficult and often ungrateful endeavor, so this is the least I can give to appreciate this.

Games

List

  • Boxes: Lost Fragments - It does its job well.

  • SpellForce: Conquest of Eo - Researching the unfathomable secrets of the world, to unveil the mechanisms at your fingertips. Wielding that power is no easy task, but it brings about limitless knowledge and understanding.

  • Catherine Classic - It’s an experience that is worth considering even if I’m a bit on the edge.

  • Psychonauts - It surprisingly holds up great even now.

  • Psychonauts 2 - This is hardly possible to make a better kind of sequel.

  • Fabledom - Cute and chill town builder.

  • OmOneko - Learn to see beyond appearances. When you extend your hand, you not only change the other, but yourself as well. Don’t leave regrets no matter what you choose.

  • Beacon Pines - A cute little story.

  • Cavern of Dreams - Cute little game, bringing nostalgia of old collectathons.

  • Polimines - Works as a fine timewaster.

  • The Song of Saya - Abandon humanity, all ye who read this.

  • Polimines 2 - The perfect refinement of the original concept.

  • 1000xRESIST - What is the role of an individual? What is order and what is change? What should be done with our heritage? What should leave for others to inherit? How we act is our answer to those questions.

  • Maliki : Poison Of The Past - With growing time flourish blooming projects. When nurtured with care and love, what flowers will be striking and a heartwarming accomplishment. The seeds of life are brimming with potential.

  • STAR WARS™: Bounty Hunter™ - The game is old but it holds up fairly well.

  • Gato Roboto - Simple and short, it didn’t wow me.

  • For The Warp - It’s an ok deckbuilder, though some design choices are frustrating.

  • Nobody Wants to Die - It’s an interactive movie, interestingly the real puzzle to solve is understanding the story, as the in-game investigations are mostly linear.

  • Unworthy - Pretty good game overall.

  • Alwa’s Awakening - This is first and foremost a platformer.

  • Alwa’s Legacy - It’s an improvement in all aspects, all the design gripes were worked on.

  • Cathedral - The retro inspiration is not hidden, and it’s also quite challenging,

  • Everafter Falls - Ended up being a pretty chill and fun experience.

  • Death’s Door - The permanence of death is something feared by many. Each have their reasons, but they mustn’t forget to live. For we all must die one day, so let’s enjoy what we have now.

  • Gorogoa - It has a pretty interesting concept, and feels quite unique even as a puzzle game.

  • Wandersong - If you ever wanted to sing through all obstacles, this is the game for you.

  • Full Throttle Remastered - Interesting experience but I’m glad it’s over.

  • Yume Nikki - It’s closer to an interactive art gallery than a game to play through.

  • Almost There: The Platformer - Too much quantity over quality makes the many levels not that interesting to go through, with a lot of rehashing.

  • Do Not Feed the Monkeys - Overall pretty good if that’s your kind of game.

  • Spaceship Looter - Lacks enough content to last more than a pair of hours.

  • A Story About My Uncle - This is no mere walking simulator, you will do PARKOUR!

  • Minecraft - The game to rule them all.

  • Arknights - I tend to avoid gacha like the plague. But this game, it’s a real game, the strategy is really rich and deep.

  • Paradigm - It takes itself seriously in not being serious, and that makes it work well as an adventure game.

  • NAIRI: Tower of Shirin - The backtracking and strange feeling of the story was too distracting from the great art and fun dungeons.

  • Yoku’s Island Express - What a good surprise, I never expected pinball would work this well as a metroidvania.

  • Samorost 1 - Now that’s nostalgic, one of the very first flash games I played.

  • The Darkside Detective - Not all the jokes landed but it was overall a fine weekender.

  • Katawa Shoujo - It opened my eyes and touched my heart. I stopped running away from listening to myself and faced the coming day.

  • Lil Gator Game - It was a really fun collectathon with a creative theme.

  • Solar 2 - Fun and simple food-chain game in space with planets and black holes.

  • Chants of Sennaar - To share common interests, one first needs to be able to communicate. Finding how to accord with others is how you can solve many conflicts.

  • Historia - Visual novels that invite you in their world without telling you all of it are the kind I enjoy the most.

  • Regions Of Ruin - Pretty fun mix of colony building and rpg hacknslash.

  • Love is Dead - More action than puzzle, it was alright.

  • Confess My Love - Interesting proof of concept, the gameplay is quite lacking.

  • Bastion - A really solid game that aged quite well.

  • Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden - A solid stealth tactical game, don’t play it expecting Xcom or you’ll fail.

  • Hacknet - Deserves to be called a classic.

  • Hollow Knight: Silksong - There are few games like this, with a rich world to get lost in and very pleasing combat. Just like Elden Ring before, this throws a big stone in the pond, and we’ve yet to see the ripple effects.

  • Caravan SandWitch - It’s an alright cozy collectathon.

  • Happy Game - It’s an interesting experience with disturbing imagery.

  • Spin Hero - Too undercooked.

  • Hyper Light Drifter - This game has a lot of merit for being a pioneer but it also has flaws.

  • Moonlighter - Does its best with a fun concept, can be improved further.

  • Hexcells - A bit like the first Polimines, it felt like a tutorial to the next games.

  • Super Daryl Deluxe - This is the story of an underdog. Silent and unassuming, easy to miss. But in truth a super deluxe potential lies within, waiting only to be unleashed! This is the story of this game.

  • Hexcells Plus - Expect intricate layouts to unravel in this brain buster.

  • SquareCells - The challenge is present here, and should fulfill like the others.

  • Rebel Galaxy - It has a really good vibe as a space captain sim.

  • CrossCells - Another solid entry in the Cells series, it’s quite different from usual.

  • Beholder: Conductor - Dystopian nightmares make super fun gameplay.

  • Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault - You can see the dev team tried to make all the mechanics better and more interesting than in the first game.

  • Hexcells Infinite - It’s very hard to resist doing one more random puzzle.

Titles

  • Unlimited power
    • SpellForce: Conquest of Eo was really surprising, I initially thought it would be an ok spinoff game, but it turned out to be the best wizard tower game I ever played.
  • Chasing tales
    • OmOneko came out of nowhere and ended up being a significant step in my game development journey. I’ll never not be proud of having done it.
  • Welcome home
    • Maliki : Poison Of The Past made me discover a side of French creation I had missed all this time. It was a fun journey, even if sadly the game didn’t get a lot of visibility.
  • Never say never
    • Arknights showed me games can still be good even with aspects I really don’t like. Giving things a try instead of throwing it away in block is important.
  • Mended heart
    • Katawa Shoujo was something that blasted me apart way back then. It felt good to reassess the journey to continue onwards.
  • Double the fun
    • Hollow Knight: Silksong threw me for a loop, it was like when I played HK but even better, and with more. It’s also when I went insane and did hitless seriously.
  • Forgotten underdog
    • Super Daryl Deluxe took me on a silly journey I never expected, and I loved it. It breaks my heart to know the game was criminally not played, it deserved so much more love.

DLC

List

Titles

  • Starry eyed
    • SpellForce: Conquest of Eo - Children of Nor added so many great new mechanics and systems, it gave me even more inspiration for creating mods.

Minecraft

List

  • Glacial Awakening - The start was really interesting, sadly it never was finished, I guess this is also part of the risks in playing modpacks.

  • Sky Capsule Project - The modpack seems to have been made by two regular but passionate people, so it was interesting to see their vision for it.

  • The Machine - This map is now part of the three maps in my “puzzle maps so incredibly good they put full paid games to shame” category. review

Titles

  • The Talos Theorem
    • The Machine was a great surprise, and it kept having layers on top of layers, like any good puzzle game needs.

Wrapping Up

66 games done this year, even though I’m not done with some of them. This was truly a bonkers year, I took a sledgehammer and blasted my pile of old installed games on my laptop, clearing almost all of it in a few months. I’ve kept up the monthly game quite well, and even managed to be part of a real steam game release, as well as making more mods on different games!

The only miss is that I couldn’t find time for my tml mods, not yet at least. Another big project has been brewing for a while too. This year was also the year I setup my HowLongToBeat collection, as a way to track all my progress better.

I’ve done a lot less minecraft, although it will still keep going strong… when I have time. This new year should see me go through more major games and projects, but still with a lot of smaller ones too. I might need to add a category for returning games, maybe?

More promising things to come, see you soon!