As we enter the final hours of 2025, we’re resurrecting an erratically-followed tradition: picking out the best games that the team played this year. It’s been another twelve months filled with thousands of new games, and we make no claim to have played all of them: these are simply the ones that we played the most, and enjoyed the most. Here’s to another round of winners in 2026.

Jon Hicks, Editorial Director

It has been another year in which I wishlisted more games than I played, and so my list of favourites is more than usually compromised. Balls have been a surprising trend, with the dazzingly over-stimulated pachinko of Ballionnaire and the artful Arkanoid iterations of Ball X Pit both standing at dozens of hours played: both of them do a fine job of dressing up a very old and simple mechanic in some very contemporary clothing, demonstrating both the timeless appeal of the classics and the power of mobile-style unlock systems.

Uncovering a sprawling family history by digging through dialup-era websites in The Roottrees Are Dead was another highlight, introducing me to the idea that the Return of the Obra Dinn could perhaps spawn a genre, although the similar structure of Seance at Blake Manor wasn’t nearly as compelling. The standout, though, was ARC Raiders: one of the year’s biggest hits and justifiably so, with outstanding visual, audio and NPC design making for the most compelling PvE title I’ve played. The buzzing, squawking drone enemies with their erratic flight paths and exposed rotors are a maddingly perfect blend of being both easy to defeat and easy to die to, and the larger enemies pose a challenge that’s incredibly satisfying to (occasionally) overcome.

Human encounters remain a knife-edge balance of risk and reward. I’ve been murdered more often than not, but there have been enough moments of random and impossible generosity to make saying hello – or deploying the international symbol of peace, the pew-pew-pew emote – worth trying, at least when my pockets are empty and there’s nothing to lose but Trials progress. The setting feels almost embarrassingly fresh, too: after decades of facing the apocalypse in generic American locations, harvesting mocha pots in ruined Mediterranean tower blocks feels like a holiday. It’s a finely-honed whole in which even a fruitless raid that ends in betrayal is enjoyable, and I’ve even grown to appreciate the ten minutes of inventory management that follows a successful one.

Sophie McEvoy, Staff Writer

Ghost of Yōtei was my most highly-anticipated title of 2025, and it met every expectation I had (and then some). Ghost of Tsushima is one of my favourite games, so its successor had a lot to live up to.

It took all of ten minutes for me to fall for Yōtei’s charm, and an hour for me to rank it above Tsushima. For starters, it has a strong female lead in Atsu (played wonderfully by Erika Ishii), whose quest for revenge takes on a much more introspective, remorseful tone as the story moves forward. But it was the world that Sucker Punch Productions crafted in the wilds of Ezo that truly captured my heart. Despite routinely slashing and hacking your way through enemies, Yōtei is a remarkably zen game that made me appreciate the beauty of trivial things.

And that’s what, to me, Yōtei is at its core. It made me appreciate the beauty of solitude, and that nature is always at your fingertips. That, and you can pet (and interact with) foxes even more in this game. And you have a wolf companion that can decimate your enemies? Ghost of Yōtei would’ve been my game of the year for those qualities alone.

Lewis Packwood, Features Editor

The year got off to a great start with the release of Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector in January. It was an absolute pleasure to spend more time in the evocative sci-fi world that Gareth Damian Martin has created, and the thoughtful evolution of the game’s dice-rolling mechanics – adding the threat that dice can permanently break – provided some tantalisingly higher stakes.

Donkey Kong Bananza was the polar opposite experience to Damian Martin’s lonely space stations, but equally welcome – a candy coloured rollercoaster ride into the depths of a planet that piles in one fantastic idea after another at a breakneck pace. But the thing I enjoyed most about it was its sheer silliness: the joyous dance numbers, the outlandish costumes, the triumphant shout of ‘BA-NA-NA’ when you nab one of the game’s hundreds of crystal banana collectibles. Sometimes silliness is just what’s needed.

Ball x Pit again couldn’t be more different, with its modern take on Arkanoid mixed with the OTT screen-filling ludicrousness of Vampire Survivors. Yet I think it shares something in common with Donkey Kong Bananza in the way it launches a constant stream of new ideas at the player. The various characters you unlock change the game in surprising ways, like launching balls from the back of the field instead of the front, and I found the constantly changing dynamic utterly compelling.

But if there’s one game I haven’t been able to stop thinking about, it’s The Horror at Highrook by Nullpointer Games, an eldritch horror-themed card-crafting RPG about four investigators looking for a missing family in a nasty old house. Mechanics-wise, there’s not much to it – you simply place an investigator in a room and click to start them on a task. A large part of the game just involves watching timers tick down. And yet it manages to generate so much atmosphere and story through that simple mechanic that I just couldn’t put it down, and its ten-hour runtime went by in a flash, leaving me hungry for more.

Oh, and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was rather good, wasn’t it? There’s little else I can say about this much-talked-about game that hasn’t been said already, except to add that it was the easiest five stars I have ever awarded in a review.

Vikki Blake, Reporter

Somewhere out there is a parallel world in which Blue Prince didn’t release in the same year as Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Somewhere out there, this phenomenal puzzle game debuted several months after Sandfall’s epic RPG, which meant it didn’t spend most of the year languishing hopelessly in its shadow. Somewhere out there, I know there are people, just like me, who would happily crown Blue Prince as their 2025 Game of the Year. Maybe even the decade. It may even be one of the best games of a generation.

Annoyingly, I can’t even tell you why. Not without giving something away, anyway. Ostensibly, your job is to reach the 46th room in an estate that only has 45 rooms, but with more layers than a chilly onion, Blue Prince endlessly shifts and changes until the original premise that brought you to the Mount Holly Estate feels little more than a fever dream.

Blue Prince isn’t just one of my favourite games of the year – it’s rapidly become one of my favourites ever. Crafty, canny, and occasionally a little cruel, its intelligent, roguelike puzzles and deceptively deep storytelling never fail to delight. Only Portal 2 – my favourite game ever – has ever made me feel as simultaneously brilliant and brain-dead as Blue Prince, but I think the latter goes even further with its maddeningly marvellous puzzling, inverting expectation over and over again.

Every single aspect of the set dressing has been chosen with care. Nothing is accidental. I can’t recall the last time a game made me gasp out loud, same as I can’t really recall the last time I had to keep a notebook by my side. But then, it’s been a long time since any game has so thoroughly charmed and hooked me as this. Please find some time over the holidays to give it a go if you’ve not already!

George Corner, Commercial Lead

When Clair Obscur swept the 2025 Game Awards there was one accolade missing from the list: the Game to Make George Cry the Fastest Ever Award. I was not ready for the emotionally devastating opening half-hour, and from that moment all I could think about was finding out the mystery behind the sinister Paintress and the annual Gommage. This turned out to be no small feat for a man with no rhythm using a combat system built around timed parrys and dodges, but with such a strong narrative offering and an utterly gorgeous world to explore, I was more than willing to suffer a few mistimed blocks if it meant spending another hour in the haunting beauty of Lumière.

Monster Hunter Wilds has tested me. The series has been a staple in mine and my friends’ lives since Monster Hunter Freedom on the PSP, but the PC release has seen fights with frame rate and performance issues as challenging to overcome as the game’s most brutal of hunts. But when Monster Hunter Wilds gets it right, it is truly a wonderful experience. The world has never felt more alive, and feels like a breathing ecosystem with endemic life and monsters going about their days, until a hunter inevitably ruins their day with a giant slab of iron.

The hunts against the Apex Predator monsters from each region are absolute cinema: when Rey Dau the Apex Predator of the Windward Plains is around, the distant sky is painted electric blue, and distant thunder crackles in the air. As you ride your Seikret towards Ray Dau’s nesting area you know you’re in for something special. The experience of dodging its lightning blasts amidst a cacophony of thunder and debris are up there with the best that a Hollywood blockbuster can offer.

Speaking of atmosphere, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Easy Delivery Co. Described to me as ‘Silent Hill meets Animal Crossing’, the PS1 aesthetic indie gem starts off as a cosy little delivery sim in a sleepy fog-covered mountain town, but slowly descends into surreal psychological horror. My sense of direction is almost as bad as my rhythm, and Easy Delivery Co’s shifting reality was a deeply unsettling experience that I wish I could forget, and experience again for the first time.