2025 was an incredible year of gaming for me, I loved a bunch of games and there are a hundred more titles that I didn’t even get to play. It wasn’t quite as grand for the industry though, as consolidation and layoffs continue. EA will soon be owned by the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund where they will attempt to gameswash their image, and the BDS boycott of Microsoft is still necessary, even if the Xbox itself has flatlined. I would have more hope for 2026 if AI wasn’t looming over everything, ready to smother creativity in the crib.
But the games persist. Here’s our top 10 games of 2025, now stamped with the First Hour Seal of Quality.
First off, I don’t own a PS5, so its January release on PC was my first opportunity to play it. Secondly, I don’t care, this is my list.
If there was an award for Most Game, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth would be its recipient hands down. I spent over 100 hours with it and just wanted more. I don’t even like the original PS1 game that much, it was a staple of my childhood but I think I resented it a bit for not being on a Nintendo console. But I found I loved Final Fantasy VII Remake, its cast of characters charmed me to death, and the battle system felt like a perfect meld of the past and present.
Rebirth literally improved on every aspect of Remake, made it open world, added a deep card game, and then piled on even more features, mini-games, and yes, fan service. I guess I’m a sucker for the Final Fantasy VII universe now that I’m in my 40s. I even read the Aerith and Tifa novel because I couldn’t get enough of the world.
There’s a fair argument that there’s simply too much in the game, but too much is something that makes the medium unique. I can spend 100 hours in a game and someone else can spend 50. We both experienced all the main story events and met the same characters, but I just wanted more world-building, more checklists completed, more mini-games discovered; movies, books, and television can’t offer this kind of experience. I love a linear, directed game, but sometimes I just want to stand at the buffet table for hours on end.
Without a doubt, with no shame, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is my 2025 Game of the Year.
Exploring the estate on Mt. Holly in Blue Prince for the first time felt like a once-in-a-lifetime experience for me. Here was a first-person puzzle game set in a house lovingly filled with confounding rooms that felt tailor made for puzzle sickos. Not since Return of the Obra Dinn have I sat down with pen and paper in hand writing pages of notes. Every breakthrough made me feel like a genius, every new locale challenged me to not only understand its immediate space, but how it should fit in with the rest. And when I finally reached Room 46, I knew my journey had just begun.
I’ve been a fan of Supergiant Games since Bastion in 2011, and their first ever sequel in Hades 2 was a no-brainer for me. I gave early access a shot but decided to wait for the full game, and I’m so happy I did. It’s distinctly iterative on Hades 1, but I just have to love a game where dying means I get all new conversations, weapons, and power-ups. The character art, voice acting, and music is all sublime. Melinoë’s journey from a warhead launched at Chronos to something else entirely is also compelling. I’m excited for what Supergiant has in store for us next.
While it’s not a generational game like Super Mario Odyssey, Donkey Kong Bananza still blew me away with its entire presentation. The music, the level design (especially the last few, geez!), the end game twist, the rush of bananza mode, the technical marvel of the elephant, and of course, the mass destruction possible. The Switch 2 hasn’t been nearly as special as the original launch, but I’ll at least be able to point to Donkey Kong as being a favorite release of mine. Let Pauline sing!
Final Fantasy X is a favorite of mine, so when my son said in August, “we should buy this Clair Obscur game because it’s probably going to be game of the year,” I didn’t hesitate. For those who come after me to play this, know you’re in for a journey: an all-time soundtrack, desperately cool art design, and a truly engrossing story. Honestly, if Expedition 33 had focused the second half of the game on Maelle instead of Verso, this might be my own game of the year, but I think this fundamentally holds the game back for me from reaching the top.
If there’s a reason I would ever move to New York City, it would be Dave Gilbert of Wadjet Eye Games’ endless series of point and click devotions to the Big Apple: The Shivah, five Blackwell games, Unavowed, and now 2025’s Old Skies. Set across a selection of time periods in the city, the only constant is you and your team of time travelers. The past is malleable so storefronts, news articles, and even people disappear in front of you as time’s ripples spread. Another absolute banger from this team, Old Skies features their best voice acting yet, and more than a few tears are in store for you.
I mentioned Obra Dinn earlier, but the true successor to it in 2025 is The Seance of Blake Manor from Spooky Doorway. Complex, interlocking systems give you the sense of being a real detective solving the disappearance of a woman at a creepy estate. Irish fae and Christian angels manifest for real in this grand puzzle deduction game, where time only progresses as you interview subjects or investigate objects. It’s a brilliant gameplay conceit that gives you the freedom to think and deduce at your own pace while still putting some mild pressure on you to advance. With a slew of colorful and memorable characters, I won’t soon forget my weekend at the manor.
I wrote about Angeline Era just this month, but I’ll forever take the opportunity to plug this little bumpslash that could. If you want your 3D action games a little less about destruction and a little more about the battle over Ireland between its fae and fallen angels (deja vu from above), this game is for you.
2025 was shockingly packed with detective puzzle games, but The Roottrees are Dead still makes my list. In a year where I’ve been struggling to finish the Miles Edgeworth collection, I honestly think the Ace Attorney series should pivot to some real deduction puzzles to keep it interesting. After 20 years I just don’t find myself very interested anymore. But Roottrees combines 90s computer aesthetics with corkboard style analysis perfectly, asking the player to fill in a vast family tree ripe with infidelity and drama. Released in January, it was an auspicious announcement of what was to come.
In what could just be another mini-game in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Dragonsweeper is a Minesweeper clone with a surprising amount of depth that had me hooked for a week when I should have been working. Just go play it right now, it’s free and a ton of fun. Prepare to die while you learn its rules.
Wonderfully weird and full of tiny surprises, Before the Green Moon is a must play for fans of Harvest Moon 64 or melancholic worlds. Released in 2023, it’s a short and bittersweet taste of yesteryear in tomorrow’s world.
Turns out some 3D games from 1998 are still excellent when given full camera controls, a steady framerate, and a bunch of quality of life features.This isn’t an official remaster though, but the PC port of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. What was a perfect game at release is even perfecter now, as the game design bones are still as strong as ever. And the Water Temple is still one the most ambitious, best designed Zelda dungeons ever, I hate it!
Possibly the most disappointing release of the year for me, I just don’t have the combination of skill and patience anymore to play Silksong. While I loved Hollow Knight in 2018, Silksong feels much harder to me and features zero accessibility options to tune the difficulty. I’d love to dive back in, but I defeated Moorwing and just kind of sputtered out after that. I feel no shame in admitting I played Hades 2 in God Mode, turned Final Fantasy VII Rebirth down to easy difficulty for its optional superboss, and appreciated from Expedition 33 that its story-level difficulty was available to me if I ever needed it. Not so much with Silksong, which I may never get to enjoy further because Team Cherry is not interested in difficulty or accessibility options.
Hopefully you recognize the 16-bit, Final Fantasy VI-esque characters now! There’s Aerith of course, Simon from Blue Prince, Melinoë from Hades 2, Pauline from Donkey Kong Bananza, and Maelle from Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. They’re set against a section of the main art from Old Skies. The Aerith sprite was originally found online and Maelle was mostly based on a perler bead pattern; Simon, Melinoë, and Pauline are all my creations, for better and worse! The font is OPTIEngeEtienne.
I’m very much against AI art, and though I’m not much of an artist myself, the decision to draw the sprites myself was an easy one! I had fun making the designs, even if I did mostly base them off Aerith. I have a greater appreciation of the format now, and can say I successfully made some art alongside my game jam entry! Try it yourself, and have a wonderful 2026!
