Another year came and went, but overall I had a great time with the video games I was able to get through! This year admittedly sucked globally, but I dunno I can’t deny I had a lot of growth come through 2025 and really motivate me to be more involved in the communities I’m part of. In a way, my top five games of 2025 reflect my own willingness this year to focus on the people around me and the things I care about.
5. UNBEATABLE
For all the gripes I have with the narrative, I still think everyone should go play D-Cell’s hot new rhythm game. The soundtrack rules and the character designs are fun as hell! I didn’t mention it in my review, but the voice cast is also a lot of fun, a mix between people new to the VO scene and some seasoned actors giving fun performances. It’s also been a catalyst for getting me back into my rhythm game fascination as of late, especially thinking about the ways rhythm games handle their own systems of making the player interact with a song beyond solely listening.
4. Dispatch
I feel like the older I get the less and less I’m eyeing release calendars. Things that get announced at a Keighley sanctioned event can show up in my radar, but it’s not like I’ll sit there and mark everything that I’ll be eager to see once it’s out, especially now that concerts and games are costing the same and I usually know which one wins out for my tastes and wallet. It wasn’t until Jackson was playing this game on stream where I went “oh yeah this was shown off a year ago” and got a little intrigued to pick the game up. Turns out it’s pretty damn good as well! As a team management sim, the game is fun to engage with and I had a great time sorting my heroes for a day’s worth of missions and obstacles. It’s simple, but in a way that makes the guessing of which stats to prioritize for a request fun by having to guess through the writing. I also had a pretty good time with the story! Aaron Paul’s performance as Mecha Man is subtle but still a lot of fun, as is the rest of the cast. The romance side of the narrative is definitely the weakest which makes its prominence a little jarring, but all the chances I got to hang with the Z-Team made those stumbles just another part to experience overall. Whatever the plans for a next game look like, the massive success this game has had should hopefully allow for a vision that can take a few more risks while still keeping this newly found core of what makes a superhero narrative work in games.
3. Umamusume: Pretty Derby
I am not a gacha gamer. I have next to no experience with gacha games and don’t really plan too. Outside of the moral decay that comes with everyone going for a loot box, as games they never really interest me and I never get deep enough to warrant that hook in. Even with friends who talk to me about the narrative in games like Arknights or Honkai Impact and Honkai StarRail, the act of playing through the game just never appealed to me and would make me not care enough to get through the developing plot. All of this to say the horse girls got me, they got me good, dog. Umamusume: Pretty Derby is something I knew little about in the years prior to its global release. At most, I watched an episode of season 3 of the anime while getting ready in my Japan trip last year. As news came about the impending global release in June, I didn’t anticipate what a tidal wave of adoration was coming in the months to come. The game itself is a raising sim akin to Monster Rancher or Princess Maker where you train a young Umamusume during the three years of her racing career at Tracen Academy. Build her stats correctly and you ensure she’s prepared to take on the obstacles ahead of her. The simplicity makes the game pretty easy to hop in which I appreciate, a full gameplay loop taking about 20-30 minutes. On top of that I just had a lot of fun with each character and how their real life horse racing career correlates to the gijinka being shown off on screen. The music is also really fun to listen to, which makes the various remixes I’ve heard at raves all the more fun. Seeing the way multiple people have built out smaller communities through art and music based on this game has been very interesting to see, and is something I do feel positive about as we go through an ever expansive wave of gambling on everything.
2. DELTARUNE Chapters 3+4
2025 marked 10 years of Toby Fox’s Undertale, and also marked the release of the next installments in his current game Deltarune. I’ve been a fan of Fox’s work for some time now, and these current releases have definitely kept the anticipation for the full game well satiated. Chapter 3 felt light when it came to its story, but was still fun to get through and have these character moments crop up between Kris, Ralsei, and Susie. Chapter 4 in turn had a huge focus on where to take the next beats of the story as we get past the halfway point of this game. It’s interesting to follow the path Deltarune has taken since its initial release in 2017 and how the addition of more people to the team has allowed Toby to iterate more on what this story can be. Chapter 5 releases the very next year and I wait excitedly for whenever the next installment of the game will be available. But never forget, until there is an actually slated day of release, any day can be Deltarune Tomorrow.
1. Skate Story
Skate Story and Unbeatable are games about the process of making things, and both of these games released in a year where I felt the least creatively tapped in to my writing. It’s appropriate then that they bookend this list given how much I still think about Skate Story’s approach to rekindling a desire to create. I spoke about the game at length already, but it really is something to be felt and experienced on its own. I actually got to talk with Sam Eng at MAGFest, and something that was interesting to learn was the inclusion of Blood Cultures’ music into the game and how it came about. This game had been in development for some time and as both Eng and the band are creative pen pals of sorts, it would lead to some songs released before the game having this focus on the moon or of fragility through metaphors of glass. In turn, the game and levels become built around songs and also led to further discussion around albums, Eng being a fellow album enjoyer and the importance of tracklisting when it comes to putting a series of songs together beyond just a concept album. I think that’s what makes Skate Story so compelling to me, that its focus and ideas exist beyond the inherent artifice of the game. Its music is what I listen to when I cross the Manhattan Bridge to work, and while I might not be heading down to Zumiez to pick up a board, I do look at 2026 as an opportunity for more, regardless of how that more takes shape.
