I’m not going to assume it was a weird year for everyone, and hopefully it was an interesting one full of mirth and merriment, but either way another year has passed and it’s time yet again to for our year-end lists. There is a bit of December left, but I think this is the latest date in the year that 've published this list, so I think I’ve given people (aka me) enough time to try to wrap up a few last games. As with last year I’ll keep updating my personal list right up until the 31st.
In keeping with previous years, the list is largely in reverse chronological order to the best of my knowledge. There are occasions where I forget to record my end date for some games, so I do my very best to insert those games in what I think is the right spot.
Best thread of the year, year after year. I love having to put pen to paper to actually document my thoughts in more than one place, both after having beaten a game with a review or some sort, but also a bit more collectively after having sat on it, but not like… years later. I keep a list of every game I’ve played (since getting on Grouvee) in a rated order and man, without those notes or some context your brain begins to drift and remember some games as having been better than they were. Also, I know there’s a top games thread, but I don’t tend to play new releases and I like to keep my thoughts in one place so I’m dropping them all here, in no particular order:
At the end of last year, I’d just finished reading all of Umineko, I continued to be engaged with catching up on theories and community memes, etc. Great series, hampered by having either a very rough intro OR only having a good intro, based on some neysayer’s perspectives. I’m an apologist and completely forgive it its sins, its going to be a part of me forever, even if I can never convince anyone to read all 1600 pages or so of it.
2025 was the year of friendslop, noteably stuff like REPO, you’ll never have more fun than playing a game at midnight on a friday with a bunch of goof off friends after a hard week. The entire genre has come under criticism, but I see them as basically toys, which, like something like the sims, have a place in our lives.
A friend forced Tunic on me and, while I didn’t love the game, I was definitely happy to have experienced it. It’s hard to describe without spoiling it, it’s one of those games everyone should try while having read nothing about, but I’ll just say that really whacky concept games have the unique privilege of feeling like you’re having a conversation with the creator, which I really love
Cassette Beasts - Pokemon-a-like-open-world-ossauraus. Not my thing, but I can imagine it being a millenial love letter item that’ll continue to have zealous fans for years and, while the post game and online elements don’t add much for me, it’s nice that people will continue to have numerous ways to interface with the game and will likely have a good time keeping the experience fresh, you can definitely feel Stardew Valley’s public influence on games like this.
Chants of Sennar - Heavy storytelling mixed with elaborate logic puzzles and just enough puzzle-infused-backtracking to make the game feel like a world and not a string of levels, but without falling into the open-world pit. Play it like I did, as a follow up to Tunic
Minit - wonderful zelda-flavored puzzler completable in 3 hours, real good time! Unfortunately, its extra content sort of overstays its welcome by expecting you to replay a lot of material to get any fun out of it, effectively meaning it has no extra content, really, all in all the PH evens out, try it out
Guilty As Sock! Friendslop roleplaying game, surprisingly fun with online weirdos, cursed for me to enjoy it more than anyone else I know. It’s sort of a half step to those online phoenix wright sims and has given me a taste for going back for those
I dove headfirst into Project Zomboid, a phase that I’m sure plenty of people have lived through, but like Guilty as Sock, you’re doomed if you enjoy it more than your friends
Kingdom Two Crowns - Lovely game, the multiplayer fundamentally fixes the original version, it truly feels like the 1.0 to the previous ‘games’ .3 or .6 versions if you catch my drift, very fun, but a bit monotonous to complete
Roller Coaster Tycoon Deluxe - Great fun for 2 hours, but has that Minecraft element where your soul sort of drifts out over time as what you’re striving for progressively feels like nothing, even the missions don’t really help and, as an adult, the difficulty in building coasters personally from the group up sort of dulls the edge more quickly than I’d like
Vampire: Coteries of New York - Cute visual novel, definitely captures a broader set of interactions if all you’ve played is the original Bloodlines, but it doesn’t really do anything transformative and (similar to Minit’s sins above) it physicaly doesn’t let you complete even half of the plot threads in one play through, which is really, really annoying
Peak - Amazing friendslop experience, I had tons of fun and I love the approach to the community the creators have taken
Marvel Rivals - A wonderful game held back by the fact that it’s the year 2025. I really, really would just prefer shooting games go back to arena free for alls or TF2-style 16x16 game modes with !rtd enabled, people these days are really missing how fun a game can be if the company operating it doesn’t have a stranglehold. Nonetheless, it is in the year 2025 and so am I, I’m glad a game this fun can come up, I just hope patch-complexity and visual clarity doesn’t nosedive the game’s fun long enough for me to get back to it. Release Cyclops or we riot.
Unfair Flips - Fun for 5 minutes, boring for 10 minutes, fun for twenty minutes, boring for eternity. The meme has eaten its own tail.
Logic Bombs - Play Logic Bombs. Its hard, it’s up its own ass, that’s fine. The real juice is getting so deep into the spiney, spindley hellhole of the later puzzles that you start to experience that ‘conversation with the creator in your mind’ element that I reference above, great stuff Matthew
Smash Ultimate - I can’t reiterate my whole review here. I relent that the gameplay is basically as good as melee, but they just make playing the rest of the game feel like kneeling on rice.
Quest 64 - Beat it today, not nearly as bad as people make it out to be, it’s basically a slowdown-riddle Dragon Quest, I have a piece of warmth in my heart knowing that I understand its defenders now, if you had an N64 back in the day and wanted an RPG, the presentation here gives off a weird ‘lonesome kid with one toy he loves’ type of vibe, it’s got heart, just not spunk.
Metroid - Worse than you remember, even if you’re already resigned to only playing the remake. The step between this and AM2R is a city-wide chasm. I have nice things to say about it too, but I genuinely don’t understand how the metroid series sprang out of this
Hot Wheels Velocity X - Solid, look at some screenshots and you’ll get the idea, it’s all surface level, but I feel vindicated that it’s a little bit more fun than I even remember, combat balancing is fucked though
VTM Bloodlines - THATS WHY HES THE GOAT. THE GOAT (every weakness shines through, but something greater than its parts still manages to shame… almost every game today, its ireplicability still astonishes me)
RA.ONE The Game - More possible than it seems on first glance, I picked this out as a curiosity and committed to playing it when I saw it had no reviews or ratings here, by the time I did play it, it had one other rating. Who are you, why are you stranger?
Sabrina Zapped/Spooked - I like to routinely reach out and play games that, while not memorable for their capacity or quality, are more reflective of what we’d honestly have played as children. It feels like a middle-of-the-road Neopets game, in the best way (don’t play it)
SMRPG Legend of the Seven Stars - Better and worse than you remember, but surprisingly less memorable than you remember as well? It’s a bit of a mad hatter of a game in that way, even now my memories of it are fading and just the cool as hell styling remains. Worth noting this was a favorite of the early Lets Player scene because it was cool as hell and easy to emulate on zsnes
Smash Melee - Bretty good game, I guess. Gotta buy Pikmen to beat it though, and who wants to do that? 8 ^ )
Pangya Fantasy Gold - Played it as I remember being mad at sucking at the MMO back in the day. Luckily, I’m great at it, unluckily they basically ported the entire progression of an mmo into a psp title, meaning that while you can be ‘better’ than anything the game can throw at you, the game is just so. damn. long (it’s GOLF) and it expects you to be progressively more perfect that its sort of soured the idea of even trying to beat a golf game in the future. That said… there’s some mechanics here that were worth remembering, but ultimately they weren’t. I’m not sure new generations will be able to replicate the star-shining feeling that free Korean MMO’s instilled in young millenials in the 00’s, a new world is just a banner ad and download away
Inscryption - Great game, also sucks that you can miss content that then requires a really, really indepth replay to get back at. I have it on my ‘abandoned’ list just because someday I want to go back and master the freeplay mode and I just didn’t have the heart after that sappy ending.
And… that’s folks. I had a kid so there’s nothing else I could fit in in the… year… oh wait
Blue Prince - Really one of the hardest games to try to describe and a really weird mish mash of other things in the year I happened to play, the plot-detective experience of umineko, the combination of logic puzzles, brainvania elements or whatever they’re trying to call it, ARG elements, and of course the roguelike elements. Look, I still need to mark this beaten as I’ve felt like I’ve been ‘99% of the way done’ for months and been unable to juggle it and a baby, but I can tell you: It does not work. Blue Prince does too much and simply takes too much time, all in pursuit of being different, but it fails in its genuine achievement of grasping onto that difference with all its might, every bit of pain it causes you, it does on purpose. I will never be able to replicate the fun of going through this game alongside a friend, but fundamentally… just cheat, the essence of its roguelike components and forced, death slog pacing do not serve the puzzle elements that are there, so I’d really suggest that anyone with some dignity just do something to circumvent this stuff, but at the same time, doing so would be like strangling a particularly shrill baby bird in the nest. I love and hate Blue Prince, and that’s because Blue Prince successfully worked its magic on me, turning me into both a victor and its victim.
Every year I have a goal of completing at least 12 games (one for each month) and yet again, I managed to do so. Woohoo! There are so many games I’ve started I haven’t managed to complete yet but at this point, I don’t foresee completing anymore with the horrifically slow progress I’ve been making. There were also several I’ve dropped as well so I won’t be counting those or documenting them here. This year has been quite rough, especially recently, so I’m just happy I managed to beat my default goal and give myself some grace. I’ll be sharing my games in completion order and by month with some small thoughts. If you want longer thoughts, feel free to check out my reviews for them on the main site. :))
January
Citizen Sleeper
Finished Jan. 20th. This was a fantastic start to the year. I absolutely love this game and I am far from finished with it due to its various routes, choices, and endings. It’s hard to describe how quickly I fell in love with it and how much it still speaks to me now. Its limited visuals didn’t stop the developers from creating a vibrant world to explore. Starfield could never.
My Bathtub Companion
Finished Jan. 20th. Technically this isn’t a game but a tech demo for the developer’s next title, Tropical Monster Girls, which is now out. Free, silly, and spicy. No ducks were harmed in the making.
What in Carnation?!
Finished Jan. 25th. This title is an abandoned work-in-progress so it technically isn’t a fully developed game but I enjoyed that it was a visual novel with unique wordplay minigames and focused on the neurodivergent experience.
Depression Quest
Finished Jan. 26th. This game and Gone Home were the triggers for GamerGate. If you want to play a game that upset a ton of misogynistic men, start here!
Sparkle Unleashed
Finished Jan. 27th. The match-3 puzzle itch can never truly be scratched yet this game really hit the spot. Being an older title, it also had retro vibes. A double whammy for me.
February
Virtual Cottage
Finished Feb. 21st. After 100 hours of being background music while I telecommuted from home, I am now quite a big fan of lofi and since moved on to listening to Lofi Girl during work hours. The sequel has been announced but hasn’t been released yet. Hopefully it’s good.
March
No games completed this month!
April
Google Earth VR
Finished Apr. 5th. I don’t actually think I finished this game but I must’ve been done with it. It’s not really a game but an experience. I think there’s some tours and badges you can earn that I haven’t yet so I might revisit this one in the future to see if there’s any activities to do. I wish it wasn’t abandoned. There’s so much more than can be done with something like this. Google disappointing me yet again.
Google Spotlight Stories: Age of Sail
Finished Apr. 5th. A wonderful cinematic. It really conveyed a sense of adventure.
Google Spotlight Stories: Pearl
Finished Apr. 5th. Have a chair ready for this one or you’ll be at the wrong height for the duration of the movie like I was. Oops!
MiSide
Finished Apr. 20th. It took me so long to finish this game because I’m such a baby with horror. It was pretty fun and had a cute art style.
May
Top Shop
Finished May 13th. Was not expecting to love this game as much as I did. Very addicting board game. I played alone but playing it with friends seemed like it’d be super fun as well.
Dance Dance Revolution
Finished May 17th. The first game in the series. It didn’t have the features I was used to in later entries but it was a delight to experience its humble beginnings.
Split Fiction
Finished May 19th. Was pretty disappointed with this one. It Takes Two was one of my favorite gaming experiences with my partner and this one did not live up to its predecessor.
June
Alleyway
Finished Jun. 6th. A simple brick breaker game that was fun to play over the course of a few hours on a Friday night.
Balloon Fight
Finished Jun. 7th. Didn’t expect to find this game enjoyable, let alone chaotically hilarious trying not to die.
Gartic Phone
Finished Jun. 14th. Not a game you can truly finish because this is a party game to play with friends but I definitely feel done with it unless someone asks for another round.
Katawa Shoujo
Finished Jun. 25th. I’m really proud of myself for finally getting around to experiencing this game. It had been living in my bookmarks for years and I managed not only to beat it, but 100% it.
City Connection
Finished Jun. 27th. There’s a lot of fun facts about this game and I wasn’t expecting to like it as much as I did, even though I was terrible at it. In some ways it reminds me of Splatoon with trying to paint everything a certain color with your car.
July
Piczle Cross: Story of Seasons
Finished Jul. 4th. I love Picross and I grew up loving Harvest Moon / Story of Seasons so this seemed like a match made in heaven except most of the pixel art is atrocious so while it was fun gameplay wise, artistically it mostly looked like ass. Also they could’ve used way more art or music tracks for this game
Bejeweled Deluxe
Finished Jul. 5th. My friends were so confused why I even bothered playing this one instead of the much better sequel but I was curious to experience the first entry. It was simple and fun and there’s not much to it. Many years later, its inspirations have given birth to spicy match-3 puzzle games so I have a lot to thank it for.
Hidden Cats in London
Finished Jul. 12th. A hidden object game themed around London. It was enjoyable. At this point I’m going to end up playing all the games in the series.
Hidden Cats in Rome
Finished Jul. 12th. This one is themed around Rome and the biggest level involved a giant brawl in the Coliseum which was a lot of fun.
We Were Here Expeditions: the FriendShip
Finished Jul. 21st. Played this with my partner. I enjoyed the ability to replay puzzles to get the highest score since that determined how decked out your ship got. Why do the endings have to be so morbid though???
August
Dr. Mario
Finished Aug. 17th. Played through all the levels in solo mode. I love this game and save scumming makes it so much more relaxing!
Yoshi
Finished Aug. 30. There isn’t really a way to end this game and I’ve played it many times before but never marked it as complete on Grouvee so I played it on this day and marked it complete hahaha.
September
Caravan SandWitch
Finished Sep. 14th. I loved this game so it was shocking to see so many mixed reviews for it. It seemed like this may have been many AAA gamer’s first trek into an indie experience and were expecting a bit too much. I enjoyed it thoroughly and it brought up memories of my childhood, which I wasn’t expecting.
Adventures of Lolo
Finished Sep. 26th. While this game is fun, it took me a long time to finish it because I got bored.
Mario Kart World
Finished Sep. 29th. I beat the main campaign but I have many collectibles to unlock yet have little desire to do so currently.
October
The Annual Ghost Town Pumpkin Festival
Finished Oct. 17th. Played this with a large group of friends and had a great time. I hope the game keeps receiving annual updates so I have an excuse to return to it each year.
The Witch Girls
Finished Oct. 24th. This game was weird and ominous and gross. A truly indie experience.
November
No completed games this month!
December
Hidden Cats in Santa’s Realm
Finished Dec. 22nd. This game was kinda awful. Easily the worst in the series. My poor ears and eyes.
I completed 17 games this year and played 68 total. A lot of them were multiplayer games and demos for upcoming titles. In November, I polished off a couple games that I had started earlier in the year while I was riding the high of finishing other titles. I placed an orange heart next to my favorites from this year.
January
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 - Heart of Chornobyl (2025-01-12)
Mouthwashing (2025-01-16)
April
The Last of Us Part 2 (2025-04-09)
Final Fantasy X (2025-04-18)
May
Split Fiction (2025-05-19)
Revenge of the Savage Planet (2025-05-25)
June
Spilled (2025-06-29)
July
We Were Here Expeditions: The Friendship (2025-07-21)
The games in order how much i liked them. Vampire Survivors - it’s a drug, an evil drug. RiME - I loved it. It’s beautiful and melancholic. The story is told without words, mostly by environment and it still manages to be very emotional. Into the Breach - FTL is one of my favourite games of all time and ITB lived to my hype. It is a mech-strategy with multiple squads that are not just skins but totally change the way you play. Because it’s procedurally generated you want to do one more run. Very addicting. Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime - because couch co-op with my brother during Christmas time is the best Night in the Woods - it’s very good depiction of problems with mental health. Mae has a problem with managing her anger and her depression caused her to drop out of college. The theme of a young person’s helplessness is interwoven with a Lovecraftian existential dread. What Remains of Edith Finch - another one about mental illness, generational trauma and neglect. It is a good game to discuss with friends. DARQ - A must play for fans of gothic aesthetics and Tim Burton, the puzzles are solid. There are 2 free DLC, I especially loved “The Crypt”. The game was made almost entirely by 1 person and you feel that this is an artistic piece, not a company product. Universe for Sale - sf adventure influenced by Lovecraft and cosy games, fresh and weird. The Last Door - Lovecraftian mystery with great atmosphere and many memorable moments. Mutazione - very slow point’n’click about gardening in a village somewhere in supernatural Latin America. I loved the fresh setting, and a small every-day drama. Call of the Sea - it’s Lovecratian, based on lore from “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” but without bleakness. It’s more like The Mummy or Indiana Jones. Strange Horticulture - Lovecraftian gardening game and we have a cat. +100 points for a cat. The Mr. Rabbit Magic Show - free game for celebration of 10 years of Rusty Lake. Behind the Frame: The Finest Scenery - 1 hour long, heart warming game about artists with very well executed plot twist. Frostpunk - Very dystopian, to survive winter apocalypse I start with enforcing child labour. I always died on my first run of scenario - there is no way to prepare for every possible crisis. King of Dragon Pass - The most complicated text game I ever played (retro gaming from 1999), the RNG elements are a bit annoying but I managed to become a tribe leader after some save scumming The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery - hahahaha it was cheesy in a good way. FMV games are “love it or hate it” but everyone should try at least one. Axiom Verge - I love HR Giger biomechanical style and it’s mixed here with Sumerian Lore. A bit too much backtracking but it’s normal for metroidivania. Journey of a Roach - funny point’n’click about bugs in a postapo world, nonsensical fun Samorost 3 - a must play for its design and music Pikuniku - another funny one to elevate the mood Monument Valley II - liked the style but it’s too easy, it feels like a walking sim instead of a puzzler Q.U.B.E. Director’s Cut - very solid puzzles that needed a better plot (cheesy monologues ruin the mood for me) and more bold art choice than boring “sterile lab style”. Escape Academy - for fans of Escape Rooms Pineapple on Pizza - a free little game (15 min) about a party on an island, the ending made me laugh . Hue - puzzler about a colour manipulation that could use a better plot (I already don’t remember what was it about). Miniatures - artistic minigames about loss of childhood and other depressing stuff. Toem - black and white game about the love of photography, very relaxing. The Operator - it was memorable, but they overdid the ending, I get it, nothing I do matters, thank you The Bureau: XCOM Declassified - At first I couldn’t understand why people hated that game. It was a bit poorer Mass Effect - maybe not fine art but solid craftsmanship. And then I’ve got such bleak ending, out of knowhere, because I’ve chosen to play as a lady, and it cancels the things I did previously? Yooka-Laylee - I liked it at first but dropped it - too much backtracking and the voices of creatures are so bad i had to mute them. Jotun - I love Viking mythos but dropped the game after reaching the last boss. The whole game was about learning the patterns of boss attacks and the last one is a pure RNG with unsolvable AoE. Zoeti - cliché fantasy card game, it was OK. Octahedron - precise platformer for hardcore players, too difficult for me, had to drop. Kamaeru: A Frog Refuge - game about a sanctuary for frogs, we make ponds and buy benches, it was repetitive after a while, but the fun was killed by the game crashes.
Sorry for bad grammar, I don’t have the strength to check the spelling. I had good party, hehe.
For me, Vampire Survivors was pretty addictive at first ! But eventually I learn how to do it, so my character’s pretty much invincible–which you have to be, considering the screen is full of infinite enemies–so it’s just a game of standing there while enemies run into you and PERISH. One time, I went into the other room to chat with a friend on Discord while playing. He didn’t get the appeal of this kind of game which I thought was understandable
Currently working on one called XMas Survivors, starring SANTA himself–I was hoping to finish for this year [list], but the last stage is quite a difficulty spike. I think I’m pretty close, but who knows if it even has an ending [yet?]
The first one of these I discovered this year was Karate Survivor, which I found to be a little bit more like a standard game–beat a boss to unlock the next stage ! I preferred this model
