Hey gang! Lucky me to be back here again sharing my top ten games of 2025 with the GB community! If I didn’t do this, I honestly probably wouldn’t know what my favorite games of the year actually were. See, I’m too busy working on my next game! At the start of the year, I formed a new game studio: Superfuture Syndicate. That’s right, I’m back on my bullshit. I’ve definitely been working too much, but excited to bring you all something that might appear on people’s future top ten lists! But I digress. We got some rad games this year! Here are several that helped me log off amidst everything going on in the world right now. I hope you all are well and getting some of your own logged-off time with friends, family, and loved ones.
10. Kirby Air Riders
Just to set some expectations here, I’ve never been a Smash Bros. person. I deeply enjoy Masahiro Sakurai’s work from a distance. His game designer’s notebook project on youtube is packed full of the most incredible advice and insight about the art of making games. I’ve spent hours combing through it all and vacuuming up the gems of expert insight like an insatiable Kirby. My fondest memories of the original Kirby’s Air Ride was watching the number of pre-owned copies pile up at the EBX where I used to work when I was in college. The only one of his games that I’ve really played enough to love is Meteos. So what’s up with Kirby Air Riders? Why is it on my top ten list this year?
To be perfectly honest, I’m studying it more than enjoying it. Yes, there’s a ton of content and variety. Getting hands-on with City Trials mode is a lot of fun. Trying to figure it out as a designer is so interesting, because it sort of eludes any pinpointed understanding of what makes it great to play. It’s a joyful chaos more than anything else. A bunch of stuff that just happens and is increasingly ridiculous until it’s over. And it’s always over too fast. This doesn’t seem like a game where deep study and drilling is going to help. It’s about jumping in, head empty, gremlining around at 100mph for a few minutes, and then maybe trash-talking your friend for coming in second place behind your first place. But it’s all so weightless that the feeling of victory or defeat never lasts. It too quickly transforms into a feeling of “let’s go again”, and I love that for them!
9. Baby Steps
My #9 choice could not be more diametrically opposed to my #10. Made by two cool indies who happen to be my friends, and one other cool guy, Baby Steps is a stupid-fun exercise in futility. Now, I love my friends, and I want to support them. But when I saw the reveal for Baby Steps, I immediately believed it wasn’t going to be for me. Then I played it and discovered I was so wrong. I doubt I’ll be able to finish it, because I don’t have that much patience. But damn, the hours I’ve spent with it have been either laughing or screaming at 110% with nothing in between.
This is a game where the aesthetic choices so deeply support the mechanical foundation.
It needed a guy to be the guy who can’t even walk competently, and it very much has that. It needed guys to play foil to the incompetent guy, and those guys are also great.
Everything about this game is silly by design. And it never gets old. Nate’s booty cakes: timeless. Falling off a cliff when trying to open a porta-potty door: unmatched. Horse-man dicks: classic.
8. Wheel World
I found Wheel World pretty late in the year. If I’d spent more time with it, it could easily be higher up this list. It really got its hooks in me, and I’m not entirely sure why. The premise is fun~ you make buddies with a flaming skull and set off on a bicycling adventure. Already weird in a way I appreciate. Nothing in there is incredibly ground-breaking or astounding. Everything’s just really nicely done. The art style is lovely, the animation is smooth, the controls and mechanics are really enjoyable, and the setting is interesting enough. It’s just better than average in every way instead of being exceptional in one way and falling short in others. I really like it, and I want to play more, which is the best compliment I can give.
7. Time Flies
Ok, Time Flies is hard to talk about without spoiling it. There’s not a lot to it~ you play as a literal fly with an incredibly short lifespan. You obviously can’t travel very far or do very much as your life’s end rapidly approaches, but you have a long bucket list of things to do before you die. On paper, it’s a roguelike. Finding the perfect run where you complete your bucket list before kicking the bucket is a puzzle, an execution challenge, and an optimization exercise.
The visuals are one-bit, meaning every pixel is either black or white, no in-between greys. It was originally conceived for Playdate’s screen, but it honestly works well on my computer monitor too. Aesthetically, I love its minimalism. There aren’t a ton of pixels or sound waves happening here, but everything you see and hear is so specifically crafted it’s impossible to not be charmed.
6. Marvel Tōkon Fighting Souls (Beta)
I dunno if I can really count Tōkon in this list because it’s not technically released yet? But it’s here because it seems like a game specifically made for me. It’s a pretty hardcore fighting game that’s gone to great lengths to make its systems and gameplay approachable by people of all skill levels. The visuals are insanely great, and the character designs are all Japan-flavored takes on the Marvel characters. Tony Stark shows up in what looks like an Iron Man mk.Gundam suit. I was sold on that detail alone.
They ran two betas this year, each one just over a weekend. They only had six or eight playable characters out of I dunno how many. They all play pretty differently too! Seems like a ton of depth in learning any one character’s uniqueness and how to best use it in other character match-ups. And dang, the fighting systems are great, and the game absolutely blasts you with sugary goodness for pressing the right buttons at the right time. The technical execution bar is much simpler than your Street Fighters or your Tekkens or your Guilty Gearses. The learnability is all in simple inputs over longer time frames instead of complex inputs in tiny opening windows. I found myself reacting to chains of events more often than whiff-openings made by my opponents. It’s a welcome change for me and my hardening brain that can’t do anything more complex than a raging demon input anymore. I’m very much looking forward to playing the finished game, if nothing else, just to bully people with Dr. Doom as I wait for the next Avengers movie to come out.
5. Kaizen: A Factory Story
A little disclosure here: I’m pals with Matthew Burns, who was the lead writer for this as well as for all the Zachtronics games. Kaizen is technically not a Zachtronics game, but in spirit, it is extremely one of those. It’s a fun automation puzzler with a very charming narrative framework and a steady progression of complicating mechanics as the game goes on. I found myself lost in building cool thing, after cool thing until I was cranking through levels without a break. I just think it’s neat! And if you have any interest in a historical fiction of working in a Japanese factory in the 80s/90s, Kaizen should definitely scratch that itch.
4. News Tower
When I was around fifteen years old, Maxis dropped Sim Tower for Mac OS 8. In classic fashion, it was about a year or two after the Windows 98 version released, but it was new to me. I remember spending an entire Saturday just lost to being a mogul-manager of my tower, building new floors, renting out unused space, and installing elevators. News Tower scratches the exact same itch for me, but got me in a hole for two days. 200% more hole-time for me.
At its heart, this is a game about running a newspaper in New York when newspapers were still cutting-edge, dominant world-changing technology. The business mogul stuff is there! Hiring people, buying equipment, arranging & optimizing the publishing lines.
And media mogul stuff is there too! Chasing down leads, assigning the right reporters to the right stories, designing page layouts, inserting adverts, and even editing copy to reduce or introduce bias. It’s absolutely charming and un-judging as it puts you into positions where you might need to compromise your journalistic integrity to make a mayor or a mob boss happy. The game doesn’t judge you for using dirty tricks to expand your reader-base. But it does present consequences from establishing the expectations of an audience and then failing to meet them in one way or another. It’s incredibly effective at presenting these real-world dynamics, and I think we could all do with a little more media literacy these days.
3. Donkey Kong Bananza
Look, I picked up a Switch 2 this year because I was afraid that by the time Duskbloods comes out that they’d be sold out and I wouldn’t be able to find one. So I went into DK Bananza as the Switch 2 game I can probably enjoy for a little while now, while I wait. I was pleasantly surprised at what a good time Banaza actually is. Watching it on streams before I picked it up, I saw a lot of random chaos destruction along with people talking about how much fun it is to play, but it didn’t look as fun as people were saying. Playing it myself, I guess it’s just more fun to play than to watch!
One of the cooler things for me personally, playing Bananza, is studying Nintendo’s take on voxel-based environment tech. I worked on Astroneer for a couple of years, another example of fairly intense voxel tech. So I had some ideas and expectations about what kind of destruction to expect in Bananza. Even then, they got me. Those sneaky devs doing fun things with voxel tech that I would never have considered. Nintendo’s mastery is showing once again. At this point, I’m several hours and multiple layers deep. I keep hearing whispers about a mid-game pivot or surprise or secret or something. If there is something like that in this game, I haven’t reached it yet, and I’m already having a dang good time.
2. Skin Deep
Skin Deep enjoyers rise up! I guess this game didn’t make a big splash in terms of reaching tons of players, but dang, y’all need to not sleep on this game. This is a Blendo Games joint, the fine folks who did 30 Flights of Loving back in the day, and more recently, Quadrilateral Cowboy. Brendon is the king of Blendo, and he’s also a friend, so take that disclosure as you will. The lovable thing about all these games is that they’re honestly and earnestly funny. If you like enjoying things, this is a good one to enjoy.
Every level of this game is a microcosm of an immersive sim puzzle game. But first, I have to explain the premise, because: ridiculous. You are an insurance auditor specifically for space ships crewed entirely by cats. Yes, the cats are out there doing space stuff, whatever cats do in space with no humans around. At some point, uh oh! Space pirates have boarded the ship and imprisoned all the cats! That’s when their insurance kicks in, and you get thawed out from your deep space cryogenic nap to kick some space pirate booty and rescue all your cat clients. It’s so dumb, I love it.
Anyway, yeah, it’s an immersive sim. Systems that interact with other systems to make emergent gameplay! Most of the time, you’re using the systems to surprise/distract/subdue space pirates. But sometimes you’re using them to put the right space fast food order into the space drive-thru window of the ship you’re on, and the customers pay you by giving you a grenade instead of space bucks. It’s good. And the best part is when you’re rescuing a cat. You’re constantly rescuing cats, and the payoff ~ without spoiling what it is ~ never gets old.
1. Elden Ring Nightreign
If you know, you know.
I had a hard time selling some of my friends on Elden Ring because it was just too much of a barrier to entry. What’s great about Nightreign’s core loop is that it squishes 100 hours of typical souls-like progression into one-hour runs. It’s everything great about getting more powerful and crushing big boys and getting sick drops, but on speed (I presume! I’ve never done speed).
I played the base game for about 100 hours, and definitely developed a recipe for success.
The recently-released DLC changes things up just enough that my recipe no longer applies. I basically have to figure the shit out all over again, and learn the new characters, new weapons, new bosses, new ways to get crushed, and whatever else the horrible geniuses at From Software added. I’m a baby again, and I love that for me!
All this, paired with world-class character & world designs, the Elden Ring content I already love, and the trickles of Dark Souls crossover content that is all new to me, it’s my game of the year, no contest. Do yourself a favor: play it with two friends. Expect to fail over and over again. Just see how good it feels when you’ve played enough that you finally fail to fail.