Britton Peele is a writer and pop culture critic who somehow found himself in the role of a Product Manager for Chicago Public Media despite living in Texas. He spreads too much nonsense on Bluesky.
For all the problems with the “industry” around games media, being able to write or talk about video games and have even a tiny audience doing it has always been one of the greatest feelings in the world to me. Over the years, that has meant doing it as a fan with a blog, as a freelancer for places like GameSpot, as a (now former) staffer for The Dallas Morning News, or just ranting on social media, and after well over a decade of doing it professionally, there is still at least a little bit of magic in it.
In recent years, though, I’ve had to shift my career more to the background, supporting news media in roles that are more techy and strategic. (Speaking of which, please support The Chicago Sun-Times and WBEZ! Independent journalism that’s not owned by a billionaire!) That has meant depressingly few opportunities to talk about games for a large audience, except for the days when I manage to trick Jeff Grubb into letting me show up on Game Mess Mornings. So I am extremely grateful and excited for this excuse to share some pent up thoughts about gaming in 2025, a year I personally think was exceptionally strong.
Most Disappointing Revival That I Ended Up Liking Anyway
Survival Kids
The original Survival Kids is a hidden gem. I wouldn’t hesitate to call it one of the best Game Boy games, but I was the only kid in my friend group that ever really acknowledged it existed. We never got the numbered sequel here in the US, but when the series made its triumphant return as Lost in Blue on the Nintendo DS, I was ecstatic.
The Switch 2 revival of Survival Kids was cursed from the start, being the reveal trailer that totally glitched out during one of the earliest Nintendo Directs about the system. My heart soared when I saw the announcement… then got crushed when I realized it was a multiplayer-focused, level-based puzzle game rather than a Harvest Moon-esque game of time management.
When playing alone, that feeling persisted. Survival Kids was not even remotely what I wanted from the series, and it was looking like my biggest disappointment of the year.
But then I played it with my six-year-old, who loved every second of it. He loved exploring together and cooperating with me. He loved amassing a collection of resources and slowly lugging them from location to location (100% needlessly, I must stress, but he persisted). He even loved working together to try to get more stars on each stage, which is something I wasn’t sure he would have patience for. The game is not particularly long, but we wrung a lot out of it as a duo.
So despite my grumpiness about what could have been, I ended up having quite a bit of fun. It’s not “my” Survival Kids. But it’s his, and I can be happy about that.
Best Game I Only Played Because of RetroAchievements
Clock Tower
When I was a young, innocent child browsing the aisles of Blockbuster, I would sometimes catch a glimpse of Clock Tower on the PlayStation (a game I now know to actually be the second in the series) and be horrified. Seeing giant, bloodied scissors wielded by a man who surely intended to cut my head off was too much for a good Christian boy like me to bear, and I couldn’t imagine ever touching it.
But I’m addicted to RetroAchievements. Lately, I’ve had a blast with their various community-run events, which often encourage me to try out games I never would have played before (or, sometimes, never even knew existed). This year’s Halloween event was a bit of a “choose your own adventure” affair where you could pick your own games to complete, but everybody had to start with the same one: Clock Tower.
Turns out, though, that the game in question was actually the Super Famicom original, which never made it to the US until much later (thus the confusing Clock Tower PSX box I saw as a kid). Much to my surprise, this game isn’t actually some horrifying, blood-soaked murder simulator but is instead a relatively cerebral point-and-click adventure game — a genre I actually like quite a bit!
I didn’t love every second of it, and I’m not sure if I’ll continue the series, but I’m very glad I faced my fear and realized that this horror classic is nothing like what I thought it was.
Best Game Based on a Book
The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick Taking Game
I’ve been trying to escape our increasingly digital hellscape and be a bit more analog this year – writing more by hand, reading more physical books, and playing more tabletop games. The problem with that last one? I don’t have a lot of local friends, especially ones that would be up for board game night.
So I picked up this new Lord of the Rings game because I love Middle-earth, because I’d heard good things, but most importantly, because it can be played solo. It’s a cooperative trick-taking game with actual progression and story, giving you a charming way to play through chapters of Tolkien’s book.
It’s clearly a game optimized for 3-4 players (playing alone actually has you playing with four separate hands), but the solo and two-player rules are well-designed, and it has been a fun way to revisit one of my favorite fantasy stories.
Best Pac-Man Game
Shadow Labyrinth
Is Shadow Labyrinth an exceptionally stellar Metroidvania? No. I mean, it’s fine. I had a lot of fun with it. But in a world full of recent standouts like Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, it’s harder for things to stand out.
So Shadow Labyrinth stands out by being an absolutely wild take on Pac-Man. Sure, you can get most of the vibe from that Secret Level short film thing Amazon put out, but then you would be robbing yourself of the opportunity to find out how this story fits into Bandai Namco’s United Galaxy Space Force timeline. (Did you even know such a thing existed? Did you know that Mr. Driller takes place in 2399 and can be tied directly to not only Dig Dug and Galaga, but also Ace Combat 3? Now you do.)
Best Cozy Game
Tiny Bookshop
With stuff like Fantasy Life i and Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma out this year, the part of me that loves to just relax and sell crops all day was eating well this year.
But there’s nothing like curling up with a good book, and Tiny Bookshop lets me live out a fantasy of opening up a small store to share the written word with the local community.
There is a lot to love about Tiny Bookshop, but one of my favorite things is that customers will come in asking for specific things they are in the mood for, and you get to recommend real books to them. Say, for instance, somebody comes in wanting a story with a female protagonist published before the year 2000, and also they’re into mysteries. If you have a copy of The Hidden Staircase (a Nancy Drew book) on your shelves, you can recommend that. There are even recent releases in the game (like 2023’s Babel by R.F. Kuang), so you might find yourself discovering new stuff to read yourself.
The Top 5
5. Donkey Kong Bananza
I don’t have the reverence for Donkey Kong Country that some do, but I consider Super Mario Odyssey to be among the greatest 3D platformers of all time, so I was willing to trust this team when they decided to take on DK.
That trust was well-placed. Donkey Kong Bananza was a blast from beginning to end. And not just for me. My son, age six, has played through the story of Bananza three times, needing less parental assistance (and even turning off the game’s own Assist Mode) with each pass.
Destroying the environment is a blast. DK and Pauline’s friendship is adorable. The Great Harmoneel is… a little disturbing if you think about him for too long. Everything just works, and it’s a must-have Switch 2 game.
4. Metroid Prime 4: Beyond
Metroid Prime is one of the greatest games of all time. That is an exceptionally high bar to set for any follow-ups – one that games two and three did not quite meet (solid though they were).
I do not think I can put Prime 4 on the same lofty pedestal that the original game still sits on, but it comes remarkably close for something that went through such an arduous and seemingly troubled development history. At the end of the day, it’s everything I wanted it to be, and in a weaker year for games as a whole, it might have even earned my top spot on this list.
Alas, it was not a weak year for games, and the competition was strong.
3. Hades II
Supergiant Games is a studio that has my attention any time they announce something new. Hades was phenomenal, so on the surface, the idea of “more Hades” sounds great. But there was already a lot of Hades in Hades (many dozens of hours worth, in fact), and I was surprised that a team with such creativity would want to revisit their most recent creation so soon.
Turns out they knew what they were doing, and I was ready for more Hades after all. It doesn’t hurt that Greek mythology is having a bit of a “moment” right now. (Anybody else get kind of obsessed with Epic: The Musical after it went viral on TikTok? I think that’s secretly what inspired Christopher Nolan to do an Odyssey movie.) I have already spent a lot of time fighting Chronos, and I know I will be spending a lot more in the future.
2. Blue Prince
I had dreams about Blue Prince while playing through it. It seized control of my brain and clung tight, forcing me to think about its many puzzle rooms (and my hand-written notes about them) at all hours of the day.
I initially thought I wouldn’t like the randomized nature of it all (and I would be lying if I said the RNG never annoyed me), but the game somehow managed to get me to feel that “one more run” rougelite addiction from a Myst-like puzzler, which in and of itself felt miraculous.
Despite being one of the year’s earliest releases, I would have bet you a fair amount of money that Blue Prince was a lock for my Game of the Year. But then…
1. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
As strong of a year as it’s been, there is one game that I have thought of consistently more than any other, long after finishing it, and that’s Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.
The story moved me. The combat thrilled me. The world intrigued me. The characters made me fall in love with them, even when my first impression was that they were just freakish weirdos (looking at you, Monoco). The game somehow managed to evoke all the good feelings I have for other games that clearly inspired it (Final Fantasy X being a big one, in a positive way) while also feeling distinctly like its own thing.
It helps that the gameplay systems are solid, but the game is likely to stay with me in the years to come because of its heart. There have been many times when I have retreated to art during times of grief, and Expedition 33 tackles that subject head on in a way that I found incredibly worthwhile. I can’t wait to see what the studio does next, and I hope the industry can take some positive lessons from its success.