Lena Raine is a composer and game developer. You've heard her music in games like Celeste, Deltarune, Minecraft, Beastieball, Chicory, Guild Wars 2, and many others.
If there was any year worth declaring that Triple-A games are on their way out, I think 2025 firmly solidifies that. There was no chance that anything (aside from one rare exception) from the big publishers was ever going to hold my attention longer than anything else released by independent creators.
So let’s hear it for indies! Let’s also hear it for being extremely tired.
Hi! I'm Lena Raine, back at it again to write some thoughts about the games that released this year. "What??", you might ask, "you didn't care about all the multi-million dollar budget blockbusters releasing this year?" Buddy. Let's talk. Even without them, there were way too many games to keep track of. I kept a big folder on Steam full of things that released this year. Some of them I could only really peek in at... So let's do a full run-down on the things I played, but not enough, that I won't spend more than a sentence on:
Afterlove EP is a really meaningful story that I unfortunately couldn't get to playing more than an introductory session. Aotenjo: Infinite Hands is the only "Mahjong Balatro" that I feel has the sauce, definitely worth giving a look. Avowed was neat, I liked the weird world for the three hours I was able to spend in it. Awaria has some really cute characters & neat puzzles, but I didn't finish it. A Whole Wolfrush is a wild jam game that somehow has even more charm and character to it than games with fifty times the production time. BLADECHIMERA is an extremely sick metroidvania by Team Ladybug in their own IP for the first time that I couldn't stick with because things kept releasing. Blue Prince is extremely cool, you know this already. Citizen Sleeper 2 is so cool, but I haven't gotten to it yet, I'm sorry, Gareth!! Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't on my list because I have an entire blog's worth of issues with it to address, but the music is fantastic. Donkey Kong Bananza is some fun smashy times, but despite being a good reason to try out the Switch 2, it didn't really keep me hooked for very long. ENDER MAGNOLIA is so cool, and I wish I got to play more of it, maybe eventually. FANTASY LIFE i is also extremely cool and just too much game for me to stick with with the density of games releasing. Final Fantasy Tactics got a remastered release and is fantastic but I really needed to see other games through. Kaizen: A Factory Story breaks my brain in a good way. Million Depth has a really cool scenario & systems, but I didn't have time to dig deep. Monster Hunter Wilds cannot run well to save its life, but it's still fun. MR. ELEVATOR is a bizarre MS Paint-type puzzler. Mushroom Musume has my respect for cute mushroom girls, but it's hard to get into due to the constraints of Ren'Py. OFF is a very loving remaster of the original. Path of the Abyss has a soundtrack that goes so hard, but the game is a bit too dense. Pokémon Legends Z-A refines that real-time battle thing, but ultimately, its single setting ends up being a pretty big drawback due to repetition and tedium navigating its weirdly restrictive vertical areas. Promise Mascot Agency looks rad, and I wish I got around to playing it. Quartet is neat, I really love the hippo, but didn't play as long as I'd have liked. Sektori is incredible, look out for aurahack's write-up on it in her list. this game will end in 205 clicks. is so delightful as a bite-sized narrative experiment. Urban Myth Dissolution Center is a super cute adventure mystery that I didn't get around to finishing.
DEEP BREATH. Okay.
Things Worth Talking About That Didn't Quite Make The Top 10
Formless Star
Artist and gamesperson samanthuel splendidland designs some of the coolest weirdos in the world. And so it's really delightful that Formless Star is basically a collection of her wonderful friends in a world ready to check out and catalogue. You just wander the randomly generated world and its biomes and find guys. Some of them have 'rules' in their appearance, and they all do a fun little thing when you interact with them. I love it a lot.
Stray Children
The only reason this isn't firmly in my Top Ten this year is because I just haven't had a chance to beat it yet. I am in the latter part of the second major area, and I already know it's gonna be a big one for me once I do finally get the time to complete it.
If you aren't familiar with Onion Games, they are a team that originally made games together under the name Love de Lic, where they made some of the most inventive little worlds like Chulip and moon Remix RPG. Prior to that, various members worked on other games for big studios like Mario RPG. You can really feel that DNA, especially as it's passed along to some of the weirdos that were wholly unique to their types of games. Eventually, a little game called Undertale was released and Toby was super inspired by a lot of things that Love de Lic did with moon. This, in turn, inspired the creators who went on to form Onion Games.
And so Stray Children was developed almost like a love letter back to Undertale & its inspirations, continuing the conversation and bringing their own ideas to the kind of bullet dodging/ACT'ing hybrid combat system. What I've played already is such a fun spin on those ideas, and I can't wait to see how it develops further.
Birdcage
Again, I have to make an excuse about a game not being in my Top Ten because Birdcage is an absolutely incredible game. The fault is mostly my own: I am just not very good at it, yet. I need to grind a lot to get to the point that I can finish it and see everything it has to offer. On the surface, however, Birdcage is an incredible homage to the Saturn/Dreamcast era of shmups like Ikaruga and Radiant Silvergun. It is oozing with style, and a soundtrack to die for by Barry 'Epoch' Topping, also one of the game's creators. It is tough as nails, but well worth digging into!!
Warframe
"Lena what are you doing? This game is so old." Yes well... This was also the year I got way back into Warframe, primarily due to the 1999 update that was such a flashpoint of an update to what the game was even going for that it made me pay attention again. It was the game I put the most cumulative time into this year. I didn't get to the 1999 storyline, not yet... But catching up was an incredibly sick experience full of some of the most inventive storytelling within a "live service" game, and perhaps the only one to actually do it right. You can just play it. It's all there for you. The only real limitation is grinding, but you can pay money to skip that process in some cases. And y'know what? It's just a fun as hell game, so grinding was fine enough for me to build out several new warframes from scratch and really enjoy my time with it. It was an enigma to me on the outside to see it constantly have such a strong & numerous fanbase, but Digital Extremes has more than earned it. They work hard to keep the game surprising folks in really cool ways. And they're not content to stick with just one way of doing that...
Soulframe Preludes
I love everything that Digital Extremes' new game, Soulframe, is doing. It's currently in its alpha state, building out its world and systems in an organic way while letting everyone play and provide feedback. I don't know how it'll change from the 'Preludes' style release into its final form, but what is there now gives me so much hope for this weird thing they're making. Everything about it feels tailor-made to reject open-world game standards. The story and even tutorials are done in metered verse, weaving together the best of the types of writing that late-era Warframe has really refined over the years. Nothing is fully explained, only experienced. Even waypoints on the map are obfuscated in an untranslated language until motes are discovered that give you knowledge of their name and significance to the world. It's doing all the right things, and I can't wait for there to be more of it finished.
Demonschool
From a purely abstract point of view, Demonschool is sort of everything that I've wanted as a long-time appreciator of the Shin Megami Tensei games, where I've always wanted to love them, but there's always something... Whether it's thematic dissonance or overly grindy gameplay, it's tough to find a middle ground with SMT. I unfortunately don't think Demonschool is fully that, either, but it is an incredibly fun strive towards something else while playing in the same toolbox. What it does have is a really crunchy tactics system that is super fun to plan out battles with and watch it all unfold in a satisfying way once you get the right pathing set up. I have a handful of critiques that I'm not ready to fully unfold since I'm still playing through the game, but it's such a stylish, cool thing that I can't not talk about it here.
The Hundred Line (Route 1)
It feels insane to say that I played this for 50 hours and only got one ending out of one hundred. But y'know what, that is okay! I will eventually come back to it and see all it has to offer. What's there is incredibly fun. Weirdly well-rounded cast full of losers that I actually care about that are forced to be slightly more likeable since there's not a Danganronpa style "kill order" in terms of how fleshed out they get to be. Since there's, ostensibly, 100 ways the story could go, the mainline "Hundred Line 1" route mostly gets you to appreciate them all, with a few exceptions due to canonical deaths during its intro route. But the characters, their abilities & tactics gameplay, all mesh really well together... I have a hard time feeling like it can be on this list without having seen everything... But the game itself calls itself "The Hundred Line 2" once you finish your first ending, so... I'm gonna just call that part the sequel and get to it when I get to it. So there!
ENA Dream BBQ
What a weirdo of an experience. I originally had this ranked a lot higher on my list, but too many things came out that proved to be substantially meaty games worth some serious contention. The experience of playing ENA is a lot like watching the YouTube series, but with a handful of funny little puzzles in a big environment that has all sorts of bizarre dream logic to piece together. Every single weirdo you come across is amazing, top 10 freaks of all time. Well worth it if you're like me and just want to keep meeting new types of guys.
Angeline Era
I so desperately wanted to be further into this game by the time I finished writing this, but alas, it will be a winter holiday game for me. Which might end up being the perfect placement for it, given its surprising focus on themes of Christianity butting up against the faerie world. Everything about it, however, screams of a game that will be formative as I continue to bump my way through it. The soundtrack alone is one of my favorites of the year, with Melos' lo-fi aesthetics buzzing with distortion and bitrate compression in a way that tickles my brain just right. It's a game that would've been right at home on the PS1 with its vertex shading and crunchy pixel textures. It uses its two core verbs of searching and bumping so well, constantly coming up with new ways to make it all flow together and find secrets in plain sight. I legit can't wait to play more.
Okay, Now Here's The Top 10
Öoo
The second game from designer Nama Takahashi and a follow-up to ElecHead, Öoo is just effortlessly charming. It's a game design treat. Everything is in its knowledge, and the whole game feels like a funny little puzzle box specifically engineered to get you to go "OH" and then execute a solution to any given puzzle. As time has gone by, I've calmed down on the game a little bit. It's perhaps "too" clean, too polished. It's a pristine little gem of a game. But I do wish for some rough edges, now and again, and the games I've ranked higher really lean on their imperfections to win me over to their side. What really gets me all smiles, though, is how Öoo manages to be a game that has no words at all. Even its title is just an illustration of its main character. In fact, the only real words are in the credits... Which is almost disappointing after the huge hurdle already cleared. My next challenge for Takahashi-san is to make a credits page that uses pictograms to imply its contributors and inspirations.
UNBEATABLE
The game is overflowing with heart, and I am a bit biased because I know the team and have two songs in the game... But like!! The sheer quantity of music in the Arcade Mode is enough to be its own stand-alone rhythm game. And then it has a huge story on top of it all. It's crazy ambitious, punches well above its weight, and is just full of feelings. While the game's story is far more of a narrative adventure that uses its songs and rhythm game mechanics to tell a story (until later on, anyway), it is one that hits extremely close to home. It is full of anger at systems of oppression, and full of love for creative people and their messy, beautiful friendships.
And then the rhythm game itself is just slick incarnate. The Peak Divide team, plus RJ & Rachel Lake, make up the bulk of D-CELL SOUND TEAM, and they've made an incredible collection of songs to play and score post about. And then they've kept adding more songs, and remixes, and guest tracks, and I really hope it keeps expanding out more and more into the future. I want a custom controller that makes sense of the up/down dichotomy. I want challenge tracks to go ape shitt just like the story mode sequences. I want more!! It's great.
The Void Rains Upon Her Heart
Earlier this year, I had a funny little experience. The site called wplace was going around and, despite its questionable ownership, there was a moment there where it was really fun to go around the general area I live and put down some pixels and see what else was being drawn. I drew a little character from the game I'm working on, and saw that nearby there were some cute little characters and a recommendation to check out a game called The Void Rains Upon Her Heart. So, I did!
Turns out the game has been in early access since 2018, and receiving consistent updates from its solo creator nearly every month. They're adding new bosses, new storylines, and the whole thing is just... something beyond comprehension. I don't know if a "1.0" release will make a big splash, so all I can really do is make a huge recommendation that this game has the sauce.
In its most pure form of inspiration, it's a horizontal shooter originally inspired by the Metaton battles in Undertale. You know, where your heart turns yellow and you get to shoot some bullets. Cool? Cool. However!! Void Rain goes about a million steps further and introduces a ton of incredibly cool bosses with various difficulty configurations. Each one is multi-segmented, has a ton of scary bullet patterns and lasers, and generally keeps you on your toes as you learn their fights across a multi-stage roguelite gauntlet. A lot of them are inspired by various Kirby foes, and the game's creator even has a long-running thread on Bluesky that tracks the inspiration for every single one of the over-100 bosses. Because not only do you fight these bosses a ton with various items and upgrades, but as you fight against them to show them love, they begin to open up to you. Every single one of them has a story route you can unlock, and most have mini-games to develop your relationship with them.
The ambition honestly leaves me pretty breathless, as I may never see the full extent of what the game has to offer. But what I've played has left enough of an impression on me to fully recommend it as one of the coolest things I've played this year.
Star of Providence
Well, what do you know, it's another roguelite shooter that has technically been out and in development for years. Having released a full year before Void Rains, Star of Providence was originally known as the game 'Monolith'. It was such a generic-sounding name, and also the name of two prolific game developers, that I just never heard of it until its re-titling. However, a big thing happened with its development this year. It got picked up for publishing by Bigmode as their second published title after Animal Well. As a result, the re-branding happened, I heard about it, and got so absorbed into what felt like discovering a long-lost title that no one had talked about. And in a way it was. The community for it has championed it, but in a world of Isaacs and Gungeons and Nuclear Thrones, how do you pitch the idea that there's one of those that's... dare I say it, even better?
Star of Providence reminds me a lot of System Erasure's ZeroRanger, a game that follows a specific kind of pixel aesthetic and sticks to it. It also brings to mind the chunky feel of Cave Story's guns and how good it feels to just run around and shoot stuff to collect little bits off enemies. (The similarities make sense, too, since the game’s soundtrack is built out entirely in Cave Story’s pxtone.) It's a room-based roguelite type thing where you explore random floors of a dungeon in search of one or more miniboss rooms, power-ups, and eventually a boss. There's not much that's breaking the mold, really. But where it really excels is in just how good everything feels to play. It's one of those things you can't really explain without going into like, the code of it all, but game feel is one of those things that brings a game out of its genre trappings and into something that you wanna just play over and over.
Like Void Rains, I don't know if I'll ever see everything here, but I'm gonna keep playing it for a long time to come.
of the Devil Episodes 0 & 1
Literally all I needed to know about this game is that it was taking the premise of the Ace Attorney series, and injecting it with the visual inspirations of Danganronpa's Rui Komatsuzaki, and quite a lot of heady cyberpunk. And then play Episode 0 (for free! plug plug plug) and get blown away by a well-realized world and a killer protagonist. It's the first courtroom trial-type game that I've played that really gets it. And while it's not perfect in every bit of its clue logic, what Double-A game has been either? The thing, though, is that it's made by very smart people who understand the present-day technology situation and so it's a cyberpunk future near and dear to my heart, with an attitude attained only from being in resistance to "innovations" that would proclaim convenience when all they do is strip our humanity away.
To say much of anything else would be a big spoiler. But, hey. I'm also now working on music for it as of Episode 2, ****which has yet to release... I'm big time looking forward to it. I can't wait to hear my own tracks play in what started out as my surprise fave of the year.
Silent Hill f
Joke's on you, I put this game in here just to talk about Higurashi When They Cry. Well, no, okay, let's talk about Silent Hill first.
I love Silent Hill. Specifically, 2 and 3, but I think 3 is the one that has stuck with me the longest. It's a little difficult to approach 2 anymore, and especially now that Konami has stuck that one through the remake-shaped wringer. It's just got Bloober all over it and has all the subtlety of a brick. Whatever, we don't have to talk about those games anymore.
The thing about Silent Hill that I loved, however, was how it took the real world and real traumatic experiences and twisted them into a Lovecraftian alternate world where the horrors of your mind were laid bare in creatures and messed-up environments. Silent Hill f taps legendary VN writer Ryukishi07 to take a stab at it... And he has one-upped every other game in the series by completely understanding what every prior Silent Hill was attempting to do, and perfecting it. I've only seen the 1st ending, and I really want to see through the entire rest of the game because I know what kind of bullshit Ryukishi07 gets up to in his stories. I've played Umineko. But I remembered, after we hit the first ending of f, that I hadn't gotten much further than the start of Chapter 3 of Higurashi.
So I picked up the VN series once again, and blasted through Chapters 3, 4, 5, and 6... As of writing this, I am at the premise beach of Chapter 7 and aiming to finish the series by the end of the holidays.
The thing about Higurashi is that it approaches the idea of repetition and multiple endings through a very funny lens. The first three chapters can almost be seen as what happens when a player chooses three very different routes in the same VN scenario, if it were a game that allowed player choice. But, being a linear novel, it simply plays out exactly as Ryukishi07 envisioned it. It doesn't give you a choice, and so you're forced to go through three parallel versions of the same story to learn more about the world, the characters, and everything that comes along with another go through the game. By the time we're on to the 7th chapter, the fabric of its narrative contrivances have become sheer. We know what we're doing, and yet the repetition continues until we can see a version of this story that perhaps doesn't go wrong.
So it's very interesting that the entire premise of Silent Hill f contains multiple endings, but only ones that you can see through after you see the primary scenario through to its conclusion. With the addition of things like "gameplay mechanics", we do allow you to have some degree of choice. But only after you've seen the worst possible outcome. Because that's how we do things around there. We love pain and suffering.
Eclipsium
The way in which Eclipsium tells its story feels aspirational. Here's a game with very little in the way of words, if at all, that shows by means of visuals both literal and metaphoric. It begins in a surgery theater when you cut out your tongue, signifying the first part of your body given up to this bizarre quest, and the end of any way of spending the currency too often squandered in games.
I often think about how talky games have become, especially in the modern AAA era. Everything needs a bit of tutorial guidance. Every new Nintendo game needs a new chatty sidekick that speaks whatever language you might have the localization set to. Everyone needs focus-tested directives, little bits of carefully-scripted wonder to replace what you could possibly have by yourself. So I appreciate a game like Eclipsium that speaks by image and sound.
Much like its narrative, however, the visuals are crunchy and difficult to parse. They're bitcrushed and dithered, impossible to read unless you can sit back a bit and take it all in. It encourages you to look at the greater image being drawn. It reminds me a lot of playing the Sega CD title Mansion of Hidden Souls, where every frame is pre-rendered navigation through a space fit into about 240 pixels wide. But there is a greater image there. One of sacrifice and love despite the hellish visuals. The pigs march and crash through walls, opening the way for you to save the one you care for. The paintings give way to a sword to scale the caduceus. I swear this all makes sense.
The score is also one of my favorites of the year, a marvel of various genre styles by Hudson Bichiksky. Really looking forward to seeing what more he gets up to after this.
Soul of Sovereignty Chapters 2 & 3
This isn't the first episodic title to grace my best of list, and it also is not my last by far. It seems like almost all of my favorite stories are coming out piece by piece. And so it feels unfair to them that I would withhold my praise until every bit of them was finished. And so I get to heap a ton of praise onto GGDG's fantastic Soul of Sovereignty (or soulsov if you have trouble spelling that last word every time).
It's honestly rare to find a visual novel so limited in its scope. And I don't mean that it is a small story by any means. Soulsov covers an extensive world and mythology surrounding how it operates, its magics and technology, and pantheon of gods, both past, present, and future. And yet it only really concerns itself with two characters at its core. Which works, because those two characters (Ysme and Loic) are so rich and full of life. Yes, there's plenty of supporting roles, but the bulk of the heavy lifting are given to these two and how wildly they contrast. While Chapter 2 introduces a new wonderful friend (I would die for Tutu), Chapter 3 digs in deep and begins to get at the heart of who these two leads really are and what drives them. It's difficult to speak about abstractly because I do want people unfamiliar with these stories to seek them out and read them for yourself.
Either way, the writing and art by GGDG are fantastic as you'd expect. And the music by GGDG, Toby Fox, and Alex Rosetti is some of my favorites in all the right PS1 source samples that I grew up with.
Read soulsov. Do it now.
Misericorde Volume 2: White Wool and Snow
It really was a year for new chapters of episodic works that dig into the essence of its lead characters. Misericorde, which I featured Volume 1 in a previous "of the year" list, does exactly that. But more than that, XEECEE (to disclose: a good friend of mine) has refined their skills even more and written a new entry in what might become one of my new top three visual novel series. I am continually blown away by the ways in which the story reveals new aspects of itself with each chapter. Volume 2 digs into lead character Hedwig's experience, or lack there of, with sexuality, and the relationships she forms with the other sisters. It also dives into something I can't really speak on, because even talking about it spoils what exactly this VN gets up to in its back half. Sorry, this blurb is so short. It really is something you have to read for yourself. Start and Volume 1 and dive in, you absolutely won't regret it.
Deltarune Chapters 3 & 4
Deltarune Chapter 1 released (somehow) back in 2018. It was a blur of a year since we had just released Celeste earlier that February, and I was trying to navigate the spotlight I had somehow found myself in. I didn't really have a great sense of Undertale as a game, other than the little I played of it over the years since its release. The surprise release of Deltarune is something that really shocked me out of my negligence. I obviously was well aware of Toby Fox's work & respected it a lot, but it felt outside my circle in a way. We just barely intersected many, many times. So when the "survey program" released, I loaded it up and was shocked at this thing that I couldn't quite explain why it affected me so strongly
Deltarune is a game that feels pulled from the exact same pool of inspirations that make me want to make games, so it isn't too surprising that it is exactly the kind of thing custom-shaped to make me feel it. I played a bit of what would turn out to be Deltarune Chapter 1 and then bailed because I needed to finally play Undertale to completion. I was recovering from surgery at the time and bedridden, so it was the perfect time to pull up my Switch and just go through the whole thing. I fell deeply for the world and its characters, and it became one of my new all-time favorites.
Fast forward quite a bit of time. After finally playing Deltarune Chapter 1 upon its Switch release, I found myself assisting on a couple of tracks for Chapter 2, which I've written about previously. Being brought into the creative process though didn't spoil the game for me, since my contributions were so far outside of context that I could provide a bit of arrangement or editing help where needed without having to know what exactly I was even working on. Which is how I like it, because I am so bought into the story and world that Toby and the team are creating that I wouldn't want to be closer to it than my peripheral involvement. Anyway, part of that process over the years involved me doing some editing on a handful of piano tracks, one of which ended up being a pretty important little story moment in Chapter 4. It made me really happy to hear that piece show up.
The thing that really brings my story surrounding the game’s actual content into focus is how much the game’s narrative relies on the idea of needing to work with others to create the future you want to see. Undertale was a game mostly about befriending all the various weirdos in the world and cherishing them. But Deltarune puts its focus on a group of friends, and needing to work together. It feels fitting that the game itself needed to find a team, and bring people closer in order to make it happen in the first place. When Susie tells Kris that she really likes their piano playing, that they shouldn’t feel embarrassed about it, it felt like she was giving my own thoughts to words. As I edited together Toby’s piano playing into what eventually is in the game, I found myself feeling close to the experience that I would eventually play. Perhaps a bit out of time. I felt what Toby might have felt about his own recordings. I’ve also felt embarrassed about my piano playing, all the time, actually. Needing to edit it to feel like it’s presentable. Some part of all of that bit of extra-game-experience and actual-game-content is some nugget of emotion that I’m glad to have experienced.
So the thing is that Deltarune is an incredibly written game. There's a lot of jokes and fandom and weird speculation and all that, and the game is very, very funny. But beyond that layer of funny guys and memes is a story about loners finding companionship with one another in a way that touches my heart. The main three characters all have their baggage. They've all been hurt, some in ways that are only off-screen, but they bring their wounds with them. The jokes come in spite of the hurt, because companionship is what drives them forward. To push against what seems like an inevitable fate.
Chapters 3 and 4 drive this home even more strongly. We distract ourselves from the realities of the world, and the antics that take place in TV World feel constantly tinged with the knowledge that it is not happy-go-lucky for the sake of itself, but despite the darkness around the edges that you know is creeping in. The end of Chapter 3, leading into Chapter 4, drives it all to the forefront. It forces all three characters to confront that darkness and contend with the realization that nothing is going to be the same for long.
It's a feeling that I wrestle with every day. This year, more than most. It's why the narrative feels so especially affecting right now. Even though the story has been unfolding for the past seven years, it always feels close to where we are in our world. The game itself won't be finished for another several years, and I don't know where I'll be by the time it ends. But I am very excited to see where the band of misfits take their lives in the final handful of chapters to come.