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Hello-hello! It's time for the Lair's GOTY awards! 2025 was a weird year for me for sure because I just kept playing the 10 out of 10 bangers that everyone was raving about, a critical darling after a critical darling, and kept being thoroughly disappointed. You know me, I never trust a game that starts great; for me it all comes down to whether or not a game can keep its momentum all the way to the end, and in this regard many freshly released titles fell off the rails, in my opinion. However! I still played a bunch of games that I wholeheartedly enjoyed, and I am here on this beautiful day to share them with you (hoping you will share your top picks with me in the comments).

Before we start, let's go through some disclaimers:

• All games I mention in this post were fully completed. I never give my opinion on a game that I haven't finished.
• It's a list of games that I played this year. They weren't necessarily released in 2025.
• I don't think I'll spoil anything major about any game but just to be safe check the contents and if you don't want to know anything about one game or another because you intend to play it yourself, just skip the section.

Let's go!

Black Myth: Wukong

The year started strong for me with Black Myth: Wukong, an action RPG based on Journey to the West, one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese Literature. The game is nothing short of spectacular: it's very cinematic with seamless cutscenes that never failed to make me gasp. You can choose your own fighting style by combining your stances with the spells and transformations that you gain after defeating bosses; and let me tell you there's no shortage of exciting boss battles.

It is NOT a soulslike: Black Myth: Wukong is brutal, and you will likely spend many attempts on each boss, but all of them are wonderfully free. You do not lose anything upon death, you do not need to go into some murky depths to collect your corpse, and your NPCs do not start catching a flesh-eating disease the more you die. You can just focus on showing the boss who's boss, without worrying about anything else.

When the game released, I often read online that the game's plot is confusing and unclear to those who never read the source material: Journey to the West. Well, I found this to be completely untrue; while the story might appear confusing at first, all you need is a little bit of curiosity. You journal contains everything you need to know about characters and their relationships. You definitely do not need to go through all the four parts of the original classic to understand what the game is about.

Black Myth: Wukong is a highlight of my gaming year, and I cannot recommend it enough. A fantastic game. Oh, and I also recommend playing it with the Chinese voiceover and subtitles; it adds a lot to the experience. Can't wait for the next Black Myth game.

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom

It's not often at all that we get to play as the Princess of Hyrule, but this time Link is in danger, and Zelda needs to save him! Echoes of Wisdom, made by the same devs who delivered the 2019 remake of Link's Awakening, is a joy to play. Zelda finds an unexpected friend in Tori, a fairy-like creature who gives her a magic staff that can duplicate various objects including monsters after they have been defeated.

While I found the dungeons to be generally simpler than the ones in Link's Awakening, the number of ways you can reach your objective is actually staggering. You can just manifest a bunch of beds, stack them on top of one another and get across a chasm; or you can conjure a flying creature that will carry you. There are dozens upon dozens of items and creatures that you can use creatively for solving the problem at hand; it's amazing.

If by any chance you're studying Japanese and would like to play something not that complicated text-wise for practice — Echoes of Wisdom is a great choice.

Tactical Breach Wizards

Normally I wouldn't be caught dead playing a turn-based tactics game, but somehow I ended up playing Tactical Breach Wizards this year, and this is one of the best, most hilarious games I've ever played.

Your dream team consists of a navy seer wizard who can see one second into the future, a freelance witch detective who can zap enemies and fly out the window on her broom and into any other window on the map, and a necromedic, the only person with an actual gun that she uses for killing her patients before resurrecting them. There are more characters, but I'm not gonna tell you about them.

Together you unravel a conspiracy plot that takes you on a journey through multiple countries. Each level is a somewhat puzzle-like map with one or more objectives. Tactical Breach Wizards is endlessly customizable in terms of difficulty: you can choose to complete challenges, side objectives, optional missions, do it with a squad of different characters for different outcomes and so on and so forth. The best part? After making your moves, you can see the outcome and just rewind if things don't go as planned or aren't as effective as you wanted. You don't need to reload every time you change your mind. You're a wizard.

I don't remember laughing so hard in a game, and then also being brought to tears, sometimes within the same scene. Tactical Breach Wizards is witty, incredibly funny, and mature at the same time. I loved the story and the characters, so give it a try, even if you normally don't play this kind of games, because I certainly don't.

Awoved

This year Obsidian blessed me with not one but two games, which is perfect because I've been playing Obsidian games for decades, so each time I know exactly what to expect.

Avowed is set in the world of Eora, so it has the same setting as both Pillars of Eternity, and while you do not need to play Pillars to understand the story of Avowed, it was nice to have a head start on the political tangle surrounding The Living Lands, the mysterious island you're going to be exploring. I really loved how it encourages you to multiclass: investing your points in more than one class is expected, and, what's even cooler, fully refundable for a fairly modest price. If you'd like to play as a berserker, but also sometimes pull out your magic wand and rain fire on the enemies, you can totally do that.

My only strong criticism is that the companion questlines are incredibly inconsistent and hard to navigate, with quests arising suddenly and then leaving you in confusion as to whether or not anything else would follow.

In my post dedicated to Avowed, I said that it might not be the action-RPG to change the landscape of the genre, but I found it extremely entertaining and also really smooth to play. And I stand by that to this day. I had a good time with it and enjoyed my dagger-and-grimoire build tremendously.

Hades II

In 2020 Hades was my game of the year, and while this year Hades II narrowly lost to another game, it remains one of the best games I played in 2025.

Supergiant Games delivers yet another god-like rogue-like that I care about, and this time I played as Melinoe, the daughter of Hades who was raised as a witch by the titaness Hecate with a sole purpose: to bring death to Chronos who seized control of the House of Hades and imprisoned Melinoe's family when she was but a baby.

Hades II is bigger than the original Hades in every aspect: there are more weapons, more modifications, more characters, more romance options, and, crucially, more directions for you to go. Whether trying to wrestle the House of Hades from Chronos in the Underworld, or stopping the siege of Mount Olympus up above: the choice of how to spend each given evening is yours.

While not without flaws that include really mean RNG and a protagonist a little bit too perfect for my personal taste, Hades II is an incredible achievement on Supergiant's part and a fantastic game.

Look Outside

Look Outside is a survival horror RPG created by a solo developer, and it made my gaming year infinitely better. Locked up in your apartment building during the people-mutating apocalypse, you have to survive for 15 days until the mysterious cosmic event passes.

In the meantime, you're going to get to know your neighbors better: some of them have mutated beyond the point of no return, but others remain pretty friendly despite extra — or missing — limbs and heads. You need to arm yourself with whatever you can find, scavenge for food and resources and meet face to face with greater dangers lurking on lower floors. However, you do not have to do it alone: you can recruit a number of people of various degrees of insanity into your party. Apocalypse is more fun with friends!

Look Outside is a phenomenal game. If you take away anything from this post, it should be this one. I also have a non-spoilery post on it that you can check out if you haven't.

I was a Teenage Exocolonist

Well, this is a rare one! But I do make a conscious effort to play whatever game Finji publishes because somehow the developers they work with end up releasing my all-time favorites. Night in the Woods, developed by Infinite Fall and published by Finji, is probably the most important game for me ever, and Tunic developed by TUNIC Team was my game of the year in 2022.

Interestingly, I Was a Teenage Exocolonist was the first game I played in 2025. It is a visual novel-style RPG with an interesting card-based gameplay. You are a kid growing up in a space colony on a beautiful but somewhat hostile planet that you have just landed on. A playthrough spans about 10 years of your life: life of going to school, learning, growing, misbehaving, falling in love, making friends, choosing jobs and nurturing your fragile colony. Your card deck is built by cards you earn through studying, participating in hundreds of events and making choices. You can then use your deck to complete — or fail — various challenges as you navigate the complicated life on a foreign planet while being an inquisitive kid.

The game has dozens of different endings that solely depend on the choices you make each month, and apparently — I say apparently because I have completed it only once — in your subsequent playthroughs memories of your past lives can help you make other choices that lead to other paths. Even though the genre blend seemed weird to me at first, I am happy I gave this game a try; I enjoyed it a great deal.

Lies of P: Overture

When Overture came out, I was ready to dive in immediately, only to find that I had lost my save files for good and need to replay the game all over again. I do not regret it one bit: I loved Lies of P when it came out, and even though I don't usually replay games unless it's Hollow Knight or Sekiro, I fell in love with it all over again.

Overture is a fantastic DLC — reasonably sized, full of blood-boiling action and truly amazing assisted bossfight where you fight alongside NPCs for whom the fight is story-relevant. The plot of Overture follows the story that was only briefly mentioned in the main game, and it gives a lot of context to many characters.

With the DLC Lies of P also received a host of quality of life improvements, many of which were dearly missed on release, and now it is truly the best version of itself. If you've never played it — the best soulslike there is — now is the time to jump right in. I have a post about it, if you haven't read it yet.

Honorable Mentions

A couple of honorable mentions before we arrive at the best game I played this year:

Hollow Knight

Silksong turned out to be a massive disappointment for me, and so I went back and replayed Hollow Knight. It is still as good as ever, and one of my favorite games of all time.

Hollow Knight is my game of the year... every year.

South of Midnight

South of Midnight really flew under many people's radars, but one day I somehow found myself in the mood for exactly this kind of game, and I had a great time. This is a coming-of-age story of young Hazel who awakens to the powers of a Weaver and travels across American Deep South meeting all kinds of local mythical creatures in search for her mother who was lost in the flood. It is a dark fairy tale that touches on very adult themes while being whimsical, and I enjoyed it a lot.

And now — to my game of the year, the best game I played in 2025...

Chrono Trigger

Growing up I didn't have the chance to play many games that have heavily influenced the games we play today and are considered classics. Unfortunately, many of those games either didn't age all that well to play now, or are just not widely available.

This year I played the Steam version of Chrono Trigger — the game turned 30 in 2025 — and it is every bit as modern as any other game I played.

The story follows a group of characters from different timelines trying to prevent imminent apocalypse by investigating its origins. There's a great deal of hopping between timelines, from the prehistoric era to the literal End of Time, which was way less confusing than I feared it would be. I adore all the weird and funny characters the game lets you befriend — and name! — which makes them even more dear to your heart. The game has a dozen or so endings and great replayability potential because you learn some things on your first playthrough that you can just use on your subsequent runs, and the game accommodates for that, which I find amazing.

Admittedly, some things were a little difficult for me to get used to: not necessarily because they were outdated, but because I'd never encountered these systems in other games. For example, the real-time turn-based combat where characters' turns are tied to their personal timers, and you need to press your menus really quickly not to leave them idle while the enemy is beating you up. Thankfully, there is an option to stop time when you're choosing you special or combo ability, and that helped me a great deal. Since you time travel back and forth, some encounters repeat, but you can just speed them up and be done in a moment.

The music is so incredible that I can replay the whole game in my head just by listening to the soundtrack.

Chrono Trigger is a timeless story about friendship that prevails against all odds, about saving the world and mending lives across centuries. It will never get old.

Conclusion

This year yet again showed me that trying out games that you wouldn't normally play might deliver you an experience you were looking for. Playing demos is just part of my routine now because it's a low-cost way to try out genres I gave up on years ago, or get a tiny indie game on my radar.

There is a sister video up on my Patreon page about games that I abandoned, didn't enjoy or regret playing — this year the list of these games especially seems like a silly mistake on my part, but unfortunately it's not — so if you're interested, you can head over there by clicking this link.

A quick update about my next project: if you remember, I am retranslating all of Dark Souls to see where the English localization differs meaningfully from the original. Well, I do admit that I bit off a little more than I could chew, BUT I am doing it anyway. I am done with DS1 and almost halfway through DS2, and you just won't believe how much text there is in these games :D

As usual, I am very interested in your game of the year. I don't care if it was actually released this year; just something you played in 2025 and genuinely enjoyed. As always, I will be putting together a list of recommendations from your comments.

As usual, stay tuned here and on the Lair's YouTube channel not to miss out on anything.

Thank you very much for your time. And Happy New Year! Take care.