If 2025 felt like both a safe sequel season and a surprise‑packed indie festival, that’s because it was. Big studios delivered polished follow‑ups — Doom retooled its combat, Hades found new musical flourishes, and Obsidian’s Avowed leaned into a world that delights by being mean to you. But the year’s most interesting stories came from smaller teams and odd, magnetic ideas: a house you rebuild every day, a game that makes you literally feel the friction of taking a step, and a slot‑machine that somehow became compulsive literature.
A year where the unexpected stole the headlines
Playlists and awards lists across outlets converged on a handful of titles that kept turning up in different forms: Blue Prince’s endlessly drafting mansion, Baby Steps’ deliberately humiliating gait, Ball x Pit’s neon brick‑barrage, and Hades II’s refined ritual of death and music. Critics and platform teams — including Sony’s indies curators — were emphatic: these weren’t novelty items. They were carefully crafted experiences that rewarded attention, collaboration, and, oddly, repeated failure.
Blue Prince stood out as the “notebook game” of the year. Its loop — draft three rooms, explore, learn, and repeat — turns exploration into detective work. Players came away with messy notebooks, sticky notes, and the same quiet thrill editors described: give this one time and you’ll be rewarded with late‑game puzzles that feel like proper conspiracy solving. Dogubomb’s design made room for different play styles; some treat it as a social puzzle to share with partners, others as a solo cryptic marathon.
Baby Steps and Ball x Pit, meanwhile, show how small dev teams can turn a narrow mechanical focus into an emotional or addictive core. Baby Steps weaponizes humiliation into catharsis: that awkward, two‑step control scheme becomes its storytelling device. Ball x Pit is machine‑perfect arcade chaos — a brick‑breaker crossed with a roguelike that seduces you into one more run.
Big names, but with fresh sensibilities
Blockbuster sequels didn’t get lazy. Doom: The Dark Ages took the franchise’s speed and turned part of it into defensive mastery — shields and parries in a game famous for strafing. Hades II kept the roguelike momentum but threaded new musical set‑pieces into its combat loops. On consoles, long‑expected entries like Metroid Prime 4 helped make the new hardware generation feel justified; Nintendo’s follow‑up strategy around Switch 2 titles was part of how players rediscovered platform greatness this year (Nintendo Raises Switch 2 Forecast as Console Sales Soar).
There was also a healthy reminder that big games can still surprise. Avowed flipped the standard heroic fantasy by making you an often‑reviled presence in the world you explore — it’s a rare RPG that leans into being socially awkward as a design choice.
Indies as the cultural engine
Look at lists from Ars Technica, The Guardian, PlayStation’s indies curators and game‑developer roundups and you’ll spot repeat indie names: Blue Prince, Baby Steps, Ball x Pit, and Dispatch. PlayStation’s own indie team highlighted many of these as the year’s emotional high points, from Lumines Arise’s synesthetic puzzle highs to Sword of the Sea’s serene sand‑surfing.
Why did indies matter so much? Because they were willing to trade scale for specificity. Where a AAA studio might chase broad appeal and safe expansion packs, indie teams experimented with form — a dating sim for appliances (Date Everything!), a match‑three lofi visual novel, a newspaper tycoon where ethics actually influence gameplay (News Tower), or a game that makes you live as a fly for minutes you’ll never forget. Those experiments reintroduced novelty into a market that has felt, at times, risk‑averse.
Business, friction and the microtransaction hangover
Not every conversation was celebratory. The industry still wrestled with pricing controversies — some high‑profile releases landed with premium tags and consumer backlash — and the mobile/online economy’s FOMO mechanics continued to gnaw at trust. Games like Marvel Snap got high praise for design, then criticism for how evolving card economies sometimes push players toward spend‑or‑fall‑behind mechanics. Players rewarded transparent design and punished obvious predatory monetization.
Hardware mattered — sometimes in unexpected ways
The arrival of new hardware cycles nudged certain games into the spotlight. Switch 2’s momentum made visually bold platformers and open‑world racers (and, yes, a rebuilt Mario Kart experience) feel like launch‑window necessities. If you’ve been wondering why some studios chose the Switch 2 for ambitious technical showcases, the sales narrative and platform push help explain it — and the traction for titles such as Donkey Kong Bananza and Mario Kart World was part of that argument (Metroid Prime 4’s 'Survive' Trailer Rekindles Hype Ahead of December Launch).
Sony’s platforms also found space for indies: if you’re leaning into PlayStation releases this holiday, the PlayStation 5 Pro Console became the natural hardware name‑check when people wanted the best fidelity for single‑player spectacle and DualSense features.
What these lists tell us about players right now
Players rewarded games that respect their time and intelligence. That means titles with coherent systems, generous signposting where needed, and the patience to let curiosity pay off. It also means community — many of the year’s puzzle and mystery games became social experiences by sheer design (swap notes, whisper hints, compare room layouts). The most talked‑about titles were those with distinct personalities: not “bigger,” just clearer about who they were and who they wanted to be played by.
If 2025 had a through‑line, it was this: creative risk paid off. Developers who focused on a single, well‑realized idea often ended up with cultural hits. Big studios that polished familiar formulas still delivered moments of joy. And players — hungry for novelty and careful about their wallets — rewarded both ingenuity and integrity.
There are plenty of year‑end lists and divergent favorites, but the one constant is that games kept surprising us. That’s a pleasant problem for 2026 to inherit.