Staff Picks: The Best Video Games of 2025
Oh Banana! Our favorite open-world adventures, indie darlings, and more
Here it is, the first of our end-of-year Best of lists! This year we’re once again doing three lists: video games, anime, and “everything else” (movies, music, etc.), with the everything else list available exclusively on our Patreon. Manga once again didn’t make the cut, since our team members didn’t read enough new manga and Evan still runs a manga publisher, putting him out of the running.
For our first list we’re covering video games! Nintendo nabs a few solid spots on our lists as always, particularly one ape who had a good year in 2025. Plus retro remakes and sequels, indie darlings, and unique mechanics experiments. Read on for the full list!
David Estrella
#3: Silent Hill f
I don’t know about this one, I’m only three hours in but I need three picks and this is one of the only 2025 titles I got the chance to play. Sure looks real pretty, although this combat is only slightly less janky than Silent Hill (1999). I’ll definitely finish it! In 2026!
#2: Pokémon Legends: Z-A
Forget Pokémon Scarlet and Violet. Only the Legends spin-off line of Pokémon games is keeping the promise of decent games alive for the franchise. After Legends: Arceus took us back to the nascent years of Pokémon training in a pre-Sinnoh civilization, Legends: Z-A brings us to present-day Lumiose City, a place that only feels vaguely familiar to the Lumiose from 2013’s Pokémon X and Y. Incredibly, this is the first instance of real-time battling in Pokémon, and while I’ll always hold turn-based combat close to my heart, it feels good to play a Pokémon game that’s trying something new without all the technical issues and overall lack of polish that plagued Scarlet and Violet. It’s a wonderful feeling to renew my faith in the series when it seemed like everything good ended with the death of the 3DS.
#1: Beyond Citadel
Beyond Citadel is the sequel to The Citadel (2020), a Japanese ero-guro indie boomer shooter that melds a cyberpunk anime aesthetic with the twitchy classics of yesteryear. Beyond is a massive rehaul of the basic design of Citadel, expanding and improving on just about every facet of the original. The story is an absolutely bonkers riff on an End of Eva-esque post-apocalyptic future where humanity has nearly been wiped out in the war between angels and demons. While the script is occasionally marred by some iffy translations, you won’t be reading as much as you’ll be shooting, running, and frantically trying to remember how to manually reload and cock your guns. Developer doekuramori put their heart and soul into this game, as it holds a remarkably deep level of polish and a commitment to an artistic vision that won’t be for everyone but deserves to find its audience.
Inaki
#3: Casting Whispers
With a lot of independent games, finding a way to get them out to people remains challenging. For Casting Whispers, a Youtuber I like did a voice in this game, and I don’t know that I would have played it without Greg making me aware of it. A very engaging first person horror game that uses every trick in the book to make you feel like you’re fighting to make progress. The central mechanic of closing the player character’s eyes to listen more intently is something I’m shocked hasn’t been more widely explored, and the use of it in Casting Whispers seems to barely scratch the surface of its possibilities.
I also like that it manages to circumvent many of the things I like the least about the cosmic horror genre, which is no small feat. It put me into a paranoid state of mind where I was questioning everything about what had been presented to me. There are some rough edges and annoying bugs, not unheard of in any game especially small indie releases, but also I was so drawn into the world of the game I was trying to figure out if it was doing it on purpose or not.
#2: Deltarune Chapter 3 and 4
Delta FREAKING Rune, baby. Although Undertale will feature in the first line of Tobias’ obituary, Deltarune might be his actual magnum opus. A richly textured experience where every little part of it brims with personality, filled with fun little interactions, gorgeous art and the solidest of rock-solid game design fundamentals. Deltarune responds to your desire to dig into its corners for secrets like no other game, while scratching the itch for the turn-based RPGs with larger-than-life stories people yearn for. Where Undertale was largely about video games itself, the tropes and fascinations common to the medium, Deltarune exists in the shadow of crumbled economic prosperity and the stifling weight of other people’s expectations, intensely focused on trying to carve your own identity and navigating mirrors within mirrors within mirrors.
Many people self-identify as a “gamer” as an important cornerstone of their identity, and none of them love the rich history of the interactive medium or are as intimately knowledgeable about it as Toby Fox. There was a moment where I was streaming this game and said offhandedly “this level is really good” and friend of the show Billy Denton simply said “we got him.” It took a clear decade but I am finally completely on board with Tobias.
#1: Öoo
Close your eyes, and imagine the platonic ideal, the broadest, most foundational stereotype of a Japanese indie game.
Congratulations, you just envisioned Öoo, an idiosyncratic pixel art puzzle game made in GameMaker with an amazing soundtrack. After months of being told that I needed to play this little game, I was absolutely disgusted to realize everyone was completely right about it being a masterpiece and promptly became an evangelist myself. You hate to see it.
Öoo is a deceptively simple puzzle game, where a lot of the solutions are gated behind your ability to understand (and your experience with) video game puzzles. Every solution makes you go “oh, yeah of course!” in a perfectly satisfying lightglobe moment of contentment. Öoo isn’t the interactive medium at its most complex, it certainly isn’t video games at its most emotionally engaging, but it might be the purest expression of what makes games eternally fascinating. It is perfect, it could not be a better expression of itself. I think this $15 game is a masterpiece and you should download and play it right now.
Evan Minto
#3: Blue Prince
Another roguelite deckbuilder?! Kind of. Blue Prince looks like one and indeed plays like one, in that you spend each run building out a mansion using room tiles drawn from a random pool. But the trick is that the roguelite mechanics are just the surface of the game. In fact, Blue Prince is an intricate clockwork puzzle, more akin to an escape room than something like Balatro. Building never-before-seen rooms gives you an opportunity to read scrawled text on memo pads or emails that read like mere flavor text, all of which provide hidden clues that make sense only when paired with clues from other rooms. One hint early on encourages players to keep a physical notepad; it’s not a mere suggestion, it’s practically required to roll credits, let alone reach 100%. Blue Prince is at its best when you’re scribbling down nonsense into your notepad like a madman, constructing theories that sound insane right up until you get the final clue that puts everything into place. It’s a shame that the aggressive roguelite RNG can sometimes get in the way of the sublime sense of discovery, but my copious pages of notes should be evidence enough that Blue Prince is worth your time.
#2: Öoo
Öoo is the most bang for my buck I got in 2025. Clocking in at just three and a half hours by my count, this is a minimalist 2-D puzzle platformer inspired by the likes of VVVVVV that similarly pares down its gameplay to a single mechanic. In Öoo you play as a little guy (indie games, am I right?) who can drop a bomb with one button and detonate it with the other. (The only upgrade Öoo offers is a second bomb about a third of the way through, and let me tell you, it’s quite a big deal.) Bombs can destroy obstacles and launch your character across the screen, serving simultaneously as attack, jump, and dash. The game is a masterclass in player education, with nearly every challenge serving as an incremental lesson in how to use your bombs. I would occasionally hit a dead end only to return later and discover that I didn’t need an upgrade (a la Metroid), I just needed a technique that I learned in a different room. All with no dialog and no instructions! Top it off with charming pixel art graphics and an earworm of a soundtrack and you’ve got an indie platformer classic.
#1: Donkey Kong: Bananza
Take Super Mario Odyssey and swap out jumping and block-breaking with smashing. Like, a lot of smashing. Donkey Kong is back for his first game developed at Nintendo since 2004’s Donkey Kong Jungle Beat, and it’s a delight. You traverse a series of sprawling subterranean worlds, freely destroying nearly anything in the environment as you go. Just like in Odyssey, there are rewards and mini puzzles scattered throughout every world, creating an addictive game loop of finding new stuff, spotting your next goal, and getting right back into it, all while picking up new upgrades and learning how to make the best use of DK’s array of expressive movement abilities. All the while, your sidekick Pauline (yes, the same one, just younger now!) acts as an adorable hype woman and support character, a welcome infusion of charm to a game about smashing rocks. There’s been a lot of frustration from certain corners of the Internet about the Breath of the Wild-ification of Nintendo’s library of franchises (this year also saw the release of the open-world Mario Kart World), but I’ve got no complaints here. Bananza’s world is vibrant and constantly engaging in a way few open-world games manage to pull off. Welcome back DK.
Patrick Sutton
#3: Donkey Kong Bananza
Oh Banana! I loved Super Mario Odyssey when it came out and was eagerly awaiting the follow up from that team. They did not disappoint. Bananza takes the open stage concept from Odyssey and points it down as Donkey Kong smashes everything in his sight to get back his bananas.
#2: Dragon Quest 1&2 HD2D
Did you think this wouldn’t make my list? Dragon Quest is a constant obsession for me. It never turns off in my head and this new era of DQ remakes has been great. The first and second games are classics and very important to Japanese gaming history and returning to them again has been a lot of fun. Part of what made this experience special is the way Square Enix handled the Erdrick trilogy this time around. Dragon Quest 3, which received a remake last year, is a prequel to 1 and 2 and for these new remakes they designed them with this play order in mind. There are additions to 1 and 2 that help them feel more connected to 3. They add a little extra charm to the games, especially 1 which is a pretty thin game on its own, considering its age. They’ve also made some welcome changes to systems from the DQ3 remake; you can turn off all of the new assist options such as quest markers and healing on level up. While some might not mind these changes, they did make 3 much easier, so the ability to turn them off is great. I love Dragon Quest, it brings me so much joy, and I hope others give these games a try. Now it’s time to rest until the DQ7 remake drops next year.
#1: Night Striker Gear
The video game wizards at M2 conjured up a sequel to the Taito arcade classic Night Striker and they managed to make a game truly worthy of the title. Night Striker is an absolute masterpiece arcade game. Think space harrier but you’re controlling a Blade Runner car with rad sprite scaling graphics and a classic Zuntata soundtrack. Gear takes everything that made it cool but now the car can transform into a robot! Gear is such an interesting game. It’s clearly a love letter to a very specific gaming experience (M2 also released an excellent port of the original Night Striker this year), but it mixes in some design concepts from shmups that add a little more variety to play. There are much heavier bullet patterns for bosses that you need to pay close attention to and enemy swarms have bright red leaders that you can target to wipe out the group. Gear, like much of M2’s original output, feels like a game that shouldn’t exist and yet it does. Go play it, and if you know someone with a Cyber Stick make sure to try it that way.
Look out for our anime and everything else lists in the coming days!