Cristian Macias (He/Him) is a Video Producer from the United States. After completing his English Master’s program in 2020, Cristian built a curated portfolio of features and video shorts for digital publications like DualShockers, ThePenultimateConquest, and TechRaptor. Now, Cristian joins the video team at The Gamer creating insightful and entertaining media for both the site and The Gamer YouTube channel.
Despite what The Game Awards might suggest, 2025 was filled with an eclectic array of games providing deeply resonant experiences. And while mainstream titles may not have been as overtly provocative as other years, I believe I’ve managed to cultivate a list of stand-out blockbusters and indies.
My only hope is that any one of these resonates with you as much as it did for me.
Rematch
I spent many weeks thinking Rematch would be my game of the year this year. Its tight mechanics and demanding skill floor don’t just make the game feel like it can compete with the likes of franchise giant EA FC, they feel revolutionary in the football genre.
Unfortunately, sporadic bugs and semi-frequent network instability spikes hold it back. Luckily, these are each issues that can be fixed with enough time and resources – and not anything at the core of its gameplay. It’s a testament to the game’s design that, even with its share of jank, the ultimate experience still feels supremely cathartic. When Rematch works, it makes me feel like I can fly. Now, if I could only get my player customized to look like he’s wearing this year’s Liverpool home kit….
Blue Prince
There’s something interpellating about Blue Prince that’s hard to place. A feeling of deep melancholia you must submerge yourself in wholly in order to attempt to piece together the mystery of room 46. While I don’t think the game is as disquieting as others have suggested, its investigative premise does make it outright compelling from the moment it begins.
Admittedly, most of Blue Prince’s self-imposed friction does hinge on its design operating as roguelite first and puzzles second – and being at the whim of RNG like that can suck. However, that there is an empathetic gothic to unearth central to the game’s objective makes both the cycles of building rooms in the manor so effective, and the puzzle-solving itself so damn worthwhile.
Peak
Peak is one of the standout multiplayer experiences of the year precisely because it leverages friction through its challenging levels and obfuscated survival systems, all while retaining its casual aesthetic. Which is a roundabout way of saying: sometimes you just want to giggle as you watch your friends fall to their deaths down the side of a mountain as their diegetic screams echo against the rocks and fade into oblivion.
Sometimes, that’s what gaming is really all about.
The Seance of Blake Manor
There are few gothic games that feel as instantaneously gripping as The Seance of Blake Manor. From its hellish framing to the haunting manor itself, every action taken toward solving the disappearance of Evelyn Dean works to drown you in the atmosphere of the sinister occult.
And submit to the phantasmagoria you must. To walk into a paranoid macabre you cannot look away from, but lay to rest one deduction at a time.
Sektori
Enter Sektori. A kaleidoscopic overload of dopamine synapses in the form of a top-down twin-stick shooter, with an original soundtrack so pulsatingly electric it’s guaranteed to improve your mile time.
Be warned, Sektori is not for the faint of heart. It operates exclusively on the overstimulus of neurotransmissions: a digital trance of cathartic score-chasing and crunchy explosions meant solely to destroy you ad infinitum. Overcome, and you’re in for the quintessential arcade experience of the year.
When I die, bury me in Sektori, would that I arise as a spectre of my own zero state. If only for another run.
Honorable Mentions
There’s a certain romance to how Arc Raiders treats its apocalypse that makes it one of the most memorable multiplayer experiences this generation. Running minor chords of arpeggio synthesizers from the menu point in the direction of a hopeful reclamation, even if its use of generative text-to-speech works to undermine its own framing. But it’s the very human interactions in every raid that takes command to ultimately define the core experience.
When the entire player base buys in and commits to earnest interactions and prox-chat communication, narrative told through emergent gameplay feels unforgettably limitless. I don’t think these Arc Raiders moments will dry up anytime soon.
Silent Hill f
The best horror stories frequently involve unavoidable recursion and inescapable trauma. Silent Hill f exceeds these requisites, filling itself with layered, insidious contemplations of our natural tendencies toward human cruelty. It is a scream into the inferno of adolescence, and hearing something unrecognizable yell back.
There’s an overt complexity that makes this one of the stronger horror narratives of recent memory, not for its explicit scares, but for how it weaponizes a justifiable rage locked inside the innermost self. Within the opening hours of Silent Hill f, you’ll be reminded that it is not just the violence that leaves us shaken, but the sorrow that always comes with it.
Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector
Citizen Sleeper 2 is a game about windows – a gaze into the countless fragile worlds entangled in the spirals of economic desperation. A meditative journey of solemn synthesizers and tender conversation floating in the interstellar miasma. It pierces us with gentle prose, guised behind routine rolls of dice as we form the rhizomatic strands of unshakable relationships.
By subscribing, you agree to receive newsletter and marketing emails, and accept Valnet’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You can unsubscribe anytime.
At the far edge of the starward belt is the prescient reminder that we are not just the residual figures of rampant corporatocracy – but that we exist – and rage against the interpellation of a quiet malaise. After all, we are each capable of making meaning despite the perpetual drum of crushing modernity. This is exactly the kind of game we need in our lives.
Death Stranding 2: On The Beach
Kojima games are always more than just games, operating as didactic stories to say something about our contemporary human condition. This time around, Death Stranding 2 is less a game as much as it is a feeling – the interactive equivalent of a folk album designed to invoke an aesthetic effect centering on grief and our intrinsic propensity for care. It is unlike anything you have ever played.
Even in its most reductive form, of walking from one place to another, DS2 continuously acts as one of the most necessary reminders of life’s inherent beauty. It also happens to have an 11-minute cutscene in the back half of the game that gutted me into near disrepair.
Hollow Knight: Silksong
Underneath its constant tension, Silksong forefronts a journey of radical individuality that single-handedly makes it the most stunning experience I’ve had all year – Bilewater and all. Which is my way of reminding us that to focus the rhetorical framework of the experience of this game largely on its difficulty would be to complete a massive disservice to how beautiful the narrative ultimately shakes out, especially under a feminist lens.
It is abundantly clear that Team Cherry, in addition to the expected masterful design elements present in the original Hollow Knight, elevated Silksong to convey a message of emotional restoration. It’s this that resonates above all else.
We want to hear from you! Share your opinions in the thread below and remember to keep it respectful.
Please respect our community guidelines. No links, inappropriate language, or spam.
