The factor that surprises me most about these private GOTY lists, which I’ve been doing most years since I began working at Kotaku (together with within the supply room for my third baby), is simply how little I keep in mind them after they go up. I might guess what was on the 2020 record, or the 2018 one, or my very first one from 2016, however I’d most likely get half of them incorrect.
The soiled little secret about these lists, a minimum of for me, is how fluid and ephemeral they’re. What was in my prime 10 shifted all year long and that variance didn’t cease as soon as the record was revealed. I lock in my selection however at all times harbor doubts, not simply in regards to the video games themselves however most of all about my very own ambivalent emotions towards them. These change, evolve, and normally simply get extra sophisticated over time.
Every of these lists would most likely be completely different if I compiled them at the moment. However that’s kind of the purpose. They’re snapshots of what I assumed I felt on the time. Perhaps they assist, even when solely barely, to make clear another person’s emotions about one among their favourite video games of the yr. Or, even higher, flip them onto one thing they hadn’t already tried. I do know, although, that largely all of us simply skim the lists to see how a lot they overlap with our personal, and what we expect that claims about our personal tastes and the opposite individual’s. So if you happen to haven’t already skipped forward, listed below are my prime video games of 2025 in alphabetical order:
9 Kings
A fantastically elegant mash-up of minimalist tower protection technique and roguelike deckbuilding, 9 Kings remains to be in Early Entry and already just about every little thing I need it to be. The introduction of a quest mode late within the yr mainly added a complete second recreation. Nothing introduced me extra pleasure this yr than snuggling up on the sofa and watching my brain-dead synergies scale in unexpectedly lethal methods.
Arc Raiders
That is the primary fashionable recreation to get me to interrupt my “no mic with randos” rule. However Arc Raiders‘ actual trick is simply how rewarding it makes taking part in the multiplayer extraction format as a solo outsider. It does an exquisite job of mixing immersive PVE encounters with unpredictable PVP run-ins in a manner that provides to the richness of the sci-fi world slightly than making it really feel like a sequence of incentive-driven hamster wheels. Stable gunplay, nice environment, rewarding development.
Citizen Sleeper 2
Citizen Sleeper 2, a tight-knit sci-fi TTRPG, feels virtually sprawling in comparison with the primary recreation. That scope can sometimes get unwieldy or see the sport run into pacing points, however the fusion of dice-roll ability checks and lightweight useful resource administration with branching dialogue and participant selection yields an unforgettably grim however evocative voyage by cosmic backwaters on the decline. By no means have the stakes been so excessive for even probably the most trivial duties. Citizen Sleeper 2 jogged my memory that letting go is usually exhausting however needed, and that realizing it isn’t the identical factor as truly doing it.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Everybody’s favourite French-infused, Unreal Engine 5 reskin of Last Fantasy X is nearly as good as they are saying. I’m not on board with all the recreation’s narrative selections, and I’m much less impressed by the obvious novelty of a great JRPG within the yr 2025 than some, however Clair Obscur is rock strong in so many departments and units a brand new gold-standard for (non-tactical) turn-based fight. The writing and performances are particularly excellent, and none of it might quantity to a hill of beans with out the (largely) glorious soundtrack.
Donkey Kong Bananza
If we judged video games by merely by the sum of the enjoyment or boredom they produced moment-to-moment, Donkey Kong Bananza wouldn’t rank very extremely. However video games are extra than simply graphs of the feelings they produce throughout dozens of hours of playtime. Donkey Kong Bananza is an ambitiously chaotic motion platforming collectathon that feels extremely novel for the primary 5 to eight hours, loses all steam and inventiveness within the second and third acts, after which comes roaring again with the most effective closers of any fashionable Nintendo recreation. Might Bananza have been extra? In all probability. Was it sufficient? Positively.
Elden Ring Nightreign
Nightreign is a wonderful action-RPG however a top-notch multiplayer recreation. It makes use of the superficial trappings of a Fortnite-like battle royale to fully reinvent open-world exploration, downside fixing, and the traditional FromSoftware boss battle. It’s much less like being thrust into an i-frame boot camp than embarking on a street journey the place you understand the automobile will lose a tire, run out of gasoline, and stall out within the worst attainable place, however persevere and the place the place you break down in the midst of the evening will quickly start to really feel like the house you by no means knew you missed.
Last Fantasy Ways: The Ivalice Chronicles
The perfect RPG job system to ever do it, mixed with an A-tier story and S-tier music, yields an all-time traditional that by no means fails to show why so many individuals are nonetheless obsessive about it, whether or not you give it one hour or 20. The remaster is overly cautious with enhancements and stingy with new content material, however it avoids the cardinal sin of attempting and failing to enhance on what was already a masterpiece.
Ghost of Yotei
Final month I went to an Italian restaurant and ordered their Spicy Crab Vodka. The primary chew was surprisingly scrumptious. Each chew after that was equally scrumptious. The truth that each chew from starting to finish successfully tasted the identical didn’t diminish the dish’s total impact, or how a lot I nonetheless give it some thought. Ghost of Yotei feels a bit like that. What it lacks in selection or novelty, it greater than makes up for with high quality, craftmanship, and the arrogance to know precisely what it’s and be the very best model of that. It’s impressively big and uncompromisingly slick, backed up by nice writing and a few unbelievable performances.
Hole Knight: Silksong
I performed a whole lot of nice 2D motion video games this yr. None of them, in scope, precision, and ambition, in the end held a candle to Hole Knight: Silksong. It incorporates among the tried-and-true parts of Metroidvanias and Soulslikes however transforms them into a novel, intimate, at occasions frustratingly galling journey that asks a whole lot of you however is beneficiant with its rewards. It’s not excellent, however the flaws it does have solely come into focus due to every little thing else it nails. On my deathbed a snow globe will slip from my palms and crash onto the ground as I mutter the identify “Bell Beast.”
Cut up Fiction
It’s by no means a great signal once I wish to begin off an entry with some kind of acknowledgement of a recreation’s greatest weak spot, however possibly it’s a testomony to simply how insanely neatly designed Cut up Fiction is that its trite premise and sometimes grating banter didn’t considerably detract from the entire expertise. Cut up Fiction is so effortlessly good at what it does, it makes it straightforward to miss simply how rare it’s to get such a tightly paced, well-balanced action-adventure, notably one which retains discovering ingenious methods to one-up itself right through to the very finish.
