If there is one thing gamers in 2025 can agree on, it’s that there was nowhere near enough time to play the countless games released this year.
Even with highly anticipated releases delayed into next year, “Grand Theft Auto VI” being the biggest, there was no shortage of games to fill in the spots left empty by those that were set back. This year saw the epic return to Hideo Kojima’s “Death Stranding” world, the release of a new Nintendo console, unforgettable multiplayer experiences and many independent studios dropping all-time great games. It is not an exaggeration to say that it was impossible to complete all of the games that were considered great, let alone amazing.
For those looking to spend their winter break catching up on some of the incredible games released this year, this list has you covered with the top five games of 2025.
Honorable Mention: Marvel Rivals
Key art for the game “Marvel Rivals.” (NetEase Games)
I can’t put my name on this list without mentioning “Marvel Rivals.” Even though it did technically come out in the waning weeks of 2024, Netease’s answer to “Overwatch” with the pantheon of Marvel characters was by far the game I spent the most time playing, clocking in over 500 hours of playtime. Over its first year of support, we’ve seen five seasons and 11 additional characters, outpacing many of the similar types of competitive video games, and there is no end in sight. The ranked grind every season never gets old, despite the dozens of games that end in hair pulling and teammate reporting. I have been looking for something to fill the competitive online “shooter” space that has been empty in my life for a couple years, and “Marvel Rivals” is that game. No matter how late it is or how bad my last game was, I need to play just one more round.
5. Hollow Knight: Silksong
Key art for the game “Hollow Knight: Silksong.” (Team Cherry)
“Hollow Knight: Silksong” was one of those fabled games, alongside “Grand Theft Auto VI” and “Half-Life 3,” that were allowed to take their time to cook because we knew the end product would be worth the wait. Essentially shadow-dropped at the beginning of September, “Silksong” delivered on what everyone had been hoping for: more “Hollow Knight.” While that means veterans of the series knew what they were getting into, the added touches to “Silksong’s” world make this sequel one of the best of the year.
The difficulty and often obtuse game design of Team Cherry’s long-awaited masterpiece pushed me to my limits, and I’ll admit that Act 3 has still eluded me. The feeling that comes from any sort of progress in this game is truly special. Parts of what made exploring the vast Kingdom of Pharloom so memorable were the characters and the songs a lot of them sing as you come across them. The cute little bugs of the “Silksong” world became my sanctuary throughout the dozens of grueling hours I spent in the colorful underground world of Pharloom. I don’t expect to stop humming Shakra’s tunes anytime soon, as it was one of the best examples of Team Cherry’s melding of world-building and gameplay.
4. Blue Prince
Key art for the game “Blue Prince.” (Raw Fury)
One of the many debut games for an indie studio this year, “Blue Prince,” is a feast for puzzle-lovers anywhere and everywhere with its simple, yet mysterious premise. You play as Simon P. Jones who will inherit his great-uncle’s mansion on the condition that he finds the secret 46th room of the 45-room home in one day. This singular task sets up the addictive rogue-lite ride that was ever-present in my subconscious mind. Each run starts Jones out at the entrance of the Mt. Holly Estate that has been left to him, where players then open doors to select a one of three randomly chosen rooms of the dozens of options that the mansion could potentially hold.
“Blue Prince” is a puzzle game that wormed its way into my brain over the summer as I returned to it day after day, trying out different layouts that I had been dreaming of. Pieces of smaller puzzles within the grander one are scattered throughout the game through letters, diary entries, photographs and other contextual items that you find in the sprawling estate and each small puzzle solved gave me a little serotonin kick that kept me coming back even after a day of horrendous luck. This game aims to reward players who may not have the dexterity needed for some of the other incredible games from this year, but who have the patience and the drive to pull out a notebook and check off each possible solution until they finally find that 46th room.
3. Dispatch
Key art for the game “Dispatch.” (AdHoc Studio)
“Dispatch” almost didn’t exist, yet it defied the cruel machine of independent game development and funding to produce an original superhero story that was brought to life beautifully. “Dispatch” is a new take on the choose-your-own-adventure style of video games that has been popular for over a decade. AdHoc Studio teamed up with the incredibly talented team at Critical Role to deliver a near-perfect version of this style of game that has had a few highs and many lows since being popularized in the 2010s.
Storytelling and performances are where “Dispatch” absolutely shines and why it lands in my top three games of 2025. Aaron Paul absolutely nails the character of Robert Robertson, delivering a defeated hero who slowly opens his heart and finds his place in the world while helping others do the same. However, as the choice maker for Robertson, every interaction between him and his team hits extra hard as I made conscious decisions to build his relationships with other characters and keep him on the path of a hero despite all the pushback from the somewhat gritty rendition of Los Angeles. A very pleasant surprise for me was how much I enjoyed the actual dispatching part of “Dispatch”. Sending out my team and hearing the hilarious interactions between different pairings ended up being what I looked forward to the most every episode. By the end of the eight-episode season I laughed, I cried and I was proud of the team I forged. Yet, I still wondered how things could have gone had I made different choices here and there. “Dispatch” is going to be a game I think about, and might replay, often until a second season releases.
2. Split Fiction
Key art for the game “Split Fiction.” (Hazelight Studios)
The team over at Hazelight Studios, led by visionary director Josef Fares, followed up their 2021 game of the year “It Takes Two” with another one-of-a-kind cooperative experience that had me smiling ear to ear from start to finish. “Split Fiction” takes the co-op experience Hazelight is known for to the next level with how much coordination you and your partner will need to complete the game, but that ended up meaning the satisfaction of finishing a level is doubled. It is absolutely worth finding a friend, sibling or partner to play this game with, and with their game sharing system, duos only need to purchase one copy to play together online. The game is already in talks to be adapted into a movie directed by Jon M. Chu with Sydney Sweeney set to star.
In the game, writers Zoe and Mio get sucked into a virtual reality that shifts between the worlds and the unfinished stories they have been putting together in their heads. The result is a game full of action with almost no downtime, filling the dozen or so hours with some of the most creative gameplay I have experienced in years. Within each main level are portals to “side stories” that were small experiences that could have been full levels, or even full games on their own. One of the first side stories in the game, which was revealed with the game’s first trailer, puts the two players in the skins of a rainbow farting or extending-torsoed pigs who eventually become hot dogs, and if that doesn’t convince you to play this game, I don’t know what will. And not to spoil anything, but the final level of “Split Fiction” is one of the all-time greatest gameplay moments I have ever experienced.
1. Hades II
Key art for the game “Hades II.” (Supergiant Games)
To put it simply, San Francisco’s own Supergiant Games made the perfect video game in 2020 with “Hades”, and in 2025, they made an even better game with “Hades II.” The loop of try, die, repeat until you finally make it to the end for the first time hooks you in like very few other rogue-lite games do. The fun factor never wanes, whether you’re on your tenth run or your hundredth, with new weapon choices and blessings from the Greek pantheon providing fresh playstyles every time Melinoë leaves her underworld sanctuary.
After a couple hours of playtime, I saw the full framework of what “Hades II” was going to deliver and how it stepped up nearly every aspect of the original game. Voice acting and character art add so much to the experience, with conversations between Melinoë and the gods and underworld dwellers evolving seemingly every interaction, even after over 100 hours of playtime.
By putting the player in the shoes of the daughter of Hades, who wields the power of witchcraft unlike her brother from the first game, Supergiant delivers a wholly new experience in this sequel. Combat feels more in depth with the addition of a skill system that players can change to fit every run, and the weapons have more of a magical feel than the arsenal Zagreus was given previously. Rarely do sequels to masterpieces hit the same highs as their predecessors, but I can say that “Hades II” is a rare example that everyone needs to play. It also helps that the game runs on any hardware that could run the original five years ago.
2025 has been an incredible year for video games, and it may go down as one of the best years of this generation so far. This year’s independent games showed up and overshadowed triple-A releases from PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo, presenting a shift in the volatile game development world. It is hard to remember a time when there were so many masterpieces released within a year, so enjoy this list as a guide when gaming this winter and beyond.