Games fin­ished in 2025

Another year gone! I’ve con­tin­ued to track my video game com­ple­tion this year, some­thing that I started last year for 2024.

There are fewer games on this year’s list, as I’ve stretched my en­ter­tain­ment time bud­get to in­clude more movies, tele­vi­sion and anime than I’ve usu­ally watched in the past. (If you want to see my movie log, fol­low me on Letterboxd!)

I think this trend might con­tinue through­out 2026, be­cause my fo­cus will be on com­plet­ing some of the longer games on my back­log, as op­posed to many smaller ones.

But for 2025, I can still fea­ture my fin­ished games by month, like last year. So let’s take a look!

January

• The Rise of the Golden Idol (Steam, 2024) — There was a dis­tinct lack of Golden Idol last year as I tried to fill the gap with other de­duc­tion games. Color Gray Games’ fol­low-up se­quel is a much more pol­ished sopho­more en­try and a great kick-off for 2025.
• Duck Detective: The Secret Salami (Switch, 2024) — A “cozy game” de­tec­tive ad­ven­ture that I pur­chased on a whim in or­der to sup­port an in­die de­vel­oper for re­leas­ing a phys­i­cal car­tridge. It’s short, and en­joy­able for its brief run­time.
• Old Skies (Steam, 2025) — Wadjet Eye is the spir­i­tual suc­ces­sor to the likes of Sierra and LucasArts, the ad­ven­ture game gi­ants of the 1990s. The sto­ry­telling is al­ways su­perb, and the graph­ics and voice act­ing gets bet­ter with each re­lease. (Full dis­clo­sure: I was a beta tester for this game.) The story is about Fia, a “time agent” in a fu­ture where time travel is pos­si­ble, the time­line is (mostly) not pro­tected from changes, and those that can af­ford it are able to go back to ex­pe­ri­ence his­tory first-hand or even change it in their fa­vor. Could you live a life that no one even re­mem­bers? Could you love some­one when they might be ran­domly erased from the time­line? These are the kinds of themes that stick with you, long af­ter the game is done.

February

No games fin­ished this month, but I did play a lot of No Man’s Sky, since it’s been so well sup­ported over the years and I wanted to catch my­self up on the newer changes. I got very close to fin­ish­ing the main quest line, but it’s such an open-ended ex­pe­ri­ence and I did­n’t want to wrap it up just yet, so it gets a run­ner-up nod here.

March

• The Last of Us Part II Remastered (PS5, 2024) — I avoided this game for a long time. I was so up­set with the first one, and I’d heard how much more of a de­press­ing lose-faith-in-hu­man­ity story the sec­ond one was. But the HBO show’s first sea­son was such a good adap­ta­tion, I wanted to play this be­fore the show’s sec­ond sea­son dropped so that I could ex­pe­ri­ence it in the same way. And I have to say, Part II ab­solutely re­deemed the first game. Joel and Ellie get the out­comes they de­serve; mean­while, Abby is such a great char­ac­ter, and I loved her whole sto­ry­line. It did­n’t come out this year, but of the games I played in 2025, The Last of Us Part II is my per­sonal game of the year.

April

• Astro’s Playroom (PS5, 2020) — I re­ally loved my time with Astro Bot, so I checked out the tech demo that started it all. It’s very much a pro­to­type of the game it would even­tu­ally be­come, but I will never say no to more Astro.

May

• Blue Prince (PS5, 2025) — This rogue­like puz­zle game caught me by sur­prise, but it tick­led my brain in just the right ways. It’s the kind of game that has mul­ti­ple depths of puz­zle-solv­ing to it be­yond the main goal, though, and I got as far as I wanted to. (The re­ally deep lore of this game can be ex­tremely frus­trat­ing to fig­ure out on your own, so I did­n’t mind hav­ing it spoiled by YouTube ex­plain­ers. Not at all.)

June

• The Rise of the Golden Idol DLC — The Sins of New Wells and The Lemurian Phoenix (Steam, 2025) — Color Gray Games are re­leas­ing new con­tent at a steady clip, and I’m div­ing into all of it.
• Snatcher (Sega CD, 1994, em­u­lated) — As I said last year, I’m ex­plor­ing Kojima’s past work, and now I’m fi­nally able to cross Snatcher off the list! This game wears its Blade Runner in­flu­ence quite proudly, but while I re­spected it for its his­tor­i­cal rel­e­vance, I still feel a stronger at­tach­ment to Policenauts.

July

No games com­pleted this month, but I had been play­ing quite a bit of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. It’s a great game! But I had put it on hold, and (as of this writ­ing) still haven’t yet re­turned to it.

August

• The Rise of the Golden Idol DLC — The Age of Restraint (Steam, 2025) — This is re­ally the year of the Golden Idol, is­n’t it? The DLC have all been re­ally in­ven­tive and sat­is­fy­ing stand­alone sto­ries, but there’s a fine line be­tween a chal­leng­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion and frus­trat­ing guess­work, and un­for­tu­nately, they don’t al­ways nail it.

September

• Anno: Mutationem (PS5, 2022) — A 2.5D ac­tion-ad­ven­ture story in a cy­ber­punk set­ting with a lot of ref­er­ences to the SCP Foundation. I dug the premise in the­ory, but the over­all ex­pe­ri­ence fell flat for me.

October

• Resident Evil 3 Remake (PS5, 2020) — The orig­i­nal RE3 was my first Resident Evil game, and set up teenage me’s for­ever crush on Jill Valentine. I did­n’t re­mem­ber how short of a game RE3 re­ally was, which made it easy to jump back in and just power through it pretty quickly. I’d still like to fin­ish the rest of the Resident Evil games some­day, even if it’s in re­make form.

November

• Stray (PS5, 2022) — This in­die game seemed to be on every­one’s radar back in 2022, and res­onated with peo­ple for its lonely, deep-in-the-pan­demic de­serted city vibes. I was also re­ally in­trigued by the de­sign cues taken from Kowloon Walled City. Although I en­joyed it, I could­n’t help but see it as a co­zier The Last of Us but with cats, and I’m glad it did­n’t over­stay its wel­come.

December

• Mario Kart World (Switch 2, 2025) — For an open-world rac­ing game that is meant to be re­played, you can still roll cred­its on it, and that hap­pens af­ter you fin­ish the Special Cup. It’s a lot of fun, and a chill time when I need to un­wind, but it’s also a shame that the Switch 2 (which launched this year) does­n’t seem to have much else to jus­tify pur­chas­ing an ex­tremely ex­pen­sive new gam­ing plat­form.

And with that, 2025 is in the books! The big three for 2026 are Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (which is still in a hold­ing pat­tern), Baldur’s Gate 3 (which I have dived back into re­cently), and Death Stranding 2: On the Beach. (And let’s not for­get there’s one more Rise of the Golden Idol DLC, The Curse of the Last Reaper. If I could just com­mit my­self to those, I think it would be fine year.