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 bear in mind them after they go up. I might guess what was on the 2020 listing, or the 2018 one, or my very first one from 2016, however I’d most likely get half of them unsuitable.
The soiled little secret about these lists, at the least 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 listing was revealed. I lock in my alternative however at all times harbor doubts, not simply concerning 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 right this moment. However that’s type of the purpose. They’re snapshots of what I believed I felt on the time. Possibly 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 principally 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 should you 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 all the things I need it to be. The introduction of a quest mode late within the yr mainly added a complete second sport. 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 trendy sport 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 a beautiful job of mixing immersive PVE encounters with unpredictable PVP run-ins in a approach that provides to the richness of the sci-fi world quite than making it really feel like a collection of incentive-driven hamster wheels. Strong 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 sport. 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 alternative yields an unforgettably grim however evocative voyage by cosmic backwaters on the decline. By no means have the stakes been so excessive for even essentially the most trivial duties. Citizen Sleeper 2 jogged my memory that letting go is commonly exhausting however obligatory, and that understanding it isn’t the identical factor as truly doing it.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Everybody’s favourite French-infused, Unreal Engine 5 reskin of Closing Fantasy X is nearly as good as they are saying. I’m not on board with the entire sport’s narrative decisions, 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 stable in so many departments and units a brand new gold-standard for (non-tactical) turn-based fight. The writing and performances are particularly very good, and none of it could quantity to a hill of beans with out the (principally) 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 probably the greatest closers of any trendy Nintendo sport. 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 sport. It makes use of the superficial trappings of a Fortnite-like battle royale to fully reinvent open-world exploration, drawback fixing, and the basic 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 already know the automotive 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 night time will quickly start to really feel like the house you by no means knew you missed.
Closing Fantasy Techniques: The Ivalice Chronicles
One of the best RPG job system to ever do it, mixed with an A-tier story and S-tier music, yields an all-time basic 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, nevertheless 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 boldness to know precisely what it’s and be the very best model of that. It’s impressively large and uncompromisingly slick, backed up by nice writing and a few unimaginable performances.
Hole Knight: Silksong
I performed quite a 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 components of Metroidvanias and Soulslikes however transforms them into a singular, intimate, at occasions frustratingly galling journey that asks quite a lot of you however is beneficiant with its rewards. It’s not good, however the flaws it does have solely come into focus due to all the things 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.”
Break up Fiction
It’s by no means a great signal once I need to begin off an entry with some type of acknowledgement of a sport’s largest weak point, however perhaps it’s a testomony to simply how insanely neatly designed Break up Fiction is that its trite premise and sometimes grating banter didn’t considerably detract from the entire expertise. Break up Fiction is so effortlessly good at what it does, it makes it simple to miss simply how rare it’s to get such a tightly paced, well-balanced action-adventure, significantly one which retains discovering ingenious methods to one-up itself right through to the very finish.
