chi's 2025 goty list

31 Dec, 2025

So 2025 comes to a close. If you know me, you probably already know that this year was a lot with the release of UNBEATABLE, a project I’ve sunk nearly a third of my life into. Now that UNBEATABLE is out, so much of what I have to bear as a creative human is nakedly just, out there - in all its messy and beautiful glory.

I wanted to take the time to share the many games I played this year that resonated with me in such an intense time of my life.

A core theme you may notice through all of them is “humanity”. In recent years, especially with the advent of things such as the game industry’s inability to keep generative AI technology away from actual art, and a very clear downward spiral in both media literacy and players’ ability to respect games on merits that are dissimilar to that of spreadsheet software, I’ve found myself personally jaded by a lot of what I’ve seen the industry choose to celebrate regarding the releases that define each year.

This feels so cynical and shitty of me to say, to be honest. I think I’ve just become more of a hater this year - I’ve never felt so out of touch with the space that I’ve been a part of, but it’s also why the games I appreciated most this year touched me in more ways than I can truly describe - they reminded me of why I love games in the first place. Why games are the powerful form of art that they are. Why there’s importance in seeing the human behind the works we cherish!

These games communicated for me that, more than ever, we need to be ourselves and we need that to be the front and center of our work. No more hiding behind a brand or a company logo - it’s time to mask off and break the rules to do more than just make "popular, likeable games", but games that ultimately will matter when all is said and done.

So let's talk about them!

10th: INAZUMA ELEVEN: VICTORY ROAD

The best game of the year if Akihiro Hino didn't shut the fuck up

Nothing distills the magic of extremely hype shounen anime and the humanity in putting everything you have into the things you love quite like INAZUMA ELEVEN: VICTORY ROAD, which covers this in both the series’ strongest scenario to date and through its overambitious attempt to be the INAZUMA ELEVEN game with its many modes and features. For me personally, expectations were high for this one - the anime was formative for me growing up, and I love the original DS game, so it really elated me that the game’s story hit as hard as it did, setting up for one of the strongest finales I’ve seen in a game this year. Everything about this game should not have worked, and in some aspects, it doesn’t completely land, but it is clear to me that they dialed into exactly what made the original TV series and games so special and took it to heights I never thought I’d see. It’s some real as fuck peak. They made this game out of pure passion and love for the series and the people that love it.

But man, I was pretty certain I’d place this as my GOTY, but everytime LEVEL-5 CEO Akihiro Hino brought up their intent to use gen AI in future projects I have knocked it down the list, and now it’s on the edge of it (with their other really good release this year, Fantasy Life i, fully kicked out). So for the sake of me not regretting putting this game on my list - Hino-san, please shut the fuck up!

9th Lumines Arise

The best way to feel the textual sensation of touching grass without actually doing so of 2025

I mean this almost feels boring to write about because of course this shit was gonna rule. Lumines but given the Tetris Effect treatment was an inevitability, and the somewhat abstract (yet less-so to TE) concepts they chose to set the game’s soundscapes and visuals behind are all winners. There’s a adoration for what makes us human in the game that didn’t have to be communicated by cheesy vocal songs about the sensation of feeling and emotion that we experience in day-to-day life, but hey, they did that anyways, and the songs are very cute. If you don’t feel something from the game’s beautiful and dazzling interpretations of sensual concepts like running your fingers through sand or wading through water, then idk man, it did that for me without having to even play it in VR.

8th: ENA: Dream BBQ (First Chapter)

The best multilingual video game of the year*

As someone who was completely out of the loop about ENA and its cultural status on the internet, I really wondered what kind of game you could even make out of it - but as it turns out, it’s actually something quite weird and special - an open-ended adventure game that is unafraid to keep its best moments away from you just because there is so much else you end up seeing that could also arguably be considered its “best moments”. You barely scratch the surface playing it just once, and I was unsettled by how vastly different of an experience it can be just from how you play. Watching my partner play felt like seeing a completely different game altogether - the amount of work to achieve this effect, while also maintaining a large degree of visual animation and stylish flourish throughout is immaculate.

So stoked to see the remaining chapters of this game - if they’re anything like the first chapter, which itself felt like a magical standalone affair in its own right, this has the makings to cement itself as a monumental achievement for the adventure game genre.

7th: BIRDCAGE

The most likely to end up on a craigslist post because someone thinks it's better than sex game of the year

Arcade action games are a dying art but BIRDCAGE sure doesn't act like that's the case.

An excellent shmup that oozes in style and presentation while nailing core fundamentals within the genre. A shmup that smacks you with kickass music, flashy fights, and maintaining its arcade pacing while dialing up cinematic flair is always going to hit for me. Imagine that craigslist post about killer7 but it’s instead about BIRDCAGE and that sums up my thoughts on this game. You should play BIRDCAGE. It’s the voice of our generation.

6th: Despelote

The Best Game of the Year that lets you terrorize your neighborhood and get away with it A beautiful work of art that captures dreamy childhood memories in super loose, goofy vignettes that are really amplified by player interactivity (or even the lack thereof). Despelote will progress even if you choose not to do anything, but the child within ourselves can’t stop us from finding out just what happens if we kick a soccer ball towards some bottles, or actively disobey curfew just to hang out with the neighbors for a smidge longer. Despelote trusts that you’ll find its aimlessness so empowering because nothing beats the whimsy of being set loose upon the great outdoors and being around others. It’s a great case for going outside and kicking balls around, basically.

Also, I was the very first person to submit a letter to Panic (which the game encouraged) at launch! Given that the game compelled me to do such a thing the very morning I beat it, I'd say that says enough, really.

5th: Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector

The best game to play when you need to be reminded that kindness is still very much alive and appreciated in today's fucked up dystopian world

Citizen Sleeper's sequel is a bigger and bolder game but is largely paced the same as the original, where you go from barely scraping by with bad hand after hand, to tackling every challenge like it's nothing. It ties into the series' core themes of strength in community and fostering hope / kindness in a world intent on snuffing it out of everyday society, and Citizen Sleeper 2 goes all in on the latter themes. In a year where kindness especially felt in short supply, largely thanks to social media enshittification and a worldwide epidemic in cruelty, Citizen Sleeper 2 is a reminder that there's still good in a lot of people - yourself included.

4th: maimai DX Prism Plus International (US) / maimai DX Circle (JP)

The annual arcade rhythm game pick on my list because i'm still deeply obsessed with these fucking games

In a year of stellar rhythm game releases (hehe), one of the many unthinkables happened - maimai began showing up to US arcades - official and online! maimai DX in its current state is an incredible game with some of the genre's best offerings in music, charts, and is an incredible experience to share with friends and soon-to-be-friend passerbys queued up to play. But perhaps more than just the game itself, this release marks a real turning point to an entire side of games that's often ignored by the wider populace!

maimai DX's immediate success in the US despite its odds show the demand for more like it, and we're about to see a real resurrection of arcades as a space to play and connect with people from our local spaces and beyond. Not that it had completely gone away in the first place - but a real storm is brewing, and it's one everyone needs to start paying attention to. maimai DX, through its two-player cabinet design and its emphasis on not just full comboing a song, but doing it with another player, has already connected me with super important friends in my life, and its bright future is proof that I wasn't alone in experiencing that.

3rd: Hello Girl

The best epilogue of the year

It’s short and sweet, but Hello Girl stuck with me through the whole year long after I saw the credits. The game says just enough to get you to care for its characters, the uncertain world they live in, and the struggles they experience as routines / jobs become unpredictable, their expectations of what the future hold shatter apart, and connection gives way to disconnection. Sincere and heartfelt in its best moments, and horrifying in its scariest - if you’ve got a few hours, you should start off 2026 with playing Hello Girl.

Also, the epilogue where they all get blazed is pretty funny. Quite enjoyed that. Thanks for a real one, Imo Team.

2nd: Consume Me

The game that deserves most to sell 1 million copies of the year

I remember first seeing this game in high school - before UNBEATABLE existed as a concept, and finding myself deathly curious about what the final game would look like. I loved Jenny and AP’s previous game, Beglitched, so naturally I was on board to play an…autobiographical RPG about Jenny’s young adult life?

Okay I wasn’t expecting this game to end up being so very specific but there’s an authenticity and vulnerability in making a game that feels in equal parts shameful of one’s self-destructive habits as a teenager and loving of the memories and life choices that shape us into the people we are now. There’s mechanical systems built around flawed viewpoints towards body health, mental health, and social life balance that are silly yet reflective of the kind of person that the pressures of American society and Asian parents instill into the generation that Jenny grew up in (and subsequently the generation I grew up in).

This game is hilarious, horrifying, heartwarming, and heartbreaking at its best moments, and often all at the same time. To achieve that through putting your own past self on blast is quite the bold move - I don’t think a lot of people would make works sharing their flaws and insecurities quite like this, and it’s worth celebrating on that merit alone - but it wouldn’t have achieved its ambitions if not for its game systems / mechanics pushing those themes into overdrive. This alone cements it for me as my favorite game of the year, especially as a full package, but if we’re to break rules for a moment…there’s one more contender I want to talk about this year.

1st: DELTARUNE CH 3 + 4

The Game of the Year. And it's technically not even "complete" yet

If I had to assess Chapters 3 + 4 alone as an experience, it’d be nothing short of uh, one of the best RPGs of the decade thus far? I hear that this same accolades get thrown around for a certain other game from this year but bear with me, I really do think DELTARUNE in its current package and especially the two chapters that released this year deserve that honor most.

For one, DELTARUNE isn’t trying to break any real ground with what it’s doing (and is not ashamed of that) - a lot of what makes its heartfelt moments work and its delicious setpiece battles click is stuff you’ve probably seen done in many RPGs before, especially from legendary titles like LIVE A LIVE, the Xeno line of games, and moonRPG, but it’s the way it understands why those things work, and a desire to take those lessons and try new things, that elevates it. DELTARUNE’s combat is a vehicle for communicating intense, emotional moments (or very funny gags) in the same way both classic and modern FINAL FANTASY nail that same flair in their combat systems. DELTARUNE’s cutscenes communicate so much through so little just like how other 2D/early 3D JRPGs did less with more. This team lives by that mentality, but when it’s time to go all out, they still go all the fucking way.

DELTARUNE shows a group of people’s love for not just the video games that inspired it, but games itself. You can see the passion Toby and his team have for BEMANI games, doujin fancircles, and both western / japanese adventure games of all kinds. It’s loving of the culture behind games, anime, and movies while critical of it. It's sentimental about the internet while lamenting what it no longer can be. The game is willing to be both a crowd pleaser and a crowd hater. It’s willing to break the rules of what has been established before, while embellishing itself in the humanity of the things that came before. To me, that’s everything I want to see in a game - and while the story isn’t complete, it feels like the mission statement of this project is clearly already taking full shape. A homemade, passionately made cake that will come with even more slices in the near future.

That sincerity and humanity, and the fact that Toby Fox and his team are celebrated as much as they are, is proof to me that the things people want in video games are ultimately things that can only be made by us - by people. When a work can create a real connection between the people that loved making it and the people that loved playing it, it’s bound to change the course of the lives of everyone involved. DELTARUNE, and its new chapters, are hope in an industry so in need of it. If it won’t take that hope, then there’s truly no future for it.

Anyways yeah that's it. Scram go out and play some maimai. Fuck genAI, fuck payment processor censorship, and free palestine. Bye!