The Games That Carried My 2025

Many games have come out in 2025, and even more were still on my backlog from years past. Here are the games that I completed and felt made my year in gaming.

Most Played [152 hours] - Marvel Rivals

Thanks to my Steam review, I have horrible proof that I was terrible addicted to Marvel rivals for the first 4 months of the year. I put in a crazy amount of time into the game, and I’m still bad at it! This was my most played game, taking up 25% of my total playtime and put in a crazy 84 sessions. I enjoyed my time with this game primarily because I played it with friends. I did minimal grinding on my own, and we even tried to rank in this game. We kinda failed by only getting into low Paltinum, but that is the highest we’ve been in a competitive shooter of any kind, so we gladly took it as an accomplishment.

First 100% - Urban Jungle

As someone who plays a lot of games, I tend to just roll credits or finish out the main content and feel good about my experience. I grew up on Nintendo consoles, and for the longest time after getting back into gaming, I played mainly on my Switch, which doesn’t have achievements like Steam or PlayStation. This has led to having a bunch of games be a handful of achievements away from being completed, and I just never felt the urge. When playing Urban Jungle, I was only two away after finishing the main story. And both were so simple. I had to finish the plant list and put 100 plants in one level.

Hardest 100% - Slime Rancher

I only just started my 100% journey in the last few months of the year, so I’ve only completed 6 games in 2025. Most were simple, Sushi Ben was story achievements only, Crypt Custodian just needed me to suffer through a boss gauntlet, and Into the Emberlands was just a few attempts to get a few stragglers collected. This meant I was not prepared for a grindy achievement. Slime Rancher was a game that was left half-finished in 2023, so I wanted to make sure I finished it this year. I spent a lot of time getting my ranch updated and trying to optimize my process. I got most of the achievements and then realized that I was on Casual Mode and couldn’t spawn or create tarr slimes. This meant that two achievements would have to be on a fresh file. I really thought that out of all the achievements I needed to get, I thought getting three plorts from a single gold slime, but I was wrong. The hardest wasn’t even earning 75,000 in Rush Mode. It was getting the tarr on the slime stand! I had to start a fresh file, and beginning from zero was a rough position to be in. Having to build up everything to get the funds and materials for the slime stand was so time consuming and frustrating. After a whole day of grinding, I finally popped the last achievement.

Shout Out to 100%

• Urban Jungle
• Into The Emberlands
• Sushi Ben
• Cats & Cups
• Crypt Custodian
• Slime Rancher

Top Played Gacha Game - WuWa [77 hours]

I have gotten into tracking my hours spent in games. I love stats and seeing what game has how many hours just makes my brain feel good. Wuthering Waves is a game that I deleted and redownloaded on Steam so I could track my hours, and I was shocked to see I put in 77 hours this year. In the middle of the year, I got back into playing it because of the major update, and the banner characters coming up were beautiful. I forgot how different the world and the combat feels compared to the other games I’ve played (Genshin, Zenless, and Infinity Nikki), and I really loved losing some hours in the world again. I was a whopping level 9 when I logged back in this year, and I spent hours grinding out levels, building characters, and exploring the cities.

Newest Gacha Game - Chaos Zero Nightmare

The newest gacha game that’s been added to my rotation is the card-based game, Chaos Zero Nightmare. This game is a bit darker than most of the gacha games I’ve already tried. I do wish they could have followed through with the darker themes and leaned into the psychological horrors that would be so easy to reach for in this setting, but it’s still darker than a lot of games, so I will take it. I love the complexity of the cards and the characters, making sure to pair three units together and balance the team is fun, and adding the card evolution on top of it and you can put hours into the game by just trying to min max card setups. With so many aspects to upgrade for every character, you will be grinding a lot, but the story is actually good, so I’m still having fun with it.

Game still not finished - Persona 5

The game that I have been working on for about 3 years now which is still not finished, is Persona 5. I am so close to the end, I can taste it. This one is a challenge because this is a PlayStation game, and my PS4 is in the living room, a whole floor away from my PC setup that I’m glued to. Pair this with the fact that my boyfriend loves to watch me play these types of games and we only end up playing during long weekends few and far between. We ended up putting in some hours over the Summer and put 30 hours in over a few days. I also picked it up again this last weekend and put in another roughly 20 hours. I think I’ve beaten the last major palace, and now I just need to wrap up what I’m assuming will be the final boss fight. But yet again, I failed at rolling credits on Persona 5 in 2025.

Top 3 Demos Played

• Dead As Disco
  • A great rhythm game with a perfect soundtrack that has you beating up hordes of enemies in a stylish fashion that just makes you feel like a badass anime protagonist. I tried this one during a Steam Next Fest, and it was my top demo from that session. I was addicted to trying out every single song I had access to.
• Haste
  • Go fast and outrun the earth, breaking away from under your feet. I love go fast games where you have to instinctually dodge and weave. The soundtrack is perfect for a game designed to never slow down. Each stage feels the perfect amount before things start to feel too long and redundant. The roguelike style of game progression leaves room for shop phases and changes in gameplay style during the boss stages. The change up of having to now avoid missile fire and run into the target instead of running linearly away from falling ground is a nice shift that is still close enough in style to stay comfortable, but different enough to have people think and pay attention instead of going on autopilot.
• Lunchbreak tactics
  • A weird twist to a card game, and not because of the rules. The cards are based on everyday items that you might find in a supermarket. Cards will be soda cans, brooms, or a carton of milk. The craziness of the cards is what makes this game so great. They are divided into packs, and you get to choose 2 packs and a hero who has their own buff. This is when you can start building a strategy surrounding three elements. Each card has a trigger and an effect. Pairing these together can end up with Balatro-level chains that can eliminate your opponent with only 2 cards. This game took up so much of my time and was my top pick from the latest Steam Next Fest.

Least Favorite Game - Rocket Squad Infinity

Just a horrible experience. I was given a key to this game to review for Minimap, and I had the worst time playing this game. At first, reading the Steam page, I thought this could be a fun extraction shooter where you go to other planets, take resources from a base, and return back while fighting enemies trying to kill you. it was that, but not fun. The movement was clunky, and the camera was horrible. Every planet felt like a copy and paste of the other, which made the rounds feel identical and boring. Everything costs money, but I didn’t feel the need to get everything from the base because I was so bored. I only grabbed the main objective, and that was it. I played enough to where I thought I had seen what the game had to offe,r and write my review. But it was, by far, the worst game I had the misfortune to play in 2025.

Games I Missed in 2025

• Silksong
• Unbeatable
• The Midnight Walk
• Silent Hill f
• Keeper

Upcoming Games I Want

• Monster Hunter Stories 3
• Slay the Spire 2
• Mega Man: Duel Override
• Bradley the Badger
• Light No Fire

Favorite Gacha Game - Infinity Nikki

Infinity Nikki was a gacha game that caught my attention early. I wanted to give it a try because it was a cute dress-up game, and it looked good, not a cheap one made for children. The story didn’t really grab me, but that wasn’t why I wanted to play the game. I had played it at launch and only picked it up before the last major update this year. I have been grinding the game and trying to catch up because the new region looks amazing. I was only level 11 when I came back and I’m quickly catching up by doing all the events and completing missions. I’ve gotten so many cute outfit pieces, and I’m really enjoying my time in the game again.

Favorite Single Player Game - Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist

As someone new to Metroidvanias this year, this was a great one to play. Ender Magnolia is the sequel to Ender Lillies, but you don’t need to play the first one to enjoy the second one. There are some plot points that would hit harder if you had the context, but I enjoyed this so much. Every fight felt challenging yet fair. All the upgrades were natural and made sense for progression.

This seems to be a game that went under a lot of people's radar with the massive Metroidvania release of Hollow Knight Silksong, but if you need more good games in the genre, give Ender Magnolia a try. I put in a solid 32 hours in this game, and I loved every second of it.

Favorite Multiplayer Game - Corekeeper | Honorable Mention to Palworld

An honorable mention goes to Palworld. I picked this game up again, and it’s just so much fun to play with my friend and we have built up a nice base… and a not so nice base. Grinding levels, upgrading pals, and making the ultimate chicken is a perfect gameplay loop. We are slowly building up power to take on the boss battles and have recently taken down the third major boss. The updates have added so much that we have gotten sidetracked a lot.

And the true game is Corekeeper. The game that I thought I wouldn’t enjoy has become the new Stardew Valley for us. A game where we divide and conquer. Amy builds up the base, and I wander around and bring back animals. We grow stronger and take on mini-bosses with the wackiest strategies, and it’s just so much fun because of the vast amount of things you can do. Even though I haven’t put in as many hours as I would have liked, we only started playing this in December, so I think it just shows how good the game is to take the number one multiplayer spot so soon.