Browse by year
250 games released in 2025 and reviewed here, best first.
250 reviews
A first-person open-world RPG built openly in the shape of Skyrim, but set in a bleaker, more literary Arthurian world where night itself turns hostile — ambitious, well-written and visibly under-budgeted in the faces of the people telling its story.
7.5 / 10
A genuinely excellent Soulslike with combat this library ranks among the best it's reviewed, one of the best-implemented easy modes in the genre, and a back half that a large share of its own fans say buckles into damage-sponge repetition — complicated further by a limited-time exclusive-content controversy, a Denuvo addition over a year after launch, and reports its own development team was restructured following disappointing sales.
7.5 / 10
A tower-defence game, a factory incremental and a scripting sandbox welded into one free island, where the real endgame is writing the AI that plays it for you.
7.5 / 10
A deliberately old-school highway battle racer from series creator Genki, returning after 18 years with an honest, monetisation-free business model its fans celebrate almost as much as the driving itself — sitting alongside a real, persistent complaint about rubberbanding AI and repetitive race structure that spans the whole year from Early Access into full release.
7.5 / 10
Two Point Studios' museum management sim remains Overwhelmingly Positive across nearly 13,000 Steam reviews, widely credited by longtime series fans as the best entry yet — undercut by a real, remarkably consistent complaint about its "Thieves" mechanic, which recurring reviewers describe as a poorly-tuned frustration distinct from the rest of the game's gentle, decoration- focused design, alongside a real, repetitive "expedition loot-box" content-acquisition loop.
7.5 / 10
A cheap, finite incremental about piloting a ship from Earth to the edge of the observable universe, with an unusually healthy completion rate to back up its warm reception, let down by a user interface that splits into too many screens as it grows and a back stretch several reviewers say outstays its welcome.
7.5 / 10
The week's biggest "new release" is actually a year-old Early Access game that just hit 1.0 — and the 1.0 finally brought the co-op everyone was waiting for. It's funny, generous and hugely popular. It's also a management sim that never lets you stop doing the menial jobs yourself.
7.5 / 10
A gorgeous, enormous free wuxia open world with some of the most charming systems design in any live-service RPG — welded to an energy meter, five battle passes and a cosmetic gacha that its own store page describes as cosmetics-only.
7.5 / 10
A genuinely inventive climbing-horror roguelike in Early Access that earned an Overwhelmingly Positive badge across a massive review base, whose own biggest, most consistent complaint is that it "does not respect the player's time" — permadeath resets progress through well-tuned early content, and reviewers say newer biomes added since launch haven't been tuned as carefully as the original two.
7.5 / 10
A handsome late-Ming soulslike carrying a Mixed badge that English-speaking players didn't give it — and a post-launch patch that changed the story out from under the people who'd finished it.
7.5 / 10
A four-person turn-based party crawler built almost entirely around class variety and a respec-anytime skill tree, sold once for nine dollars with no ads and no premium currency. The loot loop is the whole pitch, and it works — but the game explains almost none of it to you.
7.2 / 10
A 1997 Acorn RISC OS cult classic from future Deck13 co-founder Jan Klose gets its first-ever PC release — a genuinely deep 4X of colonization, law-making and tactical combat wrapped in a steep learning curve and a deliberately period-accurate 256-colour look.
7.2 / 10
A NZ$13.25 picross-minesweeper hybrid built around one continuous 60,000-tile puzzle split into 200-plus regions, where over half of owners fight all the way through to full completion — undercut by three of the game's only eleven English negatives independently accusing its Egyptology trivia of being undisclosed AI text.
7.2 / 10
A gorgeous, genuinely soothing pixel-art fishing game that lets you fish actively or let an idle mode do it for you — beloved enough to have gotten real players off the couch and back onto real lakes with their own families, undercut at launch by a real, consistently documented complaint that idling outperforms actually playing, and that there simply wasn't much game underneath the vibe.
7 / 10
A relaxing 2D resource-gathering and building game about a wizard's apprentice clicking their way off a remote island, Very Positive across 1,520 Steam reviews for its handcrafted pixel art and deliberately small, non-exploding numbers -- undercut by one loud, consistent complaint that has followed it since launch week: a game marketed and tagged as a clicker/incremental has no automation at all.
7 / 10
A genuinely inventive fusion of arcade coin-pusher physics and idle hero-collection RPG, loved by a real audience for a hybrid nobody else has built properly, undercut by rough English localization and a mid-game grind that several long-term players say goes flat.
7 / 10
A pixel-art fisher who sets up camp in the corner of your screen and keeps casting while you work — beloved by 97% of a two-thousand-plus review base, but the same corpus argues loudly about whether "idle" is the right word for it, and the achievement data backs the argument up.
7 / 10
A creature-taming roguelike deckbuilder with a genuinely distinctive hook — recruit your enemies into your deck instead of collecting pre-made cards, then lose them permanently if they die in battle — undercut for a meaningful slice of players by steep, RNG-heavy difficulty spikes that a dedicated "Difficulty Update" only partly resolved.
7 / 10
A Cult of the Lamb-shaped roguelite about taming, breeding and battling with dinosaurs that a large majority of players genuinely enjoy for its cute art and satisfying core loop, worn down for a real minority by breeding RNG and small-feeling maps.
7 / 10
id Software's medieval-set prequel trades DOOM Eternal's frantic weapon-juggling for a slower, shield-and-parry combat framework — widely respected as a deliberate, distinct evolution even by reviewers who call it the "weakest" of the modern trilogy — shadowed by a real, well- documented Xbox layoff that cut the studio by more than half the day before its major DLC launched, and by a long-simmering, genuinely disputed soundtrack controversy resurfacing now that composer Mick Gordon hasn't returned.
7 / 10
A cheap, frenetic top-down shooter where a destruction witch demolishes dungeon walls instead of fighting through them, Very Positive on Steam for a tight, satisfying thirty-minute main campaign that unlocks a genuinely addictive Endless Mode -- with a small but specific negative sample flagging balance and localization rough edges around the edges of an otherwise well-loved power fantasy.
7 / 10
A mechanically ambitious 4X sequel from Amplitude Studios, still in Early Access with a 1.0 exit now dated for September 2026, whose own review base runs a genuine, detailed argument about whether it lives up to its beloved predecessor's storytelling and art — a gap the developer appears to be actively closing, judging by a narrative overhaul several longtime players specifically credit as a turnaround.
7 / 10
A beloved, deeply engaging cozy-fantasy RPG sequel that a genuinely enormous share of its own players finish and keep playing — sitting alongside the single most consistent, most heavily-upvoted complaint this review has documented all year, that its marketed co-op is severely restricted, undersold by its own promotional videos, and takes hours just to unlock.
7 / 10
A gridless medieval city-builder that spent six years in Early Access before reaching 1.0 in January 2025, whose organic, grid-free building system draws some of the most enthusiastic praise in its genre — undercut by a launch that a majority of this review's post-1.0 negative sample says still shipped with game-breaking bugs, and a specific, well-documented housing and population wall that stalls growing settlements.
7 / 10
