As a product builder over too many years to mention, I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen promising ideas go from zero to hero in a few weeks, only to fizzle out within months.
Financial products, which is the field I work in, are no exception. With people’s real hard-earned money on the line, user expectations running high, and a crowded market, it’s tempting to throw as many features at the wall as possible and hope something sticks. But this approach is a recipe for disaster. Here’s why:
The pitfalls of feature-first development
When you start building a financial product from the ground up, or are migrating existing customer journeys from paper or telephony channels onto online banking or mobile apps, it’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of creating new features. You might think, “If I can just add one more thing that solves this particular user problem, they’ll love me!” But what happens when you inevitably hit a roadblock because the narcs (your security team!) don’t like it? When a hard-fought feature isn’t as popular as you thought, or it breaks due to unforeseen complexity?
This is where the concept of Minimum Viable Product (MVP) comes in. Jason Fried’s book Getting Real and his podcast Rework often touch on this idea, even if he doesn’t always call it that. An MVP is a product that provides just enough value to your users to keep them engaged, but not so much that it becomes overwhelming or difficult to maintain. It sounds like an easy concept but it requires a razor sharp eye, a ruthless edge and having the courage to stick by your opinion because it is easy to be seduced by “the Columbo Effect”… when there’s always “just one more thing…” that someone wants to add.
The problem with most finance apps, however, is that they often become a reflection of the internal politics of the business rather than an experience solely designed around the customer. This means that the focus is on delivering as many features and functionalities as possible to satisfy the needs and desires of competing internal departments, rather than providing a clear value proposition that is focused on what the people out there in the real world want. As a result, these products can very easily bloat to become a mixed bag of confusing, unrelated and ultimately unlovable customer experiences—a feature salad, you might say.
The importance of bedrock
So what’s a better approach? How can we build products that are stable, user-friendly, and—most importantly—stick?
That’s where the concept of “bedrock” comes in. Bedrock is the core element of your product that truly matters to users. It’s the fundamental building block that provides value and stays relevant over time.
In the world of retail banking, which is where I work, the bedrock has got to be in and around the regular servicing journeys. People open their current account once in a blue moon but they look at it every day. They sign up for a credit card every year or two, but they check their balance and pay their bill at least once a month.
Identifying the core tasks that people want to do and then relentlessly striving to make them easy to do, dependable, and trustworthy is where the gravy’s at.
But how do you get to bedrock? By focusing on the “MVP” approach, prioritizing simplicity, and iterating towards a clear value proposition. This means cutting out unnecessary features and focusing on delivering real value to your users.
It also means having some guts, because your colleagues might not always instantly share your vision to start with. And controversially, sometimes it can even mean making it clear to customers that you’re not going to come to their house and make their dinner. The occasional “opinionated user interface design” (i.e. clunky workaround for edge cases) might sometimes be what you need to use to test a concept or buy you space to work on something more important.
Practical strategies for building financial products that stick
So what are the key strategies I’ve learned from my own experience and research?
Start with a clear “why”: What problem are you trying to solve? For whom? Make sure your mission is crystal clear before building anything. Make sure it aligns with your company’s objectives, too.
Focus on a single, core feature and obsess on getting that right before moving on to something else: Resist the temptation to add too many features at once. Instead, choose one that delivers real value and iterate from there.
Prioritize simplicity over complexity: Less is often more when it comes to financial products. Cut out unnecessary bells and whistles and keep the focus on what matters most.
Embrace continuous iteration: Bedrock isn’t a fixed destination—it’s a dynamic process. Continuously gather user feedback, refine your product, and iterate towards that bedrock state.
Stop, look and listen: Don’t just test your product as part of your delivery process—test it repeatedly in the field. Use it yourself. Run A/B tests. Gather user feedback. Talk to people who use it, and refine accordingly.
The bedrock paradox
There’s an interesting paradox at play here: building towards bedrock means sacrificing some short-term growth potential in favour of long-term stability. But the payoff is worth it—products built with a focus on bedrock will outlast and outperform their competitors, and deliver sustained value to users over time.
So, how do you start your journey towards bedrock? Take it one step at a time. Start by identifying those core elements that truly matter to your users. Focus on building and refining a single, powerful feature that delivers real value. And above all, test obsessively—for, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, Alan Kay, or Peter Drucker (whomever you believe!!), “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”
Picture this: You’re in a meeting room at your tech company, and two people are having what looks like the same conversation about the same design problem. One is talking about whether the team has the right skills to tackle it. The other is diving deep into whether the solution actually solves the user’s problem. Same room, same problem, completely different lenses.
This is the beautiful, sometimes messy reality of having both a Design Manager and a Lead Designer on the same team. And if you’re wondering how to make this work without creating confusion, overlap, or the dreaded “too many cooks” scenario, you’re asking the right question.
The traditional answer has been to draw clean lines on an org chart. The Design Manager handles people, the Lead Designer handles craft. Problem solved, right? Except clean org charts are fantasy. In reality, both roles care deeply about team health, design quality, and shipping great work.
The magic happens when you embrace the overlap instead of fighting it—when you start thinking of your design org as a design organism.
The Anatomy of a Healthy Design Team
Here’s what I’ve learned from years of being on both sides of this equation: think of your design team as a living organism. The Design Manager tends to the mind (the psychological safety, the career growth, the team dynamics). The Lead Designer tends to the body (the craft skills, the design standards, the hands-on work that ships to users).
But just like mind and body aren’t completely separate systems, so, too, do these roles overlap in important ways. You can’t have a healthy person without both working in harmony. The trick is knowing where those overlaps are and how to navigate them gracefully.
When we look at how healthy teams actually function, three critical systems emerge. Each requires both roles to work together, but with one taking primary responsibility for keeping that system strong.
The Nervous System: People & Psychology
Primary caretaker: Design Manager Supporting role: Lead Designer
The nervous system is all about signals, feedback, and psychological safety. When this system is healthy, information flows freely, people feel safe to take risks, and the team can adapt quickly to new challenges.
The Design Manager is the primary caretaker here. They’re monitoring the team’s psychological pulse, ensuring feedback loops are healthy, and creating the conditions for people to grow. They’re hosting career conversations, managing workload, and making sure no one burns out.
But the Lead Designer plays a crucial supporting role. They’re providing sensory input about craft development needs, spotting when someone’s design skills are stagnating, and helping identify growth opportunities that the Design Manager might miss.
Design Manager tends to:
Career conversations and growth planning
Team psychological safety and dynamics
Workload management and resource allocation
Performance reviews and feedback systems
Creating learning opportunities
Lead Designer supports by:
Providing craft-specific feedback on team member development
Identifying design skill gaps and growth opportunities
Offering design mentorship and guidance
Signaling when team members are ready for more complex challenges
The Muscular System: Craft & Execution
Primary caretaker: Lead Designer Supporting role: Design Manager
The muscular system is about strength, coordination, and skill development. When this system is healthy, the team can execute complex design work with precision, maintain consistent quality, and adapt their craft to new challenges.
The Lead Designer is the primary caretaker here. They’re setting design standards, providing craft coaching, and ensuring that shipping work meets the quality bar. They’re the ones who can tell you if a design decision is sound or if we’re solving the right problem.
But the Design Manager plays a crucial supporting role. They’re ensuring the team has the resources and support to do their best craft work, like proper nutrition and recovery time for an athlete.
Lead Designer tends to:
Definition of design standards and system usage
Feedback on what design work meets the standard
Experience direction for the product
Design decisions and product-wide alignment
Innovation and craft advancement
Design Manager supports by:
Ensuring design standards are understood and adopted across the team
Confirming experience direction is being followed
Supporting practices and systems that scale without bottlenecking
Facilitating design alignment across teams
Providing resources and removing obstacles to great craft work
The Circulatory System: Strategy & Flow
Shared caretakers: Both Design Manager and Lead Designer
The circulatory system is about how information, decisions, and energy flow through the team. When this system is healthy, strategic direction is clear, priorities are aligned, and the team can respond quickly to new opportunities or challenges.
This is where true partnership happens. Both roles are responsible for keeping the circulation strong, but they’re bringing different perspectives to the table.
Lead Designer contributes:
User needs are met by the product
Overall product quality and experience
Strategic design initiatives
Research-based user needs for each initiative
Design Manager contributes:
Communication to team and stakeholders
Stakeholder management and alignment
Cross-functional team accountability
Strategic business initiatives
Both collaborate on:
Co-creation of strategy with leadership
Team goals and prioritization approach
Organizational structure decisions
Success measures and frameworks
Keeping the Organism Healthy
The key to making this partnership sing is understanding that all three systems need to work together. A team with great craft skills but poor psychological safety will burn out. A team with great culture but weak craft execution will ship mediocre work. A team with both but poor strategic circulation will work hard on the wrong things.
Be Explicit About Which System You’re Tending
When you’re in a meeting about a design problem, it helps to acknowledge which system you’re primarily focused on. “I’m thinking about this from a team capacity perspective” (nervous system) or “I’m looking at this through the lens of user needs” (muscular system) gives everyone context for your input.
This isn’t about staying in your lane. It’s about being transparent as to which lens you’re using, so the other person knows how to best add their perspective.
Create Healthy Feedback Loops
The most successful partnerships I’ve seen establish clear feedback loops between the systems:
Nervous system signals to muscular system: “The team is struggling with confidence in their design skills” → Lead Designer provides more craft coaching and clearer standards.
Muscular system signals to nervous system: “The team’s craft skills are advancing faster than their project complexity” → Design Manager finds more challenging growth opportunities.
Both systems signal to circulatory system: “We’re seeing patterns in team health and craft development that suggest we need to adjust our strategic priorities.”
Handle Handoffs Gracefully
The most critical moments in this partnership are when something moves from one system to another. This might be when a design standard (muscular system) needs to be rolled out across the team (nervous system), or when a strategic initiative (circulatory system) needs specific craft execution (muscular system).
Make these transitions explicit. “I’ve defined the new component standards. Can you help me think through how to get the team up to speed?” or “We’ve agreed on this strategic direction. I’m going to focus on the specific user experience approach from here.”
Stay Curious, Not Territorial
The Design Manager who never thinks about craft, or the Lead Designer who never considers team dynamics, is like a doctor who only looks at one body system. Great design leadership requires both people to care about the whole organism, even when they’re not the primary caretaker.
This means asking questions rather than making assumptions. “What do you think about the team’s craft development in this area?” or “How do you see this impacting team morale and workload?” keeps both perspectives active in every decision.
When the Organism Gets Sick
Even with clear roles, this partnership can go sideways. Here are the most common failure modes I’ve seen:
System Isolation
The Design Manager focuses only on the nervous system and ignores craft development. The Lead Designer focuses only on the muscular system and ignores team dynamics. Both people retreat to their comfort zones and stop collaborating.
The symptoms: Team members get mixed messages, work quality suffers, morale drops.
The treatment: Reconnect around shared outcomes. What are you both trying to achieve? Usually it’s great design work that ships on time from a healthy team. Figure out how both systems serve that goal.
Poor Circulation
Strategic direction is unclear, priorities keep shifting, and neither role is taking responsibility for keeping information flowing.
The symptoms: Team members are confused about priorities, work gets duplicated or dropped, deadlines are missed.
The treatment: Explicitly assign responsibility for circulation. Who’s communicating what to whom? How often? What’s the feedback loop?
Autoimmune Response
One person feels threatened by the other’s expertise. The Design Manager thinks the Lead Designer is undermining their authority. The Lead Designer thinks the Design Manager doesn’t understand craft.
The symptoms: Defensive behavior, territorial disputes, team members caught in the middle.
The treatment: Remember that you’re both caretakers of the same organism. When one system fails, the whole team suffers. When both systems are healthy, the team thrives.
The Payoff
Yes, this model requires more communication. Yes, it requires both people to be secure enough to share responsibility for team health. But the payoff is worth it: better decisions, stronger teams, and design work that’s both excellent and sustainable.
When both roles are healthy and working well together, you get the best of both worlds: deep craft expertise and strong people leadership. When one person is out sick, on vacation, or overwhelmed, the other can help maintain the team’s health. When a decision requires both the people perspective and the craft perspective, you’ve got both right there in the room.
Most importantly, the framework scales. As your team grows, you can apply the same system thinking to new challenges. Need to launch a design system? Lead Designer tends to the muscular system (standards and implementation), Design Manager tends to the nervous system (team adoption and change management), and both tend to circulation (communication and stakeholder alignment).
The Bottom Line
The relationship between a Design Manager and Lead Designer isn’t about dividing territories. It’s about multiplying impact. When both roles understand they’re tending to different aspects of the same healthy organism, magic happens.
The mind and body work together. The team gets both the strategic thinking and the craft excellence they need. And most importantly, the work that ships to users benefits from both perspectives.
So the next time you’re in that meeting room, wondering why two people are talking about the same problem from different angles, remember: you’re watching shared leadership in action. And if it’s working well, both the mind and body of your design team are getting stronger.
“Language is not merely a set of unrelated sounds, clauses, rules, and meanings; it is a totally coherent system bound to context and behavior.” — Kenneth L. Pike
The web has accents. So should our design systems.
Design Systems as Living Languages
Design systems aren’t component libraries—they’re living languages. Tokens are phonemes, components are words, patterns are phrases, layouts are sentences. The conversations we build with users become the stories our products tell.
But here’s what we’ve forgotten: the more fluently a language is spoken, the more accents it can support without losing meaning. English in Scotland differs from English in Sydney, yet both are unmistakably English. The language adapts to context while preserving core meaning. This couldn’t be more obvious to me, a Brazilian Portuguese speaker, who learned English with an American accent, and lives in Sydney.
Our design systems must work the same way. Rigid adherence to visual rules creates brittle systems that break under contextual pressure. Fluent systems bend without breaking.
Consistency becomes a prison
The promise of design systems was simple: consistent components would accelerate development and unify experiences. But as systems matured and products grew more complex, that promise has become a prison. Teams file “exception” requests by the hundreds. Products launch with workarounds instead of system components. Designers spend more time defending consistency than solving user problems.
Our design systems must learn to speak dialects.
A design dialect is a systematic adaptation of a design system that maintains core principles while developing new patterns for specific contexts. Unlike one-off customizations or brand themes, dialects preserve the system’s essential grammar while expanding its vocabulary to serve different users, environments, or constraints.
When Perfect Consistency Fails
At Booking.com, I learned this lesson the hard way. We A/B-tested everything—color, copy, button shapes, even logo colors. As a professional with a graphic design education and experience building brand style guides, I found this shocking. While everyone fell in love with Airbnb’s pristine design system, Booking grew into a giant without ever considering visual consistency.
The chaos taught me something profound: consistency isn’t ROI; solved problems are.
At Shopify. Polaris () was our crown jewel—a mature design language perfect for merchants on laptops. As a product team, we were expected to adopt Polaris as-is. Then my fulfillment team hit an “Oh, Ship!” moment, as we faced the challenge of building an app for warehouse pickers using our interface on shared, battered Android scanners in dim aisles, wearing thick gloves, scanning dozens of items per minute, many with limited levels of English understanding.
Task completion with standard Polaris: 0%.
Every component that worked beautifully for merchants failed completely for pickers. White backgrounds created glare. 44px tap targets were invisible to gloved fingers. Sentence-case labels took too long to parse. Multi-step flows confused non-native speakers.
We faced a choice: abandon Polaris entirely, or teach it to speak warehouse.
The Birth of a Dialect
We chose evolution over revolution. Working within Polaris’s core principles—clarity, efficiency, consistency—we developed what we now call a design dialect:
Constraint
Fluent Move
Rationale
Glare & low light
Dark surfaces + light text
Reduce glare on low-DPI screens
Gloves & haste
90px tap targets (~2cm)
Accommodate thick gloves
Multilingual
Single-task screens, plain language
Reduce cognitive load
Result: Task completion jumped from 0% to 100%. Onboarding time dropped from three weeks to one shift.
This wasn’t customization or theming—this was a dialect: a systematic adaptation that maintained Polaris’s core grammar while developing new vocabulary for a specific context. Polaris hadn’t failed; it had learned to speak warehouse.
The Flexibility Framework
At Atlassian, working on the Jira platform—itself a system within the larger Atlassian system—I pushed for formalizing this insight. With dozens of products sharing a design language across different codebases, we needed systematic flexibility so we built directly into our ways of working. The old model—exception requests and special approvals—was failing at scale.
We developed the Flexibility Framework to help designers define how flexible they wanted their components to be:
Platform defines behavior, products own presentation
During a navigation redesign, we tiered every element. Logo and global search stayed Consistent. Breadcrumbs and contextual actions became Flexible. Product teams could immediately see where innovation was welcome and where consistency mattered.
The Decision Ladder
Flexibility needs boundaries. We created a simple ladder for evaluating when rules should bend:
Good: Ship with existing system components. Fast, consistent, proven.
Better: Stretch a component slightly. Document the change. Contribute improvements back to the system for all to use.
Best: Prototype the ideal experience first. If user testing validates the benefit, update the system to support it.
The key question: “Which option lets users succeed fastest?”
Rules are tools, not relics.
Unity Beats Uniformity
Gmail, Drive, and Maps are unmistakably Google—yet each speaks with its own accent. They achieve unity through shared principles, not cloned components. One extra week of debate over button color costs roughly $30K in engineer time.
Unity is a brand outcome; fluency is a user outcome. When the two clash, side with the user.
Governance Without Gates
How do you maintain coherence while enabling dialects? Treat your system like a living vocabulary:
Document every deviation – e.g., dialects/warehouse.md with before/after screenshots and rationale.
Promote shared patterns – when three teams adopt a dialect independently, review it for core inclusion.
Deprecate with context – retire old idioms via flags and migration notes, never a big-bang purge.
A living dictionary scales better than a frozen rulebook.
Start Small: Your First Dialect
Ready to introduce dialects? Start with one broken experience:
This week: Find one user flow where perfect consistency blocks task completion. Could be mobile users struggling with desktop-sized components, or accessibility needs your standard patterns don’t address.
Document the context: What makes standard patterns fail here? Environmental constraints? User capabilities? Task urgency?
Design one systematic change: Focus on behavior over aesthetics. If gloves are the problem, bigger targets aren’t “”breaking the system””—they’re serving the user. Earn the variations and make them intentional.
Test and measure: Does the change improve task completion? Time to productivity? User satisfaction?
Show the savings: If that dialect frees even half a sprint, fluency has paid for itself.
Beyond the Component Library
We’re not managing design systems anymore—we’re cultivating design languages. Languages that grow with their speakers. Languages that develop accents without losing meaning. Languages that serve human needs over aesthetic ideals.
The warehouse workers who went from 0% to 100% task completion didn’t care that our buttons broke the style guide. They cared that the buttons finally worked.
Your users feel the same way. Give your system permission to speak their language.
Today’s web is not always an amiable place. Sites greet you with a popover that demands assent to their cookie policy, and leave you with Taboola ads promising “One Weird Trick!” to cure your ailments. Social media sites are tuned for engagement, and few things are more engaging than a fight. Today it seems that people want to quarrel; I have seen flame wars among birders.
These tensions are often at odds with a site’s goals. If we are providing support and advice to customers, we don’t want those customers to wrangle with each other. If we offer news about the latest research, we want readers to feel at ease; if we promote upcoming marches, we want our core supporters to feel comfortable and we want curious newcomers to feel welcome.
In a study for a conference on the History of the Web, I looked to the origins of Computer Science in Vienna (1928-1934) for a case study of the importance of amiability in a research community and the disastrous consequences of its loss. That story has interesting implications for web environments that promote amiable interaction among disparate, difficult (and sometimes disagreeable) people.
The Vienna Circle
Though people had been thinking about calculating engines and thinking machines from antiquity, Computing really got going in Depression-era Vienna. The people who worked out the theory had no interest in building machines; they wanted to puzzle out the limits of reason in the absence of divine authority. If we could not rely on God or Aristotle to tell us how to think, could we instead build arguments that were self-contained and demonstrably correct? Can we be sure that mathematics is consistent? Are there things that are true but that cannot be expressed in language?
The core ideas were worked out in the weekly meetings (Thursdays at 6) of a group remembered as the Vienna Circle. They got together in the office of Professor Moritz Schlick at the University of Vienna to discuss problems in philosophy, math, and language. The intersection of physics and philosophy had long been a specialty of this Vienna department, and this work had placed them among the world leaders. Schlick’s colleague Hans Hahn was a central participant, and by 1928 Hahn brought along his graduate students Karl Menger and Kurt Gödel. Other frequent participants included philosopher Rudolf Carnap, psychologist Karl Popper, economist Ludwig von Mises (brought by his brother Frederick, a physicist), graphic designer Otto Neurath (inventor of infographics), and architect Josef Frank (brought by his physicist brother, Phillip). Out-of-town visitors often joined, including the young Johnny von Neumann, Alfred Tarski, and the irascible Ludwig Wittgenstein.
When Schlick’s office grew too dim, participants adjourned to a nearby café for additional discussion with an even larger circle of participants. This convivial circle was far from unique. An intersecting circle–Neurath, von Mises, Oskar Morgenstern–established the Austrian School of free-market economics. There were theatrical circles (Peter Lorre, Hedy Lamarr, Max Reinhardt), and literary circles. The café was where things happened.
The interdisciplinarity of the group posed real challenges of temperament and understanding. Personalities were often a challenge. Gödel was convinced people were trying to poison him. Architect Josef Frank depended on contracts for public housing, which Mises opposed as wasteful. Wittgenstein’s temper had lost him his job as a secondary school teacher, and for some of these years he maintained a detailed list of whom he was willing to meet. Neurath was eager to detect muddled thinking and would interrupt a speaker with a shouted “Metaphysics!” The continuing amity of these meetings was facilitated by the personality of their leader, Moritz Schlick, who would be remembered as notably adept in keeping disagreements from becoming quarrels.
In the Café
The Viennese café of this era was long remembered as a particularly good place to argue with your friends, to read, and to write. Built to serve an imperial capital, the cafés found themselves with too much space and too few customers now that the Empire was gone. There was no need to turn tables: a café could only survive by coaxing customers to linger. Perhaps they would order another coffee, or one of their friends might drop by. One could play chess, or billiards, or read newspapers from abroad. Coffee was invariably served with a glass of purified spring water, still a novelty in an era in which most water was still unsafe to drink. That water glass would be refilled indefinitely.
In the basement of one café, the poet Jura Soyfer staged “The End Of The World,” a musical comedy in which Professor Peep has discovered a comet heading for earth.
Prof. Peep: The comet is going to destroy everybody!
Hitler: Destroying everybody is my business.
Of course, coffee can be prepared in many ways, and the Viennese café developed a broad vocabulary to represent precisely how one preferred to drink it: melange, Einspänner, Brauner, Schwarzer, Kapuziner. This extensive customization, with correspondingly esoteric conventions of service, established the café as a comfortable and personal third space, a neutral ground in which anyone who could afford a coffee would be welcome. Viennese of this era were fastidious in their use of personal titles, of which an abundance were in common use. Café waiters greeted regular customers with titles too, but were careful to address their patrons with titles a notch or two greater than they deserved. A graduate student would be Doktor, an unpaid postdoc Professor. This assurance mattered all the more because so many members of the Circle (and so many other Viennese) came from elsewhere: Carnap from Wuppertal, Gödel from Brno, von Neumann from Budapest. No one was going to make fun of your clothes, mannerisms, or accent. Your friends wouldn’t be bothered by the pram in the hall. Everyone shared a Germanic Austrian literary and philosophical culture, not least those whose ancestors had been Eastern European Jews who knew that culture well, having read all about it in books.
The amiability of the café circle was enhanced by its openness. Because the circle sometimes extended to architects and actors, people could feel less constrained to admit shortfalls in their understanding. It was soon discovered that marble tabletops made a useful surface for pencil sketches, serving all as an improvised and accessible blackboard.
Comedies like “The End Of The World” and fictional newspaper sketches or feuilletons of writers like Joseph Roth and Stefan Zweig served as a second defense against disagreeable or churlish behavior. The knowledge that, if one got carried away, a parody of one’s remarks might shortly appear in Neue Freie Presse surely helped Professor Schlick keep matters in hand.
The End Of Red Vienna
Though Austria’s government drifted to the right after the War, Vienna’s city council had been Socialist, dedicated to public housing based on user-centered design, and embracing ambitious programs of public outreach and adult education. In 1934 the Socialists lost a local election, and this era soon came to its end as the new administration focused on the imagined threat of the International Jewish Conspiracy. Most members of the Circle fled within months: von Neumann to Princeton, Neurath to Holland and Oxford, Popper to New Zealand, Carnap to Chicago. Prof. Schlick was murdered on the steps of the University by a student outraged by his former association with Jews. Jura Soyfer, who wrote “The End Of The World,” died in Buchenwald.
In 1939, von Neumann finally convinced Gödel to accept a job in Princeton. Gödel was required to pay large fines to emigrate. The officer in charge of these fees would look back on this as the best posting of his career; his name was Eichmann.
Design for Amiability
An impressive literature recounts those discussions and the environment that facilitated the development of computing. How can we design for amiability? This is not just a matter of choosing rounded typefaces and a cheerful pastel palette. I believe we may identify eight distinct issues that exert design forces in usefully amiable directions.
Seriousness: The Vienna Circle was wrestling with a notoriously difficult book—Wittgenstein’s Tractus Logico-Philosophicus—and a catalog of outstanding open questions in mathematics. They were concerned with consequential problems, not merely scoring points for debating. Constant reminders that the questions you are considering matter—not only that they are consequential or that those opposing you are scoundrels—help promote amity.
Empiricism: The characteristic approach of the Vienna Circle demanded that knowledge be grounded either in direct observation or in rigorous reasoning. Disagreement, when it arose, could be settled by observation or by proof. If neither seemed ready to hand, the matter could not be settled. On these terms, one can seldom if ever demolish an opposing argument, and trolling is pointless.
Abstraction: Disputes grow worse when losing the argument entails lost face or lost jobs. The Vienna Circle’s focus on theory—the limits of mathematics, the capability of language—promoted amity. Without seriousness, abstraction could have been merely academic, but the limits of reason and the consistency of mathematics were clearly serious.
Formality: The punctilious demeanor of waiters and the elaborated rituals of coffee service helped to establish orderly attitudes amongst the argumentative participants. This stands in contrast to the contemptuous sneer that now dominates social media.
Schlamperei: Members of the Vienna Circle maintained a global correspondence, and they knew their work was at the frontier of research. Still, this was Vienna, at the margins of Europe: old-fashioned, frumpy, and dingy. Many participants came from even more obscure backwaters. Most or all harbored the suspicion that they were really schleppers, and a tinge of the ridiculous helped to moderate tempers. The director of “The End Of The World” had to pass the hat for money to purchase a moon for the set, and thought it was funny enough to write up for publication.
Openness: All sorts of people were involved in discussion, anyone might join in. Each week would bring different participants. Fluid borders reduce tension, and provide opportunities to broaden the range of discussion and the terms of engagement. Low entrance friction was characteristic of the café: anyone could come, and if you came twice you were virtually a regular. Permeable boundaries and café culture made it easier for moderating influences to draw in raconteurs and storytellers to defuse awkward moments, and Vienna’s cafés had no shortage of humorists. Openness counteracts the suspicion that promoters of amiability are exerting censorship.
Parody: The environs of the Circle—the university office and the café—were unmistakably public. There were writers about, some of them renowned humorists. The prospect that one’s bad taste or bad behavior might be ridiculed in print kept discussion within bounds. The sanction of public humiliation, however, was itself made mild by the veneer of fiction; even if you got a little carried away and a character based on you made a splash in some newspaper fiction, it wasn’t the end of the world.
Engagement: The subject matter was important to the participants, but it was esoteric: it did not matter very much to their mothers or their siblings. A small stumble or a minor humiliation could be shrugged off in ways that major media confrontations cannot.
I believe it is notable that this environment was designed to promote amiability through several different voices. The café waiter flattered each newcomer and served everyone, and also kept out local pickpockets and drunks who would be mere disruptions. Schlick and other regulars kept discussion moving and on track. The fiction writers and raconteurs—perhaps the most peripheral of the participants—kept people in a good mood and reminded them that bad behavior could make anyone ridiculous. Crucially, each of these voices were human: you could reason with them. Algorithmic or AI moderators, however clever, are seldom perceived as reasonable. The café circles had no central authority or Moderator against whom everyone’s resentments might be focused. Even after the disaster of 1934, what people remembered were those cheerful arguments.
At the start of the year, Grand Theft Auto VI looked to be a shoe-in for Game of the Year. Publishers jostled around their release calendars to ensure titles wouldn’t be completely ignored in the wake of what could possibly be the biggest gaming release of all time. Then GTA VI got delayed into 2026. […]
At the start of the year, Grand Theft Auto VI looked to be a shoe-in for Game of the Year. Publishers jostled around their release calendars to ensure titles wouldn’t be completely ignored in the wake of what could possibly be the biggest gaming release of all time. Then GTA VI got delayed into 2026. Twice.
That made the 2025 GOTY race a wide open one, especially with some hotly anticipated sequels like Metroid Prime 4: Beyond and Borderlands 4meeting with particularly muted responses from critics and fans alike. So in a year of games where the frontrunner bowed out early and other contenders turned out to be pretenders, which titles reigned supreme? Read on to find out the best games of 2025.
There’s never been a game quite like Blue Prince before. Part roguelike, part puzzler, you play the role of a man who’s inherited a constantly shifting estate from his recently deceased uncle. The late relation has also tasked you with the goal of finding a hidden 46th room on the grounds by drafting new rooms in the mansion every day.
Blue Prince will put even the most experienced gamer through their paces. The game doesn’t give up its many secrets easily, and even after several hours, it can be tricky to figure out just how to place each room. Even then some bad luck can end a run early. This definitely isn’t a game for everyone, but it’s worth checking out for anyone looking for something truly innovative.
14. Doom: The Dark Ages
The remarkable thing about id Software’s most recent Doom trilogy, which began with 2016’s Doom and was capped off this year with The Dark Ages, is how each game took a very different approach to combat. The Dark Ages slows things down dramatically, basically turning the Doom Slayer into a walking tank with a shield.
This opens up a whole new way to play an FPS, focusing more on blocking and parrying. And the addition of some really cool new weapons like a flail and a gun that fires bone fragments made The Dark Ages a stand out title in a very crowded genre.
13. Elden Ring: Nightreign
On paper the idea of adding battle royale and roguelike elements to Elden Ring sounds highly questionable. It’s a testament to the abilities of the team at FromSoftware that it actually works really well. Elden Ring: Nightreign never quite reaches the heights of its 2022 single player predecessor but it’s damn addicting, particularly if you team up with two other players who know what they’re doing.
The core gameplay of the first game is still present, but now you’re much more reliant on lucky drops each run, adding a whole new layer of strategy. But even with good equipment and an experienced team, defeating the eight Nightlords is no simple feat.
12. Mario Kart World
Mario Kart 8 was always going to be a tough act to follow. After all, it’s one of the best selling video games of all time for good reason. But launching aside the hotly anticipated Switch 2, Mario Kart World quickly proved up to the task.
No, Mario Kart World doesn’t reinvent the wheel. Its new features like an open-world, Grand Prix races that link four tracks together, and a Knockout Tour are more iterative than revolutionary. But at the end of the day, it’s just a really fun racing game that most of us who picked up a Switch 2 at launch are still playing six months later.
11. South of Midnight
Between multiple canceled projects and flagging console sales, it’s no secret that 2025 was a rough year for the Xbox brand. In fact, you wouldn’t be blamed for not even knowing about South of Midnight, one of Microsoft’s best releases in years.
Admittedly South of Midnight’s gameplay isn’t particularly novel. You’ve likely played games with similar platforming and combat, but it’s a game that wholeheartedly embraces the culture and folklore of the American South in ways that few other titles have, with a stop-motion aesthetic that sets it apart. South of Midnight is proof that even during these troubled times, Xbox is capable of putting out surprisingly great artistic games.
10. Ball x Pit
You’d think that after the past few years, roguelikes would have run their course. This is even the third roguelike on this list, and there were dozens of others released this year. And yet, Ball x Pit proves that there’s still plenty of untapped potential in the crowded genre. This time Ball x Pit added the randomization of roguelikes to the timeless block breaking gameplay of titles like Arkanoid.
And holy hell is it addicting. Ball x Pitfeatures more than a dozen playable characters, each with their own unique abilities. Additionally during runs, there are numerous combinations and evolutions, plus a whole village building gameplay loop to round things out. Ball x Pit creator Kenny Sun told Bloomberg earlier this year that he felt the response to the game was “a bit too positive,” but it absolutely deserves all the praise it’s received for its addictive gameplay.
9. Split Fiction
Hazelight Studios has spent the better part of the last decade redefining what’s possible in co-op gaming. If you liked their previous titles A Way Out and It Takes Two, you’re going to absolutely love Split Fiction, the culmination of everything the studio has been working toward.
While a lot of similar games get stale fairly quickly, Split Fiction never wears out its welcome, regularly adding new gameplay styles in its tale about a sci-fi and fantasy author, then moving on to the next one almost as quickly. It’s an absolute blast to play. The only downside, of course, is that you have to have someone else around to play with.
8. Ninja Gaiden 4
In modern gaming, it’s common for supposedly single player games from major publishers to be burdened with annoying online or multiplayer functions, or expensive DLC tokens and costumes just so companies can make just a few extra bucks. Ninja Gaiden 4 is one of the rare titles that thankfully bucks that trend, and it’s the better for it.
In many ways, this is a throwback to action games of the PS2 era when the original 3D Ninja Gaiden was released, focusing more on linear levels and smooth combat that requires quick reflexes. Replacing Ryu Hayabusa with newcomer Yakumo for most of the game was a daring choice, but by the end of the game, Yakumo proves himself as a worthy successor to the Ninja Gaidenthrone. Hopefully, this is a new beginning for the storied series and not just a one off.
7. Donkey Kong Bananza
While Donkey Kong was one of Nintendo’s first gaming characters, he’s mostly played in recent years the part of a cameo character in Mario games, with the occasional side scroller throwback. Nintendo just hasn’t really seemed to know what to do with the big ape until Donkey Kong Bananza came around.
Far from just a retread of the team’s prior effort, Super Mario Odyssey, Bananza reinvents Donkey Kong with the simple premise of letting a gorilla wreck everything around him. Sure, the platforming challenges to collect Banandium Gems are great, but it’s just as easy to get distracted smashing up a level and collecting whatever you dig up. Bananzais not only the first must-have for the Switch 2, but it also provides a solid blueprint for where future Donkey Kong titles could go from here.
6. ARC Raiders
ARC Raiders wasn’t on many gamers’ radars at the start of the year, but since its release at the end of October, it’s quickly gained traction as one of the biggest sleeper hits of the year. At its core, ARC Raiders is an extraction shooter similar to Helldivers II, but with more open-endedness and a focus on PvPvE encounters.
And to be fair, that can make ARC Raiders a frustrating experience, as running afoul of the wrong enemies can mean losing quite a bit of progress. But that less linear gameplay also allows for endless possibilities in its world. And the polished gunplay makes it an absolute joy to play, regardless of how successful each run is. If you’ve been waiting to check out an extraction shooter, ARC Raiders is the perfect jumping on point.
5. Death Stranding 2: On the Beach
The response to the original Death Stranding in 2019 was largely positive, although many gamers who grew up on Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid titles were a little confused by a game both praised and derided as an advanced walking simulator set in a sci-fi world radically different from anything else seen before. It was a good game, just a little muddled. Then again, that’s always been a criticism of Kojima’s direction.
With Death Stranding 2, at least we had a better idea of what we were getting into, and On the Beach definitely took the criticism to heart with more refined gameplay and a story that’s a little less convoluted, though still very much classic Kojima. On the Beach isn’t going to win any converts who disliked the first game but for the faithful, this is another Kojima masterpiece.
4. Hades II
Yes, it’s another roguelike on the list, but Hades IIisn’t just any roguelike. It’s the sequel to one of the very best in the genre and it actually improves on the first game in every conceivable way. Hades II puts you in the role of Melinoë, the sister of Zagreus, the protagonist of the original game. This time there are two different paths to take as you face the Titan Chronos. You’re free to either head downward into Tartarus to go after Chronos or go upward to break a siege on Mount Olympus.
There’s more variety, more weapons too, and more characters from Greek mythology, again expertly written by Supergiant Games. Hades II is quite simply everything you could want in a sequel, and the new undisputed king of roguelikes.
3. Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
The first Kingdom Come: Deliverance was an incredibly ambitious RPG that aimed for a realistic depiction of 15th century Bohemia. It fell a little short due to jankiness, but for those who got into it, clearly the foundation of something great was there. And thankfully, the sequel delivers on all of that potential.
You still play as Henry, a simple man caught in a much wider conflict, and eating and sleeping are still just as important as sword fighting (if not more so). There’s no magic or dragons in this world, just harsh medieval reality. It may not sound like much fun, but if you’ve ever wanted to play something along the lines of The Elder Scrolls without the fantasy elements, it’s an amazing RPG.
2. Hollow Knight: Silksong
When games take more than half a decade to develop and start making major changes, fans understandably get nervous. Historically, it’s much more likely that games stuck in development hell end up as legendary disappointments, like Duke Nukem Forever, rather than all time classics. Thankfully, after six years of development that saw it expand from DLC to a standalone sequel, Hollow Knight: Silksong is more than worth the wait.
This is an expertly crafted Metroidvania with a bigger map, much more to do, and faster, smoother combat, yet it still retains the excellent moody sound design and art style of the original. The only downside (for some) is the difficulty. The first Hollow Knight was tough, but some of the enemies in Silksong will push you to the absolute limits.
1. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
If you had said at the beginning of the year that the undisputed game of the year would be an unapologetically French turn-based RPG by a small development team making their first game together, not many people would have taken you seriously. There were just too many impressive looking triple A games on the calendar. But no one is laughing at Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 at the end of 2025. It’s already won a pile of GOTY awards, and it absolutely deserves another.
This is a game that takes all of the best parts of RPGs like Persona, Final Fantasy, and Paper Mario to craft a brand new fantasy world unlike anything else in gaming. The sound and visuals are leagues above anything else that came out this year. Already the soundtrack is being praised as one of the best to ever grace a video game. And the story, about the quest to defeat an entity called the Paintress that wipes out more and more people every year as she paints a new age on a rock, is one of the most fascinating to come along in years. This is the type of game that will inspire RPGs for years to come, and that is an absolute must play for any gamer.
If you’re looking for something different to watch this holiday season, Amazon is now streaming the best horror movie of the year for anyone with a Prime Video subscription. The hit movie, which holds a 97% score on Rotten Tomatoes, has been celebrated for blending period drama with Southern Gothic horror, and its rich atmosphere […]
At the start of the year, Grand Theft Auto VI looked to be a shoe-in for Game of the Year. Publishers jostled around their release calendars to ensure titles wouldn’t be completely ignored in the wake of what could possibly be the biggest gaming release of all time. Then GTA VI got delayed into 2026. Twice.
That made the 2025 GOTY race a wide open one, especially with some hotly anticipated sequels like Metroid Prime 4: Beyond and Borderlands 4meeting with particularly muted responses from critics and fans alike. So in a year of games where the frontrunner bowed out early and other contenders turned out to be pretenders, which titles reigned supreme? Read on to find out the best games of 2025.
There’s never been a game quite like Blue Prince before. Part roguelike, part puzzler, you play the role of a man who’s inherited a constantly shifting estate from his recently deceased uncle. The late relation has also tasked you with the goal of finding a hidden 46th room on the grounds by drafting new rooms in the mansion every day.
Blue Prince will put even the most experienced gamer through their paces. The game doesn’t give up its many secrets easily, and even after several hours, it can be tricky to figure out just how to place each room. Even then some bad luck can end a run early. This definitely isn’t a game for everyone, but it’s worth checking out for anyone looking for something truly innovative.
14. Doom: The Dark Ages
The remarkable thing about id Software’s most recent Doom trilogy, which began with 2016’s Doom and was capped off this year with The Dark Ages, is how each game took a very different approach to combat. The Dark Ages slows things down dramatically, basically turning the Doom Slayer into a walking tank with a shield.
This opens up a whole new way to play an FPS, focusing more on blocking and parrying. And the addition of some really cool new weapons like a flail and a gun that fires bone fragments made The Dark Ages a stand out title in a very crowded genre.
13. Elden Ring: Nightreign
On paper the idea of adding battle royale and roguelike elements to Elden Ring sounds highly questionable. It’s a testament to the abilities of the team at FromSoftware that it actually works really well. Elden Ring: Nightreign never quite reaches the heights of its 2022 single player predecessor but it’s damn addicting, particularly if you team up with two other players who know what they’re doing.
The core gameplay of the first game is still present, but now you’re much more reliant on lucky drops each run, adding a whole new layer of strategy. But even with good equipment and an experienced team, defeating the eight Nightlords is no simple feat.
12. Mario Kart World
Mario Kart 8 was always going to be a tough act to follow. After all, it’s one of the best selling video games of all time for good reason. But launching aside the hotly anticipated Switch 2, Mario Kart World quickly proved up to the task.
No, Mario Kart World doesn’t reinvent the wheel. Its new features like an open-world, Grand Prix races that link four tracks together, and a Knockout Tour are more iterative than revolutionary. But at the end of the day, it’s just a really fun racing game that most of us who picked up a Switch 2 at launch are still playing six months later.
11. South of Midnight
Between multiple canceled projects and flagging console sales, it’s no secret that 2025 was a rough year for the Xbox brand. In fact, you wouldn’t be blamed for not even knowing about South of Midnight, one of Microsoft’s best releases in years.
Admittedly South of Midnight’s gameplay isn’t particularly novel. You’ve likely played games with similar platforming and combat, but it’s a game that wholeheartedly embraces the culture and folklore of the American South in ways that few other titles have, with a stop-motion aesthetic that sets it apart. South of Midnight is proof that even during these troubled times, Xbox is capable of putting out surprisingly great artistic games.
10. Ball x Pit
You’d think that after the past few years, roguelikes would have run their course. This is even the third roguelike on this list, and there were dozens of others released this year. And yet, Ball x Pit proves that there’s still plenty of untapped potential in the crowded genre. This time Ball x Pit added the randomization of roguelikes to the timeless block breaking gameplay of titles like Arkanoid.
And holy hell is it addicting. Ball x Pitfeatures more than a dozen playable characters, each with their own unique abilities. Additionally during runs, there are numerous combinations and evolutions, plus a whole village building gameplay loop to round things out. Ball x Pit creator Kenny Sun told Bloomberg earlier this year that he felt the response to the game was “a bit too positive,” but it absolutely deserves all the praise it’s received for its addictive gameplay.
9. Split Fiction
Hazelight Studios has spent the better part of the last decade redefining what’s possible in co-op gaming. If you liked their previous titles A Way Out and It Takes Two, you’re going to absolutely love Split Fiction, the culmination of everything the studio has been working toward.
While a lot of similar games get stale fairly quickly, Split Fiction never wears out its welcome, regularly adding new gameplay styles in its tale about a sci-fi and fantasy author, then moving on to the next one almost as quickly. It’s an absolute blast to play. The only downside, of course, is that you have to have someone else around to play with.
8. Ninja Gaiden 4
In modern gaming, it’s common for supposedly single player games from major publishers to be burdened with annoying online or multiplayer functions, or expensive DLC tokens and costumes just so companies can make just a few extra bucks. Ninja Gaiden 4 is one of the rare titles that thankfully bucks that trend, and it’s the better for it.
In many ways, this is a throwback to action games of the PS2 era when the original 3D Ninja Gaiden was released, focusing more on linear levels and smooth combat that requires quick reflexes. Replacing Ryu Hayabusa with newcomer Yakumo for most of the game was a daring choice, but by the end of the game, Yakumo proves himself as a worthy successor to the Ninja Gaidenthrone. Hopefully, this is a new beginning for the storied series and not just a one off.
7. Donkey Kong Bananza
While Donkey Kong was one of Nintendo’s first gaming characters, he’s mostly played in recent years the part of a cameo character in Mario games, with the occasional side scroller throwback. Nintendo just hasn’t really seemed to know what to do with the big ape until Donkey Kong Bananza came around.
Far from just a retread of the team’s prior effort, Super Mario Odyssey, Bananza reinvents Donkey Kong with the simple premise of letting a gorilla wreck everything around him. Sure, the platforming challenges to collect Banandium Gems are great, but it’s just as easy to get distracted smashing up a level and collecting whatever you dig up. Bananzais not only the first must-have for the Switch 2, but it also provides a solid blueprint for where future Donkey Kong titles could go from here.
6. ARC Raiders
ARC Raiders wasn’t on many gamers’ radars at the start of the year, but since its release at the end of October, it’s quickly gained traction as one of the biggest sleeper hits of the year. At its core, ARC Raiders is an extraction shooter similar to Helldivers II, but with more open-endedness and a focus on PvPvE encounters.
And to be fair, that can make ARC Raiders a frustrating experience, as running afoul of the wrong enemies can mean losing quite a bit of progress. But that less linear gameplay also allows for endless possibilities in its world. And the polished gunplay makes it an absolute joy to play, regardless of how successful each run is. If you’ve been waiting to check out an extraction shooter, ARC Raiders is the perfect jumping on point.
5. Death Stranding 2: On the Beach
The response to the original Death Stranding in 2019 was largely positive, although many gamers who grew up on Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid titles were a little confused by a game both praised and derided as an advanced walking simulator set in a sci-fi world radically different from anything else seen before. It was a good game, just a little muddled. Then again, that’s always been a criticism of Kojima’s direction.
With Death Stranding 2, at least we had a better idea of what we were getting into, and On the Beach definitely took the criticism to heart with more refined gameplay and a story that’s a little less convoluted, though still very much classic Kojima. On the Beach isn’t going to win any converts who disliked the first game but for the faithful, this is another Kojima masterpiece.
4. Hades II
Yes, it’s another roguelike on the list, but Hades IIisn’t just any roguelike. It’s the sequel to one of the very best in the genre and it actually improves on the first game in every conceivable way. Hades II puts you in the role of Melinoë, the sister of Zagreus, the protagonist of the original game. This time there are two different paths to take as you face the Titan Chronos. You’re free to either head downward into Tartarus to go after Chronos or go upward to break a siege on Mount Olympus.
There’s more variety, more weapons too, and more characters from Greek mythology, again expertly written by Supergiant Games. Hades II is quite simply everything you could want in a sequel, and the new undisputed king of roguelikes.
3. Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
The first Kingdom Come: Deliverance was an incredibly ambitious RPG that aimed for a realistic depiction of 15th century Bohemia. It fell a little short due to jankiness, but for those who got into it, clearly the foundation of something great was there. And thankfully, the sequel delivers on all of that potential.
You still play as Henry, a simple man caught in a much wider conflict, and eating and sleeping are still just as important as sword fighting (if not more so). There’s no magic or dragons in this world, just harsh medieval reality. It may not sound like much fun, but if you’ve ever wanted to play something along the lines of The Elder Scrolls without the fantasy elements, it’s an amazing RPG.
2. Hollow Knight: Silksong
When games take more than half a decade to develop and start making major changes, fans understandably get nervous. Historically, it’s much more likely that games stuck in development hell end up as legendary disappointments, like Duke Nukem Forever, rather than all time classics. Thankfully, after six years of development that saw it expand from DLC to a standalone sequel, Hollow Knight: Silksong is more than worth the wait.
This is an expertly crafted Metroidvania with a bigger map, much more to do, and faster, smoother combat, yet it still retains the excellent moody sound design and art style of the original. The only downside (for some) is the difficulty. The first Hollow Knight was tough, but some of the enemies in Silksong will push you to the absolute limits.
1. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
If you had said at the beginning of the year that the undisputed game of the year would be an unapologetically French turn-based RPG by a small development team making their first game together, not many people would have taken you seriously. There were just too many impressive looking triple A games on the calendar. But no one is laughing at Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 at the end of 2025. It’s already won a pile of GOTY awards, and it absolutely deserves another.
This is a game that takes all of the best parts of RPGs like Persona, Final Fantasy, and Paper Mario to craft a brand new fantasy world unlike anything else in gaming. The sound and visuals are leagues above anything else that came out this year. Already the soundtrack is being praised as one of the best to ever grace a video game. And the story, about the quest to defeat an entity called the Paintress that wipes out more and more people every year as she paints a new age on a rock, is one of the most fascinating to come along in years. This is the type of game that will inspire RPGs for years to come, and that is an absolute must play for any gamer.
This post contains spoilers for Stranger Things season 5 and also maybe Avengers: Doomsday? In the penultimate episode of Stranger Things, we finally learn the truth about Vecna and the Upside Down. The Upside Down, it turns out, is not a hellish alternate reality. Rather, it is a conduit to such a world, a wormhole […]
At the start of the year, Grand Theft Auto VI looked to be a shoe-in for Game of the Year. Publishers jostled around their release calendars to ensure titles wouldn’t be completely ignored in the wake of what could possibly be the biggest gaming release of all time. Then GTA VI got delayed into 2026. Twice.
That made the 2025 GOTY race a wide open one, especially with some hotly anticipated sequels like Metroid Prime 4: Beyond and Borderlands 4meeting with particularly muted responses from critics and fans alike. So in a year of games where the frontrunner bowed out early and other contenders turned out to be pretenders, which titles reigned supreme? Read on to find out the best games of 2025.
There’s never been a game quite like Blue Prince before. Part roguelike, part puzzler, you play the role of a man who’s inherited a constantly shifting estate from his recently deceased uncle. The late relation has also tasked you with the goal of finding a hidden 46th room on the grounds by drafting new rooms in the mansion every day.
Blue Prince will put even the most experienced gamer through their paces. The game doesn’t give up its many secrets easily, and even after several hours, it can be tricky to figure out just how to place each room. Even then some bad luck can end a run early. This definitely isn’t a game for everyone, but it’s worth checking out for anyone looking for something truly innovative.
14. Doom: The Dark Ages
The remarkable thing about id Software’s most recent Doom trilogy, which began with 2016’s Doom and was capped off this year with The Dark Ages, is how each game took a very different approach to combat. The Dark Ages slows things down dramatically, basically turning the Doom Slayer into a walking tank with a shield.
This opens up a whole new way to play an FPS, focusing more on blocking and parrying. And the addition of some really cool new weapons like a flail and a gun that fires bone fragments made The Dark Ages a stand out title in a very crowded genre.
13. Elden Ring: Nightreign
On paper the idea of adding battle royale and roguelike elements to Elden Ring sounds highly questionable. It’s a testament to the abilities of the team at FromSoftware that it actually works really well. Elden Ring: Nightreign never quite reaches the heights of its 2022 single player predecessor but it’s damn addicting, particularly if you team up with two other players who know what they’re doing.
The core gameplay of the first game is still present, but now you’re much more reliant on lucky drops each run, adding a whole new layer of strategy. But even with good equipment and an experienced team, defeating the eight Nightlords is no simple feat.
12. Mario Kart World
Mario Kart 8 was always going to be a tough act to follow. After all, it’s one of the best selling video games of all time for good reason. But launching aside the hotly anticipated Switch 2, Mario Kart World quickly proved up to the task.
No, Mario Kart World doesn’t reinvent the wheel. Its new features like an open-world, Grand Prix races that link four tracks together, and a Knockout Tour are more iterative than revolutionary. But at the end of the day, it’s just a really fun racing game that most of us who picked up a Switch 2 at launch are still playing six months later.
11. South of Midnight
Between multiple canceled projects and flagging console sales, it’s no secret that 2025 was a rough year for the Xbox brand. In fact, you wouldn’t be blamed for not even knowing about South of Midnight, one of Microsoft’s best releases in years.
Admittedly South of Midnight’s gameplay isn’t particularly novel. You’ve likely played games with similar platforming and combat, but it’s a game that wholeheartedly embraces the culture and folklore of the American South in ways that few other titles have, with a stop-motion aesthetic that sets it apart. South of Midnight is proof that even during these troubled times, Xbox is capable of putting out surprisingly great artistic games.
10. Ball x Pit
You’d think that after the past few years, roguelikes would have run their course. This is even the third roguelike on this list, and there were dozens of others released this year. And yet, Ball x Pit proves that there’s still plenty of untapped potential in the crowded genre. This time Ball x Pit added the randomization of roguelikes to the timeless block breaking gameplay of titles like Arkanoid.
And holy hell is it addicting. Ball x Pitfeatures more than a dozen playable characters, each with their own unique abilities. Additionally during runs, there are numerous combinations and evolutions, plus a whole village building gameplay loop to round things out. Ball x Pit creator Kenny Sun told Bloomberg earlier this year that he felt the response to the game was “a bit too positive,” but it absolutely deserves all the praise it’s received for its addictive gameplay.
9. Split Fiction
Hazelight Studios has spent the better part of the last decade redefining what’s possible in co-op gaming. If you liked their previous titles A Way Out and It Takes Two, you’re going to absolutely love Split Fiction, the culmination of everything the studio has been working toward.
While a lot of similar games get stale fairly quickly, Split Fiction never wears out its welcome, regularly adding new gameplay styles in its tale about a sci-fi and fantasy author, then moving on to the next one almost as quickly. It’s an absolute blast to play. The only downside, of course, is that you have to have someone else around to play with.
8. Ninja Gaiden 4
In modern gaming, it’s common for supposedly single player games from major publishers to be burdened with annoying online or multiplayer functions, or expensive DLC tokens and costumes just so companies can make just a few extra bucks. Ninja Gaiden 4 is one of the rare titles that thankfully bucks that trend, and it’s the better for it.
In many ways, this is a throwback to action games of the PS2 era when the original 3D Ninja Gaiden was released, focusing more on linear levels and smooth combat that requires quick reflexes. Replacing Ryu Hayabusa with newcomer Yakumo for most of the game was a daring choice, but by the end of the game, Yakumo proves himself as a worthy successor to the Ninja Gaidenthrone. Hopefully, this is a new beginning for the storied series and not just a one off.
7. Donkey Kong Bananza
While Donkey Kong was one of Nintendo’s first gaming characters, he’s mostly played in recent years the part of a cameo character in Mario games, with the occasional side scroller throwback. Nintendo just hasn’t really seemed to know what to do with the big ape until Donkey Kong Bananza came around.
Far from just a retread of the team’s prior effort, Super Mario Odyssey, Bananza reinvents Donkey Kong with the simple premise of letting a gorilla wreck everything around him. Sure, the platforming challenges to collect Banandium Gems are great, but it’s just as easy to get distracted smashing up a level and collecting whatever you dig up. Bananzais not only the first must-have for the Switch 2, but it also provides a solid blueprint for where future Donkey Kong titles could go from here.
6. ARC Raiders
ARC Raiders wasn’t on many gamers’ radars at the start of the year, but since its release at the end of October, it’s quickly gained traction as one of the biggest sleeper hits of the year. At its core, ARC Raiders is an extraction shooter similar to Helldivers II, but with more open-endedness and a focus on PvPvE encounters.
And to be fair, that can make ARC Raiders a frustrating experience, as running afoul of the wrong enemies can mean losing quite a bit of progress. But that less linear gameplay also allows for endless possibilities in its world. And the polished gunplay makes it an absolute joy to play, regardless of how successful each run is. If you’ve been waiting to check out an extraction shooter, ARC Raiders is the perfect jumping on point.
5. Death Stranding 2: On the Beach
The response to the original Death Stranding in 2019 was largely positive, although many gamers who grew up on Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid titles were a little confused by a game both praised and derided as an advanced walking simulator set in a sci-fi world radically different from anything else seen before. It was a good game, just a little muddled. Then again, that’s always been a criticism of Kojima’s direction.
With Death Stranding 2, at least we had a better idea of what we were getting into, and On the Beach definitely took the criticism to heart with more refined gameplay and a story that’s a little less convoluted, though still very much classic Kojima. On the Beach isn’t going to win any converts who disliked the first game but for the faithful, this is another Kojima masterpiece.
4. Hades II
Yes, it’s another roguelike on the list, but Hades IIisn’t just any roguelike. It’s the sequel to one of the very best in the genre and it actually improves on the first game in every conceivable way. Hades II puts you in the role of Melinoë, the sister of Zagreus, the protagonist of the original game. This time there are two different paths to take as you face the Titan Chronos. You’re free to either head downward into Tartarus to go after Chronos or go upward to break a siege on Mount Olympus.
There’s more variety, more weapons too, and more characters from Greek mythology, again expertly written by Supergiant Games. Hades II is quite simply everything you could want in a sequel, and the new undisputed king of roguelikes.
3. Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
The first Kingdom Come: Deliverance was an incredibly ambitious RPG that aimed for a realistic depiction of 15th century Bohemia. It fell a little short due to jankiness, but for those who got into it, clearly the foundation of something great was there. And thankfully, the sequel delivers on all of that potential.
You still play as Henry, a simple man caught in a much wider conflict, and eating and sleeping are still just as important as sword fighting (if not more so). There’s no magic or dragons in this world, just harsh medieval reality. It may not sound like much fun, but if you’ve ever wanted to play something along the lines of The Elder Scrolls without the fantasy elements, it’s an amazing RPG.
2. Hollow Knight: Silksong
When games take more than half a decade to develop and start making major changes, fans understandably get nervous. Historically, it’s much more likely that games stuck in development hell end up as legendary disappointments, like Duke Nukem Forever, rather than all time classics. Thankfully, after six years of development that saw it expand from DLC to a standalone sequel, Hollow Knight: Silksong is more than worth the wait.
This is an expertly crafted Metroidvania with a bigger map, much more to do, and faster, smoother combat, yet it still retains the excellent moody sound design and art style of the original. The only downside (for some) is the difficulty. The first Hollow Knight was tough, but some of the enemies in Silksong will push you to the absolute limits.
1. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
If you had said at the beginning of the year that the undisputed game of the year would be an unapologetically French turn-based RPG by a small development team making their first game together, not many people would have taken you seriously. There were just too many impressive looking triple A games on the calendar. But no one is laughing at Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 at the end of 2025. It’s already won a pile of GOTY awards, and it absolutely deserves another.
This is a game that takes all of the best parts of RPGs like Persona, Final Fantasy, and Paper Mario to craft a brand new fantasy world unlike anything else in gaming. The sound and visuals are leagues above anything else that came out this year. Already the soundtrack is being praised as one of the best to ever grace a video game. And the story, about the quest to defeat an entity called the Paintress that wipes out more and more people every year as she paints a new age on a rock, is one of the most fascinating to come along in years. This is the type of game that will inspire RPGs for years to come, and that is an absolute must play for any gamer.
The following contains spoilers for Stranger Things season 5. Stranger Things season 5 has dealt with everything from Henry Creel’s past to the truth about the Upside Down and Vecna’s larger plans for multiversal domination. But as the episodes tick down to the grand finale, fans are likely just as interested in the fate of […]
At the start of the year, Grand Theft Auto VI looked to be a shoe-in for Game of the Year. Publishers jostled around their release calendars to ensure titles wouldn’t be completely ignored in the wake of what could possibly be the biggest gaming release of all time. Then GTA VI got delayed into 2026. Twice.
That made the 2025 GOTY race a wide open one, especially with some hotly anticipated sequels like Metroid Prime 4: Beyond and Borderlands 4meeting with particularly muted responses from critics and fans alike. So in a year of games where the frontrunner bowed out early and other contenders turned out to be pretenders, which titles reigned supreme? Read on to find out the best games of 2025.
There’s never been a game quite like Blue Prince before. Part roguelike, part puzzler, you play the role of a man who’s inherited a constantly shifting estate from his recently deceased uncle. The late relation has also tasked you with the goal of finding a hidden 46th room on the grounds by drafting new rooms in the mansion every day.
Blue Prince will put even the most experienced gamer through their paces. The game doesn’t give up its many secrets easily, and even after several hours, it can be tricky to figure out just how to place each room. Even then some bad luck can end a run early. This definitely isn’t a game for everyone, but it’s worth checking out for anyone looking for something truly innovative.
14. Doom: The Dark Ages
The remarkable thing about id Software’s most recent Doom trilogy, which began with 2016’s Doom and was capped off this year with The Dark Ages, is how each game took a very different approach to combat. The Dark Ages slows things down dramatically, basically turning the Doom Slayer into a walking tank with a shield.
This opens up a whole new way to play an FPS, focusing more on blocking and parrying. And the addition of some really cool new weapons like a flail and a gun that fires bone fragments made The Dark Ages a stand out title in a very crowded genre.
13. Elden Ring: Nightreign
On paper the idea of adding battle royale and roguelike elements to Elden Ring sounds highly questionable. It’s a testament to the abilities of the team at FromSoftware that it actually works really well. Elden Ring: Nightreign never quite reaches the heights of its 2022 single player predecessor but it’s damn addicting, particularly if you team up with two other players who know what they’re doing.
The core gameplay of the first game is still present, but now you’re much more reliant on lucky drops each run, adding a whole new layer of strategy. But even with good equipment and an experienced team, defeating the eight Nightlords is no simple feat.
12. Mario Kart World
Mario Kart 8 was always going to be a tough act to follow. After all, it’s one of the best selling video games of all time for good reason. But launching aside the hotly anticipated Switch 2, Mario Kart World quickly proved up to the task.
No, Mario Kart World doesn’t reinvent the wheel. Its new features like an open-world, Grand Prix races that link four tracks together, and a Knockout Tour are more iterative than revolutionary. But at the end of the day, it’s just a really fun racing game that most of us who picked up a Switch 2 at launch are still playing six months later.
11. South of Midnight
Between multiple canceled projects and flagging console sales, it’s no secret that 2025 was a rough year for the Xbox brand. In fact, you wouldn’t be blamed for not even knowing about South of Midnight, one of Microsoft’s best releases in years.
Admittedly South of Midnight’s gameplay isn’t particularly novel. You’ve likely played games with similar platforming and combat, but it’s a game that wholeheartedly embraces the culture and folklore of the American South in ways that few other titles have, with a stop-motion aesthetic that sets it apart. South of Midnight is proof that even during these troubled times, Xbox is capable of putting out surprisingly great artistic games.
10. Ball x Pit
You’d think that after the past few years, roguelikes would have run their course. This is even the third roguelike on this list, and there were dozens of others released this year. And yet, Ball x Pit proves that there’s still plenty of untapped potential in the crowded genre. This time Ball x Pit added the randomization of roguelikes to the timeless block breaking gameplay of titles like Arkanoid.
And holy hell is it addicting. Ball x Pitfeatures more than a dozen playable characters, each with their own unique abilities. Additionally during runs, there are numerous combinations and evolutions, plus a whole village building gameplay loop to round things out. Ball x Pit creator Kenny Sun told Bloomberg earlier this year that he felt the response to the game was “a bit too positive,” but it absolutely deserves all the praise it’s received for its addictive gameplay.
9. Split Fiction
Hazelight Studios has spent the better part of the last decade redefining what’s possible in co-op gaming. If you liked their previous titles A Way Out and It Takes Two, you’re going to absolutely love Split Fiction, the culmination of everything the studio has been working toward.
While a lot of similar games get stale fairly quickly, Split Fiction never wears out its welcome, regularly adding new gameplay styles in its tale about a sci-fi and fantasy author, then moving on to the next one almost as quickly. It’s an absolute blast to play. The only downside, of course, is that you have to have someone else around to play with.
8. Ninja Gaiden 4
In modern gaming, it’s common for supposedly single player games from major publishers to be burdened with annoying online or multiplayer functions, or expensive DLC tokens and costumes just so companies can make just a few extra bucks. Ninja Gaiden 4 is one of the rare titles that thankfully bucks that trend, and it’s the better for it.
In many ways, this is a throwback to action games of the PS2 era when the original 3D Ninja Gaiden was released, focusing more on linear levels and smooth combat that requires quick reflexes. Replacing Ryu Hayabusa with newcomer Yakumo for most of the game was a daring choice, but by the end of the game, Yakumo proves himself as a worthy successor to the Ninja Gaidenthrone. Hopefully, this is a new beginning for the storied series and not just a one off.
7. Donkey Kong Bananza
While Donkey Kong was one of Nintendo’s first gaming characters, he’s mostly played in recent years the part of a cameo character in Mario games, with the occasional side scroller throwback. Nintendo just hasn’t really seemed to know what to do with the big ape until Donkey Kong Bananza came around.
Far from just a retread of the team’s prior effort, Super Mario Odyssey, Bananza reinvents Donkey Kong with the simple premise of letting a gorilla wreck everything around him. Sure, the platforming challenges to collect Banandium Gems are great, but it’s just as easy to get distracted smashing up a level and collecting whatever you dig up. Bananzais not only the first must-have for the Switch 2, but it also provides a solid blueprint for where future Donkey Kong titles could go from here.
6. ARC Raiders
ARC Raiders wasn’t on many gamers’ radars at the start of the year, but since its release at the end of October, it’s quickly gained traction as one of the biggest sleeper hits of the year. At its core, ARC Raiders is an extraction shooter similar to Helldivers II, but with more open-endedness and a focus on PvPvE encounters.
And to be fair, that can make ARC Raiders a frustrating experience, as running afoul of the wrong enemies can mean losing quite a bit of progress. But that less linear gameplay also allows for endless possibilities in its world. And the polished gunplay makes it an absolute joy to play, regardless of how successful each run is. If you’ve been waiting to check out an extraction shooter, ARC Raiders is the perfect jumping on point.
5. Death Stranding 2: On the Beach
The response to the original Death Stranding in 2019 was largely positive, although many gamers who grew up on Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid titles were a little confused by a game both praised and derided as an advanced walking simulator set in a sci-fi world radically different from anything else seen before. It was a good game, just a little muddled. Then again, that’s always been a criticism of Kojima’s direction.
With Death Stranding 2, at least we had a better idea of what we were getting into, and On the Beach definitely took the criticism to heart with more refined gameplay and a story that’s a little less convoluted, though still very much classic Kojima. On the Beach isn’t going to win any converts who disliked the first game but for the faithful, this is another Kojima masterpiece.
4. Hades II
Yes, it’s another roguelike on the list, but Hades IIisn’t just any roguelike. It’s the sequel to one of the very best in the genre and it actually improves on the first game in every conceivable way. Hades II puts you in the role of Melinoë, the sister of Zagreus, the protagonist of the original game. This time there are two different paths to take as you face the Titan Chronos. You’re free to either head downward into Tartarus to go after Chronos or go upward to break a siege on Mount Olympus.
There’s more variety, more weapons too, and more characters from Greek mythology, again expertly written by Supergiant Games. Hades II is quite simply everything you could want in a sequel, and the new undisputed king of roguelikes.
3. Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
The first Kingdom Come: Deliverance was an incredibly ambitious RPG that aimed for a realistic depiction of 15th century Bohemia. It fell a little short due to jankiness, but for those who got into it, clearly the foundation of something great was there. And thankfully, the sequel delivers on all of that potential.
You still play as Henry, a simple man caught in a much wider conflict, and eating and sleeping are still just as important as sword fighting (if not more so). There’s no magic or dragons in this world, just harsh medieval reality. It may not sound like much fun, but if you’ve ever wanted to play something along the lines of The Elder Scrolls without the fantasy elements, it’s an amazing RPG.
2. Hollow Knight: Silksong
When games take more than half a decade to develop and start making major changes, fans understandably get nervous. Historically, it’s much more likely that games stuck in development hell end up as legendary disappointments, like Duke Nukem Forever, rather than all time classics. Thankfully, after six years of development that saw it expand from DLC to a standalone sequel, Hollow Knight: Silksong is more than worth the wait.
This is an expertly crafted Metroidvania with a bigger map, much more to do, and faster, smoother combat, yet it still retains the excellent moody sound design and art style of the original. The only downside (for some) is the difficulty. The first Hollow Knight was tough, but some of the enemies in Silksong will push you to the absolute limits.
1. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
If you had said at the beginning of the year that the undisputed game of the year would be an unapologetically French turn-based RPG by a small development team making their first game together, not many people would have taken you seriously. There were just too many impressive looking triple A games on the calendar. But no one is laughing at Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 at the end of 2025. It’s already won a pile of GOTY awards, and it absolutely deserves another.
This is a game that takes all of the best parts of RPGs like Persona, Final Fantasy, and Paper Mario to craft a brand new fantasy world unlike anything else in gaming. The sound and visuals are leagues above anything else that came out this year. Already the soundtrack is being praised as one of the best to ever grace a video game. And the story, about the quest to defeat an entity called the Paintress that wipes out more and more people every year as she paints a new age on a rock, is one of the most fascinating to come along in years. This is the type of game that will inspire RPGs for years to come, and that is an absolute must play for any gamer.
This post contains spoilers for Stranger Things season 5. Why do people like Stranger Things? Even the biggest superfan may find themselves asking that question somewhere around the 140 minute mark of season 5 volume 2, when very little has happened on a plot level and another couple starts monologuing about their feelings. As the […]
At the start of the year, Grand Theft Auto VI looked to be a shoe-in for Game of the Year. Publishers jostled around their release calendars to ensure titles wouldn’t be completely ignored in the wake of what could possibly be the biggest gaming release of all time. Then GTA VI got delayed into 2026. Twice.
That made the 2025 GOTY race a wide open one, especially with some hotly anticipated sequels like Metroid Prime 4: Beyond and Borderlands 4meeting with particularly muted responses from critics and fans alike. So in a year of games where the frontrunner bowed out early and other contenders turned out to be pretenders, which titles reigned supreme? Read on to find out the best games of 2025.
There’s never been a game quite like Blue Prince before. Part roguelike, part puzzler, you play the role of a man who’s inherited a constantly shifting estate from his recently deceased uncle. The late relation has also tasked you with the goal of finding a hidden 46th room on the grounds by drafting new rooms in the mansion every day.
Blue Prince will put even the most experienced gamer through their paces. The game doesn’t give up its many secrets easily, and even after several hours, it can be tricky to figure out just how to place each room. Even then some bad luck can end a run early. This definitely isn’t a game for everyone, but it’s worth checking out for anyone looking for something truly innovative.
14. Doom: The Dark Ages
The remarkable thing about id Software’s most recent Doom trilogy, which began with 2016’s Doom and was capped off this year with The Dark Ages, is how each game took a very different approach to combat. The Dark Ages slows things down dramatically, basically turning the Doom Slayer into a walking tank with a shield.
This opens up a whole new way to play an FPS, focusing more on blocking and parrying. And the addition of some really cool new weapons like a flail and a gun that fires bone fragments made The Dark Ages a stand out title in a very crowded genre.
13. Elden Ring: Nightreign
On paper the idea of adding battle royale and roguelike elements to Elden Ring sounds highly questionable. It’s a testament to the abilities of the team at FromSoftware that it actually works really well. Elden Ring: Nightreign never quite reaches the heights of its 2022 single player predecessor but it’s damn addicting, particularly if you team up with two other players who know what they’re doing.
The core gameplay of the first game is still present, but now you’re much more reliant on lucky drops each run, adding a whole new layer of strategy. But even with good equipment and an experienced team, defeating the eight Nightlords is no simple feat.
12. Mario Kart World
Mario Kart 8 was always going to be a tough act to follow. After all, it’s one of the best selling video games of all time for good reason. But launching aside the hotly anticipated Switch 2, Mario Kart World quickly proved up to the task.
No, Mario Kart World doesn’t reinvent the wheel. Its new features like an open-world, Grand Prix races that link four tracks together, and a Knockout Tour are more iterative than revolutionary. But at the end of the day, it’s just a really fun racing game that most of us who picked up a Switch 2 at launch are still playing six months later.
11. South of Midnight
Between multiple canceled projects and flagging console sales, it’s no secret that 2025 was a rough year for the Xbox brand. In fact, you wouldn’t be blamed for not even knowing about South of Midnight, one of Microsoft’s best releases in years.
Admittedly South of Midnight’s gameplay isn’t particularly novel. You’ve likely played games with similar platforming and combat, but it’s a game that wholeheartedly embraces the culture and folklore of the American South in ways that few other titles have, with a stop-motion aesthetic that sets it apart. South of Midnight is proof that even during these troubled times, Xbox is capable of putting out surprisingly great artistic games.
10. Ball x Pit
You’d think that after the past few years, roguelikes would have run their course. This is even the third roguelike on this list, and there were dozens of others released this year. And yet, Ball x Pit proves that there’s still plenty of untapped potential in the crowded genre. This time Ball x Pit added the randomization of roguelikes to the timeless block breaking gameplay of titles like Arkanoid.
And holy hell is it addicting. Ball x Pitfeatures more than a dozen playable characters, each with their own unique abilities. Additionally during runs, there are numerous combinations and evolutions, plus a whole village building gameplay loop to round things out. Ball x Pit creator Kenny Sun told Bloomberg earlier this year that he felt the response to the game was “a bit too positive,” but it absolutely deserves all the praise it’s received for its addictive gameplay.
9. Split Fiction
Hazelight Studios has spent the better part of the last decade redefining what’s possible in co-op gaming. If you liked their previous titles A Way Out and It Takes Two, you’re going to absolutely love Split Fiction, the culmination of everything the studio has been working toward.
While a lot of similar games get stale fairly quickly, Split Fiction never wears out its welcome, regularly adding new gameplay styles in its tale about a sci-fi and fantasy author, then moving on to the next one almost as quickly. It’s an absolute blast to play. The only downside, of course, is that you have to have someone else around to play with.
8. Ninja Gaiden 4
In modern gaming, it’s common for supposedly single player games from major publishers to be burdened with annoying online or multiplayer functions, or expensive DLC tokens and costumes just so companies can make just a few extra bucks. Ninja Gaiden 4 is one of the rare titles that thankfully bucks that trend, and it’s the better for it.
In many ways, this is a throwback to action games of the PS2 era when the original 3D Ninja Gaiden was released, focusing more on linear levels and smooth combat that requires quick reflexes. Replacing Ryu Hayabusa with newcomer Yakumo for most of the game was a daring choice, but by the end of the game, Yakumo proves himself as a worthy successor to the Ninja Gaidenthrone. Hopefully, this is a new beginning for the storied series and not just a one off.
7. Donkey Kong Bananza
While Donkey Kong was one of Nintendo’s first gaming characters, he’s mostly played in recent years the part of a cameo character in Mario games, with the occasional side scroller throwback. Nintendo just hasn’t really seemed to know what to do with the big ape until Donkey Kong Bananza came around.
Far from just a retread of the team’s prior effort, Super Mario Odyssey, Bananza reinvents Donkey Kong with the simple premise of letting a gorilla wreck everything around him. Sure, the platforming challenges to collect Banandium Gems are great, but it’s just as easy to get distracted smashing up a level and collecting whatever you dig up. Bananzais not only the first must-have for the Switch 2, but it also provides a solid blueprint for where future Donkey Kong titles could go from here.
6. ARC Raiders
ARC Raiders wasn’t on many gamers’ radars at the start of the year, but since its release at the end of October, it’s quickly gained traction as one of the biggest sleeper hits of the year. At its core, ARC Raiders is an extraction shooter similar to Helldivers II, but with more open-endedness and a focus on PvPvE encounters.
And to be fair, that can make ARC Raiders a frustrating experience, as running afoul of the wrong enemies can mean losing quite a bit of progress. But that less linear gameplay also allows for endless possibilities in its world. And the polished gunplay makes it an absolute joy to play, regardless of how successful each run is. If you’ve been waiting to check out an extraction shooter, ARC Raiders is the perfect jumping on point.
5. Death Stranding 2: On the Beach
The response to the original Death Stranding in 2019 was largely positive, although many gamers who grew up on Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid titles were a little confused by a game both praised and derided as an advanced walking simulator set in a sci-fi world radically different from anything else seen before. It was a good game, just a little muddled. Then again, that’s always been a criticism of Kojima’s direction.
With Death Stranding 2, at least we had a better idea of what we were getting into, and On the Beach definitely took the criticism to heart with more refined gameplay and a story that’s a little less convoluted, though still very much classic Kojima. On the Beach isn’t going to win any converts who disliked the first game but for the faithful, this is another Kojima masterpiece.
4. Hades II
Yes, it’s another roguelike on the list, but Hades IIisn’t just any roguelike. It’s the sequel to one of the very best in the genre and it actually improves on the first game in every conceivable way. Hades II puts you in the role of Melinoë, the sister of Zagreus, the protagonist of the original game. This time there are two different paths to take as you face the Titan Chronos. You’re free to either head downward into Tartarus to go after Chronos or go upward to break a siege on Mount Olympus.
There’s more variety, more weapons too, and more characters from Greek mythology, again expertly written by Supergiant Games. Hades II is quite simply everything you could want in a sequel, and the new undisputed king of roguelikes.
3. Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
The first Kingdom Come: Deliverance was an incredibly ambitious RPG that aimed for a realistic depiction of 15th century Bohemia. It fell a little short due to jankiness, but for those who got into it, clearly the foundation of something great was there. And thankfully, the sequel delivers on all of that potential.
You still play as Henry, a simple man caught in a much wider conflict, and eating and sleeping are still just as important as sword fighting (if not more so). There’s no magic or dragons in this world, just harsh medieval reality. It may not sound like much fun, but if you’ve ever wanted to play something along the lines of The Elder Scrolls without the fantasy elements, it’s an amazing RPG.
2. Hollow Knight: Silksong
When games take more than half a decade to develop and start making major changes, fans understandably get nervous. Historically, it’s much more likely that games stuck in development hell end up as legendary disappointments, like Duke Nukem Forever, rather than all time classics. Thankfully, after six years of development that saw it expand from DLC to a standalone sequel, Hollow Knight: Silksong is more than worth the wait.
This is an expertly crafted Metroidvania with a bigger map, much more to do, and faster, smoother combat, yet it still retains the excellent moody sound design and art style of the original. The only downside (for some) is the difficulty. The first Hollow Knight was tough, but some of the enemies in Silksong will push you to the absolute limits.
1. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
If you had said at the beginning of the year that the undisputed game of the year would be an unapologetically French turn-based RPG by a small development team making their first game together, not many people would have taken you seriously. There were just too many impressive looking triple A games on the calendar. But no one is laughing at Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 at the end of 2025. It’s already won a pile of GOTY awards, and it absolutely deserves another.
This is a game that takes all of the best parts of RPGs like Persona, Final Fantasy, and Paper Mario to craft a brand new fantasy world unlike anything else in gaming. The sound and visuals are leagues above anything else that came out this year. Already the soundtrack is being praised as one of the best to ever grace a video game. And the story, about the quest to defeat an entity called the Paintress that wipes out more and more people every year as she paints a new age on a rock, is one of the most fascinating to come along in years. This is the type of game that will inspire RPGs for years to come, and that is an absolute must play for any gamer.
Stranger Things has had to serve a lot of masters in its final season, balancing what often feels like a dozen competing plot threads and steadily expanding mysteries. But its most satisfying decision has been to finally put Will Byers back at the center of the action. The boy whose original disappearance started this whole […]
At the start of the year, Grand Theft Auto VI looked to be a shoe-in for Game of the Year. Publishers jostled around their release calendars to ensure titles wouldn’t be completely ignored in the wake of what could possibly be the biggest gaming release of all time. Then GTA VI got delayed into 2026. Twice.
That made the 2025 GOTY race a wide open one, especially with some hotly anticipated sequels like Metroid Prime 4: Beyond and Borderlands 4meeting with particularly muted responses from critics and fans alike. So in a year of games where the frontrunner bowed out early and other contenders turned out to be pretenders, which titles reigned supreme? Read on to find out the best games of 2025.
There’s never been a game quite like Blue Prince before. Part roguelike, part puzzler, you play the role of a man who’s inherited a constantly shifting estate from his recently deceased uncle. The late relation has also tasked you with the goal of finding a hidden 46th room on the grounds by drafting new rooms in the mansion every day.
Blue Prince will put even the most experienced gamer through their paces. The game doesn’t give up its many secrets easily, and even after several hours, it can be tricky to figure out just how to place each room. Even then some bad luck can end a run early. This definitely isn’t a game for everyone, but it’s worth checking out for anyone looking for something truly innovative.
14. Doom: The Dark Ages
The remarkable thing about id Software’s most recent Doom trilogy, which began with 2016’s Doom and was capped off this year with The Dark Ages, is how each game took a very different approach to combat. The Dark Ages slows things down dramatically, basically turning the Doom Slayer into a walking tank with a shield.
This opens up a whole new way to play an FPS, focusing more on blocking and parrying. And the addition of some really cool new weapons like a flail and a gun that fires bone fragments made The Dark Ages a stand out title in a very crowded genre.
13. Elden Ring: Nightreign
On paper the idea of adding battle royale and roguelike elements to Elden Ring sounds highly questionable. It’s a testament to the abilities of the team at FromSoftware that it actually works really well. Elden Ring: Nightreign never quite reaches the heights of its 2022 single player predecessor but it’s damn addicting, particularly if you team up with two other players who know what they’re doing.
The core gameplay of the first game is still present, but now you’re much more reliant on lucky drops each run, adding a whole new layer of strategy. But even with good equipment and an experienced team, defeating the eight Nightlords is no simple feat.
12. Mario Kart World
Mario Kart 8 was always going to be a tough act to follow. After all, it’s one of the best selling video games of all time for good reason. But launching aside the hotly anticipated Switch 2, Mario Kart World quickly proved up to the task.
No, Mario Kart World doesn’t reinvent the wheel. Its new features like an open-world, Grand Prix races that link four tracks together, and a Knockout Tour are more iterative than revolutionary. But at the end of the day, it’s just a really fun racing game that most of us who picked up a Switch 2 at launch are still playing six months later.
11. South of Midnight
Between multiple canceled projects and flagging console sales, it’s no secret that 2025 was a rough year for the Xbox brand. In fact, you wouldn’t be blamed for not even knowing about South of Midnight, one of Microsoft’s best releases in years.
Admittedly South of Midnight’s gameplay isn’t particularly novel. You’ve likely played games with similar platforming and combat, but it’s a game that wholeheartedly embraces the culture and folklore of the American South in ways that few other titles have, with a stop-motion aesthetic that sets it apart. South of Midnight is proof that even during these troubled times, Xbox is capable of putting out surprisingly great artistic games.
10. Ball x Pit
You’d think that after the past few years, roguelikes would have run their course. This is even the third roguelike on this list, and there were dozens of others released this year. And yet, Ball x Pit proves that there’s still plenty of untapped potential in the crowded genre. This time Ball x Pit added the randomization of roguelikes to the timeless block breaking gameplay of titles like Arkanoid.
And holy hell is it addicting. Ball x Pitfeatures more than a dozen playable characters, each with their own unique abilities. Additionally during runs, there are numerous combinations and evolutions, plus a whole village building gameplay loop to round things out. Ball x Pit creator Kenny Sun told Bloomberg earlier this year that he felt the response to the game was “a bit too positive,” but it absolutely deserves all the praise it’s received for its addictive gameplay.
9. Split Fiction
Hazelight Studios has spent the better part of the last decade redefining what’s possible in co-op gaming. If you liked their previous titles A Way Out and It Takes Two, you’re going to absolutely love Split Fiction, the culmination of everything the studio has been working toward.
While a lot of similar games get stale fairly quickly, Split Fiction never wears out its welcome, regularly adding new gameplay styles in its tale about a sci-fi and fantasy author, then moving on to the next one almost as quickly. It’s an absolute blast to play. The only downside, of course, is that you have to have someone else around to play with.
8. Ninja Gaiden 4
In modern gaming, it’s common for supposedly single player games from major publishers to be burdened with annoying online or multiplayer functions, or expensive DLC tokens and costumes just so companies can make just a few extra bucks. Ninja Gaiden 4 is one of the rare titles that thankfully bucks that trend, and it’s the better for it.
In many ways, this is a throwback to action games of the PS2 era when the original 3D Ninja Gaiden was released, focusing more on linear levels and smooth combat that requires quick reflexes. Replacing Ryu Hayabusa with newcomer Yakumo for most of the game was a daring choice, but by the end of the game, Yakumo proves himself as a worthy successor to the Ninja Gaidenthrone. Hopefully, this is a new beginning for the storied series and not just a one off.
7. Donkey Kong Bananza
While Donkey Kong was one of Nintendo’s first gaming characters, he’s mostly played in recent years the part of a cameo character in Mario games, with the occasional side scroller throwback. Nintendo just hasn’t really seemed to know what to do with the big ape until Donkey Kong Bananza came around.
Far from just a retread of the team’s prior effort, Super Mario Odyssey, Bananza reinvents Donkey Kong with the simple premise of letting a gorilla wreck everything around him. Sure, the platforming challenges to collect Banandium Gems are great, but it’s just as easy to get distracted smashing up a level and collecting whatever you dig up. Bananzais not only the first must-have for the Switch 2, but it also provides a solid blueprint for where future Donkey Kong titles could go from here.
6. ARC Raiders
ARC Raiders wasn’t on many gamers’ radars at the start of the year, but since its release at the end of October, it’s quickly gained traction as one of the biggest sleeper hits of the year. At its core, ARC Raiders is an extraction shooter similar to Helldivers II, but with more open-endedness and a focus on PvPvE encounters.
And to be fair, that can make ARC Raiders a frustrating experience, as running afoul of the wrong enemies can mean losing quite a bit of progress. But that less linear gameplay also allows for endless possibilities in its world. And the polished gunplay makes it an absolute joy to play, regardless of how successful each run is. If you’ve been waiting to check out an extraction shooter, ARC Raiders is the perfect jumping on point.
5. Death Stranding 2: On the Beach
The response to the original Death Stranding in 2019 was largely positive, although many gamers who grew up on Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid titles were a little confused by a game both praised and derided as an advanced walking simulator set in a sci-fi world radically different from anything else seen before. It was a good game, just a little muddled. Then again, that’s always been a criticism of Kojima’s direction.
With Death Stranding 2, at least we had a better idea of what we were getting into, and On the Beach definitely took the criticism to heart with more refined gameplay and a story that’s a little less convoluted, though still very much classic Kojima. On the Beach isn’t going to win any converts who disliked the first game but for the faithful, this is another Kojima masterpiece.
4. Hades II
Yes, it’s another roguelike on the list, but Hades IIisn’t just any roguelike. It’s the sequel to one of the very best in the genre and it actually improves on the first game in every conceivable way. Hades II puts you in the role of Melinoë, the sister of Zagreus, the protagonist of the original game. This time there are two different paths to take as you face the Titan Chronos. You’re free to either head downward into Tartarus to go after Chronos or go upward to break a siege on Mount Olympus.
There’s more variety, more weapons too, and more characters from Greek mythology, again expertly written by Supergiant Games. Hades II is quite simply everything you could want in a sequel, and the new undisputed king of roguelikes.
3. Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
The first Kingdom Come: Deliverance was an incredibly ambitious RPG that aimed for a realistic depiction of 15th century Bohemia. It fell a little short due to jankiness, but for those who got into it, clearly the foundation of something great was there. And thankfully, the sequel delivers on all of that potential.
You still play as Henry, a simple man caught in a much wider conflict, and eating and sleeping are still just as important as sword fighting (if not more so). There’s no magic or dragons in this world, just harsh medieval reality. It may not sound like much fun, but if you’ve ever wanted to play something along the lines of The Elder Scrolls without the fantasy elements, it’s an amazing RPG.
2. Hollow Knight: Silksong
When games take more than half a decade to develop and start making major changes, fans understandably get nervous. Historically, it’s much more likely that games stuck in development hell end up as legendary disappointments, like Duke Nukem Forever, rather than all time classics. Thankfully, after six years of development that saw it expand from DLC to a standalone sequel, Hollow Knight: Silksong is more than worth the wait.
This is an expertly crafted Metroidvania with a bigger map, much more to do, and faster, smoother combat, yet it still retains the excellent moody sound design and art style of the original. The only downside (for some) is the difficulty. The first Hollow Knight was tough, but some of the enemies in Silksong will push you to the absolute limits.
1. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
If you had said at the beginning of the year that the undisputed game of the year would be an unapologetically French turn-based RPG by a small development team making their first game together, not many people would have taken you seriously. There were just too many impressive looking triple A games on the calendar. But no one is laughing at Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 at the end of 2025. It’s already won a pile of GOTY awards, and it absolutely deserves another.
This is a game that takes all of the best parts of RPGs like Persona, Final Fantasy, and Paper Mario to craft a brand new fantasy world unlike anything else in gaming. The sound and visuals are leagues above anything else that came out this year. Already the soundtrack is being praised as one of the best to ever grace a video game. And the story, about the quest to defeat an entity called the Paintress that wipes out more and more people every year as she paints a new age on a rock, is one of the most fascinating to come along in years. This is the type of game that will inspire RPGs for years to come, and that is an absolute must play for any gamer.
