Turtles, Dreams, Horrors, and Digimon

2025 feels like a blur. It was probably one of the busiest years of my life as a games media writer person, for better and for worse. But hey, part of that was launching Skybox, which is pretty cool. Thanks to our efforts and the folks who have been kind enough to subscribe and stick around, we’ve made it long enough to put all our muscles into a big ol’ GOTY Party. We’ve played an absurd number of games (and still missed many), recorded a big-ass podcast, and are now writing our own lists out the hard way. It’s a lot of work, but we want your time to be worthwhile, and we also want to make sure y’all really know who we are as a team.

To that end, here’s my own top ten games of 2025. It was an interesting year, with more little surprises than big, obvious things I knew I would love before even playing them. But that’s a testament to how strong “smaller” games can be, how good game-creating tools like RPG Maker really are, and, frankly, how much effort you ought to put in beyond the usual AAA machine to find the good stuff. Anyway, let’s get into it.

Missed Connections

This is just a fun little aside I figured I’d drop in here. Just a small list of games that looked fun or interesting I failed to get a hold of or find time for. If our tastes run similar, you might want to check them out:

• Skate Story
• Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds (we published a review for this one, from Cristina!)
• Detective Instinct: Farewell, My Beloved
• Gal Guardians: Servant of the Dark
• Urban Myth Dissolution Center

Honorable Mentions

Just a sentence or two on games I thought were dope, but ultimately didn’t make my top ten:

Shujinkou (Rice Games)

A fascinating DRPG that combines hours of dungeon-crawling with surprisingly in-depth Japanese language-learning mechanics. Part of that involves hitting enemies in their “ontological weakness,” which rules as a concept.

Shadow Labyrinth (Bandai Namco)

An unhinged Metroidvania featuring the kind of deep lore you’d only find in the smelliest, dankest fan wikis, but for stuff like Dig Dug and Galaga. Pac-Man is an ambiguously evil mecha/ghost/demon thing that rips a child off a street bench and forces it to fight disgusting GWAR puppet monsters. Then eats the remains.

Crescent Tower (AMATA Games, Curry Croquette)

Read my column about this one! A DRPG that mixes NES Final Fantasy-style visuals with Wizardry-like mechanics. Does some interesting stuff with class abilities that reach outside of combat, tying them to dungeon-crawling as well.

Lunar Remastered Collection (GungHo, GAME ARTS)

A no-nonsense remaster of some of my favorite old school RPGs. There’s productive under the hood tinkering, a cleaned-up script, and nice visual filters. A great case study in not meddling too much.

House of Necrosis (Warkus)

What if the original Resident Evil was a Mystery Dungeon? A game that hits its absurd concept with deadly accuracy. How could these two things work together well? House of Necrosis tells you exactly how.

GOTY Time

Alright, it’s time for the top ten. Here are the games from 2025 that will stick with me forever.

10. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tactical Takedown (Strange Scaffold)

I can’t say I expected a TMNT game would ever find itself on a GOTY list of mine, especially since Turtles in Time came out when I was a child. Tactical Takedown presents itself as a “turn-based beat ‘em up,” which sounds utterly insane on paper. But when you play it, there’s no better way to describe it. This is a tactical combat game that speaks the language of arcade brawlers, adapting that voice from its presentation to its actual gameplay mechanics. I had a blast with this one, especially considering how it manages to take an annoying TMNT storytelling cliche and turn it into a dope video game payoff. That takes talent.

9. Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound (Konami, The Game Kitchen)

Ragebound is the kind of retro revival that isn’t just a cheap vehicle for references. This game understands what was cool about the original Ninja Gaiden trilogy, pays tribute to it in subtle and/or meaningful ways, and goes on to nail the gameplay cadence of its predecessors with grace and intelligence. It’s hard to translate a NES game known for being hard to a modern context without losing something in translation, but these folks found a way to thread that needle.

8. Blade Chimera (PLAYISM, Team Ladybug)

Team Ladybug has been a hidden monster in the Metroidvania world for a number of years now, hitting IP like Touhou and Record of Lodoss War with absurdly cool pixel art and animation that made its work stand out in a crowded space. Blade Chimera is the team’s first original game, and it makes a hell of a statement. I’ve never seen a 2D game that looks this good in motion, and it has some solid action gameplay to back it up. It’s also a very no-nonsense kind of Search Action joint, more interested in the look and feel of this structure than forcing you to fill in and backtrack across a giant map more than necessary. Efficient, gorgeous, and fun.

7. Artis Impact (Feuxon, Mas)

I almost missed this one and am so grateful I managed to stumble across it before the year was out. As I’ve indicated with Blade Chimera, I love seeing what talented pixel artists can do with animation, and this game not only has superb animation, it’s unafraid to use that talent for the stupidest things you could think of and then some, like slapping bags of flour or flipping other people’s light switches. Artis Impact threads the needle of serious sci-fi storytelling and goofy humor, with a pair of heroes that ask you to consider what NieR Automata would be like as a buddy cop movie. There’s a surprising amount of emotional depth here, rounding out the action and humor for a story that feels deeply human despite all the robots.

6. and Roger (Kodansha, TearyHand Studio)

We spoiled what’s going on in this story in the GOTY podcast, but I’ll leave the twist unsaid here. But what I will say is and Roger will probably make you cry. This is a fascinating effort of taking something simple (a visual novel), and making its most simple element (clicking a button to progress a scene) complex and in some cases, horrifying. This game does so much with so little, and is a testament to how thoughtful interactivity can multiply a story’s emotional impact.

5. Unbeatable (Playstack, D-CELL)

At first, Unbeatable was a neat rhythm game with an attitude I was appreciating well enough, but growing tired of. It’s rough around the edges to say the least. But as it went on and revealed its hand, those janky opening hours melted away into a story whose emotional core resonated with me like nothing else I played this year. This game understands the creative spirit, the burning passion that makes you keep making, and the fight against the forces that want you to quit. Plus, it has a whole other arcade mode that’s just a sick music game.

4. Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector (Fellow Traveler, Jump Over The Age)

This is a story about labor and its relationship with bodies. How working hard for not enough in return is taxing, breaks you down, and takes away more than just your time. But it’s also about how that labor is one piece of a story you’re telling about yourself, and that all that work isn’t for nothing. Playing Citizen Sleeper 2, fighting to do tasks while my dice would constantly fracture and break, made me think about the crappy jobs I’ve worked and the people I worked with, the battered bodies and minds, and how we were all more than that work. 

3. Silent Hill F (Konami, NeoBards)

As I’ve said before on our podcasts, Silent Hill F is About Something. It’s a story about how children suffer from expectations from their parents, from their local communities, and from broader society based on their gender and other parts of their lives they can’t control. And of course, those fears and frustrations take form as disgusting and violent monstrosities you get to bludgeon to death with a lead pipe. Or at least try to. And in some cases, you have no choice but to flee. Writer Ryukishi07 draws from his experience both as a renowned horror writer and as a social worker to tell this story with a grounding and weight to it that easily communicates how much he understands and has witnessed these issues, from the action all the way down to the “codex” that evolves as the story unfolds. Read Thomas’ review! He didn’t like it as much, but it’s still a banger read.

2. Look Outside (Devolver Digital, Francis Coulombe)

Look Outside challenges you to think about why you like horror. What do you get out of watching something horrible happen to people around you, and putting yourself in harm’s way in the process? Look Outside rewards you for seeking the thrill. You’re the person in the horror movie opening the door that clearly shouldn’t be opened. Body horror, survival, absurdist humor, cult conspiracies, and a dash of Lovecraft make up this excellent RPG Maker adventure from Francis Coulombe. The vibes are immaculate, the horror is spooky and emotionally raw, and the systems are fun to dissect. It’s a complete package in a small box.

1. Digimon Story Time Stranger (Bandai Namco, MEDIA.VISION)

The road to this game was a decade long, and in that time I honed my skills as a writer, developed my understanding of my own tastes to a razor’s edge, and still continue to battle my own demons. Time Stranger is more than just a fun video game I really like, although it is that too. It’s also a big source of personal validation. More on that in this guest article I wrote for Start Menu. Here, I’ll talk more about why it’s number one. There’s a depth to how you interact with and develop your crew of Digimon here you simply can’t find in other monster collecting games. And it’s endlessly fun to engage with those progression systems, thanks to finely tuned UI design and a visible breadth of options to explore. Time Stranger is also smartly written, surprisingly so for a game an outsider might dismiss as made for children. This is everything I enjoy about video games, targeted squarely at the nooks and crannies of my tastes. Digimon Story Time Stranger is me on a disc. I could wear it as a mask and nobody would see the difference.

There you have it, folks. My top ten games of 2025. We made it, somehow. If you’re looking into some of these for the first time, let me know how it goes! But for now, thanks for stopping by, reading all my stuff, and here’s to doing this all again next year.

Thanks for reading! Check out our official Skybox Game of the Year 2025 podcast for our full breakdown on everything, and stay tuned here at Skybox (and use the GOTY 2025 tag!) to keep up with our written companion pieces!