If doing something three times makes it into a tradition, here’s to the establishment of my tradition of raving about twenty works I first experienced and really enjoyed this year. Each sublist is in chronological order, not ranked or anything. I’m digging this practice, both because it helps me remember all the good times, and because it might lead to you all trying out underappreciated awesome stuff and enjoying your own good times!

Previously: 2024 | 2023

Games

  • Eternal Strands (2025) - A small, confident team makes a small, confident game about a found family climbing up giant robots and dismantling them. This is the game I wished Shadow of the Colossus was.
  • Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (2025) - This atmospheric, moreish Belle Époque JeRPG has anticipated whatever ridiculous build you’re making and says sure, you can do that. I was glad to see it and its impeccable art direction win many well-deserved awards.
  • Blue Prince (2025) - A completely unknown team comes out of nowhere and shadow drops an unimaginably intricate puzzle box of a game where every tiny detail is a clue to yet another meta puzzle. The surprise and delight I’ve experienced picking apart this game with friends has been once in a lifetime.
  • Cyber Knights: Flashpoint (2025) - Neo-cyberpunk XCOM except every mission is a heist. The additional leniency, granularity, and progression make this the into game I wanted Invisible Inc to be.
  • Monster Train 2 (2025) - The sequel to my favorite autobattling roguelike deckbuilder. After navigating the nine circles of hell last game, your demon train takes on the seven heavens. Equipment and rooms add sparkle to what was already a marvel of pairing two of five wildly unique factions, broken decks, and number go up.
  • Old Skies (2025) - The team behind Unavowed and the Blackwell series of indie NYC-loving adventure games delivers again. This time, you’re time-traveling through six distinct eras of NYC and intervening in poignant life stories.
  • Hades II (2025) - Supergiant’s first sequel starts with the perfection of Hades and dutifully produces a more perfect sequel, while layering in commentary about what sequels can and must be. Or you can just not engage with any of that and enjoy its world-class gameplay.
  • Rift of the Necrodancer (2025) - The Necrodancer team dares to reimagine what high-level rhythm games can be from a place of deep reverence and expertise. It’s Guitar Hero, but the notes move in predictable patterns. Instead of playing superhuman amounts of notes, the challenge becomes intuiting the right notes from ever-more complex patterns.
  • Isles of Sea and Sky (2024) - An entire metroidvania about challenging box-pushing puzzles. If you like box-pushing but found Baba is You and Patrick’s Parabox too meta-focused, this game is for you.

    Books

  • Daggerheart (2025) - What if they made D&D from scratch today with all of our accumulated game design knowledge? Similar or better fluff and crunch, with less than half of the fiddly bits.
  • Eunoia (2001) - Christian Bök takes lipogrammatic writing to an extreme. Five mellifluous epic poems, each written with only one of the five vowels.
  • Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (2003) - Mary Roach’s debut novel, in which she asks people who work with cadavers for a living all our burning questions. Her writing remains incredible even 22 years earlier. Includes a segment with up-and-coming heart surgeon Dr. Oz.
  • The Book: A Cover-to-Cover Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time (2016) - Keith Houston leads us on four delightful, well-researched journeys spanning the complete histories of writing surfaces, writing itself, printed illustrations, and books.

Music

  • Lady Gaga - Abracadabra (2025) - A new Lady Gaga album in her 2009 style?! Yes, please!
  • Aural Vampire - LET IT DIE (2018) - Droning, industrial, energetic, and beautiful.
  • COLTEMONIKHA - communication (2006) - Flowy, quirky, and catchy.
  • 5 Seconds of Summer - Teeth (2019) - Dark, intense, and tartly beautiful.
  • Mother Mother - Hayloft (2008) - Wild, sonorant, and kinetic.

Video

  • The Man From Earth (2007) - A low-budget film about a 15,000 year old man revealing his secret to university colleagues for the first time. Feels like a long Star Trek episode, in part because it was written by one of the original series writers.
  • Critical Role: Campaign Four (2025) - The headliner tabletop role-playing actual play series begins its fourth multi-year campaign in a brand-new world. I cannot overstate how talented every single cast member is at creating a novel, engaging, dramatic experience on camera. And then they release it for free for everyone.