If you’ve read all the entries thus far, this one shouldn’t surprise you. I mean, what was the high-profile Nintendo release that I hadn’t written about yet?

• Release year: 2025
• Developer: Nintendo
• Platform: Switch2

While it was somewhat visible from the initial reveal and the marketing that came afterwards, I didn’t really realize until I started playing the game myself that Donkey Kong Bananza is effectively a spiritual sequel to Super Mario Odyssey. It’s got the same look, similar gameplay (at least at a very high level), and a surprisingly similar feel, considering how different Mario and Donkey Kong play. But it a very welcome surprise, and that’s a huge part of the game’s appeal, at least to me.

Donkey Kong Bananza opens with DK arriving at Ingot Isle, where a bunch of monkeys have started a large gold mining operation. Why DK is suddenly interested in gold is beyond me, but it might have something to do with the banandium gems that are also being excavated. Before long, a huge, ominous orb-thing appears in the sky and sinks Ingot Isle into the earth, sucking DK down along with it. Deep in the newly-formed crater, DK meets a small, purple rock creature, whose singing seems like it’ll come in handy for dispelling mysterious barriers that have appeared all around. And so the journey deep into the earth, to find out what’s going on and collect as many banandium gems as possible begins…

Though a lot of DK Bananza is structured much like Super Mario Odyssey, the main gameplay is definitely more akin to The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, as DK’s main method of doing just about anything is to punch. He can punch forwards, upwards, and downwards to destroy terrain, objects, and enemies, as well as perform his patented ground-slap that collects any nearby items. DK can tear chunks out of the ground (or walls, or ceilings), which he can then either throw, or simply use as a bat to destroy ever-more effectively. As a gorilla, DK is also able to scale just about any surface, so if punching isn’t getting you somewhere, you can just climb.

Very early on in the game, the purple rock character I mentioned before is revealed to actually be a cursed Pauline – you know, the woman that gets kidnapped in the original Donkey Kong arcade game? Except she’s a teen girl here, and she tags along with DK throughout the journey, using her ability to sing to unlock the path forward and special bonus challenge rooms. Eventually, her singing also allows DK to mega-evolve into multiple different animal forms, each with their own unique set of abilities. Having not paid attention to basically any of the pre-release hype, I had no idea about these transformations, and they were a wonderful surprise. So, sorry I spoiled them for you, I guess.

DK and Pauline will travel through plenty of different worlds throughout their journey, from a pleasant meadow, to a scenic chain of islands, to a fast-food theme park,and along the way they’ll meet plenty of other characters. Most of those characters will be fractones, a race of gem-people that can form into different colours and shapes, but you’ll also meet a bunch of animal tribes who’ve adapted to life underground, as well as some new simian antagonists and even a handful of familiar faces.

Playing this game, I think, would be roughly comparable to injecting pure joy directly into your brainy parts. Running around and smashing everything in sight feels wonderful, and while not every stage is massive, they’re all extremely fun to explore, with secrets and collectibles hidden literally everywhere. Exploring the worlds is generally pretty breezy, and bonus rooms that feel a lot like shrines from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, are where most of the game’s challenge lives, though some of the bosses can be surprisingly difficult. Possibly the most shocking thing of all is that collecting banandium gems is not required at all, and rather than gating progression, they’re used to power up DK’s abilities and grant him new ones.

I’ve heard people online complain that the Switch 2’s first big 3D platformer isn’t a Mario game, but man, I could not care less. DK Bananza ended up being so much more fun than I ever expected, and thinking about it does nothing but bring me joy. The goofy, expressive characters, the colourful worlds, the god-tier soundtrack, and the focus on pure fun make this unquestionably my favourite video game of 2025. And that’s not even mentioning the last two hours of the game, which are nothing but pure, amazing, fanservice. I felt it would be too hard to actually rate all of my top 25 against each other, which is why I didn’t officially number any of the other entries, but I’ve known in my heart all along that Donkey Kong Bananza was going to come out on top.

If I were giving out silly titles to each of the games on this list, as I’ve done before, this one would be something like the “masterpiece that came out of nowhere” award.

• Release year: 2025
• Developer: Sandfall Interactive
• Platform: PlayStation, Xbox, PC

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is just about everything that I like about video games, all boiled down into a single product. It’s a French JRPG-styled game that blends modern and classic game design elements into what is, in a way, the most Final Fantasy game that’s been made since FF9. I think probably the greatest injustice that I’ve committed all year is having not actually finished this game yet. I got close, right up to the final boss’ door, but then got swept away in all the optional stuff and eventually lost track of it somewhere.

At the outset of the game, you’re cast as Gustave, a man who will be joining the latest expedition to set off from the city of Lumiere on a journey to slay an entity known as The Paintress. Roughly 67 years before the game began, there was some vague disaster that shattered the world, and now, each year, The Paintress marks a number on the obelisk that she sits under, and when she does, everyone of that age or older simply vanishes. The painted number decreases by one every year, so it’s only a matter of time before humanity is erased completely if she is not stopped.

A massive part of what makes the game so appealing to me is the storytelling. Within the first hour of play, it’s already tugging at your heartstrings and establishing mysteries upon mysteries. And you know how I do quite enjoy a good mystery! Watching things unfold as Gustave and his crew solider on in their quest is always exciting, and this is one of the few games that kept me on the edge of my seat the entire time, constantly pushing forward because I just had to know what was going to happen next. It never once disappointed.

Gameplay here is exceptionally tight, and again, does a fantastic job of combining classic and modern mechanics to great effect. Battles are turn-based affairs, where you command party of three, each equipped with up to six unique skills. Skills cost points to use, which are regenerated slowly over time, or are earned through special effects like hitting an enemy’s weakness or dodging an attack. Speaking of dodging, Clair Obscur implements a fantastic action command system, where you can use one button to dodge attacks, or a second button to parry and counterattack, although the second has much more precise timing. There’s also an elemental system, limit breaks, and items that you can find to outfit your team with all sorts of powerful passive abilities. It’s all here! Everything one could hope for!

The world is also exactly what I want from an RPG: a classic world map that you run around on, from which you can enter discrete stages and towns. You really don’t see that kind of design in high-profile games too often anymore, outside of the Bravely Default and Octopath Traveler series. The stages themselves aren’t too long, and while they’re fairly linear, they are packed with secrets and hidden treasures that encourage and reward exploration, and many have areas that you won’t be able to reach until you come back later with a new traversal ability. The world map is huge and also filled with secrets, and you progress the game, you’ll be able to explore it more and more freely as you find ways to overcome obstacles, cross over the water, and even fly. There’s also a metric buttload of optional content, most of which involves platforming challenges, environmental puzzles, and/or extra-tough battles.

Now if all of that sounds nostalgic to you, well I guess you’ve probably also played a heck of a lot of Super Nintendo and PS1 JRPGs. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is the best of both worlds; a rewarding, interesting game that plays to old-school sensibilities but is fully decked out with modern production values. The world, characters, story, music, and gameplay are all top-notch in my book, and there is no question that it is one of the best games made this year, which I think is exceptionally high praise! I can already tell you that my new year’s resolution for 2026 is going to be to finally finish it.

Hey, look! It’s a game that’s already been on one of my Game of the Year lists! Whoops!

• Release Year: 2025
• Developer: MonolithSoft
• Platform: Switch

So I guess it’s no surprise that I’ve played this before then, eh? I won’t bother hooking up the Wii U to pull the exact amount of time I put into the original release, but I can guarantee it was well over 100 hours. Xenoblade X is one of my favourite games of all time, and I’ve basically been obsessed with it since even before it came out. What of the Definitive Edition then? Well, it’s been a busy year, so I’ve only played just over 80 hours of it. I haven’t even finished the final chapter yet, if I’m honest, so I can’t even tell you if the new content is worth playing!

What I can tell you about, however, is the plot of the game. Xenoblade Chronicles X starts off with a wicked cutscene where people are fleeing from Earth as alien forces are locked in an epic battle all around it. The planet gets blown up, and one of the escaping vessels, the White Whale, is inexplicably sucked into a wormhole of sorts. The ship is expelled from the wormhole and crash lands on a mysterious planet called Mira, where life is abundant and especially hungry for Earthlings. You and your crewmates set out to establish a colony and a new life on Mira, while also investigating the many secrets of the planet.

This is somewhere in the realm of an action RPG, where you run around freely, exploring the world at your leisure, finding treasures, completing quests, and battling hundreds of thousands of local animals along the way. Combat is both active and menu based, so you have free control of your dude, but have a palette of special moves called “arts” to choose from. Each art has a cooldown timer, and many have special effects depending on where you’re standing in relation to the enemy or if you use them in combination with certain others. I imagine that this is very similar to how a typical MMORPG plays.

What’s really special about Xenoblade X are the skells. Maybe about halfway through the game, you’re given your very own mech suit to roll around in. This not only gives you a huge leg up in battles, allowing you to fight ever-stronger enemies and mow down the weaker ones with ease, but skells also transform into vehicles, so you get to zip around the world way faster than ever. It’s a monumental shift after having spent so many hours playing entirely on-foot, and I don’t think any upgrade in any other video game has ever been nearly as satisfying and life-changing. And then –and then– a few chapters later, just as you’re getting used to rocking around in your skell, you’ll be given the ability to fly. This completely upends how you play the game again, and I don’t even have the words to describe how awesome it is. Skells do have some drawbacks like needing to be refueled and being hella expensive to replace if you break them, but overall they are the best feature in any open world video game ever.

And yeah, that’s the short version of what I have to say about Xenoblade X. I could probably go on about this one forever, given half the chance, but I’ll spare you that fate. This is an RPG that felt just as good to play the second time as it did the first time around, and that’s something that I find is all too rare. Yes, maybe a lot of the surprise and mystery were lost, but I think that just goes to show that there’s a rock-solid foundation below the glittering surface appeal of the lore. Again, I haven’t even seen most of what’s new in this version of the game, so I will definitely be playing it more in 2026, and I’m going to savour this one for as long as I possibly can. Or at least until the next Xenoblade game happens.

It’ll sound surprising at first that this is the least-played game on this list, but it’s also the most recent release. So there’s that. That kind of explains it.

• Release year: 2025
• Developer: Sora
• Platform: Switch2

If there’s one thing that I never expected to happen during the Switch 2 reveal, it was that it would be getting a sequel to Kirby Air Ride. This year. But lo, here we are, and Kirby Air Riders is a real thing that has happened. I played the original game a lot on GameCube, and while it was a great time, it was very arcadey and meant for short bursts. Also, multiplayer, which has been a pretty consistent problem for me. But now we have this sequel that has a full-on campaign and online play, which solves both of those problems handily.

Now, I say that Kirby Air Riders has a campaign mode, but it’s really just a way to string a bunch of challenges together. There is a story, and it’s told though long, elaborate, very expensive-looking cutscenes. But at the end of the day, it’s kind of meaningless. An immobile robot drifts through space until it lands in a secluded part of Pop Star. It wishes to move, and the Fountain of Dreams propels that wish up to Nova, who very much monkey-paws it in the most excessive way possible. It’s ludicrous and makes little sense and again, is pretty meaningless in the greater Kirby canon, but hey it’s an excuse to have all these characters get together to race, right?

And race you shall! As the weirdest racing game ever made, Kirby Air Riders is played using only the control stick and a single button. Well, a second button was introduced in this one because each character has a special move now. But the simple control scheme works really well, even though it takes some getting used to. In fact, getting used to Kirby Air Riders’ quirks is kind of the name of the game. It looks like a chaotic fun racer, but it’s actually got a lot of depth under the hood, with plenty of stats and systems for you to work with.

The base game is pretty straightforward racing: you pick a character and machine, then set off on a single race across one of over a dozen colourful tracks. The Top Ride mode plays a lot like Super Off-Road or any number of other isometric racing games from the 90s, where the game is heavily simplified and you can see the whole race course at once. City Trial is what made Kirby Air Ride famous, dropping you and three other players on a large map, where you would drive around to collect power-ups for a few minutes, then be pitted against each other in a random challenge. Hope you built up the right stats!

Of the new things Kirby Air Riders adds are, as stated before, an online mode where you can play against folks in any of the modes described above. I’ve played a bunch of online races, and I’ve been thoroughly humiliated in just about every race. I did okay in Top Ride, at least. There’s also that campaign that I mentioned, called Road Trip, which is kind of a roguelike mode in which you drive along a track, and have to choose from three options at set intervals. There can be races, arena battles, random challenges, bosses, free power-ups, all sorts of things. It’s also way longer than I thought at about three hours long. And to be honest, it took me way longer to finish than it should have because I kept dipping out to go play a few more online races.

There’s a heck of a lot crammed into this unassuming package, and while it’s definitely tuned for a very specific audience (fans of the original game), I think Kirby Air Riders is accessible enough for anyone. I’m not a biggest fan of racing games myself, try as I might, but really all you have to do is slap a coat of Kirby-themed paint on anything to sell me on it. Kirby Air Riders isn’t really something you’ll likely sit and play for hours on end, but it’s a blast to bust out for a few races here and there. Also, you can become a gummillionaire!

I’m so glad that Nintendo promoted this one, because I don’t think I would have ever heard of this awesome little roguelite otherwise.

• Release Year: 2025
• Developer: Kenny Sun and Friends
• Platform: Switch, PlayStation, Xbox, PC

I honestly don’t even know where to start with this one. More than anything I want to make a joke about how there’s no time travelling in this game, but I doubt anyone would really get it. And also, I’m not at all confident that there isn’t any time travelling in this game, given how many unexpected little features it has packed in.

BALL x PIT has a story, though it’s not as deep as it seems (lol get it?). There was once this place called Ballbylon, which was stuck by a meteorite (you know it’s a meteorite because it had the ‘rite’ stuff to get through the atmosphere), leaving a giant, gaping hole in the land where it once stood. People started to gather from far and wide to descend into the depths of the crater in search of fame and riches. Or so I think. Look, the opening was short and I saw it a long time ago and there hasn’t been a lick of plot since. It’s not important.

What is important, is the gameplay. Of course. BALL x PIT plays a lot like Breakout, but a little more hectic. You control a character, which acts as sort of a paddle, and launch balls up the screen at monster-shaped blocks that are constantly spawning in. Hitting a monster enough times will pop it, but if a monster makes it to the bottom of the screen, it will attack you, and your goal is to survive to the end of the stage. Each stage also has two mini-bosses, which are basically just DPS checks, and a main boss, which are all unique fights that add a bit of a bullet hell component to the game.

As you defeat monsters, they’ll drop experience points, and upon level up your character will gain a random stat point and be able to choose from three upgrades. Upgrades come in the form of new balls, each with their own special power like causing AOE lightning strikes or freezing monsters temporarily; and passive upgrades that will do all sorts of things from increasing critical damage when you hit a monster from a certain angle, to spawning statues that heal you, to allowing your shots to pass through enemies. You’ll also see a little swirly vortex thing from time to time that can either upgrade your gear or give you the option to fuse your balls to create bigger, more deadly balls with multiple special effects. And here I never thought I’d say the phrase “fuse your balls”.

In between rounds, you’ll use money and resources you’ve gathered to begin rebuilding Ballbylon. This little town-sim part of the game makes me think of Actraiser, but fortunately your settlement never gets attacked by demons. Over time you’ll clear the land and add a wealth of buildings to your thriving little civilization, most of which will offer buffs to your characters and unlock new features of the game. There are others that will help you farm additional resources, and probably the most exciting ones are those that unlock new characters. There are a total of 16 characters in BALL x PIT, and each one has a gimmick that makes them play a little differently from the rest. Or, radically different from the rest, in certain cases. What does that really mean? I highly recommend you play the game yourself to find out!

Though I wouldn’t say that BALL x PIT is the best roguelite I’ve played, it’s definitely the one that I’ve found the most difficult to put down. The rounds are short, so it’s never devastating when you lose. The unlockables are constantly flowing, which makes it seem like you’re always accomplishing something; and unlike most roguelites I’ve played, they don’t just add more gear to the level-up pool, but can be entire new features that can change the game and make you feel so much more powerful. It’s great fun, and I’m going to keep playing it for some time to come.

So this game gets to live in a weird spot as the only one on the list that I have and also haven’t played before. How is that possible? Read on to find out!

• Release Year: 2025
• Developer: Toby Fox
• Platform: Everything

Alright, so Deltarune, like so many Telltale games before it, has been releasing one chapter at a time. They are not mere weeks or months apart, however. Chapter 1 came out way back in 2018, and I played it on release. Chapter 2 didn’t come out until 2021, and I played both chapters at that point. Then, on Switch 2 release day this year, Chapters 3 and 4 both came out together! And I played all four of them back-to-back-to-back-to-back. It was lovely.

The broad strokes of the plot are as such: Kris and Suzie are a human and monster that happen to become friends when they are pulled into an alternate reality, also known as the Dark World. There, they meet friends and foes alike, and learn that someone or something is plotting to open up dark fountains all over the Light World to cover it with darkness. Their destiny, along with prince Ralsei of the Dark World, is to seal the fountains and prevent certain doom.

Every chapter has a specific theme based around Light World objects, and Chapter 3 is by far my favourite of the bunch. In this one, you become a contestant on a game show, where each round involved playing a very Zelda-style retro video game. It’s only a small portion of the entire chapter, but it was such a cool idea and very distinct from an of the other chapters’ gimmicks.

Chapter 4 is a little more in line with the first two chapters, having similar gameplay, but with its own new mechanic of climbing walls. However, this is the chapter where you spend by far the biggest portion of your time in the Light World, as opposed to the other chapters, where you’re in the Dark World 95% of the time. This, I think, is also the chapter that spends the most time pushing forward the overarching story, rather than focusing on a more chapter-specific plot.

The combat system in Deltarune is pretty standard RPG fare, at least at a glance. You select the attacks you want your guys to do, and then they do them. But when enemies attack, the screen becomes something of a bullet hell shooter, and you have to control a little heart icon and dodge incoming projectiles. Not only does this add a lot of fun and action to battles, but it gets absurdly creative as the game progresses, and the secret boss of every chapter is maddeningly difficult. You also have the choice to spare just about every foe you meet, which will unlock some additional options, and maybe even change the story a little? I don’t know for sure, I’ve never once actually killed an enemy – it’s always more interesting to figure out how to spare them instead.

Chapter 1 and 2 set such a high bar that I was actually a little worried about how I would feel about 3 and 4, but much to my delight, Deltarune is a game that just keeps getting better. As the characters continue to develop, and more pieces of the story come into place, it just gets more and more interesting. It’s all driven by the same sense of humour and heart that Toby Fox first wowed the world with in Undertale, so I don’t know why I was ever worried, really. It’s going to be a long wait for the rest of the chapters.