Top 25 of ’25: Vampire Survivors VR

While it’s not the only VR game I’ve played this year, it’s the only one I’ve spent more than like an hour with.

  • Release Year: 2025
  • Developer: Radical Forge
  • Platform: Quest

Vampire Survivors is nothing new; it’s been out for a few years, have been ported to almost everything under the sun, and has spawned a fair number of copycats. However! In 2025, it mysteriously got a VR version, which is not something that I ever really knew I wanted, until one day when I put on my headset and it was all like “Hey we’ve got Vampire Survivors now!” And because I am more than happy to own Vampire Survivors on as many machines as possible, I bought it right away.

Now, we all know how the game works, right? You pick a character and a stage, which then has you fending off never-ending waves of monsters for as long as you can. Defeated monsters drop experience points, and when you level up, you get to choose from a new weapon or item that will help you keep fighting the good fight. Your gear can level up to become more effective, and eventually you’ll even be able to evolve your weapons, which will make them even better at slaying hundreds of thousands of monsters. Then if you manage to survive for 30 minutes, the grim reaper shows up to kill you instantly and the game is over.

There is a little more to it than that, and Vampire Survivors has a lot of secrets to discover, but that’s the gist of it. In between rounds you can use coins you earn in battle to upgrade your stats permanently and unlock new characters, each with his or her or its own special trait. There’s a bestiary where you can read about all the monsters you’ve slain, and a compendium of all the items, weapons, and evolved weapons you’ve discovered. Maybe there’s even more buried in there, I don’t know. For all the hours I’ve spent playing different ports of this game, I’ve never unlocked everything.

Sadly, the VR version doesn’t add a whole lot to the mix. Mostly you just get to look around 3D environments while you’re poking around the menus. The actual gameplay takes place in a 3D area based on the stage you’re on, but the game is played on something of a tabletop within that area, so it’s exactly the same as you’re used to. The one really nice touch is that all the sprites and environments are in three dimensions on that tabletop, which gives the game at least a little more depth than the flat versions we’ve all become accustomed to. And maybe there’s more to it as you progress, I don’t know, but I do hope there are at least a couple more surprises that make use of the VR setting.

So while the core gameplay of Vampire Survivors hasn’t changed in its transition to virtual reality, it has done at least one very important thing: made me spend dozens more hours playing Vampire Survivors. And hey, as a little bonus, since the Quest 3’s battery life is so ass, I only end up playing for about two hours at a time, and don’t lose entire days to it. Which I absolutely would if I were given my way, because one of the hardest things to do in life is to stop playing Vampire Survivors.

Top 25 of ’25: Ramona

Don’t worry, folks, we’re almost through all the indie horror games on the list. Just one more to go after this.

  • Release year: 2025
  • Developer: Doesn’t Matter Games
  • Platform: PC

I won’t even pretend that Ramona is on my list for any reason other than I have a real soft spot for Doesn’t Matter Games. Ever since Lost Alone, I’ve played every release, for better or for worse. Ramona, fortunately, is definitely in the “for better” column. It’s not the only game that Doesn’t Matter Games has released this year, but it is the best one, being the most stable and bug-free of the bunch, and having its very own little camera gimmick to make it stand out from the rest.

Like every other Doesn’t Matter game, Ramona is a haunted house simulator. Or a large-scale virtual escape room. An “escape house”, as I like to call it. And I consider that to be a good thing. That little niche is right where I like to be. This one casts you as a reporter investigating the home of the titular Ramona, who had once run a shelter for orphaned children. But she seems to have fallen on hard times after having been accused of being cruel and abusive to said orphans. What’s the truth behind the stories? That’s what you’re there to find out!

I called this game an escape house for a reason: most of the gameplay revolves around you searching the house for clues to puzzles, which, when solved, will unlock a box or cabinet that grants you a key for a locked door or an item that you’ll use for another puzzle, which will unlock a box or cabinet… so on and so forth until you’ve finished the game. Many notes are strewn about the place, in true horror game fashion, some of which tell you pieces of the story, and some of which contain puzzle clues. Some even have both! And lastly, if collecting is your jam, there are dozens upon dozens of photographs of streamers hidden all over the house for you to find and collect. This has been a bit of a staple of Doesn’t Matter games for a while now, and one day, in a future game, I hope to be on one of these collectibles.

To speak more to the “haunted house” part of my initial description of the game, there are jumpscares all over the place in Ramona’s house. Getting jumpscared or lingering in the dark too long will fill your anxiety meter, and if it tops out, you die. But staying near a light source for a while will slowly bring the meter back down. Thankfully, Ramon doesn’t have any janky combat systems that you’ll have to deal with or patrolling monsters you that you need to avoid. However, if you allow noisy appliances (that set themselves off randomly) to create too much noise, Ramona herself will appear to kill you dead. Fortunately, all it takes to deter her is a single well-placed flash from the camera you pick up about halfway through the game, so dying really isn’t much of a threat.

Running around Ramona’s house, solving puzzles and jumping at scares, is maybe not the deepest experience, but it’s one that I find great joy in. Being free to figure it out at your own pace, without any sort of time limit or enemies makes it almost kind of a cozy horror game, too. Or maybe that’s just me, because this is my preferred aesthetic. Either way, Ramona was a solid little game, and I can definitely see myself going back to it again in the future.

Top 25 of ’25: Silent Hill

This is the last game on this list that was made before the year 2000, I swear.

  • Release year: 1999
  • Developer: Konami
  • Platform: PlayStation

Silent Hill. It’s iconic. Maybe less so than its sequel, but I’ve always preferred the original, myself. Yes, I’ve played it before. Just like Donkey Kong ’94, I’ve played it many times. Maybe even dozens of times, as there was a point in my life where I was trying to speedrun it and get a perfect 10-star ending. And if you don’t really know what that means, don’t worry about it. It’s not relevant to normal people.

I think we all kinda know the broad strokes of the story here: Harry Mason and his daughter Cheryl are heading off on a vacation to the town of Silent Hill, when a ghostly figure suddenly appears from the fog, causing Harry to swerve and crash his car. When he comes to, Cheryl has disappeared, and he finds himself in a town that is mostly vacant, save for a handful of random oddball characters and a legion of monsters.

I picked this one up again to play on Halloween night, and, uh… mostly made it all the way through in one go. It seems that in the few years since I had last played it, my memory of what to do and where to go had eroded a bit more than I’d expected. Most notably, I completely forgot where the rifle is picked up, missed it, and then realized that you’re unable to ever go back for it. Fortunately, it’s not really required to finish the game, but watching those rifle bullets stack up in my inventory, forever unused, really broke my heart.

The thing I like most about Silent Hill is how absolutely weird and mysterious it is. I did a lot of unnecessary exploring during this run, and noticed a lot of hidden details that I don’t remember ever seeing before, which helped to clarify a few parts of the story a little, but so much still remains up to the player’s imagination. I’ve spent the last twenty years of my life, if not more, researching the Silent Hill lore, and the fact that I still can’t explain everything about the game makes me happy.

While it was a revisit of a well-worn classic, it was one that filled my heart. I only wish that Konami would port it to more machines, because the knockoff PS3 controller I used to play it is not great and caused great cramping in my thumb-parts. And even though a big-budget remake is right around the corner, even if Bloober Team completely nails it, I don’t think the janky ol’ PS1 version will ever be dethroned as my very favourite Silent Hill.

Top 25 of ’25: UFO 50

I honestly don’t know if this one is cheating or not. I guess it doesn’t really matter.

  • Release year: 2024
  • Developer: Mossmouth
  • Platform: PC, Switch

UFO 50 is, indeed, a collection of 50 different video games. And to be quite honest, I haven’t even played all of them yet. maybe about half, if I’m being generous. But what I’ve played has generally been quite good! Since these games are all very retro-styled and distinct from each other, it’s quite a diverse grab bag, which is good because anyone should be able to find at least one game that really works for them, but also bad because there are few real stinkers.

The collection itself tells the story of a made-up game development studio, as each game in the collection is one of their releases over however many years. But unlike Retro Game Challenge, the framing device isn’t very substantial, and while it offers some nice extra flavour that ties everything together, the real focus here is are the actual games within.

Off the top of my head, I think probably the game that I’ve spent the most time with so far is Barbuta, which is a side-scrolling platformer of sort, with some puzzle and action elements. It’s slow, and difficult, and gives you absolutely no help in figuring out where to go or what to do, but that’s actually what I like about it. I’ve spent a ton of time mapping out the game’s world and trying to piece together how to complete it, but still haven’t actually managed to get to the end. But one day I will. Probably not until I’m retired and actually have time for games like this, but one day…

The game I’ve had the most fun with, on the other hand, is Velgress. This is another platformer, but this time it’s vertically-scrolling. Velgress looks a lot like Kid Icarus at first, but then you start playing it and realize that it’s much less forgiving and will require much more practice and patience to finish. Velgress also sticks to the vertical-scrolling stages and never gives you the dungeons or side-scrollers that Kid Icarus offers, but that’s fine. What’s there is plenty entertaining on its own and even though it’s only four stages long, it kept me busy for hours. Even after I managed to beat it, I just kept playing because it’s so much fun.

Some other games that I really liked in the collection include: Magic Garden, a game about moving about a checkerboard while saving slimes and avoiding mushrooms. Ninpek is an action-heavy auto-scrolling platformer about ninjas and sandwiches. Kick Club feels a lot like Bubble Bobble, but instead of shooting bubbles at enemies, you’re kicking around a soccer ball. Camouflage is a brilliant puzzle game where you play as a chameleon trying to save its babies by using the different environment tiles to avoid predators. And lastly, Block Koala, which looks like The Adventures of Lolo, but is made even harder by incorporating math.

All the games I’ve mentioned so far have made UFO 50 worth playing, and I probably would have played them all a ton if they had been real NES games that I’d owned back in the day. But that’s also kind of a curse because it’s hard to stick to any one of these games for too long when you have 49 more right there vying for your attention. Suffice it to say, I have a very high opinion of UFO 50 as a collection, and there’s still so many games in it that I haven’t even tried yet. This is a must-buy for anyone who likes retro games and hates how expensive modern games are getting.

Top 25 of ’25: Mario Kart World

Hold on, now. Give me a chance to explain myself!

  • Release Year: 2025
  • Developer: Nintendo
  • Platform: Switch 2

Right off the bat, I’m technically not putting Mario Kart World on this list because it’s one of my favourite games of the year, but rather because it’s one of my favourite albums of the year. I know, I know, that kind of goes against the whole point of this list, but it’s my damn list and I’ll do as I like with it!

I don’t know, off the top of my head, how many music tracks are included in Mario Kart World, but I think the longest compilation I’ve seen is about 11 hours long, give or take. This game, or the soundtrack to it at least, is a massive love letter to the history of Mario music. Not only is there a new soundtrack for the game itself, but there are new remixes for all the returning racetracks, and dozens of remixes from tracks from previous Mario Karts, and dozens upon dozens of remixes of songs from games from pretty much any Mario game you could name, as well as a handful of Mario-adjacent games. It has so much music, and all of that music was arranged and recorded with a passion that absolutely shines through in its quality.

There’s no question that I’ve spent far more time listening to the Mario Kart World soundtrack than I have actually playing the game. It’s basically my go-to music selection for whenever I have to drive somewhere, and what I usually listen to while writing and drawing and working. I try to listen to other music from time to time to change things up, but I always end up going back to the Mario Kart World soundtrack. Which is so huge that I feel like I’m still discovering new songs six months later.

And as for the game itself? Eh, it’s fine. I’ve had some good fun with it. I think the new format of driving from course to course is fun, but like many others, I do wish there were also a classic-style grand prix option where you just do four normal three-lap races. The new knockout tour mode is excellent, and I haven’t put nearly enough time into it. I’ve tried to play online a bit, but it’s a little disheartening to get demolished so thoroughly every single time. The new open-world exploration mode is great in a lot of ways, but does lack a little je-ne-sais-quoi to make me want to continue playing it. And I literally haven’t spent enough time ruminating on it to have nailed down exactly what it could do differently to make me more excited about it.

Oh, and I get to race as a crab in this one. That gives the game a lot of points all on its own.

So yes, in summation, Mario Kart World has by far my favourite soundtrack of the year. And it’s got some undeniably strong competition, but the sheer volume of music contained in this game, and the nostalgia that it evokes, is simply too powerful for anything else to even come close to matching. It’s a decent game, too. Kinda makes me wish I had friends to play it with.

Top 25 of ’25: The Deadseat

It seems highly unlikely that any of the games that I’ve talked to would have made any other person in the world’s GOTY list. I guess I’m just a weirdo like that. And here’s another one that nobody is going to remember but me.

  • Release Year: 2025
  • Developer: Curious Fox Sox
  • Platform: PC

I kind of thought that we were past the era of FNAF clones, but it’s 2025 and The Deadseat exists. And I guess that last statement was maybe a little disingenuous; The Deadseat has gameplay similar to the classic Five Nights at Freddy’s games, but it’s distinct enough to stand on its own, and there isn’t a single haunted animatronic in sight.

This game has you play as a kid, riding in the backseat of your parents’ car, on the way home from grandma’s house or something. Mom and dad are bickering, and they tell you to just stay quiet and play your video game. But something sinister begins to happen, and the car is attacked by a curious two-headed monster that seems to have some connection to your character…

The main gameplay has you watching for the monster to pop up on either side of the car or in the back window, and you shoo it away with a camera flash to keep it from breaking the windows to get in and maul you to death. At the same time, you’re trying to drive the car in your video game to avoid obstacles and collect fuel cans. There are five stages, and a mini-game in between each stage that you play on your totally-not-Nintendo-DS gives you a chance to collect supplies like boards and bear traps to help keep the monster away. Each stage also introduces some sort of new gimmick to add to your stress.

And stressful it is! When I first started the game, hard mode was available from the title screen right away, and I immediately said “there’s no way I’m doing that.” But then I beat the game, and the ending was completely bonkers and left me with my jaw on the floor wondering what I had just witnessed. And then the game promised to tell me the whole story if I played through again on hard mode. So I did. And though it was indeed very difficult, I pushed through and actually it was incredibly fun. Frustrating, but in the best way.

Now, I don’t think there’s any contesting that this game exists largely as bait for indie game loretubers, but the gameplay behind it is surprisingly solid and fun. I recorded a let’s play of this one, and it’s one of the very few that I was really excited to watch back because I just enjoyed the game that much. I’d like to go back to it and give the challenge mode (which was added after I finished the main game) a shot, but I don’t know that I’ll ever make the time.

All that said, The Deadseat was great. It game me all the feelings, was terrifically fun and anxiety-inducing, and has a seriously messed up but interesting story to tie it all together. No question it’s one of my favourite games that I’ve played this year.

Top 25 of ’25: Donkey Kong ’94

While most of my top 25 games of 2025 were actually released in 2025, some of them were not. The oldest on the list by a country mile is Donkey Kong ’94.

  • Release Year: 1994
  • Developer: Nintendo
  • Platform: Game Boy

Okay, so right off the bat, let’s cover the big questions on everyone’s mind: yes, I have played this game before. I’ve played this game many times before, in fact. I had the original Game Boy cartridge as a kid, and it was one of my absolute favourites on the system. Right up there with Pokémon Blue and Wario Land 2. The last time I had played it was, I believe, in 2011 when it was released as a Virtual console title on 3DS, and this year, it was added to Nintendo Switch Online’s Game Boy library, so it was definitely time for another run.

What is, at first, seemingly just a remake of the classic arcade Donkey Kong game, is in fact a massively expanded version of said game. You’ll play as Mario, climbing the the four classic stages that you know so well to rescue the fair lady Pauline from her captor, the titular gorilla, Donkey Kong. But then, just when it seems that you’ve defeated DK, he hops back up, snatches Pauline again, and runs off toward a whole new set of stages.

Nine new sets of stages, to be precise. Mario will chase DK all across the lands, through biomes such as the big city, a jungle, an airplane, and an iceberg, all culminating in a final battle atop a giant tower that is adorned by a massive statue of DK’s head. I don’t know when DK got this tower canonically or where in the Super Mario World it’s located, but I’ve certainly never seen it on DK Island.

Unlike the raw action of the original Donkey Kong game, this one is a puzzle-platformer, with each stage requiring you to find a key and then bring it to a locked door to continue your chase. Mario has like a billion different jump techniques in his arsenal, and he can pick up and toss enemies and objects, much like in Super Mario Bros 2. The puzzle elements often show up in levers that change the way platforms move or open doors, and blocks that temporarily create floors and ladders. Sometimes just getting from one end of the stage to the other is the challenge, and other times you have a strict time limit to deal with. Each world has not one, but two face-offs against the big ape himself, usually requiring you to dodge junk that DK throws at you and then chuck it back at him.

Like I said before, this is one of my all-time favourite Game Boy games, and coming back to it after so long did not disappoint. It’s honestly a little bit easier than I remember, but I do have many, many more years of video game experience under my belt at this point. Playing through this one again made me really happy, and also made me consider giving the GBA sequel, Mario vs Donkey Kong, another shot as well. But that’s a story for another day…

Top 25 of ’25: Prison City

Some retro games are just retro as an aesthetic. Other retro games are retro because they are top-down love letters to the 80s. The next entry on my list, Prison City, rests firmly in the latter camp.

  • Release Year: 2023
  • Developer: Retroware, Programancer
  • Platform: All of them

Prison City, as per the Steam store’s description, is a “dystopian, action-packed side-scroller with tight mechanics and intricate level design.” That’s all 100% true. It’s also more or less Escape From New York but with the serial numbers filed off. And I adore that about it.

You play as Hal Bruzer, a retired solider who has been called back to duty to infiltrate Detroit, which has been turned into a gigantic prison colony, and take down the techno-terrorists who have taken over the city and are presumably plotting something nefarious. The game opens with eight stages that you get to choose from freely, and then gives you a few more stages that serve as the finale, Mega Man-style.

The initial eight stages can be explored rather freely, and your goal is typically to find one of Hal’s allies, then locate and defeat the boss. Each stage also has a hidden power-up that will improve Hal’s abilities permanently, and a mini-game that you can play afterward to earn extra lives. One of the final stages is a huge map that you can roam around freely, where your objective is to place a number of bombs in specific locations. It reminded me strongly of the NES G.I. Joe game that I had as a kid and could never beat.

There’s also a ton of replay value in this one, with several different difficulty levels, a rather large list of achievements to earn, and even an extra “bomber mode” that unlocks once you beat the game.

Obviously the old-school action-platformer gameplay is the main thing that caught my attention, but I also ended up being completely charmed by the 80s aesthetic and references to movies and games of the era. Each boss is radically different, and quite honestly, I accidentally started with the hardest one, and it almost frustrated me enough that I was going to quit the game. But I pressed on, and I’m so glad that I did, because everything that came afterward seemed as if it was crafted specifically to my tastes.

The thing that really won me over, though, was the fact that there’s a cheesy (but incredible) rap song that plays over the credits. Which is just so very 80s, in all the ways. The whole soundtrack is pretty damn good, actually, and it’s available on Bandcamp. I played this game all the way back in January and I still listen to the soundtrack all the time while working, drawing, and driving.

So yeah, there’s no question here. Prison City is absolutely one of the best games I’ve played this year. It’s a rock-solid platformer that boasts a killer soundtrack and has character to spare. What else could you even ask for? …Some spare time to play through it again, would be my answer.

Top 25 of ’25: Fatum Betula

The first game on the list that didn’t actually release this year, Fatum Betula is also the game most likely to be misconstrued as a drug trip. But like, a really good drug trip.

  • Release Year: 2020
  • Developer: Bryce Bucher
  • Platform: all of them

Fatum Betula is a very experimental… adventure game, I suppose you would call it? There’s a plot in there, something about feeding a tree to determine the fate of the universe? I don’t know, it’s not important.

What is important are the puzzle and exploration aspects of the game. It’s all about roaming around the world and trying to see which objects interact with other objects. The world isn’t particularly big, but it does have a very diverse selection of little areas to explore, and a whole bunch of weird characters to meet along the way. You help some, kill others, and even be horribly disturbed by one or two.

The goal of the game is to find various different liquids, which you’ll then take back to feed your little sapling to see what happens. These liquids include things oil, blood, tomato soup, and immortality. Each one you bring back will give you a different ending, and those endings range from creepy to silly to philosophical to nihilistic. It runs quite a gamut, and while earning them all is a bit of a repetitive task, they’re definitely worth seeing, and I think that puzzling out how to find all the different liquids is definitely a reward in itself. There’s also a super-secret ending that will give you a lot of hints on how to find the others, so if you happen to discover that early, it’ll be either a huge boon or a tidal wave of spoilers, depending on your perspective.

I quite enjoyed my time with Fatum Betula. It took me just shy of three hours to discover all of the endings, and I think that was just the right amount of time to spend in this delightfully odd world. While it didn’t have a particularly cohesive narrative and several aspects were a little more obfuscated than they really needed to be, the thrill of discovery was more than enough to keep me going. It was a video game experience that felt completely fresh and unique to me, and that’s something that I’m finding harder and harder to come by as time goes on, so I really appreciate it.

Top 25 of ’25: A Lakeside Walk in the Dolomites

If the last entry was the weirdest one, this is going to be the most unlikely. You wouldn’t expect a 20-minute-long game to make anyone’s Top X list in any year but here we are, and I’m about to pitch A Lakeside Walk in the Dolomites to you.

  • Release Year: 2025
  • Developer: Emad
  • Platform: PC

Yes, that’s right, A Lakeside Walk in the Dolomites is only about 20 minutes long. It’s a walking simulator with absolutely zero gameplay elements other than looking around to find documents. But I really liked it! I hate to say it, but I think maybe it’s mostly because I had very low expectations going in, but it surprised me in the best ways.

Oh, and obviously, this falls into the indie horror genre, which I think is more than enough to tell you how I even ended up playing it in the first place.

So the basic premise of the game is that you’re some random person going for a walk at night. You stroll down this nice, relatively well-lit path next to a lake, pass by a park, yadda yadda. But then things get a little weird. You start to find documents about missing persons and strange cult-like behavior in the area. Ducks randomly vanish into the lake. You hear whispering, seemingly from nowhere, and you start to see movements in your peripheral vision.

A Lakeside Walk does atmosphere perfectly. It starts at zero, then slowly builds the tension as you follow the path, and then (very stupidly) veer off into the forest. More than once, the unexpected little noises made me jump. And then you come out to a clearing by the lake and… the unexpected happens. I’m not going to spoil the ending, but I absolutely did not see it coming. It’s not a particularly wild twist, but it’s done really well, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

And so, that about wraps up everything I have to say about this game. It may be a little too heavy on the notes, but other than that I have no complaints. It’s a free game on itch.io too, so obviously I recommend going to check it out for yourself. I only wish I weren’t so desensitized to horror, because I know this would have scared the pants right off of seven-years-ago-Ryan. Big ol’ stamp of approval here.

Also, keep an eye on my YouTube channel for my let’s play of the game, coming… March 2nd, 2026? Oh jeez, that’s pretty far away, isn’t it? All the more reason for you to play it yourself!