I was just reflecting on games I've played in the last year, and wondering when Steam's year-in-review thing would be happening (probably within the next week).
However, I thought it might be interesting to ask this question before that drops, because I'd expect that people will respond differently before they've seen the data, and I think that subjective aspect of the reflection is interesting. So tell me what games you've played in the past year that have most stuck out to you. I think it's more fun if you try to go by memory, but if you want to go check stuff like whether you first played a game in December 2024 or January 2025, that's fine too; just try to not get too deep into the data, I'm interested in the vibes here.
For me, a recent highlight was Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. I didn't expect to be able to play it for a long while because of its cost, but a friend got it for me in November, for my birthday. I like that I'll always associate it with them for that reason. The game is also very me, what with its artsy fartsy themes and the like.
Before that, I played a heckton of Hades 2, which I thoroughly enjoyed, even if it didn't quite scratch the same itch that the first game did. I've not 100%ed it yet, but I plan to. My favourite part of the game is the music — the boss fight that incorporates music in a cool way is so awesome
And before that was Hollow Knight, partly motivated by hearing all the hype in the runup to Silksong's release. I'd been weirdly resistant to playing Hollow Knight for years. I think it's because when something is so universally lauded, it makes me feel oddly anxious. Like, if I don't enjoy it, does that mean I have bad taste? What if it is objectively amazing, but it just doesn't click with me, and I feel sad that I'm missing out on whatever magic everyone else is experiencing? Or what if everyone else is wrong, and the game is way overhyped? They're silly thoughts, but this is fairly common for me (this is why I resisted watching Breaking Bad for years). Fortunately I loved it, and I expect that Silksong will be one of my highlights of 2026. Beautiful soundtrack that I've listened to so much that it was in my Spotify wrapped.
The most interesting part of my year is that I branched out more and played smaller games, outside of the typical stuff I'd play, and for a delightfully silly reason: this Venn diagram(Source).
I stumbled across that when I was voraciously consuming as much Disco Elysium analysis as I could back in 2024, when I played it. I had already played Pathologic 2 (largely due to hbomberguy's video essay on the first one), as well as Planescape:Torment (because so many had cited that as a clear influence on Disco Elysium). This gave me enough points of reference on that venn diagram that I became determined to play all the games included (i.e. Disco Elysium, Pentiment, Felvidek, The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante, Planescape: Torment, Pathologic 2. The middle section is not a game, but a book (which I haven't read): Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose)
I was utterly enchanted by this Venn diagram to an absurd degree. According to it:
- Pentiment = Disco Elysium - Pathologic 2;
- Felvidek = Disco Elysium - Planescape: Torment; and
- The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante = Felvidek + Pentiment Based off the first two statements, I felt like I could approximate the vibe of Pentiment and Felvidek, but I was intrigued to test that, and I played two games I don't think I would have otherwise.
Pentiment was delightful. I played a bunch of it when a medievalist friend was visiting me, and they verified that every weird and wonderful animal drawings were actually drawn from real medieval manuscripts. They worked with multiple historians to ensure the history depicted was accurate, and it made for an incredibly immersive experience. I loved how the text in the speech bubbles were written in a different script depending on how the protagonist perceived them — more educated people speak with a fancied script than peasants, for example. It really grounds the game in the protagonist's subjective perspective, which synergised so well with the historical setting. I learned so much from this game and from analysis content of it. Apparently Josh Sawyer studied history as an undergraduate, and he'd been wanting to make a game like this for years; I'm so glad he got the chance to make it.
Felvidek is a much smaller game than Pentiment — small enough that I would have felt grumpy at its price if not for the fact that it was clearly a labour of love by a small team. It's a JROG based in a psuedo-historical version of Slovakia, which I found cool, because I knew next to nothing about Slovakian culture. I still don't, because it's not really that kind of game, but I felt like I came away understanding more. It's the kind of game where I felt close to the developer, given that it was such a small project. If you were going to try any of the games I mentioned here, I'd recommend this one, because I'd wager you've not heard of it. If it looks like the kind of game you'd play, I'd advise you go in blind to maximise the impact of the generally absurd vibes. The soundtrack was a highlight for me — it really drove home the absurdity.
Having completed these two pillars of the Venn diagram, I was finally able to complete my quest with The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante. However, I find myself running out of steam and unable to write much more, but it was a fun little experience. Not quite as out there as Felvidek, but definitely something I wouldn't have played ordinarily.
Experimenting with new games also encouraged me to push myself out of my comfort zone further, with games like Fear & Hunger, and Signalis. I'm not great with horror, but that's part of why this was fun.
Anyway, what games have been highlights for you guys? Don't feel pressured to write anywhere near as much as I have — I mostly just wrote this much because I appear to be procrastinating making dinner.
Space Station 14. The absolute best multiplayer experiences I've had since the heyday of Planetside 2 (not that the two games are even remotely similar, just thinking broadly about multiplayer enjoyment).
But it's been a good year for other games too. Silent Hill 2 was excellent. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth was excellent. Monster Hunter Wilds had some damn good looking monsters (but was not excellent).
Still, SS14 has been my game of the year.
Space Station 14 sounds interesting. What kind of multiplayer is it? I.e. is it one where the typical experience is to play with randoms via matchmaking, or is it a game best enjoyed with friends?
I have discord server full of nerds who I played games with during COVID (and its aftermath), and this might be a good excuse to see if I can reawaken that server for games
Kinda sorta like if Rimworld was set on a space station, but players control a single pawn, and servers are in the 50, 80, 150+ player count depending on server and time of day. The vibe is pretty similar to Among Us, just vastly, vastly more deep and complex than Among Us.
You join a server, create a character, pick a job ranging from janitor, bartender, musician, botanist, cargo, medical, security, research, and so on, then you join and try to keep the space station running smoothly by focusing on your job and working with other departments.
Or, you can, if you want, get a chance at being an antagonist with various goals ranging from stealing stuff to killing specific people, becoming a zombie and spreading the infection, or even blowing up the whole station with a nuke.
It's incredibly deep, and it being a highly social game with some degree of roleplay focus, it's crazy and fun and nothing else out there is quite like it, aside from space station 13 which came before it.
To answer your other questions - no matchmaking at all, you join a specific server and whatever job you end up with is determined by which jobs you have unlocked (by playtime in specific roles), which jobs you've set for yourself that you'd like to work, and which other players have also chosen those same jobs. Playing with friends can be challenging if servers are full.
And you absolutely must NOT communicate outside of the game unless the server specifically allows it. That includes Discord, that's considered "metacomms", so go in knowing you'll have to use text chat for everything - it's how everyone teaches and learns anyways, so it'll come naturally
That sounds like a space version of Eco, with the roles stuff. In Eco, it's impossible for one person to acquire all skills, so people on a server have to specialise.
I started out as a miner, to honour my late best friend who was a dwarf at heart and would definitely have been a miner if he'd been playing with us. Then I branched out into masonry to make use of the absurd amounts of stone I'd been mining. If I wanted something made of wood, I had to go flutter my eyelashes at my friend who had started out as a logger and branched into carpentry. I enjoyed having a domain that was my own, and a clear way to be useful to the server. Other players had some level of mining and masonry skill by the midgame, but for anything serious, they had to wait until I was online.
It sounds like Space Station 14 is far more hectic than this, but in an interesting way. I wonder if it will scratch the same itch that Eco did wrt being useful in a clear role
Honestly sounds and looks quite different at first glance, but if you enjoyed working a particular job and getting better at it over time, that's for sure an itch that SS13/14 scratches well!
take botany for instance. can be as simple as planting seeds in hydroponic trays and harvesting fruit and veggies for the kitchen and for the chemistry department.
But one can go so much deeper than that - tired of onion plants only yielding two onions when harvested? well, cocoa trees drop six pods when harvesting, so you can rub a cotton swab on the cocoa tree and then rub it on the onion plant to deposit a random genetic trait from the cocoa tree, and if you're lucky or if you repeat enough times the right way, you can end up with an onion plant that drops six each harvest! or, maybe just end up with onions that contain theobromine.
There's also mutation of plants, which can add various traits (like offgassing tritium, or making the plant scream in pain when harvested, or making the produce so slippery that people slip and fall if they walk over it), and of course those traits can also get swabbed over to other plants.
there's even an illegal "gatfruit" that produces a high powered revolver when eaten, tho those aren't easy to come by
I should play more Space Station 14. I use to play quite a bit of 13, and it was quite fun to deep fry everything. I hope more things are added to 14! Otherwise I'll just have to continue my escapades of "I only know how to make banana bread, botany boss, thanks!"
14 is in a really good state right now, I think! Wizden, being the upstream/vanilla can seem a little sparse compared to, say, the Starlight fork which adds a lot, or the dozens of other forks out there.
I've spent probably most of my time as botanist, with cargo/salvage a close second and musician a close third.
Definitely play more, especially if it's been some time since you last tried it, the development of it is quite active and ongoing. Hell, wizden's test server has been trying out a complete rework of the medical system, so they're definitely not afraid to throw some huge changes out there and see how well the community responds to it.
When I played I was a chef! Often I just ghosted though in order to learn more. Follow people around, see what they do. Helped my autistic brain so I felt better about fucking shit up.
Loved my chef knife. Stupid mice eating my banana bread!
Spectating is fun! I haven't done much of it but recently I followed a musician avali for their whole shift, and it ended up being really interesting. They found a spear and were told to get a permit for it, which they did, but then someone stole the permit and they got arrested for carrying a weapon without a permit despite being issued one, despite the sec officer being told about the theft, and the thief standing right in front of the sec officer at the time.
then they later got arrested for the same thing by the same officer.
they eventually tried to sue the security department, and the trial was about to start, but was interrupted by the jury room getting bombed, and when they tried to hold the trial in the hallways of course chaos broke out and they had to evac, and didn't bother trying the trial at centcomm.