2025, Reflected on through Games!
ho ho ho, your gamer cousin is feeling less generous than last year, but that doesn't mean she forgot a gift entirely! I present here both my year represented in 1 game per month, as well as my top 12 games of the year! orders kinda loose, and also no duplicates, so I'll have to choose my months wisely! don't be expecting the same writing quality as my reviews or essays, this is just for fun, saying some things I wanted to say + sharing memories. I'll also be giving each game a little superlative and an accompanying song I associate it, meaning everyone's a winner this season! take care, O darling denizens of my palace, and remember! video games aren't the only thing the holidays are for... spread some love!
also, here's last years edition in case you missed it!
JANUARY - Most Subversive Space
Etcetera (Slitherbop)
Song: Across The Lake of The Ancient World - Terry Riley
January was a month of short-burst itch games, queer and hypnagogic, in between working on Soporfall and starting a challenging, yet exciting semester! I was at the peak of my image-hunting phase, trying to find means of articulating colourful landscapes in language, the inability of which is what made Etcetera so special. My review of it, where I found little landmarks and jotted a note down, is a stylistic fav!
FEBRUARY - Most Quietly Traumatized Toybox
Archangel: Nemesis
Song: Great Mother in the Sky - Lionmilk
February was a month of recovery, of seeking new artistic inspiration for where to next guide my project, and was also the start of my sexualization, my pursuits of love. I played a lot of beautiful yuri VNs that most ppl would reactively classify as porn, getting tired of games both as challenges and games as reinforcing heteronormativity. So many breaths of fresh air which, atop my classes, paved the way for imagining a queer utopia. This was lovely and should be on my top 12; so aesthetically grabbing, so quietly hurt, so rawly told and visualized... My review is unhinged, but my memories return to Vivi with a cigarette, to suburban malaise, radio towers and daycare-furnished churches.
MARCH - Most Vibrant Game about Darkness
Thief II
Song: Honeysuckle Suite - Rachel Grimes
March is a weird one, much more oriented in artistic strikingness around movies. Here, we have a returning contender after last October! Thief II is a game I dream about; so spatially memorable and striking, able to walk through it's stages in my head. This and System Shock were the two final pillars in my quest for Looking Glass literacy in the backdrop of a far more exciting month socially and educationally.
APRIL - Best Argument to Go Down with the Ship
Citizen Sleeper
Song: O Superman - Laurie Anderson
April is the forgotten month. After the semester, I went into a three-week span of pure game consumption that frankly lasted the whole summer given how little I wrote and read comparatively. Citizen Sleeper is all I remember fondly, played in it's entirety in one day before moving out of my dorm. It may not be nearly as complex or revolutionary in it's genealogy, but this feels like the Disco Elysium of game's Cyberpunk genre. Fondly ambient and life-affirmative. Also a member of the I-get-way-to-into-Cyberpunk-for-philosophy-reasons phase I had that got disgustingly captured by...
MAY - Best Digital World to Kill Obscene Amounts of Time in to Reinforce the Likelihood Such A Future Will Manifest
Cyberpunk 2077
Song: For lack of a concise pick... idk, Hydrogen - M|O|O|N
Besides a little game by teamcpu, this was the only thing I played in May. 100%ed. All 130 hours delicately packed into 4 weeks. Was reading better Cyberpunk along side it, but it was by far the more humanist and philosophical threads the game takes up interpersonally that I think make it a master work of player-immersion. There is an overwhelming abundance of artificial life and culture which, if I was a less lofty girl, I'd have a lot of fun succumbing to.
JUNE - Best Irish Kunstlerroman since Joyce
If Found...
Song: Ode to My Family - The Cranberries
June is pride month! The proper start of my aspiringly slutty/rock-bottom summer (I sought drugs, alcohol, parties, clubs and sex to feel more alive and experienced) and growing hunger for radical action! I went to protests, I made politically-oriented essays, and I stuck to the queer artists in seeking film and games! If Found was wintery, incredibly Irish and very liberated from how a game is supposed to look, and remains a fresh mint in the consumptive sea. There was one better... but we'll get to that.
JULY - Most Mainstream Yaoi
Kirby Superstar Ultra
Song: Wo Qui Non Coin - Cowboy Bebop OST
...by which I mean Kirby baby-birds their friends to feed them!! Incredibly cute and frictionless, love the split bite-sizedness, as it's how I write my best essays, and think it suits a droning series like Kirby well! July was a series of DS and GameCube games, a lot of mid-00's films, too. It was a continuation of what I described in June, but also when I started working, started thinking about Grad Schools (which I'm still now finishing up!). It was a very grounded month, my fondest memory when my group of friends stayed at a beach house and set off fireworks, sort of making our own from the corpses of traditional holidays (something that became a theme with this Thanksgiving and Christmas). Oh yeah, it's also the month I felt the most pain ever! Ever heard of Hell's Itch? It's when a sunburn damages the nerve ends and causes stabbing itching sensations! Sorry, not my journal. July was a month I became a lot more confident in my capacity to live outside this evil machine.
AUGUST - Most Sobering Battle for Love in Our Schizophrenic Age
Final Fantasy VIII
Song:so easy... Eyes on Me - Faye Wong
FF6 also occupies this spot. She was too shy to show up; a far more flawless, important experience, but as a result a less presently memorable one. August was a winding-down of June and July, was settling into the workflow and letting my days be defined by it's labours. Beyond such, it was an inactive month. I guess I wrote Psychdive, too. Go check that out! But two Final Fantasies beaten, both of which I had started playthroughs of in 2020, the longest standing members of interest on my Backlog (now it's New Vegas)! Both are great in their own way. Every Final Fantasy game I've played is such a cultural force, polished and uniquely compelling. Also marked the last checkbox of my game bucket list I wrote at 18 and, honestly... playing games for their culture or significance has become a far less compelling pursuit since, so there was some truth. I'm a pure-bred narrative and space girlie now!
SEPTEMBER - Most Important Game to Inciting My Own Oeuvre
The Beginner's Guide
Song: Pulsewidth - Aphex Twin
September marked the start of my final and busiest college semester. Lots of reading and writing! Also finally fulfilling my slutty summer by getting into a relationship sapped my gaming time away for the better! There's not much to say about Beginner's Guide but that it's premise inspired my Capstone, which may be the best essay I've ever written (not the best fiction piece, but I think I capture my project thusfar to the best of my ability). The question in question: when kindness isn't enough, when grace and praise ring empty, when niceties and putting you in community all work to sabotage the connection between artist and viewer, how can we ever pursue meaningful human connection? You can read the Capstone here!
OCTOBER - Most Bountiful Waste of Time
UFO 50
Song: idk it's a lot of vibes... let's go with Central City - Sonic Dark Brotherhood OST (too mean?)
October was a month of the motions, maddening to recall even so close by. Every second not working felt like procrastination, even when a week ahead of deadlines. Outside of Halloween and the string of horror movies I watched the week before, life seems to have been lost to simply working. UFO 50 embodies that, a game that would madden me if played in anything other than the spare 30-minute pouches in which killing time was preferable to work. I hated killing time, and apparently between October and September, I killed 75 hours of time getting 30 golds in this godless game. It's truly a feat of game design, but it's also a game a completionist like me, able to lock in on microtask after microtask, felt cognitively exploited by, even as it gave me so little pleasure or fulfillment to play (like school did sometimes... haha). The dates were nice, the weather was nice, my fits were fire.
NOVEMBER - Sunniest, Bluest Sega SkiesOutrun 2006: Coast-2-Coast
Song: Movin' in Circles - Ridge Racer or Wave Ocean - Sonic '06
November was a month of revelation, the month all of college coalesced. Grad School Paper and Capstone written. Like 5 new favourite books read. Interactions with local Anarchist Groups, an increasing preachiness to all I spoke to. This is the month all the lessons sunk in and clicked. Even now, I'm still glorious from it. Outrun is a game about optimism, about going for gold and pushing your limits all to express your love. It's journey mirrored mine, all while being the most damn stylish racer since RR4.
DECEMBER - Strongest Assertion that Games ARE, in Fact, Political
Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood
Song: Heaven's Gate - Oh, Yoko
Like fate, December is still being written, capable of being written. So far, we are in a month of future, of looking forward and deciding wherever the path leads, it's my responsibility to do my best to get me there. It still hasn't sunk in that I'm graduated, that life is as open as my economic freedom allows. I need to guardrail myself, to not waste my lessons sinking into the same cycle of solitude and artistic consumption I find myself stuck in every interim era. It is time to write for my sisters, write for the future, and make the decisions that I can to make life better for being in the lives of those I touch. Erotics are the future, aid is the future, and one last re-evaluation is all I need to map my path towards the good of others.... I'll report back how I do.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
And now, my TOP 12 favourites!!! Literally no one cares!! Also don't stress the ordering too much! My brain doesn't work that way!!
12. Best Use of Digital Third Spaces to Free Form
The Zium Gallery
Song: Space 8 - Nala Sinephro
The Zium Galleries I don't recall as games, but as spaces full of some of the loveliest art I've ever seem (esp. this entry). Very casual, enriching play that is probably more of an honourable mention next to the few above. Possibly the most imagistically beautiful work encountered.
11. Most Clairvoyant Foretelling of the TikTok Generation
Dynamite Headdy
Song: Garbage Pale Kids - JPEGMafia, Danny Brown or mos thoser - food house
While Gunstar and Alien Solider are better quality and more fun, the gall of Dynamite Headdy, the inability for a game like this to get funded outside the indie sphere, the schizophrenic shitposty feel... it's a once-in-a-generation symphony of bullshit!
10. Best Game to Have a Damn Fine Cup of Coffee With
Last Window: The Secret of Cape West
Song: Streets Have Memory from OST (cheater)
Close call between Kyle Hyde's two adventures, but I like the cast and plot marginally more in this one. Spectacular style, tight writing, such good vibes. Definitely Cing's magnum opus and a proud representative for how many damn DS games I played.
9. Most Surprisingly Unravaged by Indie Copycats
Mega Man Legends
Song: Apple Market from OST (getting real lazy)
Such a timeless looking game so out of genre and feel with anything else that it almost feels like I dreamed in my short stay. A strong entry in games I wish I made if I was less of a dead beat. So cute, youthful, sleepy and tightly woven that I'm surprised how little it's talked about besides my one friend who keeps hounding me to play Tron Bonne.
8. Best Game Compared to Sex
Elite Beat Agents
Song:Sk8er Girl - Avril Lavigne
Laser-focused heart-thumping thrill with so many idiosyncracies. Genuinely shocking there isn't really sequels or some new online version of the game, given it's older than fucking OSU! A perfect formula for getting me to move like a rubberhose cartoon character.
7. Best Reason Why Killing Moon was My Most Played Song on Spotify
Before the Green Moon
Song: Killer Moon - Echo & The Bunny Men
A incredible bottling of capitalist despondence and finding beauty and community in the pits of colonialism. I love how well it dismantles your Stardews as hyper-capitalist and how it's only a forever game if you reject the premise of violent upward mobility for your subservience. It's sad my brain can so easily slot into the gamification, the keeping up with the workload instead of just learning to love and live at my own pace.
6. Best Argument for Awkward Love
Chirk
Song: Dust - You'll Never Get to Heaven
My review says the extent of my thoughts, but I related heavily to Chirk, and it came at a very necessary time in my life to all the little hangups I have around just... expressing your love to someone. We only have so much time on this planet, so let's love before the storm comes!
4. Most Toxic Yuri (tied)
Loner_Dog: Snuff Puppy Carnage Society
Song:Thoughts and Prayers - Black Dresses
Simultaneously about and dismantling boundaries. A thorough transgression of the sterility of games, straight into the shitheap. Does the same thing Before Green Moon does, in a way, but refuses to take it, breaks everything and does everything and fucks everyone in it's little polycule of suffering tgirls. Both a model and a nightmare for my future in a really uncomfortable way. Also just so fucking cool looking. Shoutout snek for writing me a 3-page guide as to how she puts together her tight ass backgrounds.
4. Most Toxic Yuri (tied)
Victim Doll
Song: Defenestration Song (Demo) - Have a Nice Life
Much of the same as what has been said of Loner_Dog. Plays really well with the implication it could be read as a porn game by making you embody a tortured, maimed and killed "robot" prostitute. It's uncomfortable just as much as there is an erotic appeal to it. Also just so dirtily written in terms of urban rot. The engine for this, if I can figure out, is something I'd love to make a game in!
Song:
3. Best Game made by People who Probably Have Cooler Things They Could Be Doing
Bomb Rush Cyberfunk
Song: GET ENUF, DA PEOPLE and Hideout Mixtape from OST
Kinda crazy it ends up this high, but it was such a positive experience, even with how passive it was, that I don't feel right sliding it lower. One of the most stylish, malleable and explosive games I've played. Captures the feeling of being an Outcast and the value of all economies of art. Even if not from the era, sits at the lovely intersection of Sega-Sunny-Blue-Skies and Adult-Swim-Fetish and carries their hope in spite of authoritarianism. Internet Pitstop Core.
2. Most Improved Work by an Artist who was Already Damn Near Perfect
Deltarune
Song:Dark Sanctuary - OST...or maybe Raise Up Your Bat
I mark how fleeting and grating a find a lot of silly/meme-y games to be down to me being younger, being able to really sit down and get way too invested in a title in a way I'm too jaded for. Yet maybe I'm wrong, because Deltarune refuses to leave my head. It has won me over whole-heartedly to a degree where I am very able to overlook it's flaws. Every minute is just... so good and fresh even ten years on from Undertale. Gerson's fight is sthe best to ever do it at so many levels, and Susie and Noelle top my fav game characters of all time. I'm content waiting because GD am I sated!
1. Most in Love with Joy and Wonder
Chibi-Robo!
Song: KERA MA GO - MOON OST
Everything I love about games is here. It's frankly astonishing this isn't held as a inarguable Nintendo Classic. Is this an aesthetics pic? Mostly, though it's also mechanically tuned to my taste, fun to explore, gives an Eastern take on Toy Story, loves humanity and family so sincerely that it puts all of Nintendo's big dogs to shame. It's everything I wanted from Pikmin, from Love-de-Lic, from scavenging PS2 obscura and is just so joyful. Sometimes stupid joyful things that aren't afraid to hide from life's challenges are the most effective art for reaching the universal.