#350: The Hit Points Reader Awards 2025

Here we go then! The final newsletter of the year, a nice round number on which to mark it, and a return of one of my favourite annual traditions: the Hit Points Reader Awards. Over the past few weeks the ol’ inbox has been steadily filling to the brim with your submissions, and I believe I’ve managed to fit all of you in. (If I’ve somehow missed you off then I humbly apologise, unless you ignored the requested subject line, in which case I still feel bad about it but look, it’s your fault.)

In recent years, in addition to eulogising their favourite games, I’ve also invited paid subs to suggest a ‘hidden gem’ — something that’s flown rather under the radar but is well worth checking out. I didn’t do that this year, largely and if am I honest entirely because I forgot. But I’m not sure it was necessary, really. Amidst a volley of end-of-year lists dominated by Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, the following selections remind us that the church of games broadens every year. Some fabulous leftfield picks in here; what a tasteful bunch you are. Let’s get around it!

Despelote: a beautiful, polygamous marriage between autobiographical storytelling, simple and engaging football/soccer gameplay, appropriately retro aesthetics, and mind-bending artistic choices. Whenever one of these aspects exist in a game, they’re typically only done for a self-centered, myopic reason: a story that someone should have gone to therapy for; fun gameplay that exists in a vacuum; a look that the creator uses for easy nostalgia points; an interesting change that blows the game’s load (sorry) and makes the experience lopsided. Despelote instead finds a way to use every single one of these aspects to create a cohesive experience that is both deeply personal and also incredibly unselfish at the same time. Every game under four hours long is already a Perfect Game, but Despelote manages to pull all of this off and make the credits roll in less than two hours. Greatest game of all time as far as I’m concerned. Brandon Garner

Perhaps not my absolute fave this year, but one I need to acknowledge is Citizen Sleeper 2. What an utterly beautiful and wonderful game. I loved the first one: the stories it managed to tell, and the wonderful characters that populated its world. The sequel managed to outdo the first in every way, which is quite the accomplishment.

All the mechanics here – which drive your choices, how much risk you want to take, etc – work brilliantly and complement each other. Once again it’s full of so many interesting and charming characters. I ended up truly loving my time as a Sleeper again, and the story my Sleeper told. Amazing stuff. Ben Braine

Metaphor: ReFantazio took me just over 100 hours to complete. 100! I also happen to have a two-year-old and a one-month-old, so it wins by default as pretty much the only game I played this year. To be fair I did very much enjoy it, but it wasn't overly respectful of my time. I need to focus on shorter games next year, man. John Saunders

Certain other RPGs have understandably stolen the spotlight this year, but Something Classic Games' Quartet is also highly deserving of celebration. The studio demonstrates incredible understanding of what made classic RPGs so beloved; far from relying on nostalgia for its pleasing 16bit graphics to carry the day, it offers a fascinatingly deep and excellently paced story (running around 20 hours) with plenty of its own ideas and twists, a speedy and thoroughly engaging combat system, and a delightful soundtrack. It's a richly rewarding experience and an easy universal recommendation. Alex Fuller

This has been a tough year, and that affected the games I played. I didn’t try to expand my palate, I just wanted comfort food. And is there any greater comfort than Super Mario Galaxy 2? I barely played it on Wii for unknown reasons, so exploring it with fresh eyes — seeing the creativity in stretching the original’s tight mechanics to the absolute maximum extent — has been not just revelatory, but a joy. And I really needed joy. Ravi Hiranand

Kingdom Come: Deliverance II hits the exact intersection of my tastes: obsessive systems, grounded realism, and the kind of long-arc progression that feels like constant forward (albeit slow) motion. In fact, I enjoyed the early game — roleplaying a destitute pauper doing chores to survive and hanging out in taverns — more than the endgame, where I was an unstoppable war machine. 

I love games where mechanics interlock, choices compound, and mastery is measurable. KCDII’s mediaeval sim-RPG grit is very much in my wheelhouse, where every perk, piece of gear, reputation shift, and route through a questline changes the outcomes. It’s also a palate cleanser from glossy sci-fi hype; it’s human, messy and historically textured, and supremely immersive, with a beautiful and realistic depiction of early 15th century Bohemia. Every side mission feels integral to the story, with very little padding: nothing beats disappearing into a living world that respects my time while demanding my attention. That’s why it’s my GOTY. No other 2025 release matched its depth, authenticity, and immersion.  Giordano Bruno Contestabile

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. A JRPG made by and for JRPG sickos that’s also quintessentially and irreverently French. It balances the act of celebrating the old-school designs of the genre with modern flair of luscious but stylish Unreal visuals, edge-of-your-seat parry mechanics and a score to make you weep. Maelle magnifique! Alan Wen

It’s tempting to say my 2025 game of the year is my new LG OLED TV, and every game I own; it's made more difference for me than moving from base PS5 to Pro. However, if I need to pick an actual game, and one that came out this year (sorry Returnal, even though you look best of all on OLED), then it’s going to be Lies of P: Overture. It’s a fine bit of DLC that ups the difficulty while making a couple of accessibility tweaks, allowing me to ease past the ridiculous first boss and enjoy the rest of the game. It adds great new locations, enemies and weapons — the combat rhythms in this game are particularly satisfying — and it looks fantastic too. I’m very much looking forward to the sequel. Pete Redrup

I loved Hollow Knight. I so looked forward to Silksong, but it was just too much. And then I played Chicory, the anti-Silksong. I don't even know if it came out this year, probably not. [Nathan here! It was 2021 but that’s okay. I’m fine with it! I said I’m fine.] But it's just so nice and has kept me gaming for another year. And Lena Raine eh? Top-notch music. Her building soundtrack in the hotel in Celeste is still the pinnacle of games music for me. Robert Carpenter

When I first wrote about La-Mulana I said that all the sequel would have to do to become one of my all-time-favourite games is commit fewer sins than the original. Well, it succeeded. In basically every aspect, La-Mulana 2 is a greater game. Movement feels better, boss fights are more exciting, and the clues are more helpful. The puzzles themselves are both more solvable and more ambitious, though maybe a little too ambitious to be honest.

You need to take a lot of notes, you will die many times, and you will spend a lot of time stuck, running around in circles. Ultimately this is still primarily a game about solving increasingly unhinged puzzles. It’s brilliant, but it’s not always ‘fun’ in the conventional sense. Still, finishing this game is without question the most satisfying gaming experience I’ve had this year, maybe ever, and yes, even over Silksong. Thomas Ohashi

My clear pick for 2025 is Lego Voyagers. It probably doesn’t help my credibility that it and Sword Of The Sea are the only 2025 releases I’ve played this year (the backlog is alive and well). But I’d still choose it without hesitation.

It’s the first game I played together with my six-year-old daughter. The puzzles, the music, the calm moments, the excitement when we crack something, the partnership of figuring things out side by side — absolute joy. We’re still playing it in short 20-minute bursts, and that high-five when we finally get past an obstacle is the hobby at its best for me. It’s also sneakily challenging: I’m not ashamed to admit Google has helped us out more than once. I’ve always been a solo player, but now I have a gaming partner. Hopefully the first of many games to come. Stuart Neilson

Since roughly July I’ve been largely focused on games long consigned to history. A 3DS and DS obsession (the origin of which is unknown, but likely related to Switch 2 fever) means that my real GOTY is Kirby Planet Robobot, an endlessly charming, creative and cosy blast from ten years ago. It’s amazing and you should play it.

But I’ll be boring and pick properly. I only played a handful of 2025 games in 2025. Mario Kart World is great, and I’ll be playing it for many years, but it’s a background game, not something all-consuming. Donkey Kong Bananza was very good, but definitely not great. Sword Of The Sea was competent, but felt like Journey made by an LLM.

So naturally that leaves me with Expedition 33. I clocked up over 70 hours in a six-week period, and it was utterly engrossing. It’s more than the sum of its parts and will live on in my memory for years to come. Story-rich games often leave me cold since they’re like movies but way worse, but this one really hit its marks. I pray they never make a sequel. Dan Walker

Clair Obscur. Leftfield, I know, but maybe you’ve heard of it? I can’t remember a time when a game has grabbed my attention so fully. Minutes into loading up the game for the first time, I was enamoured with the setting. Combat was surprisingly engaging, and the characters were enjoyable and fresh (Esquie, mon amis!). And the story. Gods, the story! I can’t remember the last time I was thrown for such a ride! I dove straight into a second playthrough, just to savour how theme, narrative, visuals and characters coalesced into a true piece of art. Berets off to the Sandfall team for what may just be my game of the decade. Joseph Nyman Wiis

Mine is Death Stranding 2: On The Beach, which was a complete surprise given how quickly I bounced off the first one. I gave the sequel a go almost entirely off the back of the strength of reviews, and loved it to the tune of 84 hours through to completion. The key was drawing a line in my own mind as to how much Kojima nonsense I was going to attempt to understand in order to enjoy the game, and how much I just wasn't going to waste any time on whatsoever. Freed from that, it was a technical marvel, and the gameplay loop utterly compelling. Sam Medley

South Of Midnight is a small art project by Compulsion Games starring a Black girl, Hazel, in the deep US south. It mixes the unexplored folklore of Cajun culture while tapping into local legends of monsters (both fictional and human).

The game tells the story of a flood, and how that affects families and fauna alike. Combat is enjoyable, if very basic; the puzzles are fun; and the last stage is a beautiful surrealist painting. The music is amazing, and it will tug at your heart strings at every turn. It’s jazz, and Caribbean, and African, all the things that we have down in the south of the American continent, from México to Argentina. That's where I said: Is this what representation feels like?! It feels great. Luis Robles

Little Rocket Lab. Nothing has quite captured my heart this year as much as this quaint factory-builder set in a Harvest Moon-ish town. Its residents were happy to let my messy production lines sprawl across their streets and homes as my mind vomited designs out that I would later hone and refine. The game does not judge. It just sets out its easily readable and very manageable goals, and waits patiently for me to noodle over a solution in whatever format I want (sometimes an inspired work of engineering, at other times simple brute force), all the while looking on with gentle encouragement. Which is just what I needed this year. Edd Hewett

A year late and lacking originality, my game of the year is Astro Bot. The best platformer that Nintendo didn’t make and a stand-out in a classic genre, there are moments of joy and cleverness in all its levels — even the ones that are controller-crushingly difficult — and some moments so joyful and smart they warrant returning to more than once. I’ve played the game through to the credits twice, once on my own account, once with my five-year-old, who’s sat and played some but watched most of it.

Compare this to Xbox. Microsoft’s misdeeds have been an overarching theme this year: the company has made it impossible to enjoy the platform without feeling like you’re supporting The Bad Guys and harming your own moral calculus. If nothing else, in Team Asobi’s Game of the Year, Sony at least kept their sense of humour. Nathaniel Byrne

Arc Raiders. I was sceptical, and admittedly a bit put off by the AI controversy, but I was not prepared for how compelling and addictive the game would turn out to be. It haunts my waking thoughts. When I should be doing housework or talking to my family, all I can think about is the layers of crafting and looting I need to do to get that item, or where to go to find that blueprint. At around 25 minutes, its sessions are perfect for the time-starved player, and the whole psychology of PVP interactions has been fascinating: the ‘Don’t Shoot’ vernacular, whether they use proximity chat or fob you off then shoot you, the varied areas to explore, the terror from the drones and robots, the battles at the extraction points and the wonderful and weird emergent gameplay has made every run fresh, exciting, and hilarious. Jon Evans

When I was a lad, my mate had a copy of Micro Machines V3 on PlayStation. It had a multiplayer mode called Keepsies. Players would take their roster of levelled-up vehicles on their memory card, and race them against one another. The winner added their opponent’s vehicle to their collection, while it got deleted from the loser’s. If the winner already had a better version of the losing vehicle, it got crushed to dust by a giant mallet. Didn’t need their car? Well, never mind. The important thing is that they lost it.

We would each take the game home for a few days to grind out some new vehicles and meet up on Saturday mornings for a high-stakes showdown. It was some of the most fun I’ve ever had gaming. Thrilling, raucous and most often, hilarious. I’ve been praying that Keepsies would make a comeback for decades. Anyway, Arc Raiders rules. Gavin Gallagher

Lovely, lovely stuff. Thanks so much to everyone who took the time. Love you lot!

Thanks also to the modest, yet nonetheless surge in new and returning subscribers lured in by that three-month 50% offer. I’ve resisted doing discounts for a couple of years now, mindful of existing subs feeling like they’re getting a worse deal, but I think this strikes a decent balance. Might leave it running for a month or two and see how it goes.

New folks: this will get you into the Hit Points Discord, aka the last good place on the internet, for the next seven days. Come on in.

Anyway! Time to prep Hit Points Towers for the annual-ish New Year’s Eve shindig. We started it when we and our friend group were all new parents, starting in the early afternoon so we could have some fun before all heading home to sort bedtimes. Over the years we’ve pushed back the start time and lasted later and later into the evening, and this year, with the youngest attendee knocking on the door of their eighth birthday, I think a post-midnight finish may at last be on the cards. Knackered just  thinking about it tbh. Anyway! Have a lovely NYE, whatever you’re up to, and all the best for 2026. I’ll be back in your inbox next week.