This year has been a crazy one for us. Job changes, life events, and a structure shift on this website have us publishing articles at a more measured pace, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t get some quality gaming time in! While 2026 plans get concocted we realize that sticking to standardized awards might be a little bland, so this year we’re compiling our favorite new games and just giving them whatever award we want. They deserve it!

A brief thank you to everyone who finds their way to our website and continues to read our work. Our passion project is reaching Kindergarten grade in years and we’re seeing it grow in ways we weren’t expecting (as well as viewership that continues to blow us away!). We truly appreciate your time, and hope you’ll continue following us into 2026!

Programming note: We consider all games we played in 2025 for our awards, regardless of release date.
Images/GOTY Titles are linked with the game’s store pages or places to buy via a non-affiliate link.

Demetri – It’s looking like Superball’s playerbase might be down to single digits on Steam by the end of the year. This is a tragedy.

Kyle – 2025’s Superball, which was once 2019’s Super Buckyball Tournament, is 2023’s Deceive Inc. which is 2021’s Knockout City, which is 2020’s Rocket Arena: a multiplayer passion project with limitless potential doomed to a very limited audience and short lifespan.  Super addictive gameplay, think Rocket League mixed with Overwatch, combined with absolutely bonkers set ups that emanate Rocket League-levels of creativity without the nearly vertical learning curve.

Demetri – I don’t like Rocket League, Rematch, or honestly even Soccer all that much in the first place, but this game clicked for me on a level few do. Add it to the pile of doomed multiplayer games that we’ll speak of fondly and still probably not join fan servers for, assuming this one even has fans down the road.

Kyle – The amount of hilarity from hearing Demetri yelling, “KENNNYYYYY” while hurling a bird at a ball and hitting a Panenka on some sad goalie in a 2 on 0 situation will never get old and I’m happy I got at least 60 hours of it before it becomes nearly impossible to get another game in.

Demetri – It’s surprisingly difficult to find a great playable crime drama. of the Devil is certainly that, coming together like a freshly-made Ace Attorney that someone slipped a razor blade into. That’s a compliment. Morgan, our player character, is a monster one bad interaction from snapping at all times, and the potential consequences of that snap loom larger with each passing moment. This added layer of constant tension makes playing any of the cases available thus far a thrill ride, especially when played in High Roller mode. Rare is the visual novel I fall for, but otD clears my hurdles effortlessly.

Kyle – I may be 5 years late on Bunny Hill, but that should only attest that it being here means something.  Ever wanted to be a bunny on skis doing a slowly rotating 720 that hits skin-shredding speeds the moment you pop a ramp hand-slapping a golden flag?  Fuckin’ right you do.  The absurdly good DnB tracks, the eclectic band of misfits out to hit the slopes, and speed so crisp you’ll be seeing light lines like you’re on the post-editing team of 2001: A Space Odyssey.  If you’re hitting 35 second times on 2500m loops, you’re a God; if you’re hitting 45 second times on 2500m loops, you want to kill yourself: either way just means more.  Bunny Hill MSRPs at $8 but it’s normally attached to any sale Steam is doing so get it while it’s cheap and buy a few copies for your friends. You will not be disappointed.

Kyle – For the newly modern minted but more underground genre of “Friend Slop” titles that took the world by storm during and post-COVID, I think we’re finally getting into a groove where creative juices can be concocted even in game jam-timed sprints and provide what might be the best multiplayer experience of the year.

Demetri – There have been a lot of decent-at-best store brand prox chat games in the wake of Lethal Company. PEAK, by contrast, feels like a true evolution in its niche. Not only does it make even better use of microphones by way of giving you a larger play space, it also manages to be a genuinely compelling game in its own right, capturing the joys and challenges of climbing better than much else I’ve seen.

Kyle – Who knew navigating treacherous terrain with a mountain hellbent on killing you would be infinitely funnier with crunchy prox chat chronicling your friends’ demise?  With a drip feed of new content not even originally planned by the developers providing new items, biomes (plus tools for modders to push the game even farther than the devs have time for), and secrets to find on the daily-changing mountain, the range of “ooooh this run” shit happening provides a hilarity so natural that most companies with higher budgets and dev times have often swung and missed for.

Demetri – This game’s so solid that it’s even worth playing solo, but it’s always improved for hearing a friend’s soul leave their body in real time.

Kyle – Now, hear me out.  It’s not a well-kept secret that I am the Anime Lover of my friend group, so a gacha game with cute anime girls happens to be right up my alley.  But man Umamusume is addictive, especially if you can take the time to play the game purely as a F2P title.  I’ve probably put over 100 hours over the past 3-4 months and got myself to hitting A+ runs on Career.  Pretty Derby does give you enough freebies to play catch up if you keep yourself around it enough, but just don’t succumb to the numbers they’re asking for.  The rate of “$ to 10-pull” is atrocious, even more so when you see how many pulls you have to do to cash in on the spotlighted character or card (200 pulls??? hahaha fuck you, dude).  If you give this maybe 45 minutes a day of your time to round up dailies and whatnot, you’ll have yourself an exceptionally solid mobile game (or play on Steam with your account on online you coward). Just keep your credit card in your wallet, it’s for your own good.

Demetri – There have been many attempts at adapting fighting games to the tabletop. Most aim to capture the yomi aspect, reading your opponent before they even act and performing the right move at the right time, but until now I’d yet to see one emulate more than simple execution. Tag Team instead focuses on adaptation. Learning your opponent’s tendencies, habits, preferences, and using that against them while your opponent is attempting to do the same. By constantly having the players tweak their existing combos it feels like the card version of truly getting good at any fighter, specifically the post-execution barrier strategy, and that’s where the real satisfaction lies.

Kyle – It has become a yearly staple to gather our friends together on Discord, get some drinks, and fish the night away on New Year’s Eve to ring in the new year.  With simplistic gameplay and as much healthy competition as your friends will give you (I spent the better half of a month trying to slowly fill my ranks of Fish out) the amount of hours this game will sink into you is only as far as you’re willing to take it.  I keep WEBFISHING installed in case the urge to try for 2 star freshwater fish completion ever hits me and the thrill of hitting a ~1% fish comes back.  Lamedeveloper nailed it in 1, but because we can’t have nice things and the internet feels the need to doxx people, this’ll be that One Hit Wonder for the future.

Demetri – You ready to scream at an inanimate hot dog? Jon Perry simply does not miss, and Hot Streak is simultaneously extremely him (big Quibble Race vibes) and also wholly distinct from his ludography. From the moment you roll out the racetrack and introduce everyone around the table to the D-list racers they’ll be betting their lunch money on the game starts delivering laughs, and those only get more intense once said racers start bumbling into each other. It helps that the game itself is great too! Playing Hot Streak is all about moderate-stakes gambling, risk management, making decisions with the unique information you’re afforded, knowing when to hold ‘em, and knowing when to LET IT RIDE BABY MY BOY DANGLE’S GOING ALL THE WAY!

Demetri – I am a long-established Mario Party sicko. SMG Studio, against all odds, managed to take all the lessons Nintendo refused to and make a better one. Its boards are few but free of duds, its minigames are mostly winners, and most importantly, its comic timing is a precision strike to the funny bone.

Kyle –  Seriously, smart tweaks to the board game-video game formula that allow a sense of strategy that is absent in other titles (throwing mini-games can be vital for a winning strat!) and pitch-perfect humor (that has been slightly toned down since release because I forget this game is actually for kids and families) make for a solid collection of bricks. It also helps that Lego Party, without a shadow of a doubt, has the best main menu music of the year.  Fuck it’s been stuck in my head for months.

Both of Us, in Unison for the Next Year – Da-da-daaaa!

Kyle – I was for certain Everybody’s Golf on the PS4/PS5 was the final entry we’d see in this series as it felt like it deviated enough from the mainline consistency with middling results.  Even more so when the series showed up on Apple Arcade with almost no advertising (which was then ported to the Nintendo Switch with just as much fanfare), but while Clap Hanz is busy diving into the VR landscape, Bandai Namco was given the reins to create a new title in the series, Everybody’s Golf: Hot Shots; sequel to Everybody’s Golf in name, but more directly to World Invitational in gameplay and structure.  Getting a solid Hot Shots on PC is a gift in and of itself, but the absolute depth of content to unlock gives you hundreds of hours to swing away at, which at a lower price tag is a deal that wasn’t even needed for the sickos like myself.

Demetri – I was initially hesitant to even play this on account of the AI kerfuffle around it, only to do some research and realize that no, it just uses SpeedTree. That’s established proc-gen software, not contemporary generative AI, and conflating the two is only going to make saying no to the latter all the more confusing and difficult. I hope this game gets the recognition it deserves despite this confusion, because this is some damn good golf.

Demetri – Foddy and co.’s foray into 3D made me feel like I was playing Mario 64 again for the first time. For the first few hours into Baby Steps I was shaky legged, uncomfortable, challenged by a control scheme truly unlike anything else I’ve touched in my decades of play. Now I’m Manbreaker Certified and stomping all over the map on replay has never felt so effortless. Couple the satisfaction of conquering its carefully designed map with a narrative that is far more emotionally impactful than I was expecting, and you have a genuine all-timer that commands respect.

Kyle (Abiotic Factor) – I’ve fawned over Abiotic Factor for two separate articles now, so there’s not much else I haven’t said in those that needs to be mirrored here.  A pitch-perfect survival game turning hypothetical science into a plug-and-play introduction to its bevy of items capable of handling extra-dimensional beings set on destroying your world.  The range of items, weapons, locations, plot devices, whatever you can muster about this game is only limited by the developers’ imagination, which has me so excited for the post-1.0 content coming in 2026.  Now to try to beat Hardcore mode, for science!

Demetri (Magical Athlete) – Magical Athlete has been my favorite board game for many, many years. Any publisher could have just reprinted it as-is and I would have been overjoyed, but instead they did the impossible and improved on perfection. More racers, another track, an absurdly high quality production, and somehow even more comedy than before. Keeping MA in print is a public service that CMYK deserves a commendation for.

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2025 was a defining year for the two people behind this website and everyone who helps contribute in conversation and outreach. Our sixth year saw us welcoming 42,000 visitors across 56,000 reads, all without a single dime going to marketing. We are truly humbled and grateful for the continued attention we’ve been given, and look forward to writing quality pieces with new ideas and plans for next year. Thank you for reading!

May 2026 be a year of great games made by well-paid devs who never get laid off (and don’t use generative AI tools)!