2025 has already been one outstanding year for games, and we’re not even halfway through. Take a glimpse at Metacritic and there are several games hitting above 90+ aggregate scores that have arrived from unexpected places. It’s a testament to a shifting industry, where smaller, focused teams of experienced developers are setting up independent studios.
The success of games likeBalatroandSchedule 1over the last few years also demonstrates that the solo dev angle can work if you’ve got the right concept for a game. Solo devs have always made great games (I don’t need to reel off any other games thanMinecraftandStardew Valleyto prove that point), but it’s fantastic to see more and more of these games making such an impact on the industry. The video game industry is unique inasmuch as a solo creative can make a lot of money all on their own, without being beholden to publishers or a larger studio.
An Unbelievable Year So Far
Sandfall Interactive’sClair Obscuris already being heralded as a major Game of the Year contender, including by some of our own writers here at TheGamer. Sandfall Interactive is composed of a bunch of ex-Ubisoft developers who left the mammoth game studio to form their own company. The result was a brilliant double-A game that no one saw coming - or at least, was expecting to land so well.
Likewise,Blue Prince, developed over the course of eight years by solo developer Tonda Ros, arrived from out of the blue (excuse the pun). It’s one of the first games in a while that I’ve played with a notebook and pen on my desk, and they aren’t the sort of games that come around too often. While being fundamentally different on a few levels, Blue Prince really reminded me of that magic spark I felt when playing Return Of The Obra Dinn for the first time, another brilliant puzzler.
Schedule 1, the drug dealer simulator, had one of the most impressive indie launches of the year, hitting over 400,000 concurrent players on Steam within the first two weeks of its release. Solo developer TVGS has continued to plug away at the game, and while these games tend to come and go, I can see Schedule 1 getting a repeat wave of buzz when it comes out of its early access period in a couple of years, not unlike Hades.
Monster Train 2 might take the crown for my Game of the Year - so far, of course - because it’s not only an excellent sequel to an already-excellent game, but it goes above and beyond what I’d expected for the sequel. There aredoublethe cards in the game than in the first one, which is made possible by retaining pretty much everything from the original. The result is a dazzlingly complex deckbuilder with hundreds of hours of replayability. I’ve sunk over 20 hours into the game so far, and I’m only just getting started.
Similarly to Monster Train 2, StarVaders surprised me with its interesting blend of tactics and deckbuilding that amounts to something a bit like Into The Breach. I’ve barely had a chance to play it, but there have been rave reviews so far.
Despelote is a wonderfully quiet little game; a slice-of-life-adventure based around football (soccer) in Ecuador circa 2001, the first year the nation qualified for the World Cup. Its unique art style and concept of telling a narrative via the beautiful game makes it one of the best and most unexpectedly great games of the year,especially according to its 89-review average.
I’ve got to mention Nubby’s Number Factory here - this bizarre roguelite is basically Pachinko Balatro, and while it’s not going to win any Game of the Year awards, it’s won a place in my heart with its ‘90s retro aesthetics and infinitely scaling broken number chaos.
Arc Raiders has also taken me completely by surprise. While Embark Studios is certainly a bigger group of devs - riding high on the success of the slightly underrated The Finals - it doesn’t mean that I ever saw a game like Arc Raiders coming. It’s a brilliant take on the extraction shooter genre, with outstanding visual design and an extremely satisfying feedback loop. We’ll likely hear more about this title at Summer Game Fest, and I’m hoping it’s a shadow drop because I just want to play it.
I’m always on the hunt for unexpected games. They’re one of my favorite parts of spending dozens of hours a week staring at my computer screen, writing and thinking about video games. The last couple of years have been brilliant for titles appearing seemingly out of nowhere - games like Slay the Princess and Helldivers 2 come to mind from just last year - but 2025 is shaping up to be an iconic one. Now I just need to find the time to actually play all these games.
