2025 Roundup

I am overwhelmed by the support Stop Caring received this year.

Before I begin this year's roundup, I have to give a long overdue shout-out to Stop Caring's paid subscribers. Thank you so much to: Lawrence Adkins, Cameron Granger, Quinn Quimbly, Kasio, Luca Fisher, and Ashley Schofield. Your unwavering support has allowed me to keep the lights on around here.

A special thanks to my beloved family members: my mom, dad, and twin sister, who read and support this website despite not being into videogames and not understanding half of the shit we say on here.

I also want to thank all the donators, far too many to name, whose material support has been more than appreciated, and all the various folks who read and edited early drafts of my pieces for Stop Caring. Your thirst is mine, my water is yours.

I would also like to thank YOU, the readers. Without your eyes on these words right now, none of this would even be possible.

Lastly, I want to thank every single guest writer for believing in me, especially in the moments when I couldn't believe in myself. Wallace, Guilherme, Lawrence, Andrei, Gab, Adam, Boen, Niki, Luca, Cind, Khee Hoon: if you are reading this, please receive my infinite gratitude. I hope I can work with all of you again in the near future.

Please consider subscribing and/or making a one-time donation to make more of this magic possible.

Now, I must show you my cards: I still believe that, as a writer and editor, I have much to learn, and impostor syndrome still clouds my brain and convinces me I unworthy of recognition.

I started accepting pitches on a bit of a whim. I saw the waves and waves of writers losing their jobs, witnessed freelance opportunities dwindle, everyone fighting for scraps. I always knew I wanted other names on the site, to give people a space to write videogame-related essays other sites wouldn't or couldn't accept. But I didn't expect the staggering quality of every single pitch I accepted. It was incredible that so many talented people wanted to write for my silly little website.

2025 will go down as a bad year. Personally and politically, I have been devastated by the amount of death and violence I have witnessed or experienced this year, not to mention the continuous fall into fascism the United States is currently facing — nothing new to people who've been paying attention over these last few decades, but the way it's escalated these last 12 months has been nothing short of demoralizing. Yet, we continue to live and fight.

It's not like 2025 has been great for the videogame industry either: more layoffs, more studios closing, more money into the pockets of boorish executives that are single-handedly dashing people's hopes and dreams. And yet, videogames persist, and oh did we get some bangers this year.

Here is my classic end-of-the-year roundup, giving you my top 10 videogames of the year. As before, this is a bit more informal than my regular writing. It, also, isn't some sort of objective ranking or some exercise of comparison between games: it's just a little fun I like to have in December, when I think about the games that stood out to me through the year and award one with the coveted title of Stop Caring Game of the Year 2025.

Before we proceed with the list, a couple more messages:

FREE PALESTINE
FUCK ICE
DEATH TO FASCISTS
DESTROY AI
LONG LIVE VIDEOGAMES

Psycho killer, Qu'est-ce Que C'est...Or How I Learned To Stop Caring And Cause Carnage

Naked, but not afraid. Glass stuck on the soles of my feet, each step leaving a bloody print behind. Take a picture of a skinned corpse and my health regenerates. Whack a psycho killer in the head with a pipe, because I'm a psycho killer too.

David Szymanski's Butcher's Creek is the game Condemned: Criminal Origins could've been if the latter had better contextualized its violence. I already wrote out my feelings about it in a Superjump article earlier in 2025, so allow me to just re-state: the most satisfying part about Butcher's Creek is the clear sincerity behind its carnage.

There is no moral grandstanding, no committing of brutality from morally advantageous or authoritarian positions: you are a man who has wandered into the eponymous creek seeking snuff tapes. And when you are knocked out, stripped of your possessions and clothes, the first thing you grab is your trusty camera so you can record the violence you will commit and witness. There are so many opportunities for the protagonist to escape, but morbid curiosity draws him deeper and deeper into the lair of cultish serial killers. You're not a hero in this one.

The game is a 'I'm not locked in here with you, you're locked in here with me' simulator—crunchy, meaty, brutal, first-person melee combat in cramped, dilapidated hallways. The violence would be gratuitous if it wasn't so stylized, what with its dithering, chunky graphics. As unnerving the game is, there's moments of levity and humor, mostly found in the notes the killers leave behind: some complaining about being forced to don burlap sacks, impeding their vision, others complaining about the 'real sickos' they have to room with.

Highly recommend, with the caveat that if you're squeamish about blood, gore, and games that make you feel like a little freak, you should probably skip this one.

Infinite Megastructures...Or How I Learned To Stop Caring and Bask in the Liminality

I can sum up my feelings on Tinerasoft's Metal Garden by quoting myself: "[it] is like Halo if the developers at Bungie had more courage".

In this first-person-shooter, your mech breaks down as you're searching for an exit from a seemingly infinite megastructure. You grab your pistol, strap on your jetboots, jack in to the neuralinks of deceased marauders, and wander through vast landscapes and rust-covered buildings. Society has deteriorated and warring factions fight over the few scraps that remain.

This game doesn't fill you with tension with exciting shoot-em-ups, but from the deafening silence that precedes any violent encounter. Combat encounters are sparse, but that's the whole point: bask in the liminal setting, the gears of machinery crunching with effort after years of disuse, and the intermingling of organic material with high-tech machinery.

And when you get to the end, become crestfallen by the realization that there was never a way to escape.

Hair-Raising Yokel Fossil Manor...Or How I Learned To Stop Caring and Match Gems

If you were to tell me, last year, that one of my favorite games in 2025 was going to be a...match-3 metroidvania...and further angered me by calling it a 'mathcroidvania', I would've gladly shot you in the head and gone to jail for the offense. Leave it to the good folks over at Strange Scaffold, always toying with genre conventions, to convince me otherwise.

In Creepy Redneck Mansion III, a fourth-wall breaking, hopelessly self-aware, 'real sequel' to a game that doesn't exist, you play as J.J. Hardwell, a Chris Redfield type (if the Resident Evil protagonist was a bit more anxiety prone) running through a mansion full of creepy prehistoric lizards, connecting various gems to attack or activate abilities, unlocking new ones through exploration, and backtracking through a game that was left woefully unfinished, much to the existential dread of the various characters that reside within the broken and badly-written code.

Despite how much it fully commits to the bit (with a surprisingly great polka soundtrack?!), it also possesses a lot of heart. Creepy Redneck Mansion III is an ode to all the games we will never get to play: unreleased videogames, scrapped projects, games cancelled by greedy executives or abandoned due to lack of funds.

It made me cringe, laugh, and engendered me with a soft melancholy over the labor conditions and modes of production under which videogames are made. It's a game with a clear intent and a lot of soul, and for that alone it's worth playing.

Barefoot In Space...Or How I Learned To Stop Caring and Rescue Cats

I'm Nina Pasadena and my job sucks. I wake up each day dripping in cold water after being hurriedly defrosted from cryogenics. I'm an insurance commando for MIAOCorp, which means that, when mean-spirited space pirates take over the ship and kidnap the feline crew, it's my job to rescue them, but the company's so cheap they can't even provide me shoes!

Skin Deep is anything but—it's a playground of manic tactics, panicked plans and split-second decisions. In classic immersive sim fashion, each level provides you various tools at your disposal. You can sneak through vents and pickpocket keycards from unsuspecting space thugs or you can just smash a window open and suck them all up in the vacuum of space.

It's the small innovations, twists and indulgent humor the game adds that really spice up the formula—seeing an enemy slip on a banana peel never got old, nor did slamming them into various wall-mounted objects as I rode them like a rodeo bull, nor did flushing their heads down toilets to permanently dispose of them. All of this is wonderfully complemented by an incredible soundtrack, the little spy-thriller-infused twangs and the flashy "Ninaaaaaa!" sung by an over-excited lounge singer.

If there's one complaint I have, is that right when I felt the game finally respected me, finally threw me into a level where I had to use everything I had learned...right when it really got good...it was over. The sharp cut to the final setpiece really killed any idea of pacing the game set up with its level design.

Yet, the game is so enchanting this is but a minor conniption: it is when you free one of the cubic cats, that it finally hits this is a Blendo Game, even if it's already infused with all the charm of the developers behind Thirty Flights of Loving and Quadrilateral Cowboy. A must-play for immersive sim fans.

GO AHEAD AND DIE...Or How I Learned To Stop Caring And Admit The Monster Girl is Hot

In Brush Burial: Gutter World, you play as a ridiculously hot monster girl with a really nice ass, and you can kill most enemies by breaking their backs and necks in BDSM-flavored grapples. Need I say more?

The game sets the tone immediately with its introductory splash screen: there are no midlevel saves, the game will not hold your hand, and it expects you to die and fail over and over again.

That was certainly my experience, BB:GW was no more complex or esoteric than any other game out there, but it takes effort to follow in its rhythm—takes a while to dance in the game's tempo. But once you get there, you will kill like it's a symphony. Sneak up behind an enemy, wrap your thighs around his neck and bend his back until you hear a loud crack. Steal his blunderbuss, blast a dude away, enter into slow-mo, climb up a tall building to escape. Corral them through a door, counter their sword swings and give yourself enough time and space to snap more enemy necks.

Gutter World is not a huge game, it's three small levels and a a vast main mission, but what it lacks in size it more than makes up for in depth and replayability. It's a cathartic experience, the game I played when I got punched, and a game I expect to play through many more of life's misfortunes. There is failure and death in our real world as well. So go ahead and die.

(En)Gendered Expectations...Or How I Learned To Stop Caring and Love The New Silent Hill

I haven't had many nice adjectives for the Silent Hill series since its PlayStation 2 days. So color me impressed when Silent Hill f blew me away. It is the North Star of what kind of narrative I would like to see done more often in 'AAA' spaces, exploring a multitude of mature themes with the complexity and gravitas they deserve.

While the combat is hotly debated, given the fact that Japanese schoolgirl Hinako is able to weave, dodge, strike , and perfect counter like the best of them, I am of the opinion it is actually good , and while the endgame gets inundated with one-too-many combat encounters and Dark Souls-style boss battles, I do feel like it is thematically connected to the psychological turmoil the protagonist experiences, and the types of violence she is able to commit (if the default ending can be believed).

It is not without issues, but Silent Hill f will always hold a special place in my heart. My partner isn't very into videogames, but they were interested in the aesthetics and feminist themes the game was exploring. We played through the entire game together—terrified, butting heads during the puzzles, maybe they took a quick snooze here and there when I would die and had to restart from the same checkpoint over and over again, but when it all ended, we were shocked and delighted all the same...even if they did refuse to join me for further NG+ replays...

Get Those Numbers Up...Or How I Learned To Stop Caring and Clock In at The Factory

It's time to start my daily shift at my job, where I shoot a sentient ball into numbered pegs in a charming Y2k-inspired plinko roguelike to prevent the heat death of the universe. Go Nubby, go! You magnificent bastard.

I've already written down most of what I wanted to say about Nubby and his Number Factory, and I loved the game so much I even decided to reach out to the young man behind it, Ethan Anderson, and I had a very fun time interviewing him earlier this year.

Since then, more wacky stuff has been added to the game, more ways to play and break the game have unfolded, and I wish to only make sense to my fellow Nubbers and Nublings with the following phrases:

Poop Butt is overrated, Pedro actually slaps, always go for Tart Lard or Kidney Bean if you see them at the cafe, and, to this day, I will forever state the pregnancy test is the only cursed item that's worthwhile. Lastly: you've only won the game when you can't win at all. Only those who have made Nubby immortal will understand.

If you want to make sense of whatever indecipherable nonsense I just splat out in the paragraph above, play Nubby's Number Factory. This isn't a recommendation, it's a threat: everyone should play this game so they can understand why my brain has been irredeemably changed because of it. Have your brain permanently rewired as well and join us on the number factory floor.

The Wind In My Hair and a Song In My Heart...Or How I Learned To Stop Caring and Keep Driving

Continuing with this year's theme of writing about games I've already written about, none of the flaws in Keep Driving could decisively knock it out of the list. Its importance to me is less about its actual gameplay beats, but about the unique pathos the game covers me in.

It brought me back to my punk days, to the brief Midwestern tours I went on when I was in a band. It reminded me of long road trips, the simultaneous ennui and wanderlust of traveling through rural America. The soon-to-be ghost towns, the sight of a skyscraper after not seeing a tall building for months. Cool wind in my hair, a steaming hot car. Rock and roll, road beer, road head and spliffs smoked with the windows down speeding through desolate backwood roads. Keep Driving is about the life that gets smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror, and the uncertain future that is beyond the horizon

To wasted youth, the best kind of youth! If you are young, take your time. Buy a beat-up muscle car and go on a long road trip. Experience the stress and joy of car ownership. Witness the devastation the almighty dollar has brought to rural communities. Or just buy and play Keep Driving to recreate this experience virtually.

The Weight of Expectations...Or How I Learned To Stop Caring and Make The Shot

As the Dreamer, I have been chosen to fulfill a sacred duty. The townsfolk will bear their souls, offer me their braids, and make a wish. I can accept their desires by cutting their hair with an elongated blade. I have to master a magic slingshot, as the only way these wishes will be fulfilled is if I land a fireball into a giant altar, far off into the distance. I have one shot, one week, and if I miss these wishes will never come true.

I spend my days practicing, talking to my mentor, holding in the panic attack that gets worse and worse every passing day. At night, I listen to the townspeople. Some wish for immortality, others for love, and few just want silly things like a different colored sky, but I have to contend with what would happen if these wishes were granted...or if they could never be fulfilled. If I accept the wish for everlasting peace, and I miss, will we still only know war? Will the Dreamer after me be able to try again for a world without violence? In those brief moments, the answer doesn't matter—I still feel the pressure of these world-changing decisions.

I memorize the position and rotation of my arms, I instill myself with a precise muscle memory, until I can make the shot over and over. When the big event comes, I feel as if my heart will pop out of my chest. It's night, the altar far off into the distance illuminated by smaller pyres. The ruins and landscapes I'd been using to properly angle my shot swallowed by the dark.

I hold my breath.

Extend the slingshot.

Shoot the fireball...and...

Dear reader, let me tell you that when I made the shot I burst into tears. So many things in my life were going wrong when I played Many Nights A Whisper, but in this one microcosm of virtual existence, I made people's wishes come true. I didn't care that I would cease to be a Dreamer. I was relieve it was all over. That at least in a videogame I didn't let anyone down.

GOTY 2025...Or How I Learned To Stop Caring and Learned To Walk, One Step at a Time

I find Bennet Foddy's proselytizing nature insufferable. Don't get me wrong, QWOP was immaculate in its ability to boil down the action of running via key presses in a mechanically interesting way, but I was not a fan of Getting Over It, mostly because I didn't need an annoying and disembodied voice urging me on through my failures.

Baby Steps, a walking simulator in perhaps the purest sense of the word, is the natural evolution of Foddy's gameplay and philosophical ethos, which is exactly why I initially ignored it. Even when glowing reviews came out about it, I was confident the game would not appeal to me. Even when I was convinced to purchase it, I thought the game would wash over me—I would have a couple of hours of fun with the mechanical juice of the game, laugh at my failures and falls, then put the game down when the journey became too frustrating.

Well, dear reader, not only did I march myself one step at a time all the way to the end, I even walked more after that. What pleasantly surprised me about Baby Steps was the surplus of heart and soul that was poured into the game. It was, indeed, the most human game I played this year.

You play as thirty-five-year-old shut-in Nate, who gets whisked away to a land of zany characters and well-endowed horsemen. With the mechanical weight of your controller's triggers, help the manchild take each sordid step in a long march. When I wasn't laughing at the slapstick humor of falling from great heights, or chortling at the game's comedic dialogue, which shows Nate as a bumbling, insecure specter of a man, I was taking in the beautiful scenery, admiring the environmental sounds (chirping birds, slow drum rhythms, snapping twigs) and getting frustrated when I lost all my progress after taking one bad tumble down a mudslide.

What makes Baby Steps my Game of the Year, was how these humorous moments were supported by more somber ones, those scenes where you can see how deep Nate's scars go. How unworthy he feels. How little even his own dad cares about him. How badly he just wants to die. Baby Steps is the only game this year that made me cry, laugh and frown, and for making me feel the whole spectrum of human emotions, I see no other videogame that deserves the title of Game of the Year more.

This is the one game on this list I recommend to everyone, even those among you who don't play videogames, or even if you think this game won't appeal to you. Give it a chance, be patient, and you'll see what happens when a game tries to replicate what the human soul looks like.

Stay tuned for next year: more words from yours truly, some familiar names and even new(!) guest writers. So long as I have the will and the money, Stop Caring will persist until I die. 100 years of Stop Caring!

May 2026 show us a kinder, more loving world. Be good people and take care of one another.