Browse by year
825 games released in 2025 and reviewed here, best first.
825 reviews
An Early Access medieval smithy management sim from the makers of Tavern Master, praised for a satisfying early and mid-game production loop but widely criticized for shallow late-game content, frustrating logistics micromanagement, and a lack of real challenge.
4.4 / 10
A solo developer's free first-person horror debut sends players into an abandoned military base chasing atmosphere and jump scares, and reviewers are sharply divided on whether the short, free experience delivers or falls apart under scrutiny.
4.4 / 10
Read review of Frontier Outpost Review: A Free First Try at Horror, Rough Around the Edges
Danny Deer's tower-climbing action roguelike lands satisfying, weapon-specific hits but pairs them with sluggish movement and thin build variety that reviewers say wears out its welcome fast.
4.4 / 10
Read review of Hollow Survivors Review: Weighty Combat Undercut by Its Own Movement
A short, sharply written psychological horror game about losing your job and selling off your life to a door-to-door demon — brilliant in concept and writing, but so thin on actual gameplay that it barely clears the one-hour mark.
4.4 / 10
An aggregator filed this NZ$1.49 release as a Clicker; it is a 50-question Russian internet-meme trivia quiz with AI-recreated images, no sound, a fixed question order that guts its own replay value, and a review corpus that is 86% Russian-language.
4.3 / 10
AMGames TC's fantasy spin on the Theme Hospital formula has real charm and a clever extra resource layer, but reviewers describe persistent save-corruption bugs and an apparently stalled patch cycle that turned early goodwill into frustration.
4.2 / 10
Read review of Fable Hospital Review: A Charming Concept Undone by Broken Saves
A bike-racing spin on the beloved course-building party formula of Ultimate Chicken Horse, undone at launch by floaty controls, an unbalanced power-up system, and a level-building loop that lost the delicate risk-and-reward balance of its predecessor.
4.1 / 10
A desktop idle RPG about running a Kairosoft-inspired hero academy, recruiting and class-advancing students through branching career paths, backed by an unusually active near-daily patch schedule and hundreds of reviews -- most warmly positive, with recurring complaints about incomplete English localisation and an end-game pace that several long-term players say collapses into overnight idling.
4 / 10
Trinket Studios' mech-anime card battler, from the makers of Battle Chef Brigade, wraps a Saturday-morning-cartoon story and 75 fully voiced characters around a card-combat system that a Very Positive review sample loves for its warmth and presentation but frequently finds too easy and too shallow to justify the deckbuilder label.
4 / 10
A co-op game whose co-op doesn't work Broventure: The Wild Co-op pitches itself directly, in its own title, as a bullet-heaven survivors-like built around co-op play: band toge
4 / 10
A solo-developed, Scotland-set turn-based JRPG that wears its EarthBound and Mother 3 influences openly, whose Positive review sample repeatedly calls it a genuine, heartfelt labor of love with standout music and sprite art, tempered by a real and widely reported early-game balance problem built around healing-item scarcity.
4 / 10
A cursed frontier, defended with bubbles Canyon of Outlaws puts players in the boots of a wild west sheriff blasting through a cursed frontier, and it wastes no time establishing e
4 / 10
Same shelf, different products Car Mechanic Shop Simulator drops you behind the counter of an auto-parts store, stocking shelves, arranging inventory, and serving a rotating cast o
4 / 10
A short, charming incremental about smashing your way out of an icy prison, with a surprisingly good story and a satisfying power curve undercut by real stutter and pacing issues.
4 / 10
A two-years-in-development EarthBound, Undertale, and Omori-inspired horror-tinged RPG about a boy searching a dark dreamworld for his missing sister, whose overwhelmingly Very Positive review sample praises its atmosphere, art, and mystery-driven story, tempered by real complaints -- echoed even in glowing reviews -- about unfair, under-telegraphed combat and a padded, guidance-light middle stretch.
4 / 10
Team Soda's solo-focused, Tarkov-inspired extraction shooter about scavenging ducks became one of October 2025's biggest surprise hits, earning a Very Positive review sample for nailing loot-and-extract tension without PvP toxicity, though it's dogged by a genuine malicious-mod controversy and a conspicuous lack of controller support.
4 / 10
A MOBA-flavoured esports management sim that lets players draft, staff, and coach a team through full seasons, undercut by a shallow draft phase, a bare-bones match presentation, and missing tutorials that most of its small early review sample describes as leaving the game feeling unfinished.
4 / 10
Gyudon Games' minimalist arcade JRPG distills turn-based combat and Guild Point progression into fast, story-light runs, drawing a small but strongly Positive review sample that praises its addictive battle-shop loop while flagging AI-generated art, thin onboarding, and missing keyboard/cloud-save conveniences.
4 / 10
A solo developer's free-to-play, Tibia-inspired 2D MMORPG that leans hard on old-school nostalgia, undercut by a near-total absence of sound, unfinished key rebinding, and a population so thin that several players report never meeting another soul.
4 / 10
A PS1-styled Mystery Dungeon roguelike wearing a Resident Evil 1 mansion as its skin, whose large, Very Positive review sample repeatedly praises its love-letter genre mashup and retro presentation while sharing consistent, specific complaints about a punishing, post-launch-nerfed difficulty curve that Steam's own achievement data confirms most players never push past.
4 / 10
Heart Machine's 3D open-world spin on Hyper Light Drifter had a genuinely promising Early Access launch built on fluid combat and Breath of the Wild-style exploration -- then, nine months later, the studio laid off its team and confirmed development had ended, leaving a paid, unfinished game permanently stuck without a final boss.
4 / 10
ZuitLabs' incremental game about tending a strange, obsessive Machine wraps its click-and-lever progression in a genuinely affecting story about compulsion and isolation, and a Very Positive review sample largely rewards that ambition, though a smaller, specific set of reviewers describes the same design choices as frustrating, repetitive, and at times simply broken.
4 / 10
A NZ$12.49 seven-currency idle economy game whose own most-invested reviewers — median 23.7 hours played, well above its positive reviewers' 5.7 — describe a triple prestige system that resets everything for nothing, a save that "bricked itself" at 135 hours, and an achievement curve that halves at every difficulty gate.
4 / 10
Orange Popcorn's dark-fantasy top-down metroidvania, a perspective spin on the studio's HunterX lineage, whose Very Positive review sample praises fluid, responsive melee/gun/magic combat and strong boss design undercut by a thin story, inconsistent art direction, an underwhelming skill tree, and a rocky launch-week controller bug.
4 / 10
