The truth about Game of the Year season is that it’s near-impossible to consider everything. No list could ever be thorough enough. No ranking could ever account for a full calendar year. With the volume of games released annually, there’s simply not enough time for any person — or group of persons — to fairly assess the entire spectrum of “every game released in the past 365 days.”
As a result, some hidden gems are bound to slip through the cracks. For every Hollow Knight: Silksong, there’s an Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist; for every Blue Prince, a Séance of Blake Manor — some lesser known gem that was every bit as exemplary in its genre as the more mainstream hits that nevertheless didn’t quite achieve cultural saturation.
So consider this an addendum to viraltrendingcontent’s list of 2025’s 50 best games. Here are 15 under the radar games we loved this year that we feel deserve some recognition. Let’s call it extra credit for anyone who has already finished their 2025 backlog catch up and wants to throw just a few more things to that list.
Angeline Era
Angeline Era feels like a long-lost PS1 game — but not in the way you’re thinking. Yes, it certainly looks the part, with its blocky overworld that looks like it was pulled right from Final Fantasy 7. But the oddball adventure game plays nothing like it looks, trading in RPG battles for “bumpslash” combat that has you tactically bumping into enemies to auto-attack them. To defeat enemies, though, you’ll first need to find them by searching the overworld for levels that aren’t marked on the map. Those two hooks come together to form a totally inventive puzzle-RPG that’s built on discovery. It’s up to you to prod the world, figure out where to go next, and learn how to master its unusual combat. I can’t think of a PS1 game that plays quite like it, but it has the spirit of the generation down perfectly.
Battle Train
I wouldn’t blame you if you saw Battle Train this year and wrote it off as another indie deckbuilding roguelike. That genre hybrid is old hat by now, yes, but Battle Train is anything but typical. Structured like an irreverent game show, players must win battles by building train tracks that connect from their own stations to their enemies and blow up the latter by dispatching explosive train cars along their route. It sounds like a strategy game, but it’s more so a board game-like puzzle as you need to deploy your cards wisely to make tracks. But that’s not even what I love about Battle Train. Its real strength lies in a hysterical overarching narrative that runs through it. All I’ll say is that it involves one very friendly turtle and a lot of dudes named Aaron.
Bionic Bay
Bionic Bay was clearly constructed in the Church of Limbo — a moody, wordless platformer that tests your logical reasoning as much as your reaction speed. You play as a scientist who screws up an experiment and ends up getting teleported to a derelict robot factory. At first, Bionic Bay is about scaling ledges and jumping across chasms. Then you unlock the ability to switch places with many of the objects you come across. Suddenly, you have to start thinking. With the right timing, could this box protect me from that laser? Can I drop a barrel off a ledge and swap with it to jump higher? What happens if I switch places with a bomb? (Spoiler: nothing good.) And that’s just one example of Bionic Bay’s abilities, with each one opening a new range of gymnastics — both mental and physical. —Ari Notis
Blade Chimera
2025 was an incredible year for ninja games, thanks to two Ninja Gaiden games and a Shinobi revival, but the 2D katana game of the year might just be one you haven’t heard of. Blade Chimera is an excellent throwback that wears its Castlevania inspiration proudly on its sleeve. Armed with a magical demon sword, players slash through dense pixel art environments in an action-RPG that gives you plenty of space to craft your perfect playstyle. Guns, sword, whips, and spells give you plenty to work with in a terrific Metroidvania that’s heavy on the “vania.” If you’re looking for some straightforward action delivered through crunchy pixels, let Blade Chimera be your next backlog assignment.
Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist
When it came to the Metroidvania genre, Hollow Knight: Silksong was the talk of the town this year. (Sorry, Metroid Prime 4: Beyond!) But if you asked me to choose the subgenre’s best game in 2025, I would personally go for Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist. That’s not a knock against Silksong, which is an incredibly dense and challenging action game. It’s just that the more traditional Ender Magnolia nails all of the genre’s fundamentals. The grim fantasy story takes cues from Nier to make a 2D adventure that’s both eerie and whimsical. Its dark world is filled with secrets that reveal themselves the more you pick up traversal upgrades that, sometimes literally, smash environments apart. With strong action that gives players a little more to work with than Hornet, Ender Magnolia is a real meat-and-potatoes kind of Metroidvania that I’d recommend any Silksong player check out.
Kaizen: A Factory Story
No game this year made me feel smarter than Kaizen: A Factory Story. In this creative puzzle game set during the rise of Japan’s mass production age, players are tasked with creating efficient assembly lines in order to create products as cheaply as possible. That’s accomplished by placing down gadgets and programming actions that will let machines cut, flip, and weld parts together. There’s no one right solution: Each puzzle is a test of your engineering ingenuity. That opens the door for a wealth of eureka moments that had me thinking about assembly line tricks I could build all day long. That hook fuels a nuanced story about the benefits of mass production, but what we lose when we trade in human hands for mechanical ones.
Titanfall 3? Probably not happening. But Metal Eden is the next best thing, at least in terms of a first-person shooter campaign that kicks all kinds of ass. You play as a combat-ready android who can be reconstructed ad infinitum. That serves as a narrative vehicle for you to dash, double-jump, wall-run, and grappling-hook your way through tight battlefields full of hostile robots and awash in standard-issue cyberpunk palette. Fights are pure chaos, bolstered by a creative suite of weapons that keeps Metal Eden feeling interesting for the duration of its brisk runtime. Titanfall 3? You don’t need Titanfall 3. We have Titanfall 3 at home. —Ari Notis
The Midnight Walk
Though VR is still a relatively niche genre in gaming, I’d be remiss if I didn’t fire off a few recommendations. After all, 2025 was a pretty strong year for VR gaming thanks to highlights like Lumines Arise and high-profile releases like Marvel’s Deadpool VR. What else did we love this year? V-Racer Hoverbike is a great racing game that uses your body as a steering wheel, Arken Age is a solid action game filled with intuitive motion controls, and Ghost Town is a downright excellent puzzle adventure from the creators of The Room series. If you only have time for one game though, don’t sleep on The Midnight Walk. The moody stop-motion adventure puts you in the middle of a Tim Burton movie filled with whimsical little weirdos and creepy monsters that will haunt your dreams. With one of the year’s best original scores and a great fairytale story, it’s a can’t miss experience. (And if you don’t have a VR headset, the standard console version will get its strengths across just fine.)
Rift of the Necrodancer
Rift of the Necrodancer takes a familiar note-matching rhythm formula but amps it up with an action game premise, as melodies become monsters that need to be vanquished. Like Guitar Hero before it, Rift puts that idea to work with a curated soundtrack of certified bangers fit for a strong music game premise. You can also play “Steamed Hams.” Yes, thanks to built-in Steam Workshop support, Rift of the Necrodancer has truly come into its own post-launch through the power of creative shitposting. Watching players figure out how to transpose The Simpsons’ most infamous bit into a playable song, complete with flaming traps to symbolize a burnt roast, has revealed just how clever and pliable Brace Yourself Games’ deceptively inventive action-rhythm formula really is.
The Séance of Blake Manor
Blue Prince is viraltrendingcontent’s game of the year, but it isn’t the only mystery game about a mansion that we loved this year. (I know, a really specific niche there.) The Séance of Blake Manor also won our attention thanks to its fantastic twist on the deduction genre. You play a detective who is called to the titular Blake Manor to investigate a disappearance. As timing would have it, you land there just as a gathering of mystics is set to take place. You have three days to figure out what happened before the group conducts a Grand Séance that threatens to have deadly results. There’s only a limited amount of time to get that done, as every action you take costs precious minutes. The goal is to figure out what happened while convincing as many people as possible to quit the seance as possible. It’s a fantastic murder mystery bolstered by strong writing and a wealth of Irish mythology that makes it as educational as it is spooky.
Skate Story
Skateboarding games had a bit of a moment in 2025, with Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 and a revival of EA’s Skate series, but none stuck the landing as well as Skate Story. Developed by NYC-based game designer Sam Eng, the city — and its skating culture — oozes through Skate Story. The trippy game isn’t concerned with such trite matters as “realism” and “accuracy,” as is evident in its surreal, kaleidoscopic visuals. Instead, it finds authenticity in vibes: the obscure and boundary-pushing ethos skateboarding was born from (and still lives in, at least in some corners). The “Are games art?” argument is tired and soooo last decade. But if the belligerents of that debate played Skate Story, it’d have been over in a second. —Ari Notis
Squeakross: Home Squeak Home
I’d usually argue that if you’ve played one picross game, you’ve played them all. The grid-based puzzle format is always entertaining, but hard to shake up in significant ways at this point. And yet, Squeakross: Home Squeak Home finds a way. You’re not just solving grids using number clues in order to draw a picture. The pictures you draw are pieces of furniture in a magazine. Once a puzzle has been cleared, you can place that object in your rat avatar’s house and decorate to your heart’s content. Yes, somebody put Animal Crossing in a picross game, and it’s fantastic. If decorating isn’t so much your thing, at least come for the rodent facts that get emailed to your in-game PC from time to time!
Time Flies
Time Flies captures an existential crisis in a jar. Developed by Playables, the team behind interactive artworks like Kids and Cars, the unique life sim gives players a simple task: Complete your bucket list before you die. Easy enough, except for the fact that you’re playing as a simple housefly who won’t survive longer than two minutes (that time varies, as the fly’s time mirrors the life expectancy rate of whichever home country you select). As depressing as that premise may sound, Time Flies is full of light — and not just the kinds that will zap your insect friend dead. It’s a slapstick celebration of life that teaches us to enjoy life to the fullest, not letting any precious second go to waste. You never know how much time you have left until the end, so why not check something off your bucket list today?
Wheel World
Have you ever met a Cyclist? Not just someone who bikes to work or lives in Amsterdam, but a true, died-in-the-spandex, capital-C Cyclist? They’re obsessive. One day, it’s an invitation for a chill ride down the beltway. The next, it’s Strava scores and custom diets and lap times — a full-throated acknowledgment that everything’s cool, so long as you’re balancing on two wheels. Wheel World must be what it’s like to live in that headspace, and it sure is magnificent. The twee open-world racing game really does offer a sense of unvarnished bliss. In 2025, riding off to an idyllic island where everyone talks in bike lingo and society is constructed around smashing PRs was legitimately transportive. An escape from the real world like no other. —Ari Notis
Wizard of Legend 2
Peak, REPO, and Split Fiction led the pack of an incredible crop of co-op games in 2025. But the best of the bunch was an under-the-radar roguelike about wizards competing for glory. Wizard of Legend 2 offered isometric action (and this might be sacreligious to some) on par with Hades. You mix and match elemental spells to crash through waves of enemies in a series of thematic biomes, with each one culminating in reflex-testing boss fight. It’s a blast. That you can do it with a friend, though, who can theorize about the best builds with you (and who can revive you when needed), makes this Hades clone one of the few that stands on its own. —Ari Notis
