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Blatantly stealing an idea, and just doing a pinned running thread of good/interesting games I've played this year. Fair warning, I have a ginormous backlog (who doesn't?) and am trying to catch up on some old shit this year.

Started the year off with: BALL x PIT (2025, Kenny Sun) Tons of influences/genres mashed up here: twin-stick shooter, bullet hell, randomized builds (don't call it a roguelite :P), and light city-builder. Fun and addictive early on, but overstays its welcome a bit, and 100% achievements was grindy.

Thronefall (2024, Grizzly Games) RTS-lite with a bit of tower defense. By day, spend gold to build your town's economy, hire soldiers, construct walls and towers. By night, direct troops and defeat waves of invaders. All buildables have preset spots, so strategy comes from resource mgmt / ordering.

Talented (2024, TurtleFox Games) Randomly generated skill trees! The trees are absolutely massive and can even be multi-floored; use your chosen skills to defend a fixed position against conveyor belts of enemies. The combat is simple and verges on auto-battler, but it's unexpectedly addictive.

Hardspace: Shipbreaker (2022, Blackbird Interactive) Dadsims in space! Use cutter beams, shaped charges, and tractor beams to decommission ships into metal salvage and piles of second-hand goods. But there's limited time, the company store's always more expensive, and this ain't exactly a safe job.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (2025, Sandfall Interactive) The closest thing we've gotten to a classic turn-based JRPG in years, with fantastic voice-acting and scripting, but also an example of being brave in writing and presenting stakes so dire that not everyone is guaranteed to walk away happy.

Cairn (2026, The Game Bakers) A mountain climbing sim where you move one highlighted limb at a time (QWOP-style) to move from hold to hold, set pitons, find safe leans to rest, and forage for supplies. (Also a touching sad story about determination, obsession, and being understood.)

Hades 2 (2025, Supergiant Games) Yeah, you all know what this is. :P I think in the long run I do prefer it to the original, even if the story is much more slow-burn and fragmented (I wish some of the beats didn't save their payoff until deep in the epilogue). But it's addictive dodgy smashy fun.

Winnie's Hole (2026, Twice Different Games) Still in Early Access, but there's a lot to like here. It's a body-horror Winnie The Pooh mashup of Slay the Spire and Tetris - a roguelike where your "brain" gets populated with actions, and you lay down tetrominoes to pick what gets used that turn.