Hello and Happy New Year - is it okay to say that now? I'm not sure where the cut-off point is. Some people still have their Christmas trees up. We had ours out before New Year. Welcome back to What We've Been Playing! Or as I like to call this particular edition of it: What We Played Over Christmas, because it's been a couple of weeks since we've talked.
It's been another strange, difficult, and yet somehow also brilliant year for video games in 2025. Triple-A releases have been sparse again, compared to the boom times of old, with a great big GTA 6-shaped hole left in the final few months of the year. And yet once again, every gap left by the established order has been filled twice over with something brilliantly new.
Is 2025 the greatest year ever for exceptional indies? If you don't think it is, it's surely on the podium. Alongside the likes of Silksong and Blue Prince, Ball x Pit helps back up this year's case. Taking the simple ball-bouncing joy of Pong and Breakout and turning into a deep, addictive, chaotic roguelike, it's just been revealed that it's shifted a million copies. I can't say I'm surprised. Given its huge popularity, it felt inevitable that we'd see more content arrive in Ball x Pit in the future, but I didn't expect fans to be eating so good, so quickly, and for the low, low price of nought. A trio of free updates are heading the game's way next year, and they're all totally free.
Read the full story on PCGamesN: The dev behind 2025's ball-blasting, city-building roguelike just announced three free expansions after selling 1 million copies
In this episode, Carlos returns and we talk about:
Dying Light: The Beast
Mind’s Eye
Ball x Pit
Lumines Arise
Arc Raiders
Vampire: the Masquerade – Bloodlines 2
Where Winds Meet
Instruments of Destruction
Outer Worlds 2
Deathless: The Hero’s Quest
…And more!
You can also hear the show on iTunes
Please send feedback and mailbag questions to SoVideogamesPODCAST (at) gmail (dot) com, or post them in the comments section below. Thanks!
The post So Videogames Episode 462 appeared first on Gamecritics.com.
Hello and welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we've been playing. This week, Kelsey discovers the joys and stresses of managing border control in Papers, Please; Tom holds off his Kojima dislike and plays Death Stranding; Victoria looks for anyone she can to talk to about Dispatch; Ed can't stop thinking about balls; Connor finds himself back in Guild Wars 2; and Bertie finds himself back in Dungeons & Dragons, getting everyone in trouble again.
