Is it that time of the year again? It’s high time to start talking about the new games I’m looking forward to play in the upcoming year. I may have written fewer articles compared to 2023, but I have written better researched articles. But, looking back on 2024 is for the next article. In this article, I’m looking to the year 2025. A year when I have been writing articles for 15 years. And I have been writing these gaming related articles for 12 years. And the third year that I’m livestreaming together with my buddy Klamath. So, on this day, I’m going to reveal the 10 games I’m looking to play in 2025. What games do interest my on the release calendar. Also, feel free to leave a comment in the comment section with your list and/or thoughts on my list. So, let’s dive right into my list. Note, this list is in a random order.

#10 – Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Stole Time (Nintendo Switch – April 2025)

This game was supposed to be released this year. Yet, this game got delayed to 2025. Fantasy Life was a charm RPG on the Nintendo 3DS where you played through a charming and adorable story. You were able to play in different lives like a warrior, magician, wood cutter, miner…

This title from Level5 got a small cult following. We were beyond stocked when the sequel on the Nintendo Switch got announced. Now we can’t wait to play it and the delay is a shame. But on the other hand, the game may be even better because of the additional polish it might get. Or maybe the game will release on the Nintendo Switch 2, which is rumored to be released at that time. Who knows, we shall have to wait and see.

#9 – Professor Layton and the New World of Steam (Nintendo Switch – TBA)

On our live streams, when ever there is a logic puzzle… Klamath says I need to wait before I say my solution. For some reason, I have a knack for solving logic puzzles. I can’t tell you why. What I can tell you is that I love games where puzzles play a central role. Games like Professor Layton.

It has almost been 8 years since we got a new Professor Layton style game. And if you don’t count the spin-off of Layton’s Mystery Journey: Katrielle and the Millionaires’ Conspiracy… we need to go back 11 years to a cross over with the Ace Attorney series. Add another year for the final game with only Professor Layton in a lead role.

But a totally new adventure by the professor where solving logic puzzles in a central mechanic in the world is… a wild dream for me. So, please Level5… You have two amazing titles upcoming for 2025, don’t delay them or don’t undercook them. I’m beyond hyped.

#8 – Tomb Raider IV-V-VI Remastered (Multiplatform – Febraury 14th)

Take this admission however you want. But, my first original Tomb Raider game was Tomb Raider Chronicles. Yes, I first played Tomb Raider V.

I have always been of the opinion that Tomb Raider V was a decent game and shouldn’t get the hate it got back then. I can understand that due to the departure on the original formula, like less ancient tombs and small mini-adventures… That it didn’t sit well with Tomb Raider fans. But, as a starting point, it was a blessing, actually.
Now, does Tomb Raider V have problems? Yes, it has. But with the upcoming remake of Tomb Raider 4, 5 and Angel of Darkness… We finally have a chance to see a more improved version of it. So, a week after my birthday, dear Aspyr, you may be sure that I’ll be playing the remaster of Tomb Raider V on my Nintendo Switch to enjoy Tomb Raider V how it should have been. Or maybe on my PC for added nostalgia. That’s some food for thought.

#7 – Demonschool (Mutliplatform – Q1 2025)

As long as your game has an interesting concept, I don’t really care if you are a small studio or a big studio. Necrosoft Games is currently placing the final hand on their new title called Demonschool.

Demonschool is a turnbased tactics RPG game in the style of Fire Emblem, Shin Megami Tensei and Persona. The idea is very novel and adds a new depth to the genre. Where each unit has their own role, since the weakest enemies can be killed with one hit. So, it becomes more a chess match than anything else.

From the trailers I have seen, I’m beyond interested. I could try and explain it here in this article but I feel like the trailer and battle mechanics trailer they placed on the Steam store page explains it better than I can in this article. Also, give the demo a try since, I really enjoyed it myself.

#6 – Demon Tides (PC – TBA)

While I haven’t played through the original Demon Turf, just yet… I have played through various other similar games like A Hat in Time.

From watching the trailer, I have been highly interested and I got a nostalgia hit for A Hat in Time.

So, I wishlisted this game, and I’m so going to give it a try. Since I saw various video’s on the original game and I wonder by myself, why I haven’t played it. So, Demon Turf and your sequel. I can’t wait to play through you in 2025.

#5 – The Hundred Line Last Defence Academy (Nintendo Switch & PC – April 23th)

Danganronpa and the Zero Escape trilogy are two series very close to my heart. And now we get a new title with those two writers creating a game together and directing it.

Kazutaka Kodaka and Kotaro Uchikoshi are working hand in hand in this game. You clearly see the influence of both their styles in this game. And it will even have a physical release.

To create this game, the studio Too Kyo Games has to take out a loan. That’s because a publishing deal fell through. Aniplex picked this game up as a publisher. And this game is being co-developed by Media.Vision, the company behind the Wild Arms series and various Valkyria Chronicles games. So we are in good hands for this title.

On purpose, I’m trying to avoid spoiling myself as much as I can. Since, I want to be as blind as possible when I play through this game.

#4 – The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky the 1st (Nintendo Switch/PC – TBA)

A RPG series I always wanted to get into was the Trails in the Sky series. Sadly, I was always distracted by other games or I had the bad luck of my PSP bricking and destroying my game.

When my PSP bricked, due to the internal battery leaking… I lost my save file as well and I was so annoyed that I didn’t want to restart the game right away.

So, the Trail series continued on and I saw amazing titles appear. Color me surprised that suddenly a remake of the first title gets announced and is coming to the Nintendo Switch and PC. So, I have a chance to play this game from scratch, and it’s totally remade from the ground up. Count me in. I can’t wait to start my journey in this series and see what I missed out on.

#3 – Date Everything (PC – February 14th)

When you see the title of this game, you most likely think to yourself: “Jonez, what in the name of …”. Well, I told you earlier in this article… That if your game has an interesting concept, count me interested.

In this game, you literally can date EVERYTHING in your house. If you have seen those YTShort skits by ProZD where everything is sentient, well… What if it is. And you can date those characters?

That’s what this game brings to the table. And this game is fully voice acted, has 100 (!) characters and branching paths. And get this, there are at least 3 different endings per character. You have the love ending, friends ending and hate ending.

Now, when I saw this concept and gave it a thought, I was like… Oh hey, this has a ton of potential. Since the potential for humor and amazing story telling in this is just huge. And as somebody who loves writing stories and articles myself, this clicked right away. So, I’m going to give this game a chance and see where they go with it.

#2 – Lunar Remastered Collection (Multiplatform – Q1/2 2025)

If I look at all the retro games I still want to play through, like Lufia, my list is getting pretty long. Once, I wrote an article about my backlog, and it has gotten even more out of hand.

So, if you give me a collection of games to play through to shorten my backlog, then consider me interested. Especially when it’s good old fantasy RPG.

A story where you are dumped in a fantasy world and explore it’s various stories. With the upcoming remake, I’m quite curious to dive into the Lunar series and see why various people have recommended it to me.

#1 – Paraside: Duality Unbound (Multiplatform – TBA)

Imagne a tactics RPG, where each battlefield has two sides. Yes, basically a light and a dark side so to speak. And can manipulate the battlefield by flipping the tiles.

Do me a favor and watch the trailer for this game. And then think how many interesting gameplay concepts that this game can have. How is the flipping mechanic going to work. What are the limits of this power.

I’m mostly interested in the story behind this game. Since it’s the style of story I love to write for my personal amusement. But, the gameplay is looking mighty interesting. Now, I have only to decide if I play this title on my PC or if I take it on the go with me on the Switch. We shall see, since the game will have modding support, so the PC version might be my best option.

15 years of game blogging

While this year has been a heavy year for me, I’m happy with everything I achieved. I have been recently published in a fan gaming magazine called ReLOADED by Dominus. And I’m so happy I was able to contribute my work to it.

Next year, I’ll be writing articles for 15 years. I have several special idea’s in mind and have been working on preparations for them. But, I’m not yet going to reveal what they are. Since, I want to leave them a surprise for all of you guys and girl. While 2025 is going to be a busy year for me, I’m sure that it will be filled with amazing adventures and unique opportunities.

When I look at the games that are going to release in 2025, I’m beyond stocked that I will have a lot of games to play and talk about in my blog. But, who knows, games on my backlog or retro games I find might grab my attention more and more.

And with that, I’m going to wrap up this article here. I want to thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another one, but until then have a great rest of your day and take care.

The Sunday Times has revealed the UK's top 30 wealthiest developers and gamers, including Rockstar's Sam and Dan Houser (#4), Frontiers' David Braben and Wendy Irvin-Braben (#10), and Rebellion's Chris and Jason Kingsley (#14), and Hello Games' Sean Murray (#17).

Other names on The Sunday Times Gaming Rich List include Felix "PewDiePie" Kjellberg (#25), Alastair "Ali-A" Aiken (#30), and KSI and The Sidemen (=#21).

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In the roiling waters of the northern sea, a mysterious oil rig has appeared whose lights can be seen for miles in the darkness. The foreman is a bit jittery, clearly worried about the platform's somewhat shoddy construction and his overbearing boss docking his pay for being behind schedule. When the drilling does begin, it's not oil they strike, but something far more sinister that splinters the sea floor with an ominous red, volcanic glow. And the resident scientist and his corporate suit boss only seem to want to feed this supernatural terror, the safety of their fellow workers be damned.

To some, I've just described the plot of The Chinese Room's recent walking horror, Still Wakes the Deep. But in a strange coincidence, Dredge is now following the same trajectory with its latest DLC, The Iron Rig - albeit with fewer left hooks throwing errant Coke cans to distract wandering nasties and more actual hooks reeling up yet more fresh horrors from the deep. This new chapter in Dredge's faintly cursed archipelago finally puts the spotlight on the mysterious Ironhaven Corporation, whose CEO is a dead ringer for Wake's weaselly boss Rennick, right down to his last-minute escape on the corporate helicopter. It's all profits before people in this unfortunate corner of the ocean, though unlike Wake's poor Caz, at least you can share in some of those benefits this time thanks to the plentiful supply of upgrade opportunities for your boat.

Over the course of three to four hours, The Iron Rig will see you revisit each of Dredge's main island clusters, hunting for fresh fish in new micro-habitats created by pools of ungodly ooze that have sprung up from the fissures created by the rig's drill. Each time one of these clearly very bad cracks opens up, the rig's scientist will task you with collecting various samples to bring back to him for further analysis, but some of these aren't easily won with your default set of equipment. Cue, then, a gentle and well-paced upgrade back and forth that will see you construct new buildings on the rig to unlock enhanced versions of your rods, nets and winches, as well as blueprints for new engine parts, bait types and other gadgets to help speed the process along.

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I keep seeing those adverts for that Ray-Ban and Meta collaboration, where like, they're smart glasses that let you browse the web with your eyes? Anyway, yeah, they don't appeal to me at all. Not as much as "Dateviator" glasses, which come courtesy of Sassy Chap Games and their upcoming dating sim Date Everything! As the title suggests: you date everything, from kitchen sponges to lampshades, as they morph into absolute fitties once you've donned the special specs. It looks incredibly dumb but in the best possible way.

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I keep seeing those adverts for that Ray-Ban and Meta collaboration, where like, they're smart glasses that let you browse the web with your eyes? Anyway, yeah, they don't appeal to me at all. Not as much as "Dateviator" glasses, which come courtesy of Sassy Chap Games and their upcoming dating sim Date Everything! As the title suggests: you date everything, from kitchen sponges to lampshades, as they morph into absolute fitties once you've donned the special specs. It looks incredibly dumb but in the best possible way.

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Developer Black Salt Games has confirmed that Dredge's highly anticipated second DLC, The Iron Rig, will release on 15th August, 2024.

The indie fishing adventure will, ahem, "lure players back in" with new fish, new boat upgrades and gadgets, and a brand-new storyline.

Playable at any time in your Dredge adventure, The Iron Rig sees you join the Ironhaven Corporation to "collect resources to build a formidable base of operations, unlocking new tiers of equipment, abilities, gadgets, and consumables". And as part of the adventure, you'll get to "revisit every area from the base game with renewed purpose".

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You've got to love Steam Next Fest. The video team has already put together a list of its must-play Steam Next Fest demos, but there's just so many new and exciting demos to try that we couldn't fit them all into one listicle! Well, OK, I guess we could have done, but that would have been one very long list video indeed...

On the video player above (or over on our YouTube channel if you'd prefer), you'll be able to watch today's livestream, where I took a look at the upcoming Steam Next Fest demo for Conscript. Published by Team17, Conscript is a survival horror experience set in the trenches of the Battle of Verdun. While this isn't the first time we've seen a horror game set during the First World War, Conscript still feels rather unique, even though its developer Jordan Mochi admits that he has drawn a lot of inspiration from classic horror games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill.

While I love a good retro-inspired horror game as much as the next person, one of the first things I noticed when I played the demo was how slow and clunky the combat was. This is certainly in keeping with games like the first Resident Evil but modern gamers may be put off by what appears to be a very sluggish and unforgiving control scheme. In Conscript you can only shoot, reload and melee attack whilst standing still and I found this very frustrating during the opening 30 minutes of the demo when I had to single handedly hold off a German trench invasion with only a rifle and a shovel. This mainly involved kiting enemies around the trenches until I could get in the right position to shoot at them or bonk them on the head, something that ended up feeling a bit like being chased around a Pac-Man maze by a bunch of Stahlhelm-wearing ghosts.

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Hello! Welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we've been playing over the past few days. This week, we lean on sailor superstition to scare a boat full of pirates, we voyage across space in vast gothic monasteries, and we learn a hard lesson about communication in an outrageous kitchen.

What have you been playing?

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We've Been Playing, here's our archive.

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One of the hallmarks of a great studio - I'm deciding this as I type it, but it definitely sounds legit - is that they can take on surprising themes and topics and genres and still feel like themselves. This week's game of the week had to be a Roll7 joint, and while I could have picked literally any of the team's games - they never made anything that was less than glorious - I've gone for Not a Hero, which was published by Devolver Digital back in the day.

For players expecting another skateboarding game after the first two OlliOllis, Not a Hero was both a genuine surprise and something that ultimately felt just right. It's an action game - there aren't many games that cram in more action - and it plays out in a side view as you race through various locations, smashing windows, taking cover, picking your moment and blasting enemies to pieces.

Yes, it's an action game, but it's also a sports game, of the same strain as the OlliOllis that preceded it. You're racing against the clock, but you're also following, or trying to uncover, that magical thread that will take you from the start of the level to the finish. The rules are very clear and the fail states are very obvious. Picking up ammo and stuff like that triggers a little timer, while your rechargeable health is there to separate a one-off mistake from an approach that is just a terrible idea. OlliOlli is yet another one of those action games - there are a lot of tactics games in this category too - that really reminds me of American Football. The full-ahead approach, but with a bit of thought to it. The precision use of non-precision aggression.

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I was stunned this morning to read about the sudden closure of award-winning British studio Roll7 by parent company Take-Two, as I'm sure so many of you were. It hasn't been officially confirmed by either company yet but there are reports out there and people talking in all-but-confirmation tones on social media. It seems beyond doubt.

But it was barely a blink of an eye ago - November 2023 - when I was sitting with studio co-founder John Ribbins, and creative director Andreas Yiannikaris, to talk about 15 years of Roll7 and what was coming next. They were each excited about new games they were directing there, with Ribbins hopeful we'd learn more about his one this year. But those games, I expect, are now cancelled. To me at the time they looked as comfortable and content as anyone in game development could be. Belonging to a big company like Take-Two, via its publishing label Private Division, looked good on them.

It makes me cringe to think we even talked about the layoffs ravaging the games industry, which have evidently continued well into this year. I didn't put this quote in my piece but it's pertinent now: when asked about layoffs and whether they'd affected Roll7, Ribbins said, "I don't think anyone feels safe, but I feel very fortunate that we became part of the Take-Two family when we did, and also very fortunate that they still back what we want to do. Obviously there's stuff we're doing we can't really talk about at the moment, because it's early, but to be in a position where that is happening when lots of places around us are struggling - in a position to keep doing what we're doing with the people that were doing it with: we're really lucky to be in that position."

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