Every Game I’ve Beaten in 2025 (So Far)

Hello, everyone! It’s certainly been a while, hasn’t it? I’ve been trying to figure out how to make my return to blogging for a few months now, drafting up posts and then trying to decide if what I’m writing is “good enough” for a grand return. Ultimately, I decided that I just need to write something to break the ice, and then I’ll feel free to write whatever I want going forward. Since I originally started this blog to talk about video games, discussing my 2025 gaming thus far seemed like a good place to get (re)started.

If I’m being honest, this hasn’t been a great year of gaming so far. While nothing I’ve played has been awful, only a few titles have really impressed me much. That said, I am in the middle of quite a few games, so as I make monthly updates going forward, I feel optimistic that future months will have better titles to discuss. Let’s see what I’ve been up to in the past few months!

8. 100 Capitalist Cats

Starting off my list with a whimper, 100 Capitalist Cats is a hidden object title that will take approximately ten minutes to beat. As the title implies, the entire game is a single image in which 100 cats are hidden, and players find all of the cats to beat the game. This is actually, embarrassingly, a replay because I was planning on doing a project where I play every title in my Steam library, alphabetically, replaying anything that I’ve already played along the way. While I do want to do a large backlog project in the future, I’m workshopping it at the moment to see if I can do something that encompasses more than just my Steam backlog, so stay tuned for more information there going forward.

Regarding 100 Capitalist Cats, there is really nothing more to say here. The gameplay works, the art is cute enough, and there’s nothing inherently terrible about the game, but it feels like it should have been a level in a larger title, so I can’t say I’m terribly excited about it.

7. 1 Screen Platformer

1 Screen Platformer is another title that I replayed for the purpose of possibly including in an upcoming backlog project. Just like the previous title, this is also something that I don’t have any distaste for, but it isn’t something I’m shouting from the rooftops about, either. This is a 2D platformer built with replaying for speedruns in mind. The main gimmick is that the entire level can be seen at once, as it all takes place on a single screen (though the user is able to zoom in if the full level makes it difficult to see the character).

There are a few characters to select from that all play a little differently, but there are ultimately only two versions of the level: One default level and one hard level. Once you’ve played a few rounds and tried the characters, unless speedrunning is something you enjoy, there’s not much else to see here. It’s not a terrible title by any means, but I can’t say I’m eager to ever play it again.

6.Thrillville

Thrillville is a game that I remember quite fondly from my childhood, but I never actually finished it. Instead of trying to improve my park or engage with any of the management systems in this theme park simulation title, I just plopped down an arcade machine and played the various shooters and racing minigames available to me. I saw that this was on PlayStation Plus as a classic title and knew that I had to redeem my younger self and roll the credits for her.

Here’s the good part of Thrillville: This is a bafflingly ambitious title for the era in which it came out. This is part theme park management, part social simulation, and part minigame collection, all built into one game. While no individual segment is terribly complex, the fact that this all exists in one package is incredibly cool and I would love for something like this to come out in the modern day.

Unfortunately, there was one major issue with my Thrillville experience: I didn’t read the fine print of the PlayStation Classics version enough to realize that this was the PSP version of the game, not the PS2 version that I grew up with as a child. While most of the content is similar, that lack of a second analog stick made a lot of the arcade titles near-impossible to play well. Honestly, if I had known about the controls beforehand, I wouldn’t have picked this one up, so maybe it’s good that I didn’t realize this in advance. This allowed me to relive my childhood because once trophies started popping, I knew that I had to keep going and get the platinum, fighting the weird control scheme the whole way through.

With that, I do want to give a word of warning to anyone reading this who likes to trophy hunt: Thrillville has a super bugged trophy. I’m not sure if the trophies for getting five stars on challenges have a delay, are broken, or the description is misleading and I was doing something wrong, but I had to grind for about five hours on just that one single trophy, when I should have gotten it during my normal playtime. It’s not a complete dealbreaker, but it did leave a sour taste in my mouth.

Overall, if you don’t have nostalgia for Thrillville, I don’t think this will be for you. If the thought of not using a right analog stick to aim in arcade shooters sounds terrifying, then I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone eyeing it on PlayStation Plus right now. That said, I had a really good time reliving my childhood in spite of all the flaws and, while I never want to play it again, I don’t regret having spent a few hours finally beating this one.

5. Milo and the Magpies

During last year’s Christmas sale on Steam, I decided that for everything under five dollars on my wishlist, I would either buy it or remove it from the list. Milo and the Magpies was one of my purchases, and the only game from the winter sale that I’ve actually finished, so far. This is a simple point-and-click puzzle adventure title that will only take an hour or so to beat. While I don’t have anything much to say because saying anything about a game this short would be a spoiler, I will add that this has some of the most inventive puzzle solutions I’ve seen in this genre. It often goes on sale for incredibly cheap and while I don’t think it’s a masterpiece or something that’ll leave me thinking about it ten years from now, it’s engaging and a good use of a Saturday morning with a cup of tea.

4. Digseum

While I don’t really believe in the concept of a “guilty pleasure” because I don’t believe any of us should be feeling guilty about what we enjoy, if I had one, it would be my love of idle games. Playing games that will eventually play themselves because the numbers keep going up just brings me so much joy. These titles can be incredibly grindy, however, as my hundreds of hours in Cookie Clicker demonstrates well.

Digseum solves this problem by being an idle title that actually ends. There is a definitive end state of the game where credits roll after a few hours. The gameplay loop for those few hours is engaging and fun, however, as I would constantly be unearthing new relics for my museum that would bring in even more visitors and, therefore, more money. While finding new relics is an active part of gameplay that cannot be automated, once those relics are found, they generate passive income, so it occupied me for a Sunday as I alternated between maximizing my earning potential and waiting to make tons of money while doing some chores around the house.

If playing an idle game without the long-term commitment sounds like a fun time, then Digseum is well worth a play. Honestly, I would love an expansion so I could go back in and play some more because I had a really fun time and I wish there was more to do.

3. Duck Detective: The Secret Salami

I love the detective game resurgence that Return of the Obra Dinn has ushered into the gaming scene. Running around an area and collecting clues that can be used to solve a bigger, overarching mystery has such a satisfying gameplay loop. There can’t be enough of these games, and I’m finding myself constantly looking for more to play. My constant search for similar titles eventually led me to Duck Detective: The Secret Salami.

Duck Detective plays like a simplified version of The Case of the Golden Idol. The titular Duck Detective goes to investigate some strange happenings in a corporate workspace and gets drawn into a larger conspiracy. As the player investigates, clues are gathered and can eventually be used to solve the case by using Mad-Libs style word insertion. It’s not as hard as some of the other titles in this genre, but that makes it the perfect entry point for anyone who wants to try a deduction-style puzzle game, but is scared off by the difficulty.

The mystery, while reasonably predictable, is made entertaining by the cast of animals that the Duck Detective meets. In some ways, this game reminded me of the old-school Humongous Entertainment titles that I played as a child, with every single character having just as much charm as Spy Fox and Freddi Fish did for me as a kid. Given that I cite Humongous Entertainment as a huge part of why I am a gamer to this day, that is a massive compliment coming from me.

While not perfect, given the predictable plot and somewhat overly simplistic mystery mechanics, Duck Detective: The Secret Salami is the perfect entry point to the genre. It isn’t nearly long enough, at only two or three hours for completion, but a sequel is on the way and I’m certain I’ll be picking it up on day one.

2. Balatro

Does anyone else remember the days of having handheld gaming machines meant entirely for one title? Instead of a Gameboy or using an iPhone for gaming, there were toys that were dedicated to just playing a rudimentary football title or Snake. Well, I had one of those as a child, but it was for playing Poker for some reason. I’m not sure why I had it or why I enjoyed it so much, but I played it a lot. Obviously, that means I loved Balatro, because in addition to it being Balatro and therefore being completely amazing, it reminded me of my childhood.

Balatro is a poker-playing roguelike that has taken the entire gaming scene by storm. Basically, as the player progresses, extra cards can be added to the deck or special “Joker” cards can be obtained that will be used to give advantages in certain situations. For example, the first time that I won, I had a Joker that increased my scoring for every time I played a pair (two cards with the same number on them), and I had another Joker that increased my scoring by how many times I had played a hand before in my current run. Since pairs are easy to make, and I had an incentive to use pairs frequently, I racked up that multiplier higher and higher with each pair I played. It’s incredibly satisfying to try different combinations of Jokers and learn how to be victorious with each one.

In the context of this list, “beaten” just means I’ve won before, not that I’m a master yet by any means. I still need to play a lot more rounds to really feel like I’m “good” at this game. There’s definitely an element of RNG here, as well, that can be frustrating. I’ve had several rounds that were going phenomenally until I rolled a terrible boss objective that sank my entire run. Even still, I’m going to play many more runs of Balatro this year, and honestly, there’s every possibility that it ranks higher in my year-end review as I gain more experience.

1. The Roottrees are Dead

Finally, my number one of the year so far is The Roottrees are Dead. I saw this on Steam and bought it on a whim, not expecting much. It just seemed like a detective-based title and, as I said earlier, I want more of these and try to support the developers making them whenever I can. I never expected this game to be so good, and I’m incredibly happy that I can now shout from the rooftops about how everyone should be playing this title.

The Roottrees are Dead is a hard title to explain to people. It plays a bit like Return of the Obra Dinn, as the player is tasked with matching up names and photos in order to fill in a family tree. Where this game really shines, though, is how the player finds this information. Instead of walking through a scene to gather clues, the player gets an old, 1990s-style search engine and has to type in search terms to find articles and photos. Each article may lead to new search terms that can be accessed, and the bigger picture slowly gets revealed. This aspect reminds me a lot of Her Story, and is really what sets this apart from other titles within this increasingly-popular genre.

In terms of difficulty, which is always something that I consider when playing detective titles, I would say it is relatively on-par with Obra Dinn, but it has a hint system that is a lot more forgiving. I used the hints a bit in the second story campaign to give them a shot and they’re really well designed. Each hint is designed to lead to the next search term that can be used to identify someone on the tree, and it starts very vague, trying to hint at where the search information can be found. If the player is still stuck, there are a few more slightly less subtle hints available until the final hint tells the player exactly what to search. I loved this tiered approach to hints, as it makes it feel like you were still involved in the deduction process, even if you needed a little bit of help to make the full connection.

I absolutely loved this title, but it isn’t without its flaws. My biggest complaint is that the pace at which information is received is a bit uneven. For example, there is one specific clue that players will eventually stumble upon in their research that will blow the case wide open in all sorts of directions and it feels really satisfying in the moment. Ultimately, however, there is so much information there that it actually got me stuck for a while because I had trouble sorting through what would actually be relevant. I kind of wish that, for the sake of better pacing, that clue had been broken up across more articles instead of being one massive payload so it was less overwhelming. This would also help possibly even out the parts of the game where I felt like I was getting article after article that was giving me a dead end, or thinking I found new information that would result in a new lead, only to search it up and get an article I had already seen earlier.

Another smaller complaint is that, as I alluded to earlier, there are two campaigns in Roottrees. The first campaign is phenomenal and is absolutely worth the price independently, but the second fell flat for me. It’s hard to discuss without spoilers, but the way the second campaign is introduced to the player and how it fits into the main story makes it feel a lot more loosely-connected and makes the search feel a lot less rewarding overall. I’m not that harsh on it because of the strength of the main story and knowing that this second campaign was really meant to be more like a bonus story for hardcore fans, but I wish it had been stronger.

Overall, while I don’t believe that The Roottrees are Dead quite lives up to the titans of the genre like Obra Dinn, I had an incredibly good time with it. Everyone should be giving this one a shot and I hope the developers make another title like this in the future.

Conclusion

Well, that’s my full list of titles I’ve played so far this year! It’s not a terrible list, but it’s not a great one yet, either. I really hope I find some heavy hitters in the remainder of the year so I have a more exciting year-end wrap up. I don’t want to spoil my own list, but let’s just say that I already have some titles I’ve played so far in April that are definitely going to shake things up when I create the full list at the end of the year.

What have you played so far this year? Let me know in the comments below!