Top 10 Games of 2025

0:00 Hi everyone, I'm Tom and here I'm going to be talking about my favorite games from this year and it's been a bit of a different year. Usually playing ton of games all of the time. I think I've been doing a fair bit of that this year still, but we had a baby for the first time this year and so obviously that's been a lot of the time. So I've probably only played about half as many new, you know, actual releases, non-Kickstarter things. That's the thing about this list. It's got to be final things that I have played and got. hopefully released in 2025. Although, you know, it depends on it. Things come out in different places at different times. But even more of a focus on solo because apart from kind of maybe one key thing in this list, generally a a lot of the things this year, especially since May, I've played solo. So, I'm aware there's been a load of things that I've missed out on that maybe we'll catch up on. Some in the start of next year. Maybe some that aren't on this list I didn't miss out on. I just didn't like them as much as these 10 or I didn't much like them at all, which is the case with probably a couple of heavy hitters. Maybe we'll have some kind of like chat stream and we can chat about some of the things that you think are missing cuz I'm sure there's going to be some people's number ones that I haven't even played on this.

1:13 There's some things like Sweetlands. I'd like to play that, but I can't get a copy of it. So, maybe next year. You actually probably see a few of these entries hiding back there on the wall. Any cheat putting it in here. It's Ash's Ascendancy, which is a two-player dueling card game. I'm not interested in games where you're fighting each other. That's another caveat I should put into my like descriptions of things. I play like peaceful games where we're not attacking each other or co-opy things or solo things of course. So, one of the things about Ashes, it is a dueling card game, but it has got a PvE mode in it where in this form you are fighting against a dragon born. So, you're doing all of your kind of, you know, one of a better term, you know, your Magic the Gathering kind of card play, but it's got loads of its own unique things to it. Uh, you're trying to work out putting out all of these creatures and spells and combos and things whilst trying to fight off this dragon born.

2:08 It's got a really cool dice system for the players where you'll roll your dice and the dice depending on which character you are being have got three different kind of levels of magic that they could be and different cards will call for different amounts of those to be spent and you'll be and you'll be manipulating them trying to get them onto the right side. You can always meditate, discard some cards to be able to put them on any faces you like. It's a fantastic system and I've been having a lot of fun with it. like crept in right at the end of the year. Now, the reason why this is kind of a like cheat putting it in here is because the big downside I've had with Ash's Ascendy is this is a new box covering the game of Ash's Rise of the Phoenix born and it was later Ash's Reborn and it that later got co-op expansions and loads of character expansions for it. So, this is the new relaunch of that game. The old stuff is compatible, but this is the new start that you can just jump in at. You don't need any of that old stuff. Here is a new fresh start for the game. But [snorts] in this starter set, you only get one thing to fight against. One dragon born and a couple of characters. There are a billion things with Ashes though that are compatible with this.

3:23 So that's the only reason that kind of the the new Ascendy product if you just want to go in with that line. Right now, it's quite a pricey starter set for not a lot of content, but it is compatible with a ton of stuff. I've got a few things for it. And I say like even the limiting factor is that single dragon born. Like hopefully other things will be available here and I can get more things to fight against. But as for things fighting with, I've managed to get some characters and stuff and yeah, I've just been incessantly fighting in this game and I absolutely love it. I think it's one that when I get chance to play some games with my wife again, I think this is going to be a game that we'll both enjoy together. It is not a game of, you know, building up all of this stuff and gradually gradually taking these massive wipeout ultimate turns. It is definitely a game of puzzling through like puzzling what dice you have available and the cards you have available, what the enemy has put out and how you can kind of combat that this turn. It's got a nice system of, you know, their things will only get to attack as many times as your characters will, but if you leave things out there, they'll get status tokens and they can do nasty things with them. But this entry kind of represents ashes as a whole, I suppose. I'm very late to the party. I wasn't interested in the initial release. Beautiful as it looked.

4:41 I haven't even mentioned that. It's got absolutely gorgeous artwork. It's every chord is a beauty. The dice are nice as well. like it's got upgraded components that are really nice to like little plastic ones. But yeah, I enjoyed just kind of the the new sets as kind of limited as it is right now, but it was going into some more of those characters from the like previous set, although it's all compatible. I have to thank uh Big Denplays. Don't follow him. Check him out on YouTube. He's got loads of playthroughs for Ashes as well. Uh for encouraging me like through his love of it to check out some of those other characters as well. And I'm sure it's going to be a rabbit hole that will lead to a load of other things if like the co-op mode for the old game will be available at some point. Yeah, that is Ash's Ascendancy. I'm sure that if like there was more to do and there was more enemies to fight and maybe if I'd had more time to it, it's kind of a thing that's come crashing in at the end. Uh for if any of those things were different, it would be higher in the list, but I am very very excited at this point to keep playing some more. Number nine is from Alleycat Games. It's Adah's Dream. In this game, we are doing a kind of alternate history where Ada Love Lace said to Charles Babage, "Hey, I can help you with your computer prototype if you want. You seem to be having trouble with it." The alternate history part is that Charles Babage said, "Yes, help." So, we are Adah's assistants trying to prototype a new machine. And we will do

6:11 this through taking dice from a warehouse. It's got a neat little system of how we'll take these dice. Uh, taking certain dice will enable you to play partner cards to get bonuses. And then on future turns, once we've got dice, we can use them based on their color to activate a different section of the main board. Whether that's lecturing in universities, traveling up and down the country, trying to get new partner cards that are more powerful, give us better rewards, or going to aid study that can let us get books and activate bonuses on each of these actions, get these assignment cards that will reward us with more research, going up these uh rewarding tracks every time you take more dice in the future. uh and getting these uh program cards that plug into your playerboards because your player boards are the prototype of this machine that we're making and they have got space for these dice to be placed in as we take the actions. And as we put discs out onto the board, we can replace them with gears that have math functions on them that have uh addition, subtraction, and multiplication. And if you completely fill rows and columns at the end of the game, if you fill them with three dice and you've got a program card that says, "I want all the dice to be green or even," then they'll score. Uh, but if they've also got gears in the middle as well, you will resolve their functions, not in like mathematical order, but just in the order that you've placed the things. Uh, and they will be the points that you'll learn for those rows and columns. So admittedly, seeing a game with, you know, dice placement and math functions all over it, it was

7:42 pretty appealing in the first place. But yeah, it's uh been really satisfying playing the solo mode of it. It's got a great easy to learn solo mode as well. Like the bot ignores a lot of the things, a lot of the normal rewards that they would get and goes up this reward track and said that at the start of the game they aren't going to get many rewards on it, but every time it loops around the die ticks up and they will be getting more and more on that track as they go up. There's another game I said about Ashes. I should say about Adah's Dream. It's got gorgeous artwork and lovely components and yeah, I think it comes together really well to make a satisfying game. Adah's Dream. Next, for the second year running in and what's now starting to be a tradition, it is a 52 Realms game from Postmark Games. This is 52 Jewels. Postmark Games make print and play games that often they are either rolling right games, a lot of their earlier ones are, or the last couple have been played with a deck of cards. You just need a deck of playing cards to either have a dungeon crawl.

8:39 That's what 52 Realms Adventures was. This time we are fighting against each other. It can be a two-player dueling game if you want. I don't want. So, what I'm talking about is the solo mode of it where there are different characters that you can play as. There's like a rogue, a barbarian, a priestess, and a merchant. At the time of recording, Postmark always add more stuff in their games later. You pick someone to play as with their own unique set of abilities. And in the solo game, you can play as against a nemesis version of one of the other characters. You'll have a hand of playing cards, and you have got abilities at the bottom of your sheet that want you to eventually play cards to them of the same number, of the same suit, a run of numbers, or a full house, and they will activate different abilities based on the character that you're playing. You can level up by playing high ranks of cards to level up slots to try and unlock more abilities later. Or you can play cards as items based on their suit that will let you manipulate what cards are, heal them back, uh be able to discard and redraw more things. And as we are attacking each other, everyone's got their own unique defend ability. But as you take wounds, you discard cards from the top of your deck into a wound pile that you can heal from depending on who you are.

9:49 If the priestess finds it a bit easier to heal, uh, but it's harder to get things back generally from that wounds pile. Things that just get discarded because you're using them to play get shuffled back into your deck as you go through. And so as the game goes on, you are getting more powerful hopefully like you've been able to play cards to these abilities. the longer you leave them and leave play more cards to those abilities, the more powerful their effect will be. But you'll try and level up and get some of the powerful abilities happening. But as the game goes on, your deck will be whittleled down as well. So, not only does it start being a bit of a panic mode that I'm running out of health and things are getting tricky here, cards in your deck have been removed and it's going to be very hard to keep track of the exact things that are going to be gone. So, it makes it harder and harder to like remember what you have in activating those abilities. It's a really really cool system. It's really fast playing game. It's like 15 minutes for a solo fight. It depends. Sometimes like some fights are quicker than others. The Nemesis is really easy to manage and they are really competitive as well.

10:54 There's always going to be, you know, you're playing with playing cards. So, if the the bot gets like lucky draws and gets their level up really quickly, it's it's not like you can't do anything about it. There's still like ways around it. Just cuz they got to level up earlier, it means they haven't activated any abilities earlier on. And yeah, it's it's not like it's um a huge deal in that, but it's always going to be a factor in a game where you're trying to make up suits like that, but it's about kind of manipulating what you've got. there with the items especially, there are often many ways around what you want to do and playing to the character strength as well with just like what was true with 52 realms adventures. Uh it's really really cool and it's another one that's kind of just just before the Ashes ascendancy obsession started. The the thing was just uh relentlessly playing 52 jewels. And there's something really satisfying as there was for realms. There's something really satisfying about playing with playing cards as well. Like I've got several decks around. Not that I ever play cards with them, that I ever use them for anything. So it's nice to be able to dig them out for a start, but play something using a normal deck as well. That's not like the the closest I've got probably in the last couple years is Incesscent Bolatra, but this is in real life. So yeah, 52 Jewels. Check it out. Next up, reaching all the way back to January, is Star Trek Captain's Chair. This is a game using the Imperium system. I was a big fan of Imperium Horizons, Stroke Classics, Stroke Legends, all using the the same kind of core game, but with

12:24 loads of different civilizations and some more complicated than others. This takes that core kind of thing and transplants it into the world of Star Trek and adds more things to it like uh exploring the different planets for rewards, trying to get majorities on these planets, a campaign system where you can carry over cards from previous games. So, it's a kind of even deeper experience gameplay-wise uh than Imperium was. Uh the bot is still kind of let's say as as easy to handle. You are just kind of drawing cards for the bot and following instructions on there. So, that's the kind of thing where it's simple. The core game yourself that you are still doing is still like a complex one, even more complex than Imperium was. Maybe even slightly a bit longer.

13:10 Uh, but it is so satisfying building all of these things out, trying to tailor your deck to what your particular captain wants. Uh, you're moving up tracks as well to make certain types of cards worth more at the end of the game to be able to activate more powerful effects on these cards if you've done enough uh, research for example. And the captains like the different civilizations in Imperium have all got their own unique flavor and like starting deck of cards, wants and things like that. They've got objectives that you are trying to complete on your way. Yeah, it is just a really satisfying game. I think the the only thing that the only couple of things that have stopped it being higher of like it is like a longer game for me anyway. Like I know there there's probably people whizzing through it in half an hour at this point, but I tend to be a slow player anyway. And in my situation at the moment, like I haven't got as much time for the bigger games. You say that some big games coming up. Okay. But another thing as well is that they always say that one day it's going to happen. I haven't really seen that much Star Trek. I've seen a couple of seasons of the Next Generation. I've seen a couple of the newer films. I've enjoyed it all. But I can't say like I'm like a super fan with any of it. So I know like I I definitely know from the chat in the live streams that I've done of captain's chair if you are a big Treky then there are tons of references and Easter eggs and you know all the cards uh even like the the jokey promo ones reference this

14:42 kind of running joke in this episode or this particular thing that happened. So like if you are really into it in that way then it's got kind of an extra dimension for you that it is made by you know not only based off the core amazing system that Nigel Buckle and David Torsy came up with for Imperium. You have got the obsession I don't think you'd mind me saying of David Torsy in being absolutely mega Star Trek fan who can pull all of these references out of the air and there's like there's another core box coming out fairly soon. There's an expansion that would work with either of them that I'm sure is going to be absolutely bursting with things as well. So yeah, uh I've had a fantastic time with Star Trek Captain. Next up is Vantage, a firsterson planet exploration game. At the start of the game, you are in a spaceship crash and through some dice rolling, it's going to take you to a particular part of the map and just based on what you have on your card in front of you, uh, a little vantage point uh, and some kind of descriptions of actions that you can do. You need to roam around and try and find what you want to do. You need to find yourself an objective and you will find it through the actions that you'll take through the things that you will discover on your journey. You will fill a gear grid that at the start of the game just has kind of your character in there and some actions you can take on there to uh

16:12 train a bit and level up and you can purchase some items if you should come across some credits. There is an absolutely like huge world in there. There is a great big map and so much stuff that like I I've played it about like eight or nine times like say that you could probably guess as soon as I said that I had a baby that like a lot of games I haven't played as many times as usual as well. Uh but for the ones that have managed probably a lot of these 10 uh for the ones that I have managed to go deep into like it's only about that deep. Uh but yeah, I I know there are kind of I I've come across puzzles. I know there are mini games in there. There's some kind of sealed package with something that I haven't uh found. I haven't been given an instruction to open it yet. Uh it's full of dice based checks, but unlike kind of the the standard roll to resolve thing, which they're saying like I'm against anymore. I'm a big fan of you elish horror and things like that.

17:14 Now although you are rolling to see what happened, you never fail an action. The consequences of rolling the dice are always like well this is how you succeeded but at what cost and you have got various you know time and health and uh food tracks that are kind of counting down your doom. Uh, but you can always spend skill tokens to cause you to roll fewer dice. And you have got places that you can put these dice on your gear grid as well. They will have dice slots on top of certain cards that will allow you to put otherwise bad results away. And uh hopefully you can then use all the dice from the pool and get to refresh all of those slots so you can use them again.

18:01 you can flirt with these uh huge beings uh and get more help from them. What else do you need to know from that? I think I was given like a a mech suit by some pirates at some point at the start of the game. And so that became like my starting goal. Let's let's turn this into something. Let's go down this path. Uh there is just as you would kind of want from this game. There is so much exploration in there. There are so many like hidden goodies that like I'm I'm sure like if you got to play this over and over and over again. Uh there is just so much to find in there and it has been exciting in all of my plays so far. Like they have all felt very different. I've always ended up with like fairly different gear grids. I I think I've probably only been in the same locations uh as other playthroughs a few times in there. It's another I think we could say across the board. They're all gorgeous looking games with lovely art. I forget to say it one of these times because like a broken record. Uh but yeah, I just love traveling through that world and finding out what will happen this time. And uh yeah, hopefully like it will keep feeling uh so fresh and different every time. And I can't wait to see more of the secrets and open that thing eventually. What's in there? Don't tell me. Number five is Metal Gear Solid. I am a huge huge fan of the Metal Gear Solid games. Well, particularly the first one more than any of them, but definitely like the first four at least.

19:30 So, it was highly anticipated to begin with, hugely biased in favor of it to begin with. Uh, just having the kind of the the story of the first video game playing through Shadow Moses Island already that is a huge boon having the charact. I was predisposed in favor of it. But there is always the danger of tying things that it's just going to be, you know, a more shallow experience that doesn't really make you feel like the the thing that is representing. But happy to say that uh designer Everson Matsuchi has really really brought that feel of Metal Gear Solid, of that tactical espionage action. It is a sneaking mission snake and it really feels like one in the board game. Uh, the gods are following certain routes based on their facing. They have a deck of cards that will make them activate.

20:24 Certain actions that you will take on your turn will make noise. For example, if you're well certainly firing weapons, but if you are trying to run instead of walk to get to your uh objectives in time, uh then you will be brought upon to roll these noise dice that might make you put an alert token down. So, the guards are going to come and check you out there. But you can also do that on purpose to make them go to a certain place where you know you're not going to be again. Uh you can like knock on the walls and stuff like that. There are kind of stealth levels mixed in with boss fights. It's obviously like a condensed version of the video game story to fit in a kind of uh board game length thing, but just kind of I think I played about half of the main story. So like there were plenty of replays and trying to like do things in a different way and replaying things when I filmed a few of them as well. So I can't say I've seen the whole thing yet, but I'm excited to. But yeah, what what has been true through like pretty much every level. I think the the tank level kind of fell a little bit flat and kind of ended up quite easy the the couple of times that I've played it. But other than that, all of the other ones, like not only have they been like a challenge and like scary to try and make sure that you are getting through these things, especially if you're going to try and uh do the other object, the bonus objectives to try and unlock more things cuz you will unlock gear as you go through that goes in your little uh PlayStation memory card styled save

21:54 cardboard tuk box in there. It is full of like in the main kind of mechanics as well. There are loads of things introduced in a new sneaking mission or introduced in a new boss fight that just kind of are impressive every time that make you think, "Oh yeah, that that is really like the it's it's really evoking the feel of doing that boss fight in the game or coming across that thing mixed in with loads of extra touches. Like I said, that your safe box is a little PlayStation memory card. uh the instructions in the manual or as you were told things in the scenario book are told to you by the kernel as well as if you go to board gamegeeek for a rules question cuz sometimes there's there's a few bits that are unclear in the rule book anytime you go to see an answer to something in the board game forums designer Emerson has replied to it in the style of the colonel telling you something in the video game which is exactly the kind of you fourth wall breaking thing that Metal Gear did from the start of you you're told in your conversations in the start of the game to press the start button and things like that and you can look up whenever you pick up new items and weapons and things. You can look up little codec things where there's a little conversation between characters describing how that thing works. It is so nicely done. It is lovely to like ju just have something with like oh this this little figure a solid stick just that is exciting but to have it in a really engaging and beautifully done

23:26 game is what you always hope for with one of these things for something that you already really like and uh yeah I'm happy to say that Metal Gear Solid knocked out of the park and to the point where like the a new thing that Emerson is doing is the board game of vampire by Survivors, which is a game like if you haven't played it, check it out. It's really good. You can get it on mobile and stuff now. But a kind of thing where you are moving around uh shooting things as a vampire, using various weapons, and your swarms and swarms of enemies are constantly coming at you to the point where by the end of the game, the screen is unintelligible with the number of things flying everywhere. And I would have been saying with the announcement, well, that's never going to be a board game. How could that possibly be translated? That's never going to work.

24:12 But it's also from designer Emerson Matsuchi. So there there is no uh there's no question. I'm checking it out. I've got confidence not just him him as a designer from before like Metal Gear Solid. He's designed plenty of great things before. Uh but yeah, it's certainly encouraging seeing the the massive success this has been. Hopefully it's done well saleswise as well that we can get a Metal Gear 2 game. Metal Gears Holy 2, you know what I mean? Anyway, next up is Galactic Cruise. It's very stiff competition at the top. I feel like any of these I have said at various points in the year like I would be shocked if this is not like number one. And I'm pretty surprised that Galactic Cruise isn't number one. But yeah, this it's very very very very close between these things. So Galactic Cruise, we are a space company sending people on Galactic Cruises. We need to build up our ships. We need to sell tickets to people. We need to boost our efficiency in making all of these things happen.

25:13 It's done with a really cool action selection system where you are placing a worker in one of these slots. Each of these slots corresponds to two different actions that you can take and you'll take two actions on each turn. You can repeat the same one if you want. Uh so you are placing for your choice of action. But in between all of these action slots are these spaces for cogs and you can put down these developments that are cogs in these spaces. And once you do, you not only get access to the actions where you've placed, you get access to the ones across from like connected by your development. Now you can even use other people's developments if you want to pay them for the privilege. And you can move up a track high enough that you don't need to pay anyone to use any of their things. So you don't need to build your own ever if you don't want to. Or maybe you just want to get into it hoping that other people will pay you. Uh so suddenly later on if if you've got access to all of these developments one way or another placing your worker in a space means that you have got access to two of a choice of the the two that you're on or the two that you're next to on either side. So two out of six. So it massively like changes the scope of what you want to get done. It's not as simple as like I just want to place here. I'm going to I want to place here but somebody's already there. I'm going to have to go there because it's got lovely worker bumping, a lovely positive interaction thing in uh worker placement games. Not all of them, but some great ones. Uh in that, you know, just because somebody's in there, it doesn't mean you can't do your turn, but they're going to get a little bit of a bonus for you pushing them out. They get a worker back, and

26:44 they also get to get a little bit of uh their choice of income for you doing that. Uh but yeah, there are loads of ways around getting what you want. uh you can move up and down a reputation track to get access to money or ads or fuel and things because you need a load of stuff to enable a launch to happen but there are so many ways you can kind of get this stuff done and I think that kind of it's having the own tool artwork beautiful uh but having that and the style of gameplay does evoke a lot of uh vital larda feelings uh it's like Definitely a more accessible one I would say. Uh but yeah, it it gives you that thing of having an innovative action selection mechanism, but and the core loop being that you want to get people on these cruises. You don't have to go and do a load of cruises. There are a load of uh ways to get points. Uh but having these particular objectives and a load of ways that you can get them done in that like the the reputation track feels like the track in the gallerist which could be used to get money in there at any point. Well, here it's for a load of different types of things.

27:51 There are four different technologies that kind of bend the rules of the game that you can put a development under as well. Uh rather than just linking up the actions uh and they will let you bend a particular rule, but also other people can use that bend rule if they are willing to pay you for the privilege. It's engaging. It's fast-paced. It is beautiful. it. While I'd say, and I imagine loads of people have, you know, echoed the Lerta feeling, it is very much its own unique game, it's just got that kind of uh kinship feeling uh to a load of games by a designer that I absolutely love. So, yeah, another one that I was predisposed to be excited for and like on the way to it. I got a demo at uh Essen last year from Paul Groin who has been uh uh a big cheerleader for Galactic Cruise since the Kickstarter.

28:40 And yeah, is absolutely right. It is absolutely amazing. It's on board Game Arena. So, I'm sure a couple of these will be. I think it's the first one actually uh of these games that I've said so far that's on board Game Arena if you want to check it out if you're wondering. It's it's a big game. It's a big purchase, but yeah, you you you can check it out on there. Even the solo mode as well. It's got an absolutely fantastic solo mode, too. Uh, and I think you can try that out on board Game Arena as well. Time of recording, we have Galactic Cruise, a staggeringly good game and I am looking forward to many, many plays in the future. It's absolutely fantastic and I'm very much looking forward to the achievement expansion that's on the way. That's a kind of campaign style thing. There are a couple of uh expansions for it now that add uh different ways of playing that. They've got like rooms that link up uh with different bonuses if you can match the sides of them and their own like particular flavors, too. Yeah, it's fantastic what is available so far.

29:31 Backer of the future one. Very excited. Check it out. Galactic Cruz. Number three is The Anarchy. Another one. What? Anarchy is not number one. I should just do joint for all of these things. The Anarchy is a sequel to Hrien's Wall. This is a flip and fill style game. Uh but like we're saying for Hrien's Wall that it's a flip and fill game with a lot going on. You know, it may look like if you're just glancing at it for the first time, like a great big spreadsheet. There are so many uh boxes to fill in, so many little things going on. Well, what if you took that from Hrien's Wall and added more things to it? That is the anarchy. I have to say, as someone that was obsessed with Hrien's Wall, played through that whole solo campaign, I've played it so many, many, many, many, many times, and I would keep playing it. the anarchy has kind of swooped in and replaced it by being that very similar core thing of uh getting all of these resources in different um things like wood and stone and stuff and the different kinds of workers having similar ways of you know spending those to go up particular tracks unlocking bonuses in income and things like that but just adding more of everything. the right sheet with all of the various mini games on it. There are more different kinds of things on there this time and everyone is very tempting to try out. There is a whole separate section of these different castles and

31:04 one of the things that you can do uh over the course of round is get enough uh military strength and resources and things to go over there and attack these various you non-player castles for rewards and also fewer punishments because if you get held back on that track uh then you'll get less choice of these uh points cards later you'll go further back internal for picking those although I've only played the Anakis solo so it's like you versus the the bot. You won't get a choice of your path card if you lag behind on that. It's got another fantastic solo campaign built into the like the booklet is in the box. It was a free download in Hadron's Wall, so it's not like you had to get an extra thing for that, but there is actually a book in the box for the Anarchy to do it. And it is even better than the solo campaign for Hadron's Wall in encouraging you to go down these different paths, giving you, you know, challenging objectives and things. But I would say even without that campaign, the various sections and you know mini games in uh the the right sheet as I said they are all more enticing now. But I say that there's kind of areas particularly like maybe the uh gladiators in Hadrien's wall like I tried it in the one bit of the solo campaign that made me but generally I don't really like the the risk of doing that thing. There is just so much that is just like I I want to try all of these bits. Which which one am I going to prioritize based on what I've got?

32:26 But yeah, it is uh is even more satisfying. If you are a fan of Hadrien's Wall, then yeah, there's just even more for you to love in this. If you haven't played Hadron's Wall, I think that's available on board game Marina to give a go. Uh but yeah, it may be trickier to jump in at the anarchy given that that it's that core system with more stuff on top of it. The way you're getting attacked as well is uh more interesting that in the originally in Hadrien's wall you were getting attacked by the picked and you needed to protect yourself from the left center or right uh and you would draw these cards at the end of a round and it would tell you where you're getting attacked from and if you had enough strength on the various sides to defend there. Uh, in the anarchy you are being attacked your your castle is being sieged as well at the end of every round by various methods and you can see the you can see every method that you're going to be attacked by. Uh, but certain cards enter face up and face down. You can get abilities to look at the face down ones.

33:26 Uh, but they will not necessarily say the direction that you're going to be attacked from. And one of the key things is like through progressing along tracks, you are building up the defenses of your castle in the towers and the walls and the gates and the moes. And you've got a little dice-based representation of your castle getting built up on the table as well. It is just so good. I have like I I've started the solo campaign which was paused by the birth of my baby. Uh but yeah, hopefully we'll get back to it at some point because uh I've I've played it a good number of times now and it is still just so exciting. Uh and uh yeah, maybe I've had comments about like how like looks like a spreadsheet. I would never want to play that thing. It is the most exciting spreadsheet uh you will find.

34:13 It is so so good. The anarchy. Okay, getting right to the top now. Number two is Aridia, the paths we dare tread, which you can find extensive coverage, probably the most coverage I have ever given a game on this channel. You can find like 20 like probably hour-ong uh playthroughs uh for Aridia on here. This is an enormous box adventure game uh where you will alternate between these kind of exploration and story periods and then eventually you will lead to a fight and you will have a puzzly combat session. The players are these outcasts that need to go around Aidia doing favors for people to try and get these tokens to you kind of uh earn our earn our freedom like redeem ourselves in the eyes of the world. And with that kind of vague goal at the start, you are set out into the world. Go wherever you like on the map and just go to places and uh explore there. It's got like the presentation of the game like not just like in lovely artwork and stuff.

35:20 Components are is a is a big expensive game, but in that big expensive game, you get top-notch things. Not just in, you know, the the like the the metal coins. The world map is a dual layered board with these punched out hex's. And when you go to a new place, uh you will flip over these hex's to see what you found there. And it's all resettable and stuff. None of it's um legacy. When you come across a new enemy to fight, uh there are advent calendar style boxes that you will open a new door of and reveal the minis you're going to be fighting against. The the player minis and all of the enemy minis. Not only are they all minis, they are all prepainted. So, you've got this kind of broad exploration on the world map and you've got a travel system in there that is kind of, you know, giving you exhaustion as you're trying to travel from place to place. And it there is a travel deck that's going to trigger that. But there are also events that can get shuffled into these travel decks and make certain story things happen and make, you know, certain things you will do in missions will add cards to those decks and things will reoccur. uh something that is like not a particular fan of um Robinson Crusoe on the whole, but I remember that being a key thing to when we first played it way way way back when. Uh the the best thing about it was that you could sometimes do things in that game and it would shuffle cards into decks and those story things that you did earlier on would come back to haunt you or come back to help you. Uh but yeah, that's a really cool thing in Aridia. As

36:51 you zoom in and go into the places on these hex's, there are loads of map sheets and everything's organized into these boxes just as the game comes. The organization's great and you will lay out these uh cards with the kind of grid of where you are in there. There are a load of things that will change as you go on and you know certain characters will be there or not there. Maybe something's been destroyed or something's been changed over like as a result of something that you've done or something you've taken too long to do. I don't want to spoil any particular story things that happen in there because it was so good stumbling upon them, but there are so many things in our, you know, like 40-ish hours that we played.

37:36 I say like we got like halfway a third of the way through the whole thing. Uh there are so many things that we found in there. These story events that were wildly different, often wildly surprising at times. We didn't expect to go into some kind of uh side story thing. There were really funny things happening in some of them as well. I was surprised by how inventive the game kept being at uh having you stumble upon these different things. And uh yeah, again I want to just go into like um some memorable examples, but I I think that they are best left if if you'd like to check out, you might have to scrub through about 20 hours of playthrough uh to find some particular ones. But yeah, the there were some absolutely fantastic things in there. And that is kind of the key that um we loved the the exploration and the roaming around of it. And when there are NPCs in there, like it's just me and my wife or H playing. Uh so like you will go into a town, you will go to a certain NPC that you can see on the map and you say I want to interact with that person. Okay. The other person or one of the other players will take control of that NPC. They are given some traits and uh you know uh maybe some mannerisms of that person and are encouraged to you know act it out. You are given their responses. Uh so the like in a kind of you know trying to you know emulate an RPG as these things are are often trying to do uh the the player

39:08 whose turn it is is encouraged to just try and have a conversation with this NPC ask them things and as the person with the card you know gets asked a relevant question can give uh a relevant response and if they uh do particularly well at that they can be rewarded with these uh cubes I can't remember the name of now that will give you boosts to uh roles later on. That part of it, that whole exploration thing, being the NPCs, coming across these uh exciting or funny or surprising stories. Absolutely loved it. The other side of the game is, as I said, puzzly combat in which you are given weapons and abilities and things that will attack in certain directions and the enemies have these damage grids and you are often doing damage uh adding damage to these various points.

40:01 Sometimes it will be a weak point that will kind of branch off and do some extra damage elsewhere. Uh but it might power the enemies up, make them angrier. We did enjoy that for a long time, but I would say and it could be that we only picked two characters. It could be that our combination of characters or the way that we were playing them uh held us back. I would deny that. I'm sure there's uh there's been some comments to that effect somewhere along uh in certain battles of the playthrough. Uh but I say the combat section is where ultimately we got a bit fed up of it to be honest. But it didn't matter because we still played 40 like mostly amazing hours of Aridia and not long after we decided I think I think we're going to stop this now. Uh our daughter was born so we would have had to stop anyway. And Aridia is the last kind of huge thing that uh me and my wife have played together. But that is another thing that like not only was it uh mostly incredible experience and something very like new and different in the world of these uh you know big box adventury things that I'm always excited to try out. I want a big campaign thing. I might not have the time to finish big campaign things but I always want to keep trying uh new ones. And I think on so many fronts of uh presentation of design of bringing that like I haven't played really uh a tabletop RPG. So like it is just imagining what it is like or

41:32 seeing you know people play it on the internet and imagining that's a representation of what it's really like. Maybe it is. Uh but um yeah I think this is the closest that has come through like encouraging the acting out of things. not like massively. I'm sure it says in the ruble like you don't have to do this if you don't want to. Uh but through gently encouraging uh you to do that how it reveals uh the bits of the math, how the world changes as you interact with it, how much there is to find in here. Like I I I think people have been saying like 100 plus hours in their final completed campaigns. It is so ambitious. It is so well done. I say ultimately like the the the only drawback we had is we got fed up of the combat and I say that that could be because of things we did. Who knows? Uh but yeah, still despite that, despite only getting as far as we did, I say only like there aren't many games that we get to play like 40 plus hours of. Uh so like Aidia kind of stands at the top of um time played in a lot of games.

42:42 Certainly this year it is just an incredibly well-made kind of unforgettable experience. And maybe like one day in the future we'll get to uh maybe there'll be an Aridia 2 we can have another go at. Maybe one day we'll be into trying something big and adventury and we will uh dig it out and give it a three-player play through. Either way, it is a fantastic experience and as I say, it is uh a huge box, a huge commitment both in terms of kind of your time and brain space and your money as well, but I think in kind of execution and components and stuff. Yeah, it's it justifies all of it and it is fantastic. Aridia. And finally, my favorite game of 2025 is Speak Easy by Vital Lasserta. already been mentioned in a game he didn't even design as you can see from things that probably aren't covered up by box images. I know how mirrors work. I can point at things. Uh there are a lot of things you may even be able to see speak easy and some other games represented over here. Which LERA games are these do you think? V Lerta at this point one of my favorite designers.

43:53 I think surely the designer I have the most games by. He designs these often heavier games uh with interlocking systems that form some kind of core loop where there are loads of ways to get what you want done in there. Whether you are trying to run a car factory efficiently, whether you're trying to rebuild the streets of Lisboa, escape after a heist, here we are hooch runners, run runners. We are basically the the mob uh in the era of prohibition in Manhattan and we are trying to evade the law and get the booze into the hands of the people where it belongs. And so obviously having seen that episode of The Simpsons, I know all about uh prohibition and stuff. So as a theme and stuff, being these mobsters, get getting to be a mobster in a board game that doesn't have like fighting between the players is like a huge plus to begin with, but it is nestled in like another one of Vital's games where it has a unique action selection thing. And here it is more simple than a lot of them I think in that you have these different people that you can go and speak to.

45:08 They will sometimes be grouped up and depending on the particular person that you speak to, you will get some different bonuses as well as kind of a main action. Whether that is building more speak easys out on the board, moving your trucks around that can go and pick up hooch from your stills or from the rumr runner boats that are going around the island. Building up your strength. going to send enforcers to speak easys and your various nightclubs and cassinos and things later on uh so that they can continue uh to operate in the presence of the law. Getting to play these various operations cards that will boost your leverage in getting those enforcers out onto the board uh and just basically up give you initial bonuses when you play them, but enable you to take these extra actions. And it just plays out really beautifully that at the start we don't we only have kind of one thing out uh in setup. We don't have much of a presence in the city but neither do the police and the other mobs. They only have a couple of things out there. But as the game builds up the the competition like even at two players or I have actually played it multiplayer actually uh back in them olden days this year but yeah I've played it a lot more solo. But either way, even just in the kind of two-player representation, uh the there is stiff competition for a lot of the the land that is out there. And there is there is like always trades off of stuff of like you could go into somewhere that is nice and empty to begin with. You've got warnings of when police and other mobs are going to arrive in uh particular areas. You might want to go into a free one so you can, you know, for at least a

46:40 couple of rounds, you can just do what you like and not have to worry about any of that stuff. But eventually it's going to creep up on you. Eventually, the police and the other mobs and the other players are going to swarm all of these areas and it is going to end up really claustrophobic and you'll end up paying a higher price to fight some of those things off later on. Whereas, if you go somewhere with a bit of competition earlier, that competition is a little bit weaker and it's never going to happen again later on. There is a lot of freedom as to how you select these actions as well that like it is work placement and only one person can go in a lot of the spaces that are out on the board. But there is a park location that you can come to and if you are willing to give the person you are pulling out of an action spot a little bonus then you can free up the spaces for yourself. There are often, as you would expect from a visit game, a load of different ways of getting what you want as well of activating these bonuses and getting to take actions that you didn't necessarily need to go to the main board for. Uh, getting together some uh, lovely combos or extra activations of things because it is a very tight game that you will have. I think it's 11 like worker placements, not necessarily like actions that you'll take because sometimes things will uh certain turns will trigger more things than others. Uh but yeah, you start out with four capos that you will place in these uh spots to go and have a word with someone. Uh but as the game goes on, they will get whittleled away. So in the final round, you're only placing one of them. You're only taking one action. So for lots of different reasons, it is a very uh tense tight kind of a game. But yeah, it is I

48:12 I I feel like this is going to be maybe not necessarily the the most simple one, but there is something about the way this is laid out. Maybe it is that kind of being a more like standard worker placement presentation in the corner along with like all of these extra sneaky ways of doing things. Uh maybe it is just the the flow of the game. something particularly seemed to flow about the the learning of this. It is not, you know, a a simple game by any means to get to grips with and maybe having like a lot of experience with Vital Games helps towards that. Maybe I've become desensitized and I'm out here saying that it was a smoother experience where other people would disagree. But yeah, I I think there is something special about this. Not just in the theme and alloy, it's exciting like life crime stuff. That was that was cool about escape planet as well that in that you are criminals that have just done a heist and you are trying to uh escape with all of your money intact.

49:15 But here we're all kind of different families in a larger crime syndicate that have been told by our boss like we'll get a lot more done if you lot work together. And there's these, you know, non-player mobsters that are going to be coming into the town. they're going to be enough to deal with. So yeah, I I love that we uh like whenever like mafia things come out. Not that there's been a ton of them, but there's been like Scarface and there's been a Godfather game and stuff. Like I know that inherent in all of that stuff is going to be a load of um backstabbing and fighting between players perhaps you would say as it should be. But it means that I'm not interested in playing any of those games. Uh but that is another like another notch for speak easy say that like I can get involved in this uh theme that appeals and we don't have to fight with each other. Absolutely fantastic for a player like me. But yeah, it is the kind of engaging uh thoughtful often puzzly gameplay that uh Beetle is known for. a load of different ways of getting what you want done, but through some combination of the theme of the core worker placement and I'm sure a very experienced uh designer and team behind him developing. Uh it just works fantastically. The solo mode is so good as well. It is very very easy to run like it's just drawing a card and following some instructions. You are not spending an enormous amount of time on the bot turn. the bulk of the game is spent concentrating on yours, yet the

50:47 bot is still like is is still behaving as an opponent would, which is kind of what you perfectly want. Like, as much as I love kind of involved AIS in games and stuff, like in heavier games, I'm finding it hard enough to concentrate on what I'm doing and get the things straight for me, never mind having to like keep track on what some other player is doing. Uh but yeah, it's uh it's really really well done in speak easy and yeah, just massive uh congratulations to everyone involved because it is uh possibly my favorite visa game now. It's really really tough because it has always been the gallerist for solo and canan for multiplayer. It's 100% top three, but yeah, I I think it may overthrow one of those. I need to play with my wife. Like my wife hasn't been a huge fan of a lot of vetos games, but she loves Kamban. So I wonder and as I say, there feels like there is a flow to this that uh makes it more approachable than some. Like not necessarily that it's going to be a lighter game, but something just seems to click about the the learning and playing of this. Like I can't say enough good things about it. It's Big Easy. It will be coming back to the channel at some point. I have bent the rules here because I did say at the start, didn't I, that it's only things it's only things that have released and it's only things that I've got final versions of that I've played. As you can see from my

52:17 strange like box lifty thing here, that's Speak Easy. I've got a prototype of Speak Easy, but it's just that final things haven't made it to the UK yet at time of recording anyway. And as you can see from me play through, the price is pretty much like a final thing and the rules haven't changed. So I've bent me my own rule there, haven't I? But I'm happy to do it for speak easy. So there we go. That is my top 10 favorite things of this year. But there is also another game that I had a good run on that I want to mention. An honorable mention, like my number one new to me game that is not from this year, and it's a game I never thought that I would buy or or play again probably. It's Kingdom Death Monster. Yes. keeping up with all of the latest things. I am jumping onto a game about 10 years after it came out. And it is always something that I kind of looked at from afar and being like, "Oh, I I would like to try that out, but like when they make a stande version of it, if they ever do that, then yeah, the price tag is just too high." And it is like it it I know that it comes with lovely minis and it's got all of this involved. Like you can put particular armor on your things. You can magnetize it if you want to. You can do all of this fancy stuff, but uh like for for the longest time, I never painted any minis. Like do it a little bit more now.

53:32 Hey, here's one from Primal that's on my desk. But way back in the lockdown, like before the like official simulator existed, and I think like me and a friend and Ra for a bit, we we played a few sessions like in our load of tabletop simulator lockdown uh sessions. Uh we played a few games of it and like really enjoyed the boss fights. I think we only ever played against like the the starting lion and a few more fights against it and kind of thought I really enjoy this. Really like the the AI card system and the the the loot system and oh we're starting to build a settlement and things like that and like oh like this but it like a lot of things in those tabletop simulator things kind of fizzled out and never went anywhere. I didn't really think about it much and I don't really know what spurred it on this year. But I know that like the the combination of whatever brought it back up in my mind and finding a deal of uh getting it for still a hefty price tag but half the hefty price tag that I thought it was. I got it in physical form and while I've only played it I think about 12 times. say only like I said I've had a baby like any game getting to anywhere near those numbers is uh unprecedented this year uh but like it's kind of a combination of uh what what hit me over the edge is uh big D plays another mention uh he has done like loads and loads of playthroughs on his channel but loads of series of kingdom death monster and in the oming and aaring of do I take the plunge and try this thing out I had been watching

55:05 one of his older series and started to see some of the things that can happen in it. Like I knew that you go out in hunts and there's like a table that you roll on there and loads of uh random events can happen, but seeing like a few sessions in to how settlements build up and seeing like an experienced player, like someone who knows what they're doing make good choices in there and start to bring this kind of deep sprawling thing out of all of these various places where you can build all of this gear, the different events that can happen to your settlement, the different uh technologies that you will end up unlocking and how they branch out and how they unlock more things and unlock more actions for your characters to take in these fights. I have really enjoyed the the battling side of it.

55:51 It's a lot of dice chucking and stuff. The gear grid is nice. You are building up these cards uh that have like they often have here's a bit of Kingdom Death on the table that's been on the table for months now. I haven't played it for a while at this point. Uh, but they've got like little colors in various sections of the cards, and if you can match up those colors, uh, you will often unlock special abilities on, uh, cards that require it. The fights have been fun, and the four probably different bosses that I've fought against have all been like wildly different, often like really, really tough, but uh, a blast to play through every one of them. But it is in the building of this settlement as well that um I'm starting to see like not that I've done a good job of building it up. It's like my first proper play of it in real life, but seeing it evolve and seeing like the the people kind of get XP, build up these uh abilities, get these fighting arts, get these impairments, and often die and not be available anymore. seeing the kind of journey and the story that the game tells. That's kind of the the key that I hadn't really been thinking about uh previously in in seeing things about it as a boss battler in playing the few kind of um lighter sessions on uh tabletop simulator that we did years ago. We kind of seen that like the introduction to the the boss fight bit.

57:14 But as well as seeing a uh more depth and more things in that, it is kind of the key of like it being this settlement managing thing and settlement storytelling mode that like it is telling a really cool different uh often kind of horrific and strange story of what is happening to these survivors in this strange scary world. And I know there are like one of the things of coming into a game like 10 years on is that there's so many expansions and extra things to this and when I see like uh people making new playthroughs of it, they're using things like beyond my mild comprehension of the the base game. So I know there's a lot of things to explore. I've only played those sessions solo. I would love to like as as we get uh gaming sessions in the future, I would love to try it with some friends and see how we go through a session if they're up for that. Yeah, it's something that I've been massively drawn in by this year. And while I did only get those like kind of couple of months of uh or maybe it was just like kind of squeezing them into one month of actually like playing it a lot and then other things sprinkled throughout the year. It is the one thing that like like I've loved playing everything on this list otherwise it wouldn't be on that list.

58:30 Like the talking about kind of session length and space and organization needed for it. If I didn't need to keep having things out on the table to be filming all of the other stuff, then the I think probably one of the top things on the list to with a kind of separate table where I could keep things laid out. I would want uh Kingdom Death on there. And to keep seeing what the game has got in store because I know that like just in the base game, there is so much in there. Like if you start adding expansion on there, I think the one I got came with a couple in there cuz it's got like the Gorm and stuff. There's someone around here somewhere. Yeah, there's an angry lion. There's a scary antelope. I can point things in the right direction. And I do feel in a way dafted with like, hey, have you heard of this thing Kingdom Death Monster that everyone has been playing for like 10 years? There's a part of that to it. But until probably a few years ago when I was still Mr. I don't want to roll to resolve anything. I was still kind of in that mode when we played it on tabletop simulator and I enjoyed it though. If I could if I could have afforded it and would have been on board with it all that time ago, I probably wouldn't have enjoyed it. So it's taken this amount of time to kind of jump on. But I am very very glad that I did. and having things like like when I did the videos for a trespass odyssey which is also fantastic and kind of builds off that core um kingdom death thing it's it got its own systems and its own like unique escalation stuff in the call it the triscalion it's it's it's got its own things and its own kind of huge Greek story that it's telling from there whereas kingdom death is rather than a pre-written thing

1:00:03 there are certain events that will happen in certain years but it is through a lot of card drawing and dice rolling coming up with its own story of your civilization. You know, properly going back now after playing games influenced by it and seeing like the the the bits where that originally came from and seeing that take you down a different path has been uh really really fun. And yeah, as I say, I I would love to have space somewhere where that could like, okay, we're going to do this game now. And then we've got the Kingdom Death Station there where we could uh just jump back to it. And probably a station for most of the games back here, so we could just jump to them at any point. But yeah, space time got to be restricted somehow. Anyway, that is my top 10. top 10 games that released this year and an extra one that didn't release this year, but I have also been pretty pretty wowed and obsessed by. It's what we always What have I missed off this list?

1:01:04 Hey, I probably haven't gotten around to it yet. It might not have released here yet. Maybe I did play it and didn't like it. I'll see if we can have a chat stream at some point uh to have a talk about some of them. Uh but yeah, let me know in the comments. In the meantime, have lovely Christmases everybody and I will see you. There'll probably be a playthrough in a few days actually. I think there's a tapestry one, but yeah, I will see you next year for more livey things. Thank you for all of your support. If you would like to support me, you can subscribe and do all of that stuff if you would like to. But there is uh Patreon, there is uh YouTube membership, there are links down below for all of that stuff. It's how I'm able to do any of these things. Thank you so much for all of your support this year, whether it's through those things, whether it's just through uh watching and subscribing and stuff. I really appreciate all of this. I love doing this. I love board games. I love making videos about them. And uh yeah, let's uh keep it going, eh? Bye everyone. Bye.

1:01:59 Bye. Bye.