Path of Exile 2

Silksong surprise dropped this September after 7 years with like a 2 month heads up

Clair Obscur Expedition 33 came out of absolutely nowhere and is a work of art in every way

Deltarune chapters 3 and 4 finally launched, 3 is fun but 4 is incredible.

I think Balatro came out in that timeframe, and CloverPit in a similar vein this year (though the latter's most recent update is frankly terrible and hopefully most of the charges will be reverted in the next update)

Ball X Pit becomes more of an idle game once you make progress, but it's a great little casual take on Breakout, with a fair bit of grinding for completion.

Eden Ring Nightreign is an interesting take on the formula and IMO a far better game than its original counterpart

Alan Wake 2 may have been 2023, my memory's a bit fuzzy, but I think if anything they dropped a decent sized update last year.

Mycopunk is a fantastic early access FPS, coop emphasis and super chaotic

Path of Exile 2's early access is phase is finally nearing its end. Game has solid bones

Ninja Gaiden Ragebound is pretty underrated, first modern game in the series that builds on the classic NES formula instead

Antonblast is a great little Wario-inspired platformer. Not as speedy as Pizza Tower, but really tight.

Yakuza Pirates I guess, though I'd argue it's legitimately the worst game in the franchise. It's not bad but it's not good.

Witchfire is another early access FPS about to hit 1.0. It's been out for a few years now but they've been really cracking down on the updates lately.

I Am Your Beast is an underrated one for sure, very fast paced speedrun-driven FPS about taking down a fascist private military. Strange Scaffold never disappoints.

These couple years saw a huge resurgence of casual party-based games. Lethal Company, REPO, and Peak are all fun with the right group, though popularity of the first two is dwindling last I checked. A bit of a fad but they're fun.

I've definitely missed a handful here and got my years wrong in some places, but these have been some standouts for me lately.

Hades 2

Skyrim was re-released again!

Hollow Knight: Silksong

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2

Still wakes the Deep

Indika

Blue Prince

Hades II

Another Crab's Treasure

Animal Well

Balatro came out just before your date, 13 days or so, so may have flown under the radar. Very addictive

If you like building things, I've been playing the hell out of "Mars First Logistics".

Basically, you build custom mars rovers to move increasingly ridiculous shipments across the red planet. And the whole game has the visual style of a Lego instruction manual.

Welcome back! BTW, there were some users wondering whether you're okay some months ago: https://pawb.social/post/33129287

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is excellent.

Welcome back to the digital world 👨🏼‍💻

Another vote for Expedition 33. Literally best game I've ever played. Loved it so much.

A lot of people loving Dispatch but not tried it myself yet.

Blue Prince is unlike a lot of games I've played before, bring a notebook though.

Heard good things about Metaphor: Refantazio

Not a 2024/25 game but I'm still gonna plug Inscryption too if you haven't played it. Such a fun little game.

Edit to add: The game awards were last night. Might be worth looking at what won for ideas too

Hi-Fi Rush was released before that time, but it was Denuvo-encumbered until about a week ago.

Black Myth: Wukong was sick af. Soulslike based on Journey to the West.

I'm mostly an RPG/FPS person so that's what I'll mention.

We got a remaster of Oblivion that was excellent, The Outer Worlds 2 was a lot better than the last one, and we got Dragon Age: The Veilguard which Dragon Age fans didn't like because it was more like Mass Effect and YouTube "personalities" didn't like because there was an option to establish your player character is trans when establishing their backstory. As a Mass Effect fan I absolutely adored it though, so I'm playing through it again right now. STALKER 2 finally came out, and it didn't have A-Life for some reason, but it does now... it's also has mod support now too, even on console.

Oh! Speaking of games with mod support on console, we also got Arma Reforger on both PC and console, so that's opened up mil-sims to a wider audience. and while we're talking about military shooters, Black Ops 6 came out and it was terrible, and they just kept making it worse all year to the point where even the CoD fanboys didn't even care when the beta for Black Ops 7 came around. Activision panicked and made a bunch of changes that the community had been begging for years for, but it was too late and when BO7 came out most people didn't care. Especially since the campaign was Co-Op only and weird. Multiplayer is solid but nobody cares and ActiBlizz is in full panic mode. This whole situation wasn't helped by the fact that Battlefield 6 had a beta that managed one of the top concurrent player counts on steam because it was so well received. The multiplayer of BF6 was well received on launch, but people complained that the maps are small (they are) but with the first season they released a BR called RedSec and it's just okay, but it came with a couple new big maps and also every update to BF6 makes it worse in some way so now people are kinda souring on the game.

Warsim.

I specialize in finding obscure good games.

Alice's World - Mix between Doki Doki Literature Club and an adventure game.

Astro Colony - Satisfactory in space.

Days Without Incident - Fun small game made by the same guys who made Nightmare House 2.

I also recommend keeping an eye on Fractured Blooms, The Oversight Bureau, Cycle of Struggle Ardengrad, and Advent Dawn. They're only demos at the moment though.

Depends what you’re looking for.

Adventure/RPGs: Oblivion remaster and Avowed both came out with pretty good ratings overall. Ghost of Tsushima was also a big hit last year, came out in May 2024.

Multiplayer indies had a good year as well - Repo, Peak, and Escape from Duckov have been popular.

Cozy/niche games: Hello Kitty Island Adventure, Deltarune, Slime Rancher 2.

Niche games I’ve personally enjoyed and/or want to get: Mudborne, Cryptmaster, Dungeons of Hinterberg, LAN Party Adventures, The Lonesome Guild, and Little Rocket Lab.

Nine sols. A metroidvania with parry-based combat and insanely good plot.

Hollow knight: Silksong Deltarune chapters 3&4

I've had my best video game experience since a long time with Arc Raiders. An extraction shooter with interesting players interactions.

If you like arcade twin-stick shoot-em-ups, Sektori is one of the best the genre has seen. Hard though: if one doesn't know the genre, play Waves and Assault Android Cactus first.

If you haven’t played games in a while, a subscription service like game pass or PS+ can be a good idea.

It’ll let you try out a lot of games that you might not try otherwise, and also try/discard some games that seemed cool but turn out to be unlikable.