I think I’ve said something to this effect before, but this year did not go as planned. Ha, looking back, I wrote exactly that last year: “So this year has not exactly gone according to plan”. If only she knew about 2025, I think to myself. I hope I don’t have to write the same sentence this time next year.

As I get older, I think that’s what I can come to expect from life – that plans will get disrupted, that life will not cooperate, and that things will get tough when you don’t expect them to. It seemed that this year, nothing could be relied upon to stay stable. My family lost a lot. Our dog, sadly, passed away, as well as a few other elderly pets (we are a pet-filled household). And we lost a family member this year who has been struggling with the terrible degenerative disease Alzheimer’s this year, far, far too young. If I have been absent from the channel, and from this website, it is because I have been supporting family dealing with this and other stresses. It has been a long, horrible few years in that respect. This has been an ongoing struggle that my family has been going through in the background to all that I have worked on and my attempts to produce things.

A lot of the media that I really engaged with this year has been an attempt to make sense of life, really. While I wished my creative drive was in gear, I’ve had trouble with that too. Depressive moods, fatigue, and severe dysphoria – all of this swirled and collided into some kind of super-awful mental storm, which really takes me out at the end of every work day. And I have been working – earning money has been a goal of the year, before my income will drastically reduce again next year due to getting the final tertiary qualification I need. Just a little longer before you can take a University course run by the Horror Game Analysis. That thought buoys me, even among all the other awful geopolitical things happening all around the world, and the knowledge that I am just one person against a storm, on a tiny little blip of a planet.

What I’ve been struggling with a lot is the idea that I should be doing more. I always have this horrible, crushing feeling that I should have already finished that book by now, I should have that game complete, I need to learn how to draw, etc, etc. As I get older, and as I comprehend the capriciousness of living as a human being, I feel that desperate need – as many people do – to leave a mark. To some extent, I have that – a small body of published online work, a thesis, and a number of unpublished writings that perhaps could be honed further and with some more effort published or archived or whatever for posterity’s sake. I remind myself that I have a lot of time left, but I think what this year has given me also is a sense of calm, peace, and comfort with myself, to some extent. 

This year has been revelatory in that I now know myself more completely than ever before. I am a woman, truly and utterly, completely content and assured in that knowledge. I have worked hard and done much deep, ponderous soul-searching to reach this conclusion, and that, at least, has paid off. As has my presence as a teacher, a guest speaker, and a presence within local academic and game communities. I have been also most lucky to spend so much of this year with valuable, irreplaceable friends, and with my partner, all of whom I love with my whole heart. While my creative output this year disappointed me, I’ve nonetheless still done a lot this year, worked hard, and come to the end of 2025 with the knowledge that I am a better person. 2026, rather than being “my year”, will be a year of routine. It shall be a year of “get up, write for an hour, switch to something else, write again”. It shall not be my mission to produce a manuscript the size of Rome in a day – instead, it shall be a year of measured, steady progress, measured not by a sprint, but by a marathon. 

I wanted to do something similar to last year and talk about seven games that I played this year that left some kind of resonant impact on me, whether or not I’ve played them before, whether or not it was a mostly positive or negative impact, and whether or not I’ve talked about them before. I hope you find it as interesting as you did last year.

I have done enough apologizing for my output – know that all of those apologies remain active and ring out eternally. I would prefer to send my sincere love to you, reader, for being brave enough to make it through 2025, being able to find reasons to keep going, and dreaming dreams of a brighter future. Or maybe you’re still around because you to just want to read about video games, come on, get to the point! These games are not ranked in any particular order (aside from the last one, which I consider the best game I played this year). So, then, yes, you impatient reader, let’s get started!

Game #7