When I looked back to 2025 to gather votes for the advent calendar, I was surprised how many of them were smaller games, especially in a year that introduced both the new Silent Hill and And Doom hits the shelves. But then I remembered that this year, the Steam algorithm was whispering in my ear like the Green Goblin Mask to Norman Osborn, directing me to beautiful indie gems (and telling me to crush that Spider-Man).
None Doom: Dark Ages neither Silent Hill f might surpass the pleasure I got from playing lesser pleasures. When the final votes for the Advent Calendar were tallied, several of my favorites were left lying on the cutting room floor. Clover Pit, No I'm Not Human, and Tree Roots Are Dead. Routine would have been on the list too if it had come out before we submitted the application. But the next five games deserve their moment in the winter sun.
Company “Easy Delivery”
I love Euro truck driving simulator. I love Death. In short, I love delivering big ol' packages while listening to a podcast and gesturing aggressively with my hands when things go wrong. Easy Delivery Co. was catnip to me. Appropriate when you play as a cat in a snowy city, bombing a pickup truck, delivering packages.
Its driving physics are chaotically arcade-like, and I spent hours racing through large piles of snow with tall piles of cardboard boxes haphazardly taped to the cargo bed. But this cycle quickly turned into something much more exciting.
The quiet streets of three quaint locations hide an eerie secret that is revealed during your adventure. On top of that, the eccentric locals lure you into their subplots. I especially liked the cat in the general store who was in love with the girl who worked in the bakery. The same bakery girl who only talked about how much she loved dirt. The surreal silliness is almost like Eurotruck Simulator. Animal Crossing meets Twin Peaks, a delightful triple feature.
The only reason he didn't finish higher in my vote was because he became a victim of his own perfection. I washed it out of new packages to deliver them in just three days.
Oblivion: Remastered
Yes, the remaster made my list. I am criminal scum and I will pay the fine to the court or serve my sentence. But I won't pretend that Oblivion: Remastered isn't one of my favorite games this year. I grew up watching and playing Oblivion endlesslyso returning to Cyrodiil, setting up my disgusting Argonian, and closing the jaws of Oblivion for the hundredth time felt like coming home.
The remaster really spruces things up, and it's a welcome improvement considering the original looked like an oversaturated mess. But Bethesda has kept Oblicion's charming flaws while giving them a few modern touches. They've improved the AI, but the townspeople still engage in “novel” idle dialogue where they stand around making stupid, completely pointless jumps between watching mud crabs and throwing waste to their zero-transition neighbors. The combat gets better, but every time you level up, the world also levels up, leading to the beggar pulling out a mythical great sword from his rags to strike you down if you steal it from your pocket.
Oh, and of course they didn't get rid of NPCs rushing out of nowhere to start a conversation. It wouldn't be Oblivion if you weren't terrified by the zoomed-in close-up of a potato face accusing you of breaking the law. Oblivion has always been a complete mess, but this my hot mess.
Peak
If we really are inventing “druze slop” as a genre, Pieck has already sat down next to us Deadly companyPhasmophobia and Among Us on My Friend's Mount Rushmore. Screw arc raiders. This was my multiplayer juggernaut of the year. After countless runs landing on the random shores of a deserted island, gathering resources to survive, and then starting a series of long, physics-based mountain skirmishes with friends, I became obsessed with it.
Carrying my little customizable fool up the mountain, watching my dwindling stamina bar drain, and listening to the screams of my friends as they plummeted down to their doom, I learned so many organic stories. Almost all of them revolved around the fact that I was a threat. I'll never forget testing the edibility of a mushroom by force-feeding it to my overly trusting friend, who seemed fine until he started screaming obscenities, went comatose, and comically slid off a rock into the boiling lava pits below us.
And it's made even funnier by how expressive and adorably mischievous the Saturday morning cartoon art style is. Every week I play long-distance co-op games with my friends, and if my impassioned recounting of Samwise Gamgee's monologue from Mount Doom as I carried an unconscious friend on my back and dragged us up the mountain is anything to go by, the Peak was the most fun I had during those weekly sessions.
Repo
When putting together this list, I knew that Peak and Repo would go head to head, and for good reason. I fought these games every time I went online with my friends. The repo transaction is simple. You play as a colorful team of bug-eyed robot bailiffs who explore haunted buildings and search them for cursed objects. The problem is that the house's previous occupants, and most of them, are floating skeleton heads with chomping teeth or clown monsters shooting lasers.
Walking in I was expecting another textbook Death Company clone and boy did it blow me away. It has so much charm, from the disturbing design of the monsters to the physics systems at the heart of the gameplay. Every time you pick up an object, you have to carefully maneuver it to keep it from hitting the walls and breaking, leading to a million arguments. But you can’t argue for long, because the creepy Repo ghouls are always hiding nearby.
My first few runs were fun and chaotic squabbles until my team encountered a blind enemy with a double-barreled shotgun and his heightened hearing revealed my kryptonite: “Keeping the trap shut.” Every time I play I'm shaking in my little boots, and it's even funnier knowing that it's because his enemies are simply following the sound of my yapping through chat.
Vanderstop
Wanderstop is a game that I would like to include in the Advent calendar simply because I have something to say. The story of Alta, a boxer trapped making tea in the inescapable forest, was a virtual therapy session that really spoke to me. At first glance, this is a farming game. You grow a crop, turn it into tea, and then give that tea to a variety of magical patrons who come and burden you with their problems.
But the mundanity of this gameplay loop serves a purpose. Alta enters the forest as a once invincible warrior who has suffered her first defeat, and now she is aggressively trying to “fix” the part of herself that has been defeated and can't seem to rise back up. My thinking can be depressingly similar. I'm the king of setting ambitious goals and scaring my fried brain into hitting the wall, taking my foot off the pedal, and wondering if I even want them anymore.
Alta's quest to create the perfect cup of tea reminded me of being a developer reminding me to take care of myself. His farming mechanics are monotonous, but this monotony provides an opportunity to take a break from life and focus on something insignificant. And during this break, Vanderstop convinced me of the importance of taking stock, respecting myself, and being friends with my brain. It was therapeutic, and if anything I said sounds relevant, I would implore you to take a break.
