Happy new year! Yes, it is the very end of February but I came up with this idea very late and finished it even later.
In 2025, I played a small handful of video games. More than I usually do in a year, so I thought why not go through some of them and give some quick thoughts on them? Not all games were released in 2025, it’s all just stuff I played that year.
Mouthwashing (2025)
I think my experience with this game was sort of ruined by knowing too much about it before playing. Next time some game gets a lot of attention like this, I’ll be more careful to steer clear of spoilers. Mouthwashing has a sort of weird plot that I have been struggling to word so I’m going to quote the summary of it’s steam page.
‘The five crew members of the Tulpar are stranded in the empty reaches of space, shrouded in perpetual sunset. God is not watching.’
Mouthwashing has a really unique and well written story, I liked it. It felt like the plot of an old horror movie especially with how it chose to portray some events and the feelings of the protag in such a surreal way. I really liked how all the characters thought/acted and how not everything was told directly to you, I’m a sucker for subtlety in games. But even still… It felt extremely underwhelming.I think my disappointment with mouthwashing was mostly just me problems on top of me problems. Although it was used for some very creative visuals, I really didn’t like the aesthetic of the game. I’m just not a fan of ps1 styled things, it’s overdone and not good on the eyes 90% of the time. The gameplay was extremely basic. Walking around going from point a to point b, occasionally getting an item. Puzzles so simple they probably can’t even be called puzzles. There were a few times where you had to avoid a monster/threat while trying to complete your assigned task at least, but it felt sort of random and just added to the game for flair instead of actually serving a narrative purpose. I suppose I just expected there to be more interesting (and frankly less useless) gameplay elements with how hyped up this title was, but I see now that was all for the story.
Even though I didn’t enjoy it that much, I totally get while people like it. It’s unique and the actions of the characters as well as the ambiguity of some things gets people talking. If I replayed the game a few times instead of looking up a summary of the story after I finished it to fill in the blanks I didn’t get, I probably would have had more appreciation. But too late.
Overall, it’s a good game and most people will probably like it. I’m in the minority of people who were kind of disappointed and even then I think my disappointment is specifically due to personal preferences of valuing gameplay over story.
Clinical Trial (2024) 
One of my friends is super obsessed with this game, so I mostly played to see what he was so in love with.
Clinical Trial follows Angel Martinez who is doing, you guessed it. ADHD medication clinical trials for money. The game explores the relationship between them and their provider, Lee.
Although it is an rpgmaker game, it reads more like a visual novel. (therefore escaping the wrath I had with mouthwashing valuing story over gameplay.)
Truly I think it is best for anyone playing this game to not know ANYTHING about it when playing so I will hold back and not say much since all the praise I have for it would be major spoilers. Angel and Lee are both extremely endearing though and the game would be nowhere as good as it is without such wonderful characters like these two. The characters make the game here.
I love love LOVED this game so much. If you take anything away from this article, it should be that YOU SHOULD PLAY CLINICAL TRIAL! It’s pretty short, it took me 4 hours but also I play games at the speed of a snail so it’s probably more accurate to say 2.5 or 3 hours. It explores this weird, genuine, and frankly often uncomfortable relationship between these two people, leaving you with a weird taste in your mouth about it.
Go for a punch! Saki Sanobashi (2023)
I’ve seen lots of people talk about ideas they have for adaptations of the infamous Saki Sanobashi myth, but none have actually gone on and created them except for the creator of this game as far as I can tell. I’ve been intrigued by the concept of Saki Sanobashi ever since I discovered it, so this game was an immediate impulsive purchase the moment I saw it on steam!
For those unfamiliar, Saki Sanobashi is an alleged piece of anime lost media. It’s supposedly a guro film where a bunch of highschool girls get trapped in a bathroom, go crazy, and kill each other. It’s agreed upon by mostly everyone that has looked into it that it was a hoax and never existed, but some people still believe it’s out there somewhere. I won’t get into the whole search and everything behind it but here is a video on it if you’re curious. I want to focus on this specific game, but thought the origins were worth mentioning since this game wouldn’t exist otherwise without the myth.
This is definitely a very unique interpretation of Saki. A lot of people seem to imagine it as a very violent and gruesome story but this game is very melancholy and more sad than anything. The plot is that you and four girls plan to meet in a bathroom, all with the goal of committing suicide together via poison. But when you leave to go get said poison, you end up never coming back and the girls are locked inside the bathroom with no way to carry out what they intended to. You then play as one of the girls (Saki) and get to know the other girls you’re with, the reasons they’re choosing to kill themselves, and basically just rotting in this bathroom with them for days.
I thought it was neat! Even so, it wasn’t that great of a game. Maybe I just didn’t understand the whole story or missed something important (I missed out on some steam achievements, but I truly could not figure out how to get them no matter what I did…) but the game’s ending was very unsatisfactory and didn’t really provide any answers to why the events of the game played out the way they did. It just kind of.. ended in a really out of left field way. It was so whatever I don’t even feel like going into why I didn’t like it, it was just very random. I liked talking to the other characters and hearing them voice their acceptance of their fate to die in this bathroom. Even though it was just a one shot, I wish the game were a little bit longer and had a more cohesive story. Hopefully more people will create fangames based on Saki in the future. It is an extremely competent idea that more people should try putting their own spin on.
The Hundred line: Last Defense Academy (2025)
I am a big fan of Kazutaka Kodaka’s work. The Danganronpa series is one of my favorite game franchises of all time. Akudama drive is one of my favorite anime. I recently finished playing Rain Code, which checked every box in the things I love in video games and my main issue with it was that it wasn’t longer. Point is that I really like his work, so of course I had to try this game out with how much he was hyping it up. Kodaka has been referring to it as his magnum opus, saying how if it didn’t succeed then he would quit game dev. How he has created such a unique gaming experience that hasn’t been done before. This is the first time I’ve ever spent more than 20 dollars on a video game and I don’t regret it!!
In Hundred Line, 15 teenagers from the fallout shelter-style underground society of the Tokyo Residential Complex are forced to the surface of Earth to fight monsters called Invaders for the sake of saving humanity. But something is awry as their sergeant/kidnapper Sirei is clearly hiding many aspects about the truth of this ‘war’ on the invaders. The main selling point of the game is that it is extremely large, with 100 endings and 22 routes.
As I write this, I haven’t completely finished it yet. I have gotten about 95 endings I believe? It’s been a minute but I’ve gotten most of what the game has to offer in terms of story and gameplay. I really loved it! It’s a very flawed work that I have lots of critique of but despite that, I loved it enough to say it’s probably my favorite game I played this year. The whole game feels like a puzzle beckoning you to put it together. Finishing one route only leads to more questions, which you have to go seek out the answers to in other ones, which may offer answers to questions you don’t even have yet. This isn’t a very good explanation of it but it was very satisfying to piece together what the hell is going on with the ridiculous amount of things and sideplots going on all at once.
Hundred Line still suffers from a lot of the writing problems other kodaka works do, so much so that I’d say that you shouldn’t play if you’re someone that is easily annoyed by his style. (flat characters with only one defining character trait, random XD perv humor for the most part) Basically, if you couldn’t get through a Danganronpa game then you likely won’t be able to get through this. I’m basically immune to the cringe of Danganronpa level writing at this point, but if I wasn’t I’d probably have killed myself playing this.
Even with how much I enjoyed it, I have lots of issues with it (clearly) which I want to talk about more in a separate piece. Maybe in a couple months…
The only issue I’ll directly call out here is that the reusing of cgs was extremely immersion breaking. Don’t tell me that I have been walking around the ruins of a city for days while showing me the same 3d render of the city over and over again. It’s rude to force the audience of your own pretend story to play pretend, just make another render PLEASE.
I also played OFF (2008), Doki Doki Literature Club (2017), and Saya No uta (2003, 18+), but I don’t really have a ton to say about any that would be worth reading. I’m so extremely late to the party anyway, I’m sure everyone reading this probably already knows OFF and DDLC and has played them/watched gameplay. And I just don’t feel like writing about Saya No Uta. OFF is fantastic (a perfect 10/10 game in my eyes.), DDLC is cute, and Saya No Uta is… a lot.
And to end this off, here are some upcoming 2026 games I am extremely excited for! Each game’s steam page is linked :)
As previously stated, I’m a huge danganronpa fan. The second installment is my favorite. Of course I am salivating and frothing at the mouth for this game to come out. A remake of the original game AND a new story AND remastered visuals?! This will be all I am thinking about forever until this thing is finally released.
I found out about this game’s existence from this YouTube upload (gore warning) of one of the tracks that will be in it. A crazy good track with equally good art. It really reminds me of OFF which is perfect since I’ve already been missing that game’s music since I finished it.
The game itself is described as a ‘wordspelling roguelike set in a dystopian future where the government has taken your pronouns.’ Ridiculous concept plus I LOVE word games so this is right up my alley.
I watched gameplay of this from youtuber ManlyBadassHero who was playtesting it recently. It’s a fishing mystery game that looks like it will involve mermaids and maybe ghosts? And astral projecting your consciousness into fish??? The PS1 visual style is extremely overdone (and frankly ugly) in indie horror games at this point but it looks lovely in About Fishing. Maybe because it doesn’t rely on it as the main appeal of the game’s looks. Very excited about it!
That’s all. I hope you found a game that may interest you in this list. I have a video game queue I’ve been slaving away at but for the past few months I’ve been taking a break from it. I hope this year I can both finish and add lots more games to it!
Currently the list is Earthbound, OMORI, Umineko, Higurashi, Hylics, Kuriyama, Sayonara O Oshiete (18+), Room No. 9 (18+), Deltarune, I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream, and INMOST. I have started Earthbound already so it will be the next one I’ll complete on the list, then I’ll see where to go from there.
Finished 2/23/26
