5 Overlooked Games From 2025 That You Should Still Play

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2025 was packed with highly anticipated games, including popular titles like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Hades 2, Hollow Knight: Silksong, Silent Hill f, Dispatch, Arc Raiders, and Death Stranding 2: On the Beach – and that’s just a small sample of the year’s biggest releases. However, many excellent games struggle to get noticed. It’s tough to compete with titles that have massive marketing budgets and dominate conversations and sales charts. While attention is limited, these lesser-known games deserve a chance to shine as well.

Here are just five of the many overlooked games of 2025.

5) Despelote

2025 had a ton of soccer games come out, but nothing really grabbed me like Despelote. It’s a pretty personal game, set in Ecuador around the early 2000s when the national team was trying to qualify for the World Cup. But you don’t play as one of the pros – you’re Julián, this kid who’s absolutely obsessed with soccer. It seriously takes over his whole life! I’m talking kicking a Shrek DVD around inside a video store and accidentally booting bottles into the neighbor’s yard. He even sees soccer everywhere, imagining games even when there’s no ball around. It’s wild!

This game offers a charming, everyday look at a major event, experienced through the innocent perspective of a child. While much of what’s happening around him is beyond his understanding, these little moments and conversations create a rich and believable world. Though the gameplay isn’t overly complicated and the ending feels a bit weak, it’s a memorable experience that stands out from typical action and adventure games.

4) Labyrinth of the Demon King

Labyrinth of the Demon King is a brutally difficult horror game. Inspired by Silent Hill, it features a grim and unsettling atmosphere created with grainy graphics and heavy use of darkness. Fighting enemies is deliberately challenging due to a limited stamina system, meaning reckless attacks can quickly lead to failure and a return to your last save. To add to the difficulty, an invincible demon will occasionally appear, making an already tough experience even harder.

Labyrinth of the Demon King can be challenging, and that’s actually what makes it enjoyable. As a horror game, it’s meant to be unsettling. Navigating the labyrinth with limited resources – just a weak torch and a broken sword – and having to revisit areas to find keys is deliberately difficult. While frequent enemy respawns can be a little frustrating, they don’t completely detract from the game’s intense atmosphere.

3) Revenge of the Savage Planet

It’s tricky to categorize Revenge of the Savage Planet, which makes it hard to define for players. It’s an action game with a focus on exploring and a comedic tone. You scan objects to learn about them and then use that knowledge to buy upgrades, allowing you to scan even more and become a better shooter – it feels a bit like Metroid Prime mixed with the bizarre humor of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!. The game is genuinely fun to play thanks to its silly, live-action commercials, colorful alien worlds, and over-the-top physical comedy. While the core gameplay of scanning and upgrading is straightforward, it’s surprisingly engaging, especially with the increasingly fluid movement that eventually lets you triple jump and grapple around effortlessly.

Initially, the game’s clear markers on the map took away from the fun of discovering things on your own. However, a later update fixed this, letting players enjoy the challenge and reward of figuring things out for themselves. Thankfully, Revenge of the Savage Planet doesn’t waste your time with endless filler or unimportant tasks. It’s a fast-paced game you can finish in about twelve hours, which is rare these days, and it’s a lot of fun. We need more games that are this enjoyable and don’t overstay their welcome.

2) Wanderstop

Burnout can affect anyone, no matter their job. Davey Wreden, the creator of popular games like The Stanley Parable and The Beginner’s Guide, explored this in his game Wanderstop. While Wanderstop appears to be a relaxing tea-making game with a gentle style, it actually offers a personal look into Wreden’s own struggles with burnout after creating those earlier titles – something he has discussed openly since the game’s release.

The game thoughtfully explores the experience of burnout and the difficulty of quieting an anxious mind, particularly when things go wrong. While making tea in the game is a simple and calming activity, it’s secondary to the game’s real strength: its sensitive and realistic portrayal of mental health struggles. It avoids being preachy or overly simplistic, instead offering a mature perspective on a difficult topic. Though the writing is often funny and insightful, it’s this honest approach to a genuine problem that makes Wanderstop so memorable.

1) Metal Eden

While big-budget, fast-paced single-player first-person shooters aren’t as common as they used to be, smaller games like Metal Eden prove the genre is still thriving. This cyberpunk shooter takes inspiration from the satisfying ‘Glory Kill’ system in recent DOOM games and builds upon it in a clever way. When you weaken an enemy, you can rip out their core to regain health, or launch it as a powerful explosive. Players have to make these quick decisions constantly to survive, as limited ammo and dangerous robots mean you can’t just stand still and rely on a single weapon. Staying alive requires skillful movement and knowing when to switch between your weapons.

The game is brilliantly structured to encourage fast, skillful play, highlighting its strengths. Constant upgrades and increasingly challenging enemies intensify the exciting flow. This proves that first-person shooters don’t require loot or multiplayer to be enjoyable – strong gameplay and a good visual design are enough.

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2025-12-23 02:41