UNDER THE RADAR

6 splendid games you may have missed in 2025

- 

The most discussed video game of 2025 included plenty of sequels — among them Hollow Knight: Silksong, Hades II and Assassin's Creed Shadows — and the debut role-playing game that could, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.

But lots of smaller games captured our attention as well. Here are some favourites.

ABSOLUM

Though Split Fiction is the more notable two-player game released in 2025, Absolum is the sleeper couch coop triumph of the year. A side-scrolling beat-em-up in the vein of Double Dragon and Streets Of Rage, Absolum introduces the initially frustrating X-factor of death returning you to the very start of the game. Your characters reincarnate, reborn through a magical and disturbing process led by a cryptic maternal figure.

Yet the ability to have another person to collaborate and strategise with, along with a world that forks and changes with each run, means Absolum is an endlessly entertaining and exciting experience.

Special powers bestowed randomly redefine how a given run might go.

Punches might trigger electric shocks or encase foes in destructive bubbles or create vortexes that sweep them into the air, ready to be juggled.

As the game progresses and gets more complicated, combinations of powers stack in unpredictable ways, creating downright game-breaking ripple effects. Endless catastrophic super-attacks can fill the screen and create a joyful chaos. It all somehow works. And it looks beautiful, a Bluth-esque fantasy world exquisitely drawn and animated.

Reviewed on the Switch 2. Also available on the PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and Switch. — YUSSEF COLE

IS THIS SEAT TAKEN?

When a fellow gamer described Is This Seat Taken?, it sounded intriguingly like virtual Sudoku. And it totally is, if you replaced the square grid and numerals with a crowded movie theatre and anthropomorphic shapes wearing giant cowboy hats.