Maximum Utmost’s overall favourite games of 2025

It’s time! In this final listicle, we’re putting a ring on our favourite games of the hell-year of 2025. Some of the folks here at Maximum Utmost played a lot of games, some only played a few. But that’s enough of a pool to choose from. Only one of these games is the correct Maximum Utmost game of the year and the other are frauds you can discard. Which one is it? You decide.

As always, these aren’t strictly games that saw release in 2025, but rather the chosen from the games the author played for the first time.

Zoey Handley – Stray Children

It wasn’t a forgone certainty that I’d enjoy Stray Children, just because Yoshiro Kimura is one of my favourite designers and Hirofumi Taniguchi is one of my favourite composers. I’m realistic. Nobody has a perfect track record with me. Kimura and Taniguchi included. So, gosh, what a relief that I loved Stray Children.

Even halfway through the game, I hadn’t decided whether or not I liked the game. The Undertale-esque trial-and-error enemy dialogue trees and strict linear progression weren’t exactly what I had hoped for. However, it won me over the same way all of Kimura’s games do: the characters, the themes, and the acceptance of the fact that people aren’t perfect, and neither is life, and what were we talking about?

Anyway, it’s another game that Yoshiro Kimura has touched that I hold in high esteem. And, partially, that’s because he knows how to pick his collaborators. I hope everyone involved outlives me.

Daniel Sanford – Mario Kart World

In many ways, isn’t your favorite game of the year the friends we made along the way? I probably spent more of 2025 talking about games with people and working on shows about talking about games than I did actually playing any… and I may or may not have played them a lot! I think for that reason, I would have to give Mario Kart World my favorite game award due to how dominant it has been in the conversation with friends both old and new this year.

As a big fan of a game I think is probably better (Mario Kart 8 Deluxe), I was extremely interested in getting a Switch 2 for the latest game in the franchise. And while the game was a bit deflating to actually play, I want to award it the title of Favorite because of how many conversations I’ve had with friends discovering everything in the world, the nuances of the mechanics vs. the prior entry, the impressive visual upgrades, and the extreme depth of music on offer. And as a quick anecdote, I was playing music at a holiday-themed DJ gig this year, and after a chat with a friend, I decided to add some music from Mario Kart World to the set list, and it went over extremely well!

Is it contrarian to award a favorite game to a game you don’t love through and through? I guess? But while I honor the letter of the category by choosing Mario Kart World, just know that I’m really choosing friendship as my favorite thing of 2025.

Jonathan Holmes – UFO 50

Like Blippo+, my favorite game I didn’t finish of 2025, I also haven’t finished UFO 50. That’s in part because, also like Blippo+, UFO 50 is more of a series of separate but connected experiences, brought to your TV from an alternate dimension that tells a larger meta-narrative about the fictional creative team. Unlike Blippo+, which simulates the experience of watching ’90s cable TV, UFO 50 contains 50 full-fledged games (plus at least one secret game-ish executable file) that offer vast depth and intense replay value. There’s not a bad game in the bunch, and most of them are hard as nails, too tough for this old bird to beat since it was released on consoles. 

That said, I still feel like I’ve played enough of it to declare it my favorite game of the year. The fact that I haven’t needed to master each of the 50 titles here only further convinces me that it’s the best game of the year, and one of the best games I’ve ever played. Each title in UFO 50 is immediately mysterious, interesting, and in its own unexpected way, “fun”. Each one feels like a rock in a garden. Turning them upside-down might reveal a horde of bizarre little bugs, a piece of wrapped candy, hidden by some strange child who planned to eat it later, or even a nugget of gold. When you don’t fully finish one of the games in UFO 50, all that means is there’s more left to excavate later. The games here are the kind of experiences that I actually wish I could forget in order to fully reexperience them for the first time again. 

Instead, I’ll just keep playing UFO 50 over and over again until I die. Not a bad deal for $24.99. 

Patrick Hancock – Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

Yeah, everyone’s game of the year is my game of the year, so sue me. My GOTY was going to be Blue Prince until I played Expedition, and I didn’t think anything could top my time with Blue Prince. But what Expedition 33 does is a marvel. I loved its characters. I loved its gameplay. The music is incredible. The big story beats are all-timers. And, to top it all off, I’m able to do one of my favorite things in all of video games: experiment with builds and take advantage of various systems all at once.

What helped cement Expedition 33 in my head was to watch my wife play through it. As someone who enjoys videogames but rarely gets sucked in, she was obsessed. She spent much more time than me in the game and I loved watching her experience everything for the first time. The game’s hype is tremendous, but for us, it lives up to it in every way.