We somehow got to the end of June already, and that means it’s time for one of my regular annual features, where we look at some of the movers and shakers I’ve covered in my regular Weekly Spotlight posts here every Sunday, and see how the Retro Arcadia Game of the Year 2025 Top Ten Countdown is currently shaping up! Well, looking back at my Game of the Year Predictions from January, what I was hoping would be here so far mostly is, with a couple of exceptions I just haven’t got to yet, but more interestingly, there’s plenty more I didn’t see coming at all here too, so let’s jump in and count down my current top ten games of the year, as they stand at the end of June 2025…

10. Galactic Intrusion (Atari 2600)

I’m always on the lookout for a decent new homebrew, but you don’t have to look far on the Atari 2600 where Mirsad Sarajlic is concerned! I’m a big fan of his excellent Jutland Skies from a couple of years ago, but here we find the newest addition to an already impressive library for the system, which is clearly one that he now just gets. It’s a deceptively simple, corridor-based vertically-scrolling shoot ‘em up, where you play an elite pilot from the Galactic Recon Corps, trying to rid an abandoned space city called Nexus of an occupying alien force spread over five levels, culminating in a boss fight with their commander before looping again. Simple doesn’t mean easy though, and this game is a wonderfully old-school cruel beast! It plays a bit like the tunnel section near the end of Scramble (spun around ninety-degrees), with you avoiding walls, fireballs and enemy spacecraft, which you can also attempt to take down for the big points with your impressively upgradable weapon. Impressive use of the 2600’s two difficulty switches too, should you feel the need! It looks and sounds great, with plenty of personality and loads of colour, and it controls as well as it moves, precise but loose enough to keep you on your toes, and you’ll need to be because what it lacks in frantic it more than makes up for in classic arcade challenge and a super-addictive high score chase!

9. Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector  (Xbox Series X)

Masterfully building on its superb and rightly-lauded predecessor, this sequel takes the same unique, not nerdy in the slightest, dice-driven, text-heavy, sci-fi RPG template, then adds even more depth to all of the above! Once again, you’re in control of an escaped “Sleeper” android, but this time it’s all bigger scale too, with you not just worrying about yourself and your immediate environment, but commandeering a ship that needs a crew, who need managing, while balancing contracts across the entire Starward Belt against the demands of your own decaying body, as well as staying one step ahead of your past. And there’s all the adventures, characters, intrigues and seat-of-your-pants decisions along the way you’d expect from this follow-up, and that’s where the real joy of the game once again lies, all so well written and crafted, behind a slick and vibrant interface that almost gives it a futuristic board game kind of feel, albeit one with a great soundtrack and relentless narrative to enjoy! It might not have had the same out-of-nowhere impact on me as the original did but I couldn’t ask for any more of a sequel all the same.

8. The Alters (Xbox Series X)

This only launched recently on Game Pass and elsewhere, and is a bit like Stardew Valley in Chernobyl! It’s a third-person sci-fi survival adventure, with you playing the sole survivor of a mining ship that’s crash landed on this bleak, radiation-ravaged planet. Fortunately, you’ll soon be joined by your alters – alternate versions of yourself, born of decisions you didn’t make in your own past, with their own personalities and a few unique, handy skills you could have had yourself if things had gone differently. Oh yeah, while you’re busy getting your head around that, learning to survive, and creating and managing your new crew, you’ll also have to manage and expand the giant, wheel-shaped base you find yourself the caretaker of – in a kind of Fallout Shelter style – in order to keep it running, keep you alive, and whatever comes next. This leads to a lot of resource gathering out in the dangerous world, some strategic thinking and prioritising how to use them, and some serious time-management on top… Which is a shame because a relaxed version where you can potter around in your base and explore at your leisure would be really cool! Not sure how much would be left without that pressure though, or the hard-hitting narrative it’s driving along, so we’ll be happy with what we’ve got, which also includes a very atmospheric and frequently striking environment, and decent, if not massively memorable sound design, as well as perfectly intuitive gameplay. And it all comes together really well, as consistently compelling as it is weird, and hard to put down for as much as I’ve seen, which I hope continues to be the case so maybe it can keep climbing this list towards the end of the year! 

7. Mullet Madjack (Xbox Series X)

As an anime-drenched first-person shooter with a bit of the rogue-lite about it, I had zero expectation I’d still be playing it ten minutes after it arrived on Game Pass, but months on, here we still are! It was all about the art-style to begin with though, with a very nineties, slightly-Warhol vibe, full of the boldest solid colours on clean, repeating patterns and textures, and filled with exaggerated, retro-futuristic sci-fi characters and themes. Plenty of neon too, and an insane amount of cartoon carnage and stuff exploding and bullets flying everywhere, and it’s all moving at 100mph, and your eyeballs might never be the same again! Same for your ears with the relentless supporting wall of noise, and the gameplay then ramps up the intensity even further, with you playing a Moderator in the dopamine-fuelled dystopia of 2095, where evil Robillionaires rule the world, and you need to rescue a guy called the Influencer from the top of a skyscraper filled with them, all in exchange for a new pair of shoes. And you have ten seconds to clear each level before you die and have to start all over again! Chaining kills will extend that time, and as you go you’ll collect new weapons and upgrades to help you out with that, and it’s just totally bonkers and so much fun to gradually get a bit further each time! Really nice surprise! 

6. Labyrinth of the Demon King (Switch)

I think I first came across a demo for this in a Steam Next Fest at the start of the year, when I was immediately captivated by the very stylised PS1-era Silent Hill in Feudal Japan aesthetic. The gameplay soon had me too, to the point I quickly got rid of the demo so I could savour the real thing when it came in full, which it eventually did on Switch too, which honestly is where I’d rather be playing this kind of thing. It’s a first-person “retro-grim” dungeon crawler with a big dose of survival horror that has your lone soldier hunting down the Demon King, who’s running wild about the place with his Yokai and other abominations inspired by ancient Japanese mythology. It’s dark and foreboding from the outset, as you explore every nook and cranny for the the weapons, items, armour and talismans that might just get you through the twisted labyrinths and somehow even more bleak exteriors (complete with mandatory fog), filled with unsophisticated but perfectly effective puzzles and combat, and some very uncanny characters (accompanied by some very uncanny sound effects)! Doesn’t hold your hand either, but the sense of adventure never lets up, and neither does that gorgeous art style! 

5. Lonely Mountains: Snow Riders (Xbox Series X)

I’m a huge fan of Lonely Mountains: Downhill, and haven’t stopped dipping in and out since 2019, but with this sequel, it might finally have been superseded… The concept is the same, with you trying to find the ideal route down a sprawling mountain in the fastest possible time, and with the least possible crashes, but now you’re on skis rather than a mountain bike, and it’s not so lonely either because there’s both co-op and up to eight player versus modes too. Not really for me though, but with a no-pressure Zen Mode on top of a huge set of courses to get through, there’s more than enough solo stuff to keep you going for another six years, as you try to hit each one’s time and crash targets to unlock more (and be rewarded with all sorts of customisations), exploring each of the mountains in search of the perfect way down, then trying to perfect your own technique accordingly, over and over and over again! It’s so one-more-go, much like Trials was, and with similar challenge, as well as similar checkpointing, so you can instantly retry those bigger risks (and some wild drops!) for the reward of a few saved seconds, until you’re skilled enough that the next run might just be the one! So atmospheric too, mixing oversized pixels with these realistic but super-stylised and utterly gorgeous snowy dioramas, and the mountain sounds just right. The various types of snow feel just right too, with simple controls transmitting a real physicality. So addictive, so absorbing, so exhilarating, and a genuinely beautiful experience!

4. Atomfall (Xbox Series X)

While it put me in mind of Elden Ring as much as it did Fallout, the setup for Atomfall is effectively Fallout in the Lake District in the early sixties!  It’s an action-survival type thing, released straight to Game Pass and elsewhere, and finds you in a post-apocalyptic quarantine zone, five years after a far more dramatic, fictional take on the real-life Windscale nuclear accident of 1957 in northern England; it’s Cold War sci-fi with a folk-horror vibe. It really drops you in it too, although there’s plenty of very tweakable leeway below the default difficulty, and once you find your level, you can start to properly explore this gorgeous, none-more-English, Wicker Man-infused (literally!) picturesque landscape, full of rolling hills and valleys, (unusually!) sunlit woods and once-quaint villages, leading you to not-quite-abandoned mines and nuclear bunkers, cult-controlled ruins and all kinds of weirdness. Along the way, you’ll need to scavenge, barter, craft, talk, stealth and fight for survival, as suspicious locals, the military, secretive government-types and a British take on the cast of Mad Max will gradually guide you to clues about what’s going on, as well as vaguely where to go next, although getting there (or getting totally sidetracked) is on you, and it’s such a good time! The rest is more functional, and noticeably so when you’re not being distracted by those wonderful, enchanting landscapes and some very eccentric characters, but once it gets going, the emergent narrative moves and turns at a decent pace, and your curiosity is frequently rewarded throughout its twelve or so hours… You just need to find your way past the opening one first! 

3. Blue Prince (Xbox Series X)

I knew absolutely nothing about this when it turned up on Game Pass in April, but a couple of weeks later, it seemed like I was in the minority, so I thought I’d see what all the fuss was about… And I’m glad I finally did because it’s fantastic! Your recently deceased uncle has left you his huge, forty-five room mansion but there’s a catch – you need to find the hidden forty-sixth room before you can get your hands on it! Then there’s the real catch – the layout of the mansion changes every (in-game) day, so apart from what you’ve learnt along the the way (and probably want to record in a notebook), you’re just about starting from scratch every time. The mostly first-person perspective gameplay then involves laying out rooms onto this blank blueprint, where every new door brings a choice of three more to draft onto it, which you can then explore for stuff, uncovering all kinds of intrigue and solving all manner of puzzles (upon puzzles) along the way. And that’s all I’m saying because a lot of the enjoyment here is slowly muddling your way into what’s going on and what you’re supposed to be doing. Controls are pleasantly minimal, puzzles are revealed and designed brilliantly, and the pacing as the game evolves over many thoughtful hours is excellent, as are the enigmatic soundtrack and kind of cel-shaded, richly illustrated visuals. A remarkable achievement! 

2. South of Midnight (Xbox Series X)

I love a bit of American Deep South folklore, so I’d been looking forward to South of Midnight’s arrival on Xbox Game Pass in April since it was first announced, and it did not disappoint! It’s a modern tale about modern characters but is steeped in history and old magic too, as you guide your college-athlete (I think!) protagonist on a journey of discovery about herself and her family’s hidden past, as she tries to find her missing mother in the aftermath of the hurricane you find yourself preparing for as the game begins. Things quickly take a turn for the weird as, guided by ghosts, your powers to “weave” the twisted environment, the mysterious beasts inhabiting it, and your own destiny gradually emerge. Mechanically, it’s the same third-person action-adventure you first got used to when you were playing God of War on the PS2 but twenty years more fluid, as you explore and manipulate things to explore a bit more… Combat is much less sophisticated when it happens, but how imaginative what you come up against more than compensates, and that goes for the swamplands and forests, decaying towns and eerie old mansions you find yourself in too, and it’s all so so good-looking, going for this lifelike claymation thing that really brings the already-excellent narrative to life. Olivier Deriviere’s bluesy, folky, gospel-y Southern Gothic soundtrack is something else too. This game is just so enjoyable and everything I wanted it to be! 

1. DOOM: The Dark Ages (Xbox Series X)

By my reckoning, this one makes that eight mainline Dooms now, the first of which I bought on launch day on the original PlayStation, the third of which is my all-time favourite first-person shooter, and the last two of which caused me terrible motion sickness… This is a staggeringly cinematic prequel to the latter, namely 2016’s Doom and 2020’s Doom Eternal, laying down a dumb but reasonably coherent origin story for our legendary Doom Slayer, although it will be no surprise it still involves slaughtering the entire population of techno-Hell with all kinds of wild, demon-slaying super-weapons, as well as a brand new shield, which you never knew you needed but is far more fun than just defensive, and does mix up the traditional stick-and-move Doom gameplay a lot. Some big mech-fights and even a dragon to fly too! The overall scale of what’s going on is outrageous, with insane numbers of both familiar and new enemies coming at you all at once and from all directions, leaving you equal parts exhilarated and exhausted, as your senses are pummelled by relentless, blockbuster, heavy metal violence. It’s so fast-paced, and plays so fast and loose, but with real impact to everything, heightened by the Devil’s own soundtrack and apocalyptic audio design, while the visuals – both in-game and during cutscenes – are a gothic sci-fi fantasy feast, literally oozing atmosphere and dripping medi-evil in every respect. Best of all though, no unwanted nausea whatsoever this time – just what’s meant to be there! 

Wow, good old Game Pass making a bit of a resurgence, and that’s where we’ll also find the one honourable mention I want to mention, Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine – Master Crafted Edition, which might have been at number three had it been remake rather than remaster! I’ll also quickly note that I did have a go at what seems to be almost everyone else’s early favourite, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, but was too French and too turn-based for my liking. As much as I loved Doom and everything else here so far though, I’m still really hoping new Hollow Knight is finally going to be giving them a run for their money by the time December arrives! Which also goes for Silent Hill f and Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater… In fact, if those three aren’t topping the list one way or the other, I’ll be very disappointed! As alluded to at the start, I still haven’t got to Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves or Dune: Awakening either, and then there’s Shinobi: Art of Vengeance, Ninja Gaiden 4 (and Ragebound), Ball x Pit, Moonlighter 2, Double Dragon Revive, maybe some Switch 2 stuff if anything ever appears on there that grabs me, and hopefully all sorts more I don’t even know about yet that might be heading for the final top ten, which I also hope you’ll join me for just before Christmas! 

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