End of year update!
Hello you incredibly awesome Patreon people!
I hope that all of you are doing better than the best you ever did, that you are about to have a wonderful Christmas and that Santa Clause throws exactly the things you were wishing for down your chimney!
What better way to start an end-of-year update than by mildly disappoint all of you!
Let’s start with the bad news first!
This post won’t be accompanied by a video.
The thing is the following: my family is spread all over the country and because of this I’m barely at home the days surrounding Christmas.
I just don’t have access to my normal equipment, preventing me from waffling this text into a microphone.
Oh no!
Now that we are off to a mildly disappointing start, let’s see if we can turn the tides together!
So first: the two videos about Mario Maker cryptography are online and I’m quite happy with how all four of them turned out!
Our final attempt at Mario Maker cryptography is actually still unbeaten even though the community is tearing and clawing at it with full force - it looks like we will finish 2025 with an actually secure level!
Speaking of 2025!
What an interesting year in gaming it was!
We got some of the most anticipated indie sequels in a long time (like Silksong or Hades II), the Switch 2 released and alongside it many interesting Nintendo games (like Metroid or Donkey Kong Bananza) we got many interesting new indie games that are classics already (like Blue Prince or Look Outside) and then there was also this hidden gem of a game called Claire Obscure that the mainstream is really sleeping on.
So with the year coming to an end I thought it would be fun to take a look back at the launch of the Switch 2 before fulfilling my demonic YouTuber duty and share my personal game of the year with all of you! (Plottwist alarm: It is not Expedition 33!)
So the Switch 2 launch!
It looks as if the Switch 2 had quite a successful launchening!
Nintendo expects the console to sell roughly 20 million units till March next year, which would be quite a good take off!
For comparison: The original Switch sold roughly 18 million in its first year and the Wii U sold roughly 14 million.
In total.
Saleswise the first year of the Switch 2 has been a success.
However I’m not quite convinced yet that this trend is going to continue into the console’s second year.
Here’s the thing.
Nintendo just has a very strong pool of hardcore fans that will pretty much buy anything they release.
Let’s face it: if the Switch 2 would have been a cube with displays on each of its six sides and the only way to control it would have been two paddles that we control with our feet - I at least still would have bought the console in a heartbeat!
The real question deciding whether the Switch 2 ends up becoming wildly successful is if they manage to break through to the mysterious demographic group called the casuals.
They need to convince parents to buy the console for their kids, they need to convince people who have never owned a console before and sell it to people that haven’t played a video game in a year.
They have to break through to the casuals and I don’t think they are yet positioned to do so.
What is the problem?
Well, it’s that the Switch 2 has a really weird and unusual software line up!
If we exclude Mario Kart for a second then the Switch 2’s library only consists of Nintendo’s worst selling franchises so far.
As of right now we got a Donkey Kong spin off game, Kirby Air Riders, Hyrule Warriors and a Metroid on the console.
Bananza is a bit difficult to gauge but the other games are traditionally some of Nintendo’s worst selling franchises.
On its own that would be fine.
On its own, but we also know which games are in the workings.
So far we know that 2026 will feature a new Yoshi game, a Fire Emblem, a new Mario Tennis, a Splatoon spin-off and a new Pokemon base builder thingy.
So don’t get me wrong, I’m sure all those games will be great but they are all B-Tier franchises.
All of Nintendo’s heavy hitters are missing on the Switch 2 so far.
There is no Pokemon, no Zelda, no Smash, no Mario Bros. and no 3D Mario.
There is no Animal Crossing and no Luigi’s Mansion - there is no Splatoon nor Mario Maker.
The big boys are all missing in action!
There will be more games in 2026 that we do not know about yet, but judging by what we know so far, I don’t think that the Software line up is strong enough to ensure the console keeps selling that strong.
Add to this that Nintendo might be forced to increase the price of the Switch 2 because all the RAM in the world is needed to generate mildly entertaining videos of rabbits on trampolines and sprinkle the general current economic uncertainty on top and … yeah.
I think the Switch 2’s second year is going to be a lot more difficult than it’s first.
So that’s my main prediction for 2026: More mildly entertaining rabbit videos.
But what about 2025?
Well, 2025 was an incredible year for gaming - one of the best years in a long time!
Just take a look at all these games that released this year:
Kingdom Come Deliverance, Donkey Kong Bananza, Mario Kart World, Metroid: Fusion, Ghost of Yotei, Claire Obscure, Blue Prince, Silk Song, Ball x Pit, Split Fiction, Hades 2, Death Stranding 2, Kirby Air Riders, Silent Hill f and of course Drag X Drive!
That’s quite a list and it’s missing lots of interesting indie games, like The Séance of Blake Manor, Look Outside or CloverPit.
Lots of good games here.
But which of these games was the bestest?
Actually there were so many good games this year, let’s not just do one best year of the year, let’s triple the fun!
Let’s talk about the most interesting game I played all year, the most fun one and finally the most unique game I played in 2025.
So first, the most interesting game.
That one is certainly Blue Prince.
Oh dear! Blue Prince is quite something.
I just never played anything like this before.
On the one hand it is this really fun RNG driven deck building game that is executed brilliantly and on the other hand it is this unbelievably deep mystery box that just keeps revealing new layers every time we think we are about to finish it.
And both aspects of the game are fundamentally in conflict with each other!
The randomness just makes it impossible to really dig into the mysteries, while at the same time often forcing us to mess up the deck building because an opportunity to investigate the story opens up.
The whole premise of the game is just fundamentally flawed and yet somehow the game makes it work.
It’s strange!
At times the game frustrated me to no end, but at the same time the game enthralled me in ways few games have before.
For me it ended up being a really interesting experience and one of my favorite games of the year.
What’s the most fun I’ve had with a game in 2025?
Well that one is certainly Silk Song.
Silk Song is a bit weird for me because I am still not sure whether I like it more than Hollow Knight but looking back at my time with it - holy fuzzy: Did I have fun with it!
The moment to moment gameplay, the atmosphere, the tricky bosses and the varied level design - smashing bugs and having bugs smash me - it’s just all so much fun in a pure video game sense.
Silk Song just managed to be a pure video game experience in a way that we rarely get anymore.
I’m already looking forward to replaying it once the first expansion drops!
Which finally brings us to the most unique game I played this year!
That one might be a game a lot of you are not familiar with - it’s Abiotic Factor.
Abiotic Factor is something else!
At its core it’s a base building, immersive sim Half Life 2 metroidvania with Elden Ring’s level design and a bit of Subnautica mixed into it.
The game takes place in an abandoned facility in which a terrible catastrophe had just occurred and has us slowly explore the facility while unlocking new items, visiting new areas, defeating progressively stranger enemies while slowly uncovering step by step what had happened before.
It’s just unlike anything I’ve ever played before.
Just to be clear, the game is far from flawless and certainly not for everyone, but if it clicks it clicks really hard.
So if this sounds like something you might like I honestly can recommend the game.
Awesome!
Finally, what about Claire Obscure?
How can I make a best game of the year list and not mention what everyone agrees upon is the best game of the year?
Well, that is quickly answered.
I just haven’t gotten around to playing it yet - shame on me, I know!
An objective character flaw that I plan to fix over the holidays.
So those were some of my favorite games this year, but what about yours? I always very much enjoy learning what you wonderful people have been playing - what games really stood out for you this year?
Finally, finally:
What’s next for us?
Well, I’ll take a bit slower over the holidays - doing four videos instead of the planned two on Mario Maker encryption has been a bit taxing - but once 2026 hits the clock we will take a look at a challenge run and do an scientific attempt to accurately codify the entire lore of all Super Mario games (probably be the dumbest video I’ve ever done)!
Expect the next update after those two videos.
Finaliest: A huge and gigantic thank you to all of you for your generous support.
You are really making a difference here and you are all awesomer than merely awesome!
I hope all of you have great holidays and a happy new year!
Comments (12)
The real thing we're all wondering (pun intended after today's video) now is, have you fixed your targeted objective character flaw over the holidays? Also, I don't know what it is with your writing style but I could just *hear* this post while reading it. Even if you didn't waffle it into a microphone.
Yes and I loved it!
What really stood out to me this year was Fallen Leaf and Pro Philosopher 2 shooting up my favorites list out of absolutely nowhere.
Happy holidays Mr. Ceave! I would probably give my GotY to Silksong. E33 is a game that I absolutely adored for the most part, but I have such a strong negative reaction to the way the ending(s) were handled that it managed to substantially mar my feelings towards the game, and I kind of hate that it did that. Like, I can rationally acknowledge that 98% of my experience was very positive, but emotionally, the first thing that always comes to mind when I think of it are my issues with the ending. I wish I could compartmentalize that better. Silksong on the other hand is something I am ravenously hungry for more of, so it gets the spot for me. I respect the hell out of Blue Prince, and I enjoyed my time with it (stopping shortly after reaching room 46), but as the puzzles became more esoteric and more tied in to getting the right RNG rolls (the chess puzzle for instance), I found my frustration starting to outweigh the fun I was having. I still think it's a masterwork though - just not one that I have the disposition to see through to its end. And it's cool to see you're a fellow Abiotic Factor enjoyer! I've dipped my toes into a handful of those sorts of survival crafting games (Valheim, Nightingale, etc) but Abiotic was the first one that compelled me to see it through to its end. I'm excited to see what the devs do with it over the next few years. And I'm with you on being baffled by the anemic switch 2 lineup. It's kind of crazy that we're coming up on 9 years without a proper new mainline Zelda game (I don't personally count TotK, just like I wouldn't count X-2 when talking about mainline Final Fantasy games), when back in the day OoT, MM, and WW were each spaced only two years apart.
"all the RAM in the world is needed to generate mildly entertaining videos of rabbits on trampolines" got me 😂, that's society alright. My favorite game this year has been Hollow Knight- the first one. I might be getting Silksong for Christmas though! I've also gotten back into Mario Maker a bit, largely thanks to your insane cryptography journey. Happy holidays to Ceave and everyone else!
After playing Blue Prince with my wife for upwards of 200 hours, I feel that any recommendation of the game based on how unique, brilliant and engrossing it is (and it is certainly all of those things) needs to come with two massive disclaimers of the kind they put on cigarette boxes. First, every mystery just leads to another mystery, over and over and over, and there is no ending in the game that resolves the biggest ones. It's as if LOST had continued for another 10 seasons and then been cancelled abruptly mid-season. The more invested you get, the angrier you will get when you realize the pay-off you've been waiting for was never coming. You literally cannot finish the game feeling satisfied—it is purposefully and cruelly designed to ensure that. Second, this game is dangerously, even unethically addictive. The farther into the game you get, the more it has the cadence of gambling: if you have good luck, you need to turn that into a streak of good luck, or you can't get a pay-out. So far, so roguelike. But other games let you save and take a break in the middle of a streak, and at least on PC, this one doesn't. A run can take anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour and a half (the luckier, the longer), and if you choose to save and quit, the game ends the run and throws out your winnings (i.e. the house configuration). When you come back, you'll start with nothing. What's more, it's tough to quit even when a run is through. The "endless mystery box" format means that even when you lose, you feel like you've earned something that maybe you'll be able to spend in the next run. You want to keep the momentum going. And then on top of that the game tries to hijack your brain even more directly into continuing by letting you get small benefits in each run that can only be spent in the very next one. (And it's so much harder to quit in the middle when you're losing not just the winnings from one round but from two.) You might think "this isn't like gambling at all, I'm not losing any actual money by getting sucked in", but the currency you're actually being tricked into overspending is TIME. For a young player this might not be a scarce resource, but for those of us with responsibilities it's essential. My wife and I would say "let's just give it a few minutes in between things, we want to see if we can quickly test this theory we've had", have some unexpected good luck in a different area that we didn't want to lose, and find ourselves hours later with our house not getting cleaned, food not being made, work not getting done and most alarmingly of all our kids being neglected. And then the game through its themes and music and general vibe has this subtle layer of dread running underneath everything, so that even when we were away from the game that hum of anxiety was still in the back of our heads making us more agitated about life. I am not exaggerating when I say that this game did real damage to our lives, and I am also not exaggerating when I say that it's turned us against videogames as a medium a little bit. A serious conversation needs to be had here about the ethics of game design. Tonda Ros is not a good person, he does not respect his players and his work should certainly be discussed for its innovations but should not be promoted to the public without those giant disclaimers: the game is designed to be perpetually unsatisfying, and the game is designed to addict.
I agree enthusiastically with the idea that games can be too addictive, and I think this should be discussed more. I'm glad you mentioned it. I don't know that it was Ros' intention to design an exploitative game or waste player's time, so I don't personally blame him or any game designer. I imagine it's very easy to forget what a game asks of players if you're looking from a developer's perspective. But I think a lot of games tend to keep players playing after they've stopped having fun, and I totally agree it's an issue. For example, I would argue that keeping people interested without any payoff is the core of the Animal Crossing experience - and probably many other "endless" games. I have fed hundreds of hours into the Advance Wars games but I often end up attempting another level even when I'm no longer enjoying the game. I totally agree that addictive games can make it harder to get on with life - I have this issue with TV as well. If I get hooked on a game with a definite end point, it still has the capacity to interfere with my life, but at least when the game is over, after a few days or a couple of weeks (which, granted, is still too long), I can move on. With Animal Crossing, or apparently Blue Prince (I haven't actually played it), it gets all the worse when there's always more game to play. I wonder if having less content, or at least easier-to-access content, is a way to address this design trend. Maybe a few quality-of-life improvements, like saving more progress after shutting the game off, would help in Blue Prince's case.
The only reason you can’t waffle about it is cause you’re eating waffles
Happy Holidays, Ceave (and all you wonderful supporters)!
Happy holidays, Ceave! Thanks for the very interesting wrap-up! One thing I'll comment about Nintendo's 2026 line-up is that unlike basically every other company, Nintendo often won't announce games until they're complete and ready for the final distribution push - Super Mario Bros. Wonder was released a mere 4 months after it was first announced back in 2023. So it's quite possible they'll do the same and we'll get something similar next year that hasn't been announced yet. That being said, this doesn't feel like the best time in a console's lifecycle to do that. I would think that building hype by announcing big games to come on it would be helpful to get people to buy it early on, so perhaps it's a bit less likely they'll do that this next year. My gut tells me we'll see at least one game next year they do this with, but maybe something relatively lower-tier like Luigi's Mansion.
I don't understand why nothing's ready, though. Most of Nintendo's core teams have been quiet for years now. The last year or two of the Switch's lifespan was nothing but the work of external partners, absolutely nothing in-house. If it is so much more time-consuming to make games for the Switch 2 compared to the Switch 1 that nothing substantial was ready for the first year of the system's life, then maybe it wasn't a good idea to move on from the Switch at all.
Happy Holidays and safe travels Ceave! Looking forward to new videos in the new year.