My Adventure Game Top Ten of 2025

My top 10 of 2025!

Here are my top ten adventure games of 2025. This list is based on my personal enjoyment of all 28 games I've played this year - not all point 'n clicks, but one and all great narrative experiences! We had a crazy year and it's actually impossible to make a ranking like this, because all these games are SO good in their own field, it really just comes down to how much fun I had playing them. So even the lower ones are still top notch!

10. Slender Threads

The nightmarish journey in Slender Threads isn’t for the faint of heart, but those with a morbid sense of humor will love the fun of unraveling the delightfully quirky goings-on in the strange town of Villa Ventana. 

9. Rosewater

Its obstacles may not put up much of a fight, but Rosewater’s sharpshooting lies with its wonderful production value and freedom of choice in this character-driven Western, earning itself a big “Yeehaw!” for fun and replayability.

8. The End of The Sun

Exploring the magnificent mythological world of The End of the Sun rivals any vacation you could ever take deep into Central Europe yourself, especially when travelling through time to uncover the Slavic valley dwellers’ intimate personal stories.

7. Blue Prince

The immense puzzle game that is Blue Prince is so multi-layered, it keeps you busy for well over 100 hours as almost every detail matters in one way or another. You're in the position to inherit a huge mansion, but its rooms change daily and puzzling your way to the grand prize is no easy feat! I still haven't "really" finished it, and I'll probably never will...

6. Kathy Rain 2: Soothsayer

Our hopes for a wonderful sequel have come true, as Kathy Rain 2: Soothsayer balances a great dialogue-based serial killer mystery with entertaining puzzles in another sublime point-and-click pixel art adventure game. 

5. The Drifter

The Drifter is an action thriller with supernatural elements, and the game does an excellent job to translate that into an interactive experience, where we put in a sense of urgency which makes the game feel extremely fast-paced. 

4. Dispatch

Dispatch is an interactive animated superhero series filled with dialogue choices and mission management. You play as Robert Robertson, former superhero Mecha Man, who gets recruited by the Superhero Dispatch Network, where he becomes the man in the chair.

3. The Séance Of Blake Manor

The Séance of Blake Manor is one big investigation game where you have to make deductions and decisions and choose how to spend your time. The initial nervousness quickly made place for elation and the accompanying adrenaline rush, causing the search for a missing young woman in supernatural circumstances to become quite addictive.

2. Foolish Mortals

Foolish Mortals  is going to be right up there with old classics. It features beautiful artwork filled with small animations, excellent voice-overs and straightforward inventory puzzles. The story is very engaging, with lots of characters and great dialogue combining background information with clues to the puzzles.

1. Old Skies 

If you are a fan of Wadjet Eye Games, your zeal will be transformed into divine adoration after playing Old Skies. This is just instant classic to me, and it should be instant buy for anyone who's serious about playing adventure games. It doesn't feel like a game; it feels like a work of art. It's entertainment of a whole other level.

Finished "The Drifter" after an intense finale...

We won't yet be riding into that sunset...

Last time I played The Drifter, I had found myself with a new team of unlikely allies. In a short Chapter Six, I located the possible HQ of the bad guys. Together with two companions, I set out to infiltrate said HQ, and I was getting ready for a grand finale.

Reminds me of a certain secret voodoo hounfour...

Soon, however, it turned out the place wasn't as villainous as I had expected. Quite the opposite, in fact. Still, I didn't quite believe what I saw, nor what everyone there was telling me. Especially that John Hammond grandfatherly type of character. And there were lots of other people telling me stuff as well. Chapter Seven therefore was a pretty long chapter, with a new setting I kept getting turned around in, and many conversations and running back and forth basically doing errands for everyone to finally find my way toward the REAL finale of the game, with yet another new team of unlikely allies, like that German Ludger Brink type of scientist...

Meet my new team of unlikely allies...

Aaaand of course my hunches proved to be right, and with the bamboozlement uncovered, that slow chapter gave way to a couple of very intense final ones that expertly combined humor with horror, and I finished the game in a total of 9 hours. Where a bit earlier in the game I didn't expect The Drifter to leave such a lasting impression eventually, the story picks up again with an amazing pace and a very fulfilling final showdown. Now I see why everyone was so over the moon about this game, and it will certainly completely rearrange my top ten of 2025.

MacGyvered myself a flamethrower...

Normally I'd alternate to a classic adventure game starting in Chicago of the late 1930s next, but since there has been a particular new release I've been looking forward to for a while now this week, I'm taking a small detour to Louisiana of the early 1930s...

You can buy The Drifter on Steam or on GOG.

About thirty deaths later on "The Drifter"...

My own ex has never been this helpful...

After last time playing The Drifter, I've died and returned at least thirty times. The bad guys had me cornered at the graveyard, and it took a bit to escape. I wound up at Annie's house, Mick's sister, where Sarah, Mick's ex-wife was able to help me out some. I had to travel back and forth between the different locations a lot trying to find information that could help me.

Aha! A computer! That'll surely hold some answers...

Of course when I found something I could use, the bad guys caught up with me again and I had to be creative to escape, dying several times before I figured out the correct sequence of events to get me to safety. To be honest, I thought the rewinds would be more frustrating, but it's actually not that bad and I was always able to find the solution relatively fast.

What goes up, must come down...

I really like the graphical style of The Drifter. It's pixel art, but the scenes seem to glow. The use of lighting is gorgeously done. The dialogues and voice actors are simply brilliant. I also like how slower scenes alternate the tense once where split decisions mean the difference between life or death. Or, well, temporary death...

So little to work with, yet so long until I figured it out...

After spending what felt like eternity in captivity of someone adamant on performing brain surgery on me, trying to get free time and time again and getting blasted in the face or in the chest over and over again too, I've reached chapter six after 4,5 hours of playing. It's amazing that many times when I think I have found the solution, it backfires and it turns out I have to do something completely different, or change some conditions beforehand. Now it's time to come with a plan, together with some unlikely new allies...

You can buy The Drifter on Steam or on GOG.

New game: "The Drifter"

New game!

Since The Drifter was released back in July, I've heard nothing but good things about it. Game Of The Year things, even. I bought the game as well, since the concept definitely intrigued me. But it took me a while to get to. Finally, the day has come and I started my first playthrough!

Much darker than "Loco Motive"...

I'm Mick Carter. Clearly I'm Australian, going by the accent. I also like to comment on everything I do. Seriously, this voice actor is quite something. It's hard to imagine him simply saying the lines from a script. The emotion he puts in this performance, I can't believe he's not watching an actual playthrough of the game himself, it's so on the nose!

Just pick up the idol and climb out!

Mick is coming back home after having basically disappeared five years ago. His mother has died and he wants to attend her funeral. Well, "wants to" is perhaps the wrong way to put it... "Feels obliged to" is more like it. Anyways, on arrival in a train's box car, he gets caught up in what appears to be a conspiracy: several homeless people have been abducted, others are acting crazy, and if that wasn't enough weirdness to go around, Mick is caught himself, thrown in the lake with a block of cement tied to his feet, and actually drowns. Only to come back to life a couple of minutes in the past, and with a second chance to free himself.

I felt a bit chilly...

I've heard people mention how fast-paced this game is, while still being a traditional point 'n click, inventory-puzzle based adventure. I believe we put in that sense of urgency ourselves, making the game feel fast-paced to our own experience. Stuff happens, Mick is threatened, he has to act to save himself. This gets our own adrenaline rushing, and even without an obvious time limit, we act much faster than we would in a regular adventure game. Mick's story is an action thriller but one that seems to have some supernatural elements to it, and the game does an excellent job to translate that into an interactive experience.

Cemeteries in adventure games, could be a blog post in there...

After an hour and fifteen minutes of game time, I've reached chapter three. I've finally made it to the funeral, but this is only the beginning, since Mick is now clearly neck-deep in all the nasty stuff that seems to be happening in this city... Time for me to dive back in!

You can buy The Drifter on Steam or on GOG.