I’ve recently been playing through Quake again (the base game is on Steam) and I’ve really been enjoying it. The beauty however is how easy the game is to mod.
I remember how much I loved picking up CD’s full of total conversions. I remember a Marvel themed Quake TC, and a few other ones stuck out in my mind. Heck Team Fortress started life as a Quake Total Conversion.
I had a few maps that I made and edited a few textures in the 1990s. Usually with garish primary colours, that stood out from the actual game, but it was a formative experience, tinkering and playing with games. Something I still enjoy nowadays. Part of me has got me thinking whilst shooting Fiends, Shamblers and Ogres in the id classic has got me wanting to make a level. Just to dust off my chops.
So seeing it evolve 30 (yes, THIRTY) years later to what it’s become and the modding community getting it’s flowers is nice to see.
Now to find the big box version that I’ve got somewhere.
LLM’s I find are terrible at problem solving. They’re good at interpreting what people want to do, but it doesn’t really think about the box. I have an example I’ll probably talk on next week’s Now page, but will share it here.
I had a problem with some code in my game, in that I couldn’t get a hitbox (the yellow circle) to sit within the sprite. The problem was the rotation script I use pivots the sprite around the bottom right hand corner of the sprite, so whilst the hitbox remains in the correct place, the hitbox does not.
The LLM was rewriting my code, and getting nowhere fast. It was trying to change the pivot point but going nowhere. Confidently wrong as it hit the brick wall.
The solution? Don’t have a hitbox. Determine that a bullet is outside of the white circle, and if the colour of the pixel at the bullet’s x & y co-ordinate is not black, then determine a hit. This was applied and fixed.
Programming requires a different approach that is often found by taking a walk and thinking about the problem in a different way. There was a famous case with Wing Commander where a bug in some versions was a memory error that existed on the game exiting that caused a crash. The solution? Change the error message to “Thank you for playing Wing Commander!”. Problem solved.
I feel these sort of bugs at the moment can only really be fixed with experience.
Ongoing Support
The second thing Ross mentioned was ongoing support. This is true – I’ve noticed this with Revive to Sky. I pushed an update that ticked the plugin over to 10+ Active installations in WordPress this week. That has meant I get a few more support requests over the weekend. When these occur, it can take a bit of debugging. I curiously asked an LLM for a solution for one of these, surprise surprise they were wrong.
Of course, this can lead to a period of of debugging and a back and forth. That does take skill. You can use LLMs for this – asking what an error means. But often a search on the internet throws up a solution quicker and easier. That’s a skill.
Anyway, I just wanted to highlight Ross’ post and add my 2 cents. Make a brew (it’s Brew Monday!) and go and read it.
I lamented in 2024 that video games were beginning a downturn. The games that grabbed me post COVID weren’t going to be a thing going into 2025. I can confirm I was right in my speculations. 2025 was not a good year for video games.
There were good games, no doubt, but again AAA games were all largely disappointing, and indie games – whilst good – weren’t really quite grabbing me. It seems like although art forms require less and less attention spans, video games seem to be sticking with the larger, 40 to 50 hour attention cycle that I just don’t have. Nevertheless, there have been highlights.
The first main one has been being able to explore the Evercade. I’ve a blog post about it within my draft about the systems and why it’s the right mix of curated games and nostalgia (and you physically own the game) mean it’s perfect for those wanting to explore a library but are overwhelmed. It’ll get published soon. But if you end up with one under your Christmas Tree in a few weeks, consider yourself very lucky, as it’s an excellent system.
The second area of joy has been actually making games. I probably should turn the “Games” section of the About Us into it’s own little area highlighting my games, but I get genuine joy when people play or comment on my games. I’ve got a few in the pipeline, but it’s fair to say at the moment I’m preferring making games, rather than playing.
That’s not to say I didn’t have fun playing video games in 2025, oh no. Here’s a list of games I picked up for the first time and enjoyed in 2025.
Games I Enjoyed Playing in 2025
As always, I begin with video games I sunk some serious time into in 2025. These ones weren’t released this year, but short of a couple of quick blasts, these ones I discovered and I loved playing in 2025.
Zeta Wing (C64) by Sarah Jane Avory is a fantastic kind of spiritual successor to one of my favourite little Commodore 64 games and also my favourite arcade shooter – Gemini Wing. This Commodore 64 game has everything that made the first game great, with power ups, great controls and a fantastic soundtrack.
A few years back I listed Yoku Island Express as my favourite game of 2018. In a similar vein is Pinball Spire (PC), a Metroidvania style game where you play a large pinball table that goes up a spire. You get powerups for your ball that allows you to do some fun little tricks, but it keeps to the pinball element a lot better than Yoku. Maybe better? Not sure. It’s a bit short but it doesn’t overstay it’s welcome, which is nice. I recommend it highly if you like pinball games or Metroidvanias.
I’m sorry to Snow Bros (Arcade, available on the Toaplan 1 Evercade cartridge) that I always thought of as a weak Bubble Bobble clone. Turns out it is a ridiculously fun high score chase. Slightly random at points, which takes somewhat of the fun out of it, but overall a great high score focussed game.
Probably the weakest game here, Alcon (Arcade, available on the Toaplan 1 Evercade cartridge) – is a Toaplan vertical shooter with an odd quirk. Not kill anything for your first life and dependending on how far you get your next life will begin with a full load out and a shed load of points. There’s a philosophical argument to be made in the less you retaliate, the further you get in life. But I’m not Socrates.
A scrolling beat em up like Yie Ar Kung Fu, Guardian (Arcade, available on the Toaplan 1 Evercade cartridge) is a bit of a guilty pleasure. Probably not a great game by any metric, I really enjoyed it. I was so close to completing the came on a single credit. Not great, of course, but I really enjoyed it.
Although I’ve had it in my collection for a while, and I love the arcade version, the Game Gear port of Wonder Boy is sufficiently different I find to list as it’s own game. You have to play it so much different to the arcade version (which is one of my favourite games ever made), but it’s still great fun. A fun high score game. Probably could complete it if I gave it some more time.
Finally, my latest discovery is Xeno Crisis (Megadrive, available on the Xeno Crisis/Tanglewood cartridge). A modern game in the vein of Smash TV. A beautiful game, that has a cracking soundtrack. Tough, but just a great fun game, with some fantastic action. Recommended.
My favourite game I played the first time in 2025: Life is Strange
Probably my game of 2025. Life is Strange is a fantastic story. The tale of Max Caulfield and her relationship with Chloe Price, and the students and characters in Arcadia Bay is a story that grabbed me. The characters are well rounded. Three dimensional characters and a compelling storyline that develops over the course of the game. When shocking moments occur in the storyline they grab you, including moments that you are stressful, moments that shock you, and moments that make you cry. It’s a great story, with a particularlyevil bad guy, that you genuinely want to see get their comeuppance. The last episode is arguably one of the tensest moments I’ve ever been when playing a video game. So much you could eliminate one of the story arcs from the game, and it’ll still be incredible.
It’s not too difficult, but it’s a majestic storyline (which I’m avoiding here to share anything here to keep it spoiler free). It also has some of the best sound design I’ve experienced in a video game, something I’ve written about before here.
It’s well worth your time, and the last chapter has some of the most tense moments in video games I’ve ever experienced.
Those are the games I played for the first time in 2025, but what of games released this year? Here are those games, including my top 3 games of 2025. I’ll be honest, I’ve missed a lot of the top games and some big hitters (Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Blue Prince, Ball x Pit) are on my “to play” list, or I need a better system to play it. Nevertheless here are some of the games released this year that I recommend you check out.
A cosy logic game, Is This Seat Taken? (Steam) is a game with a fairly simple game where you have to arrange people to sit in locations based on their preferences. Every puzzle is possible. There’s a simple story but has some moments that makes you chuckle. Not too taxing but will keep your brain occupied for a decent length of time.
I wasn’t sure if I liked or hated Keep Driving (Steam) when I started it. I abandoned my first run because I wasn’t sure what I was doing. Nevertheless, I started again and I enjoyed it. A driving simulator involving everything but driving. For anybody who has ever completed a road trip, a lot of the game would resonate. Being able to pick up hitchhikers, a great soundtrack (that you have to buy in game), and some interesting side missions, there are multiple ways to complete this game. Best played after an enjoyable road trip.
A fun little Amiga romp, Roguecraft DX (Evercade) is a great little Roguelike where you descend into a procedurally generated dungeon to take on monsters such as scorpions, snakes, and errr… chickens. Has a Rogue like dungeon crawler been done better? Absolutely. Fatal Labyrinth for one for the Sega Megadrive. However it’s a great game, and well worth picking up.
For the longest time this was in my top 3 games for the year, but it dropped off. ReMATCH (Steam) is a third person football game that’s online. Combining the likes of Libero Grande from the arcade and Rocket League, this game sees you play short – 5 minute football matches – with various people online. You can communicate effectively without voice chat, and the game runs and plays well. The shooting system is a bit like Three Lions for the PS1 (remember that?), but plays pretty well. It ultimately dropped off as although I had some really tense moments (including a “golden goal” draw that lasted for a good 15 minutes), I did drop off, as folks got better, and I didn’t, and it took too long to level up and unlock things. Good fun mind!
3. Dispatch (PC)
Honestly, this will once it’s complete, may be the Game of the Year.
Dispatch is – at it’s core – a real time strategy team where you play a Dispatcher for a bunch of misfit superheroes. You have to send out your super heroes to respond to various incidents in the town you are in, and play to their strengths – send out a charismatic member of the team for community outreach work, send out a tall one or one that can fly to rescue a cat from a tree, that kind of thing.
However, at times, the superheroes can act on their own accord, and this is what is engaging. There’s an in depth story here, with a framing of a new employee navigating a brand new workplace. You have choices and there’s a un-nerving “XYZ will remember this” that flashes up whenever you have something that can affect you. I’m at the end of Episode 4 (episodes are framed based on a single day, and take about an hour to complete), and had a choice at the end of it that brought flashbacks to the choices in Life is Strange – where it feels so consequential. I went “Oh no!” at the end, as you do build bonds with these characters, and right now there’s a sense of foreboding….
With a great graphics, a fantastic presentation that sees your choices highlighted wonderfully at the end of each episode, and a compelling list of characters, Dispatch may – when it’s all said and done – by my GOTY 2025.
19th December 2025: I’m now at the end of Episode 5. The song that plays at the end of Episode 5 is up there with the theme from Snake Eater, “Still Alive” from Portal and “Gigi’s Song” from There Is No Game as my favourite song from a video game ever.
Öoo I picked up on a whim, and you play a character with 2 bombs that follow them around (in effect, what the typography of Öoo) is. It’s a fun Metroidvania, whose twist is you get the items all very early on, but you are sent on a loop of a cavern learning tricks with said items. Usually, the last trick will get you into the next cavern. It’s hard to explain but it’s very cleverly done. It offers the “aha” moment that means so much to me in games.
It’s ultimately a speedrun game. Even on a casual playthrough you’re likely to complete it within 3-4 hours, and it’s incredibly charming. The music has that Bubble Bobble-esque loop that is memorable, repeatable but doesn’t get repetitive, and the music evolves as you go through the game. The game is unpolished in a charming way, and well worth picking up for cheap.
One of my favourite games from the last 10 years has been The Return of the Obra Dinn, and any game that scratches that itch will always do well with me.
Add some beige box early internet, well, that scores huge.
The Roottrees are Dead is a fun, 10 hour or so mystery where you examine who inherits the vast Roottrees fortune. Only blood relatives can lay claim to it, so your job is to build the family tree to discover who are actual biological Roottrees. Find their name, their job and what they look like. Dig through library archives and 1998 internet to find out information about individuals. The satisfying elements are when printers whir into action, meaning you’ve uncovered a clue.
I don’t know why it resonated with me so much, probably because it was a simple interface and vely little hand holding meant you had to write notes, interpret documents and – eventually – uncover a secret that ties everything up nicely, works well and is a genuine twist. I’ve talked about the game before on this site as it’s slightly controversial start, but this cosy adventure is well worth 10 hours of your time.
A rabbit hole I went down yesterday was this article on The New Stack and it went deep into places I don’t ever want to frequent1. In the article, it talked about the sustainability in open source, particularly when large corporations that turn over huge profits view contributions as “here’s a bug, fix it”. I don’t want to believe it, but it does seem like open source is only a viable business solution when somebody gets screwed somewhere down the line.
The XKCD comic you legally must share when talking about open source development.
I remember when I started getting “security researchers” reporting bugs in my plugins, and it got exhausting when individuals came with their cap in hand to my free plugins, putting the bug behind a bitcoin paywall. Oddly since my plugins have joined the Patchstack Vulnerability Disclosure Programme these updates have pretty much stopped.
It got frustrating and stressful for me to push security updates when I was getting a couple every month, and I don’t have Google’s finest security researchers and AI breathing down my neck because my code probably isn’t being used internally in Google, or in Amazon, or Meta. I can understand why people who maintain these libraries are quitting when these are corporate entities are overwhelming volunteers, often with no compensation.
What’s with all the folks online tearing down other people’s stack?
I’ve read many a post in the past few weeks where people have been complaining about WordPress. There are justifiable complaints, obviously. However I feel like some developers and designers have made their entire existence about hating WordPress. Celebrating people moving off the platform. There are folks who post 2,000 word articles about how they hate Wapuu’s, sharing it as critiques on the community at the whole. But if you read the article fully, they simply hate Wapuu.
Obviously, everybody is entitled to their opinion. But I find it a bit strange. Making your entire personality on hating anything is weird, but especially for hating something as benign as a tech stack. Mate, Node.js won’t sleep with you. I also think it’s strange that people openly post on company blogs this. At least I try and keep it a bit separate. It’s woefully unprofessional and I can’t imagine it gets many customers.
Of course WordPress has problems. The block editor is a bit clunky still, and I am cheering on Fair to succeed. But nothing else is perfect. Shopify has problems2, Next.js has problems3, Webflow has problems. Different tools have positives and negatives. Being wedded to one system is always limiting. Be curious of other things4, explore the bubble outside, recognise which tools are best for the job, and go with them.
Never one of the Cool Kids
For me, I find the tool the most comforting to be WordPress. It’s creaky and clunky at time, but the sites rank well enough and do okay, plus I can make changes easily. There’s a reason why it’s been popular for so long. Same way COBOL has been around for so long. WordPress doesn’t attract the cool kids, but do you want your bank account to be cool5? Or traffic light systems to be cool? I don’t know about you, but I’d rather they work. I think WordPress is in the same place.
I find it similar to a patriotism. Usually the ones who I deem to be the most patriotic I find the ones who don’t bang on about it and recognise there are problems along the way. Whereas the folks who make their whole personality around a flag or a leader just a bit weird. Like they have nothing else to offer bar a piece of fabric from a flagpole. Because their piece of fabric is in their mind is better than your piece of fabric. And they want you to know about it.
I think developers who make their whole personality of “Hating on WordPress” similar. It’s text in a file that you open on a computer. We don’t have to be so emotional about it.
Finally – I’d like to draw your attention to the heading of the post. Do you know how difficult to find a roundabout that hasn’t been defaced in the UK in the year of our Lord 2025? To use as a base for my top image? Surely that’s worth a share just for that.
I may have assumed the gender of Wapuu. In which case, I apologise. ↩︎
Shopify is a nightmare for redirects. Like really bad. I had to use my friend Shane’s approach to redirects with it. As redirects in Shopify is completely unusuable. ↩︎
Have you ever tried to use Next.js to put anything in the header – like JSON+LD? And for it to work? Impossible. ↩︎
