Kotaku Wednesday, December 24, 2025 3:39 PM
New details about the upcoming Pokémon Wind and Wave show the games' map, battle gimmicks, more The post Surprise <em>Pokémon</em> Leak Reveals Fresh Clues About The New Gen 10 Games appeared first on Kotaku. |
Destructoid Wednesday, December 24, 2025 5:39 PM
Nothing says happy holidays like sitting down and playing a cozy, relaxing game. Whether you're looking for your next single-player adventure or a casual game to play with family and friends, there's no shortage of good (and bad) titles to choose from.
There are tons of options within this genre, from adorable farming games to shop management journeys where you run your own business at a more casual pace. Let's take a look at Destructoid's picks for the ten best cozy games to come out in 2025.
Table of contents
Best cozy games of 2025
Tiny Bookshop
As a lifelong reader and game lover, Tiny Bookshop truly feels like it was handcrafted just for me. It's the pinnacle of what a cozy game should be, centering on running a small, customizable, seaside book shop while gently progressing a storyline that runs through the seasons and features a lovable cast of quirky characters.
The experience is calm, thoughtful, and deeply comforting, encouraging you to slow down and savor the simple joy of books and community. You can take it entirely at your own pace, making it the perfect game to enjoy no matter what kind of mood you're in. This game filled my heart with joy and my to-read list with more books than I can reasonably handle, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
Date Everything!
Date Everything! is, without a doubt, the best dating sim I've ever played and one of my standout cozy games for 2025. This sandbox-style experience is a genuine love letter to art and creativity, with over 100 unique characters brought to life by an impressively talented voice cast and striking, memorable designs.
Witty, charming, and endlessly addictive, it fully embraces its absurd premise with confidence, transforming everyday objects into unforgettable characters and stories you can't help but fall in love with. It's safe to say there's truly nothing else quite like it, and it delivers an experience you'll never forget.
Two Point Museum
It's time to jump right into some classic money management with Two Point Museum. The Two Point series is well-known within the casual gaming space as being strange yet oddly fascinating, and Two Point Museum is no exception. If you've played Two Point Hospital or Campus in the past, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.
Two Point Museum manages to kick everything up a notch with its mix of bizarre humor, satisfying visuals, and enjoyable gameplay that goes beyond just making rooms and watching your money go up. It takes everything that made past Two Point games great and evolves them further, cementing itself as one of the greatest tycoon games to release within the past few years.
Hello Kitty Island Adventure
I still remember my first hour playing Hello Kitty Island Adventure at the beginning of this year. With 2024 being a strange year for me, I started 2025 feeling happier than ever, knowing we were beginning with a title that's still near and dear to my heart.
Even if you're not a Sanrio fan, there's still plenty to love here, with a massive open world to explore, tons of quests to complete, and an in-depth, rewarding friendship system. If you're looking for a cozy game absolutely full to the brim with content, Hello Kitty Island Adventure will be right up your alley.
Town to City
I'll admit it: I adore voxel graphics. It's rare for a voxel game to look truly beautiful, but if there's one game that pulls it off flawlessly, it's Town to City. Made by the team behind Station to Station, Town to City masterfully combines feelings of relaxation with a unique spin on city building, building itself up as one of the most interesting games to come out this year.
Normally, city builders can be stressful, especially if you struggle with resource management or are prone to min-maxing. Town to City gives you the choice: take on the challenge of building up a town through the game's campaign mode, or jump into Sandbox mode and put all of your energy into creating a bustling settlement. It creates a perfect balance of cozy and challenge, all the while keeping you immersed with its beautiful art style and landscapes. If you're a fan of Station to Station or want to try out a more casual city builder, this one is for you.
Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time
There are two sides to the Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time coin. For those who played the original Fantasy Life on the 3DS, this is a trip down memory lane with vastly improved graphics, revamped dungeon mechanics, and polished controls to make it feel modern. For the rest of us, it's a fantastic dive into a classic JRPG full of fun combat, unique skilling mechanics, and multiplayer features for wacky shenanigans with friends.
Of all the entries in this list, Fantasy Life i is the title I've put the most time into, by far. The main storyline is in-depth and stretches dozens of hours, with fellow completionists out there having well over 100 hours of skilling grinds, dungeon-crawling, and open-world exploration to conquer. It's an adorable and charming entry I couldn't put down for the first few weeks of playing, and I wholeheartedly recommend this one to any classic RPG fan who thrives on mastering life skill progression systems.
MakeRoom
2025 is the year of expressing creativity in our games, with MakeRoom being another that steals the show. This title is all about unleashing your interior design skills as you take furniture pieces, change their colors, and arrange them in dioramas. You can make anything from cottage-style kitchens to gaming lounges, cafes, or even a place for your pets.
Although MakeRoom mainly focuses on interior design, you can do just about anything that your heart desires. It lets you recolor and resize furniture, change room sizes, and even recolor the map's background, giving you more to do than just mindlessly place down furniture. Combine this with an adorable cartoony art style, and you've got yourself a game that you can sink hours into if you're feeling particularly creative. It's quickly become my go-to chill game, especially when I'm in the mood to recreate rooms from a TV show I've recently watched or places I've seen in real life.
Cast n Chill
Let's change things up with some fishing. If you're like me, you'll have at least a few games you enjoy just because they have a fun fishing minigame. Rather than just being a minigame, Cast n Chill is all about you and your pet dog riding in a boat, fishing, and making a whole lot of money. It's a stunning game to boot, donning detailed pixelated graphics and impressive scenery straight out of a wilderness adventure.
The twist? It's both an active and idle game. If you want to dive headfirst into learning how to catch fish, you can take a more active approach, master its mechanics, and reap the benefits. Sometimes, though, it's nice to enjoy your surroundings by taking a passive approach and letting the game play itself. Of the many fishing minigames and full games I've played, Cast n Chill is up there as one of my favorites of all time.
Gemporium
If you're tired of fishing, cooking, and combat, maybe mining is for you. Gemporium is a short but sweet game where you play as a mole that recently inherited their Grandmole's gem business. It turns out, though, that she's in some serious debt, leaving you to pay it back by taking over ownership, collecting gems, and selling them to groups of customers.
While this might sound like just another shop simulation game, it offers a great mix of strategy and fun without feeling stressful or chaotic. Like others on this list, you can go at your own pace and either speedrun paying off Grandmole's debt or take your time and treat it as a relaxing hidden gem within the cozy game genre.
Winter Burrow
Last but certainly not least is Winter Burrow, a survival game with a heavy focus on exploration and resource management. While it has some strong initial similarities to titles like Don't Starve, don't let its art style fool you—it stands on its own as a completely separate and lovable game that, rather than being brutal and unforgiving in nature, is instead a pleasant and comforting experience.
Winter Burrow balances challenging survival mechanics with riveting storytelling in a way that's fun without being overwhelming or stressful. It calls itself a cozy survival game and proves it, letting you sit back and enjoy its story without getting spawn camped by monsters or starving to death every few minutes. It's easily one of my favorite survival games to date, making it a strong contender for one of the best cozy games to release this year.
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Destructoid Wednesday, December 24, 2025 5:19 PM
The Frequency Mod Box, added to ARC Raiders as part of a post-launch update, has suddenly become a popular item for raiders.
This essentially has to do with the new Expedition 2 project, which requires you to commit a few Frequency Mod Boxes to complete the stage. While the item's location is random, this guide will help solve some of your doubts about where to look.
Best locations for Frequency Mod Box in ARC Raiders
The best spot to find the Frequency Mod Box is Stella Montis. This is by far the only spot where I have found the Frequency Mod Box. Ideally, you can find the item on any corner of the map. For better odds, you'll want to look in the rooms of Medical Research and Assembly Workshops.
These two locations are high-tier loot areas compared to the rest of the map. Naturally, the odds of finding rarer items like the Frequency Mod Box will be higher. If you're in the locations, you'll want to look in every container and locker possible.
Remember that there's no fixed location where you can find the Frequency Mod Box. As of writing, it's also not part of any quest rewards, but that could change in the future when the next update drops.
There are also reports of players finding the item on the Spaceport Map. As of writing, I have never managed to find it on the map. However, make sure to look near the Rocket Assembly area if you're on Spaceport. There are no alternate ways of obtaining the Frequency Mod Box apart from obtaining it during a raid.
Earlier, we could recycle/salvage the Frequency Mod Box to find valuable items like Advanced Electronic Components. However, you're going to need them to complete the Expedition 2 project if you want to reset your progress and begin fresh.
The Stella Montis map is also an excellent area to find Ticks. You'll need to damage and destroy several of them if you're aiming to get three stars from the ongoing Trials.
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Destructoid Wednesday, December 24, 2025 4:38 PM
Warhammer 40,000 fans are eating good. With Total War and Dawn of War on the way, I don't think there's ever been a better year for the franchise. However, those more inclined toward RPGs instead of strategy are getting something, too, which is Owlcat's new Dark Heresy title.
Much like its 2023 game, Rogue Trader, Dark Heresy takes place in the grim darkness of the far future where there's no peace among the stars. It puts you in the role of an Inquisition Acolyte, searching through a God-Emperor-forgotten hive city gutter where many don't even know what the Inquisition represents.
You're tasked with piecing together a comprehensive case like a true detective, uncovering the dark mysteries that shroud the putrid corners of Marisportum. Thanks to Owlcat, I played the game early and participated in its pre-release Alpha, and I'm completely enthralled by its innovative approach to cRPGs.
The overarching mechanic of playing as a detective is one of the most fun things I have ever encountered in a video game. You're literally a detective—an Inquisition detective at that—where each and every bit of information feeds into your broader task: finding out what happened to people in Marisportum.
You get this huge Inquisitor's journal where the whole narrative blends together, as if you were putting things up on a pin board, not much unlike a detective in a police procedural. You uncover information, connecting it to what you already know, use what you've uncovered to uncover more, and eventually form opinions and literal hypotheses that may or may not be true.
It's a comprehensive system, one that has completely transformed the core of what a quest is, making everything a thread to be followed. Every part of the game is important and crucial to the story, as you never know how a random side-quest may shine light on a vital piece of missing information that you just needed to form a solid hypothesis.
And while those bits are awesome, to say the least, the combat, too, is as innovative as they come. The last time I played a cRPG and was surprised by its turn-based combat was Divinity: Original Sin 2, a game that proved to me how turn-based combat can actually be fun and intuitive and not slow at all.
Now, Dark Heresy takes the crown as my favorite game of this kind, even if it isn't as deep as, say, Baldur's Gate 3. Each of your heroes, and there can be many in your party, has a unique set of abilities and weapons which determine how they'll perform mechanically. It isn't just about melee and ranged, every gun works differently on the battlefield and can be as much an advantage as a hindrance.
A lot of 4X is there that puts Dark Heresy somewhere in-between Baldur's Gate and Mechanicus, as you also have to position your heroes before the fight, much like you'd do in the latter.
One of the heroes in the alpha, the Acolyte, has a sniper rifle that enables him to enter something like V.A.T.S. from Fallout, where each body part has a percentage to be hit. This sort of variation between each of the weapons and characters makes the combat super fun, replayable, and even complex, allowing your tactical and strategic self to truly shine in each situation.
Of course, this is set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, which I've been bawling over for the past few weeks in light of all the different announcements. The setting, the grim darkness, the factions, everything is represented, well-developed, and stylish, as you'd come to expect from a 40K IP.
Overall, what Owlcat has done here is superb, and given that it's an alpha and not the full game, I cannot wait to see what else they're cooking behind the scenes.
The full release is likely sometime in late 2026 or even early 2027, so there's plenty of time to add a lot more than what's been shown so far.
The post I tried Owlcat's Warhammer 40K: Dark Heresy RPG, and I can't wait for the full release appeared first on Destructoid. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Destructoid Wednesday, December 24, 2025 4:20 PM
The Perita Rebellion game mode is an excellent addition for Warframe players who have reached the endgame stage.
Added as part of The Old Peace update, the mode requires you to complete various missions on Perita. While the missions are reasonably complex, there are excellent rewards available for players.
Table of contents
How does Perita Rebellion work in Warframe
The Perita Rebellion mode sets a timer of 12 minutes for you to complete different objectives. Irrespective of how many objectives you manage to complete, the boss will always turn up after 12 minutes. That said, you'll want ot complete as many objectives as possible to get better rewards.
While it's essential to defeat the bosses to get three crucial resources (Ascaris Prime, Lyroic Bridge, and Ren Hypercore), there are more rewards on offer.
As I mentioned earlier, you'll want to complete as many objectives, aka Orders, as possible. Completing an Order raises the amount of rewards by one, and completing ten of them automatically doubles your rewards.
Moreover, the Orders themselves have their own pool of rewards that follows the typical rotation order in Warframe.
All Perita Rebellion Order rewards rotation
The Order rewards follow the AABC order. Rotation A has the highest number of rewards, but Rotation B and Rotation C also consist of some fantastic rewards.
Rotation A
Rotation A includes parts of Galariak Prime, Sagek Prime, Meso Relics, and random resources. The Perita Rebellion Orders are the only known way to get parts of the Galariak Prime and Sagek Prime.
Rotation B
You'll always get one additional boss resource based on your selected Recall mission.
Rotation C
Rotation C includes five Tektolyst Arcanes, with each having an odd of 20%.
The post All Perita Rebellion rewards in Warframe and how to get them appeared first on Destructoid. |
Gaming Instincts – Next-Generation of Video Game Journalism Wednesday, December 24, 2025 4:04 PM Adds a new character and vehicle. The post Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds Gets NiGHTS Content Drop Update appeared first on Gaming Instincts - Next-Generation of Video Game Journalism. |
Gaming Instincts – Next-Generation of Video Game Journalism Wednesday, December 24, 2025 3:33 PM A new trailer was also released. The post FANTASY LIFE i: The Girl Who Steals Time Gets New Major Update appeared first on Gaming Instincts - Next-Generation of Video Game Journalism. |
Gaming Instincts – Next-Generation of Video Game Journalism Wednesday, December 24, 2025 3:06 PM According to the publisher. The post Danganronpa Series Sales Surpass Ten Million Units Worldwide appeared first on Gaming Instincts - Next-Generation of Video Game Journalism. |