Stuff I liked in 2025
This is the 2025 edition of my "good stuff" list, where this time I'm collecting things over time as I experience them. Metal records, books, and games I've enjoyed so far in 2025, with the music restricted to new releases.
See also last year's post.
Heavy metal§
There's been so much good stuff this year I might have to do a top 10 instead of 5. Top N so far:
- Kardashev — Alunea (deathgaze)
- An Abstract Illusion — The Sleeping City (atmospheric prog/death)
- Rivers of Nihil — Rivers of Nihil (prog/death)
- Fallujah — Xenotaph (atmospheric tech-death)
- Eluveitie — Ànv (folk/melodeath)
- Slow Fall — Blood Eclipse (melodeath)
- Allegaeon — The Ossuary Lens (prog/tech/melodeath)
The rest in no particular order (well, the order I heard them in, which I guess is a particular order if you think about it):
- Dynazty — Game of Faces (heavy)
- Arion — The Light That Burns The Sky (power)
- Spiritbox — Tsunami Sea (prog/metalcore)
- Dawn of Ouroboros — Bioluminescence (post-black)
- Dessiderium — Keys To The Palace (prog/death/black)
- Havukruunu — Tavastland (black)
- Bleed From Within — Zenith (metalcore)
- Hypermass — Apparition Day (groove/melodeath)
- Elvenking — Reader of the Runes - Luna (folk/power)
- Voidfallen — The Rituals of Resilience (melodeath)
- Embrium — Timekeeper (melodic black)
- Buried Realm — The Dormant Darkness (tech/melodeath)
- Novelists — CODA (prog/metalcore)
- Fractal Universe — The Great Filters (prog/death)
- Destinity — Ascension (melodeath)
- Shadow of Intent — Imperium Delirium (symphonic deathcore)
- Ancient Bards — Artifex (symphonic/power)
- Azure Emote — Cryptic Aura (symphonic prog/death)
- Blackbraid — Blackbraid III (atmospheric black)
- Spire of Lazarus — Those Who Live In Death (tech/deathcore)
- Lorna Shore — I Feel The Everblack Festering Within Me (symphonic deathcore)
- Faetooth — Labyrinthine (doom)
- Visitant — Rubidium (melodic black/death)
- Dark Matter Secret — New Matter (instrumental tech-death)
- Suotana — Ounas II (folk/melodeath)
- In Mourning — The Immortal (melodeath)
- Raat — White Fire (atmospheric black)
- BLACKSHAPE — Prismer I (post)
Books§
Nonfiction§
I've been reading so much for my studies this year I haven't had the energy to read any more nonfiction for leisure, but I want to highlight one textbook I read:
Tristan Needham — Visual Differential Geometry and Forms
Beautifully written and illustrated,
full of humor, useful intuition, fascinating historical notes,
and Star Trek references.
The only textbook I've had so much fun reading
I'd even open it on weekends.
Math (and science in general) would be better with more pictures of fruit
and phrases like "therefore, reaching upward, we may now touch the face of God".
The lengthy recommended reading list at the end of the book
will certainly keep me occupied for years to come.
Fiction§
Max Gladstone — Three Parts Dead (The Craft Sequence)
A fantasy interpretation of our modern world
where the arcane rules of law and ownership
are the basis of actual magic and gods.
A fun hodgepodge of aesthetics, often quite funny satire,
and many great characters.
Quite a long series which stayed interesting all the way through,
with the latest part being released just this October.
Mary Robinette Kowal — The Martian Contingency
The latest entry in the Lady Astronaut series mentioned in last year's list,
this time seeing Elma York et al. building the first human habitat on Mars.
Still fascinatingly grounded in reality
despite the divergence from real-life events,
and full of lively detail that makes it easy to relate to the characters
and their struggles.
Ursula K. Le Guin — The Left Hand of Darkness
Like many of Le Guin's works, this book combines two of my favorite things:
sophisticated worldbuilding and a "man vs. nature" survival story.
On a cold planet whose people have no fixed gender
(a fact reflected in all aspects of their social order),
a human ambassador attempts to navigate their unfamiliar politics
and harsh landscapes.
Alex Pheby — Mordew (Cities of the Weft)
A strange, borderline surreal, vaguely Victorian fantasy world
of wildly powerful magic and seemingly nonsensical events
which eventually cohere into something surprisingly comprehensible.
It starts small, in the slums of the city of Mordew,
slowly revealing the true nature and scale of the world.
This is my kind of weird — unusual storytelling structures,
high-flying philosophical ponderings,
topped off with touches of dry humor and body horror.
Susanna Clarke — Piranesi
A mysterious world of endless corridors and statues,
inhabited by an equally mysterious lone explorer
whose journals tell us the story.
A captivating tale with a palpable sense of place
that I would have loved to spend more time exploring.
Aliette De Bodard — The Red Scholar's Wake
Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,
and this spacefaring pirate story could just as well be about wizards instead
with its sentient spaceships, micro-robots and mind-controlled computers.
The core of the story, though, is in romance and political machinations
which I found quite compelling.
Also, "lesbian space pirates" is a hell of a tagline.
Susanna Clarke — Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell
1800s England, except there's magic.
And it's a field of study as dry and academic as they come,
which makes it the exclusive pursuit of rich men with nothing better to do.
The story is told in the style of a regency drama,
with much attention given to the mundane interpersonal squabbles of these aristocrats.
It took me a while to decide whether or not I liked this one,
but ultimately the skillful character writing
and unusual depiction of magic won me over.
Adrian Tchaikovsky — Empire in Black and Gold (Shadows of the Apt)
A fantasy world where humans have taken on traits of various insects.
Industrious Beetles, rigidly organized Ants, tiny nimble Flies,
Mantis warriors, etc. etc.
all threatened by an aggressively expansionist Empire of the Wasps.
The worldbuilding is a fun and very detailed mix
of steampunky industrial revolution -era technology
with the various semi-magical insectoid features,
and while the protagonists have a certain "young adult" flavor,
the story isn't afraid to get as dark and brutal as a war story needs to.
At the time of writing I'm halfway through the (quite long) series
and still enjoying it a fair bit.
Games§
Saturnalia
A horror detective game about an Italian village haunted by a mysterious monster.
Roads and most buildings are randomly shuffled
whenever you lose your crew of four characters,
making sure you never quite get comfortable with the layout.
An interesting blend of procedurally generated and hand-authored content,
stylish visuals, an engaging story, and lots and lots of tension.
Archipelago
A randomizer mod with a twist —
instead of shuffling items within one game,
it combines many games into one world
where items of one game may appear in any other.
It's a wild idea that works amazingly well,
even supporting many games that don't have "items" in a typical sense.
You can play it alone or with friends,
all at the same time or asynchronously over long time periods.
BETON BRUTAL
A tower-climbing platformer in the vein of Getting Over It, Only Up, etc,
but from a first-person perspective.
Very punishing and frustrating at times,
but has good pacing and solid controls
that still feel good when you're going through the same room for the 30th time
to get back to that one spot where you keep falling off.
Dead Space (2023)
I never played the original so I can't say how it measures up,
but the remake was a thoroughly enjoyable horror shooter.
A little more combat-oriented and gory than my usual horror preference,
but the game does some cool things with the weapon mechanics
and world design that made it very compelling for me.
Still Wakes the Deep
A horror story about an oil rig and its crew
who encounter a mysterious organism hidden in the bedrock.
The setting is beautifully realized and perfect for horror —
no way out, and plenty of high places, dark rooms, and massive underwater structures.
Plus some delightfully Scottish character acting.
There's not much in the way of gameplay,
but with atmosphere like this I had a great time just walking through the story.
Lies of P: Overture
A new campaign for one of the best Soulslikes out there.
This one ramps up the intensity to previously unseen levels
without losing its sense of fairness,
featuring some of my all-time favorite boss fights.
The visual designs and exploration elements are also as enjoyable as ever.
Merge Maestro
A deckbuilder where you place tokens on a board,
combine identical ones to make new stronger ones,
and create synergies to destroy enemies.
The basic rules are simple, but there's a combinatorial explosion of possibilities
where winning often entails "breaking" the game in some new and satisfying way.
Metal: Hellsinger
At first glance this game looks almost exactly like Doom (2016),
but the twist — you must shoot in time with the music —
ends up giving it a highly distinct and satisfying identity.
The soundtrack consists of some pretty banging melodic death metal
that gives the game a driving groove that just feels really good.
Rain World
One of the strangest, most thoroughly unique gaming experiences I've ever had.
Rain World simulates a complex living ecosystem of predator and prey
in the ruins of some mysterious civilization,
where you must learn to survive without being told anything about how it works.
It's unfair in the way nature is unfair;
it's brutal and frightening and disgusting in the way nature is;
it's grand and beautiful and serene in the way nature is.
Also an absolute masterpiece in 2D visual effects
and an inspiration to my own tech-art work.
Sword of the Sea
The latest from Giant Squid (of Journey fame),
another short platforming adventure with a focus on astonishingly beautiful visuals.
As a "snowboarding" game it lacks a certain inertia,
but the movement is merely a vessel for experiencing the world,
which is gorgeous as always.
Worth seeing if you're a Giant Squid fan;
if you've never played one of their games before,
my personal favorite is still The Pathless.