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 albums, 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§
Current AOTY: Allegaeon — The Ossuary Lens (prog/tech/melodeath)
- 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)
Books§
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.
I read through the entire series without a break
(except for the final entry, which is not out yet at the time of writing)
and was sad to have it end.
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.