May 2025 - Delivering Demon Kings
Kept you waiting, huh. May was a pretty quiet month, although maybe I was just playing too much Doom to notice. Find below, the games that were good enough to drag me away from slaying hordes of demons.
The slogan for May 2025 should have been "quality over quantity" because there were certainly less games that caught my attention than normal. That can be partially attributed towards my obsession with Doom: the Dark Ages (which I wrote about here) but what I did find was excellent.
I've had some of the below titles on my wishlist for what has felt like an interminable amount of time. Others were surprises that seemingly materialised out of thin air. Some released right on the cusp of April and May and since April was already chockers I opted to include them here.
But who gives a shit about my schedule? Even I don't. All you need to know is that the games I've included have earned your love and attention. Without further faffing about, presenting May 2025:
Labyrinth of the Demon King
Release Date: 14.05.2025
The state-mandated survival horror game that I take intravenously has arrived and it's Labyrinth of the Demon King. This is my fix—my heroin, my crack cocaine, my Dare Iced Coffee No Added Sugar. It's a tightly designed descent into an ever-maddening dungeon.
Expect tense, yet satisfying combat, rewarding exploration and an oppressive atmosphere that exerts terror. It is a fantastic experience, and you can read all about it in the full review, available here. In short, it's Silent Hill meets King's Field and fans of either will adore it.
Skin Deep
Release Date: 30.04.2025
Play as Nina Pasadena—an embattled insurance commando—who awakens from cryo-sleep to put down space pirate incursions by any means possible. From throwing a lighter at a gas leak or strategically positioning a banana peel, there exists a huge amount of makeshift weaponry available.
It's been too long since we've had such a dynamic stealth sandbox. Skin Deep is an immersive-sim, think Deus Ex or Thief, wrapped in a 70s pulp-sci-fi aesthetic. Every level is a self-contained playground for experimentation and crammed full of jokes and references. It's all at once ridiculous, yet extremely intelligent in its design.
Twilight Wars
Release Date: 23.05.2025
The art style threw me off Twilight Wars for a bit. I love a good cyberpunk aesthetic, but the characters' faces just looked off. It's a good thing I stuck with it, though, because Twilight Wars is a really interesting and intricate game—essentially X-COM meets Cyberpunk meets Darkest Dungeon.
The game offers far more than meets the eye. You can build and upgrade rooms at your base; then you need to manage the morale, traits, skills and salaries of your crew; then you manage their interpersonal relationships. There's also equipment, missions to choose, and choices to make on those missions, and it can all feel a bit abstruse. It's fun, though, and I can see the right player(s) sinking a lot of hours into this.
Deliver At All Costs
Release Date: 23.05.2025
Now we move onto the polar opposite of Twilight Wars' in-depth strategy management: a game where you drive trucks through buildings. Deliver At All Costs is a throwback to a simpler time. I sank countless hours into the Red Faction games when I was younger, where the greatest satisfaction came from blowing a lot of shit up, and this game nails that feeling.
It's a game that revels in absurdity, a recurring theme this month. Case in point: an early side mission sees you driving a haunted car into a volcano. The car occasionally takes control away from you, trying to prevent its incineration, as you drive it up a precarious mountain trail.
This is a forgiving, arcadey game with generous checkpoints, solely focused on dumb fun. It's the perfect game after a hard days yakka. The art style is gorgeous, the music is great and it's a game almost anyone can play.
to a T
Release Date: 28.05.2025
There are nowhere near enough decent games aimed at a younger audience. Too often, kids' games are either god-awful 'edutainment' or branded cross-media cash-ins. Rarely does a game aimed at younger gamers emerge that's both heartfelt and thoughtfully designed.
to a T gets straight to the point and clearly presents itself as a thinly veiled allegory for living with a disability. Your character is T-shaped, and the majority of the game is completing everyday tasks in this shape. The controls are simple, and it's a fun little game. It also presents themes about bullying and acceptance. It's a powerful message for kids that is wrapped in an entertaining package. We definitely need more games like this.
Out of Sight
Release Date: 22.05.2025
So much of my personal taste in games is built around the amount of time I've spent playing survival horror games and end up skipping over a lot of other kinds of horror games. 'Defenceless' horror games, like Outlast or Little Nightmares, never quite clicked with my little lizard brain. Out of Sight is giving me pause—maybe I should play more kinds of horror games.
Sophie is a blind girl being kept as a prisoner for a dark ritual. Miraculously, she regains sight through the sewn-on button eyes of her teddy bear companion, Teddy (she's magical, not creative). You'll spend a lot of time carrying Teddy around in a sort of first-person view—then you'll enter a room with a puzzle to solve, place Teddy on a vantage point while you run around in third-person pushing boxes and pulling levers. And it's a good thing we can see because the art direction is incredible, boasting excellent lighting, creepy characters and a stunning environment.
It's a short game, taking between two and three hours to complete. I'd rather say it's a game that doesn't "outstay its welcome" but just a few more puzzles wouldn't have been amiss. Still, what Out of Sight achieves in its brief runtime is impressive. Each room is its own little puzzle box with a drip feed of new mechanics that slowly complicate matters. It's not a terribly scary experience, but it's an interesting game with a fresh perspective.
That's a wrap for May. Steam Next Fest delayed production a bit, especially because I decided to check out a load of games. If your wishlists are looking light, I'd suggest checking out Part One and Part Two of my Next Fest coverage.
Aside from Next Fest, June has been an ample month for releases. In the next roundup, you can expect to hear about the already much-celebrated Date Everything!, the totally radical Star Overdrive and more. Death Stranding 2 comes out in June as well, so there might be another delay, but I swear I'll catch up soon.