Hey bookworm friends! Dark Shelf of Wonders is a bookish blog but I have other hobbies and this year, I want to make room on my shelf to talk more about games. This post might not be for everyone (and that’s okay) but I know that a lot of readers, like me, also love games. So, before January is over, I want to indulge my gamer side and chat about my top board games & video games of 2025! This does not mean that the games came out last year but simply that I played and enjoyed them then.
My Top 5 Video Games of 2025
I played 10 video games in total in 2025 so I’ll only be picking my top 5, not counting any I replayed. They are listed in order of hours played. Please note that more hours doesn’t necessarily translate directly into loving them more.
1. Baldur’s Gate 3
My Thoughts: I had so much fun playing this game with my husband; what a great story! I know it’s one I’m going to want to replay again in the future to get the most out of it since I didn’t explore every story-line. I didn’t get to learn much about Astarion because I nursed a grudge against him the whole time so maybe next time I’ll be nicer to him 😜. And maybe I can get Karlach to love me, too. I loved how rich and lived-in this world is!
Hours Played: 113
2. Slay The Spire
My Thoughts: I love deck-building games of all kinds so I was bound to fall in love with this one. I find it equally satisfying and challenging though I’ve yet to beat the game with the Watcher even though I’ve tried SO many times (🫠) and yet I’m not fully ready to quit yet! I’m also super excited for Slay the Spire 2 that’s coming out soon!
Hours Played: 73
3. Plate Up!
My Thoughts: One of our favourite co-op games in my house is Overcooked 2 and PlateUp! is currently giving it a run for its money. We played a good amount last year and we’re still going at it because it’s endlessly re-playable. I love that it’s a cooking game where you can upgrade and customize your kitchen and set up a bunch of different restaurant franchises that sell different meals. The longer you play with a restaurant, the harder it gets but the more you can eventually automate it to handle bigger crowds and more complicated meals!
Hours Played: 47
4. Time to Morp
My Thoughts: Another cute co-op game I played with my husband, there’s definitely a theme here and I prioritize playing co-op games whenever I can! This one is like if Stardew Valley took place in a distant planet in space. It’s a farming sim where you have to explore the area and find different types of these cute little aliens called Morps. Each type of Morp provides you with different resources and eats different things. As you expand the village, you set up an engine with your resources to get better technology and figure out how to get off the planet. It’s a cute game and the Morps are adorable. We had fun with it though we didn’t expect the end of the game to sneak up on us, I wish it was longer.
Hours Played: 21
5. Witchtastic
My Thoughts: Surprise! Another co-op game and another kind of cooking game! As the title implies, you play as little witches collecting ingredients to make potions against the clock. It’s so creative and whimsical, I love that a lot of the ingredients aren’t so easy to collect. For example gathering ghosts in a bottle but be careful because the ghosts can stun you and make you drop your bottle! It has a solo mode but it’s quite challenging. Another one that I wish was longer. We could have played more but it’s very difficult to get perfect or ‘Witchtastic!’ on every level. We might have given up on perfection but we enjoyed our time with it a lot!
Hours Played: 15
My Top 10 Board Games of 2025
I’ve been embracing video games a lot more in recent years, but they’re a newer interest for me since I didn’t grow up playing them. On the other hand, board games have been a constant in my life ever since I can remember. My love of games comes from my mom, which in turn comes from her parents; special occasions in my house always involve some kind of game. And my husband loves all kinds of games more than me if it can even be believed 😲! All that to say that I played so many board games last year that it would be impossible for me to pick a top 5 so I’m picking a top 10 which is already hard enough! In no particular order, these are all ones I would love to own and am always happy to play.
1. Era: Medieval Age
Build a 3D city by rolling dice. Figuring out how to place your buildings to gain more points but avoid potential disasters is so fun and has a tetris-like feel.
2. Evergreen
Build lush ecosystems by planting trees where they can collect sunlight to grow. I loved this one so much, I got the mobile version.
3. Clank!: A Deck-Building Adventure
Build decks to explore a dragon’s mountain lair and steal their treasure without waking it up! I hadn’t played it in years and fell in love with it again.
4. Dorfromantik: The Board Game
A co-op campaign game where you build a tile-based territory with fields, forests, train tracks, rivers & towns. Each game is different but builds off the last one.
5. Bunny Kingdom
Draft cards to position your bunny warrens in strategic places on the 100 squares of the board. Expand your Bunny Kingdom to gain more influence than your opponents.
Era: Medieval Age
Evergreen
Clank!: A Deck-Building Adventure
Dorfromantik
Bunny Kingdom
Fantastic Factories
Hues and Cues
Just One
Ex Libris: Revised Edition
Stardew Valley: The Board Game
Board Games of 2025, Cont’d
6. Fantastic Factories
A worker-placement game where the dice are the workers in a factory and you have to manage your hand of cards to make better factories.
7. Hues And Cues
Describe a hue without using a primary colour name and the closer people guess to the target, the more points you get.
8. Just One
Players try to guess one word with one-word clues. But if multiple people give the same clue, it gets canceled out. This one is a crowd-pleaser and an addictive party game.
9. Ex Libris
Try to alphabetize your magical bookshelves by using powers from locations that are ever-shifting. Perfect for bookish gamers!
10. Stardew Valley: The Board Game
Grow crops, raise animals, explore Stardew Valley, and befriend the residents. This board game recreates the video experience in board game format really well!
Let’s chat in the comments!
Bookish Gamers, please sound off 🖤! Please tell me about any favourite game discoveries from 2025!
STARDEW VALLEY HAS A BOARD GAME?
You’ll be pleased to learn that, Yes it does!! It’s so fun and you can do farming, fishing, having animals, giving gifts to villagers, mining, foraging, opening geodes, and even opening the community center… so much of the elements are transferred over in a way that makes sense for a board game and you can focus on different things each game. 😀
Im glad you decided to go ahead and make this post in the end 🥰 hopefully it’ll help people discover some new games. I especially love that you’ve covered both video and board games.
I still really want to try out Baldur’s Gate 3 and will have to look into it sometime this year. Plate Up! Sounds like the cooking games I used to download free demos of when I was younger. I always found them super addictive. I love the sound of a witch based one too. Good luck beating the watcher one day on Slay The Spire too 🥰
I havent heard of any of the board games you’ve played but they sound like a wonderful mix with some really creative ideas. I especially like the sound of Ex Libris and the Stardew Valley one. I remember you mentioning the video game version but had no clue that there was a board game now too.
I love how much game time you and your husband manage to share. I’m going to make more of an effort to try my video games out this year. I actually have my eye on a few upcoming ones that sound great, although it depends what consoles they’re on. I’d love to do board games more too but that all comes down to numbers 😌
Thanks, Charlotte, in the end I thought why not, it’s a topic I care a lot about and I had fun writing it! 🙂 Yes, I had to have both categories 😀 !
ahah yes I highly recommend BG3 and haha that’s cute I love that you used to get free demos of cooking games and I fully agree that they’re addictive!
Thank you, I will need all the luck I can get with that one, It’s been plaguing me for over a year lol 😅.
I’m glad some of the board games sound fun to you too and Ex Libris is honestly so perfect for book lovers and it’s surprisingly challenging!
Yes, I definitely think not enough people know that Stardew has a board game version now too!
It’s luckily a shared hobby of ours and something that we definitely bonded over and I’m grateful to have someone who will happily read the rules for new games since I hate that part 😂. I hope you can play more video games this year. ohh exciting which ones have caught your eye? And yes that’s fair.
Thats what matters most 🥰🥰 writing posts that you feel passionately about is always so rewarding.
Not just cooking, all kinds of time management ones to be fair as well as hidden object ones. It always used to bug me that the trials were limited to an hour though 😪
I’m sure you’ll get there eventually 🥰 at least its a fun challenge.
Definitely a very fitting game to share on the blog then 🥰 I like a challenge to be fair. And I’m sure if that one was more widely known it would have a lot of fans.
😂😂 I love how you’ve delegated that part of the game process to him 😅thank you, here’s hoping 🤞
The Dune one, I still need to look into what it involves but I’m sure I’ll love it. Crimson Desert and The Blood Of Dawnwalker caught my eye in the same email. Maybe Haunted Chocolatier as the name definitely caught my eye (I used to love a free demo of a chocolatier game as a kid). I need to look to see if there’s more tbh. If I come across any I’ll let you know on Instagram.
Okay, I am obsessed with PlateUp! It’s so much fun. I’ve never heard of Witchtastic but it sounds like one I definitely need to check out, too. I’ve always wanted to check out the Stardew board game. Glad to hear you liked it.
Oh yay, a fellow PlateUp! fan 😃! I’m so glad you love it too and I love how you can play it for so long without ever getting boring!
Witchtastic is a cute and creative indie game I have such a soft spot for it. Thanks and yes if you can ever get your hands on the Stardew board game I highly recommend it! Thanks, Amanda 🖤
I have a habit of starting long & complicated games (like BG3) and not finishing them, and then not remembering where I was and what I was doing, and so restarting the game entirely. 🤦🏻♀️ In fact, I only recently restarted Baldur’s Gate 3. I’m hoping that this time I keep playing so that I can finish the main story!
Ohh honestly I can relate to that, I’ve done that before with another game. It helps that usually I’m not playing by myself so if I forget something, my husband knows exactly what we were doing lol. I definitely hope you can continue your run of BG3 this time because the story really is so great! 😀 hehe
How many interesting games!!! *_*
I love Baldur’s Gate even if I haven’t finished it yet. But still… it’s an amazing game!!
And Bunny Kingdom seems soooo cute!
I was curious about the Stardew Valley one, because I love the videogame but I wasn’t really sold on the board game, but I am glad you’ve enjoyed it!!
Yes there were so many great games last year, thank you :D!!!
And I’m glad you love BG3 too 😀 I hope you can finish it at some point and what character are you playing as or did you make your own?
The cards in Bunny Kingdom are so cute and the game is so fun!
Ah well, if you ever get a chance to play the Stardew board game without paying for it, I say try it out and see what you think! I always play it at a cafe but I love it enough that I would be happy to own a copy.
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