In 2025, so many video games helped us laugh, helped us escape, and helped us connect. Join us for our annual discussion and celebration of the games that made our year.

00:00:46 - Some bittersweet news

00:09:56 - 2025 year of gaming overviews

00:26:47 - Spencer and Jamie's Top 5 Games of the Year

01:31:30 - Honorable Mentions

01:43:52 - Favorite characters of the year

01:47:36 - Favorite games journalists/content creators of the year

01:52:15 - Most hype for in 2026

Watch the live stream recording of this episode on YouTube here: https://youtube.com/live/SE2sNC_uE3Q

Side Quest

https://transasylumsupport.github.io/

The Trans Asylum Seekers Support Network is an interdependent, solidarity-based network of queer and trans asylum seekers, loved ones, collective members, and volunteers dedicated to the abolition of all cages and borders, revolutionary compassion and trans liberation. Our goal is to free transgender asylum seekers languishing in detention centers and help them relocate to and create thriving lives in Western Massachusetts. Learn more by visiting their website or @transasylumsupport on Instagram!

About Pixel Therapy

We're a podcast queering and transcending video games for all kinds of gamers and those who love them--get cozy with us! If you like what you hear, please take a moment to rate us, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts (or your listening app of choice) and subscribe! Want more? Join for free at patreon.com/pixeltherapypod

As the temperatures drop, the coziness factor turns up, and the impending arrival of a new year looms ominously on the horizon inviting us to dissociate from reality for just a little bit (just us?), it's just the perfect time to escape the stress and excitement of the holidays with a lengthy RPG you can sink your teeth into. At least, that's our tradition. Enter Demonschool (Necrosoft Games, published by Ysbryd Games), a campy, queer, isometric tactics RPG set at the cusp of Y2K with a delightful cast of college students banding together to save the world from monsters and gangsters while finding time for karaoke dates, fishing, petting dogs, and maybe kissing. WHAT ELSE COULD YOU WANT?

00:07:34 - Plate Up!

00:16:00 - s.p.l.i.t

00:20:28 - Demonschool

Watch the live stream recording of this episode on YouTube here: https://youtube.com/live/vdzIo5MlaYU

Side Quest

https://transasylumsupport.github.io/

The Trans Asylum Seekers Support Network is an interdependent, solidarity-based network of queer and trans asylum seekers, loved ones, collective members, and volunteers dedicated to the abolition of all cages and borders, revolutionary compassion and trans liberation. Our goal is to free transgender asylum seekers languishing in detention centers and help them relocate to and create thriving lives in Western Massachusetts. Learn more by visiting their website or @transasylumsupport on Instagram!

About Pixel Therapy

We're a podcast queering and transcending video games for all kinds of gamers and those who love them--get cozy with us! If you like what you hear, please take a moment to rate us, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts (or your listening app of choice) and subscribe! Want more? Join for free at patreon.com/pixeltherapypod

This week we're chatting about Hades II, the long-in-early-access follow up to 2020's Hades from Supergiant Games. Like its predecessor, Hades II is an action RPG roguelike chock full of eye-popping art, callous-forming combat, and a steady supply of sexual tension set in the deep lore of Greek myth while telling the all-too-relatable story of confronting toxic family dynamics and breaking intergenerational cycles of trauma. So grab a bottle of ambrosia and activate God Mode with us as we unpack all our thoughts and feelings about this game of the year contender.

1:57 - Dispatch final thoughts

11:29 - Hades II

53:30 - **SPOILERS for Hades II**

1:32:32 - Outro

Watch the live stream recording of this episode on YouTube here: https://youtube.com/live/XZ-HrL-XNNQ

Side Quest

https://transasylumsupport.github.io/

The Trans Asylum Seekers Support Network is an interdependent, solidarity-based network of queer and trans asylum seekers, loved ones, collective members, and volunteers dedicated to the abolition of all cages and borders, revolutionary compassion and trans liberation. Our goal is to free transgender asylum seekers languishing in detention centers and help them relocate to and create thriving lives in Western Massachusetts. Learn more by visiting their website or @transasylumsupport on Instagram!

About Pixel Therapy

We're a podcast queering and transcending video games for all kinds of gamers and those who love them--get cozy with us! If you like what you hear, please take a moment to rate us, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts (or your listening app of choice) and subscribe! Want more? Join for free at patreon.com/pixeltherapypod

Idk, but let us know in the comments! We continue our scattershot indie game revue reviews this week with Dispatch (AdHoc Studio, Critical Role), a superhero workplace comedy where choices matter, Consume Me (Jenny Jiao Hsia, AP Thomson), a WarioWare-esque slice-of-life RPG about that time when your parents, your friends, and society at large all conspired to make you feel ugly, lazy, stupid, and unloved despite the brilliant human spirit contained within you (aka high school), and BALLxPIT (Kenny Sun and Friends), a brick-breaking, ball-fusing, base-building survival roguelite!!!!111

02:10 - Halloweens Past & Present

12:16 - Adventures in Multiplayer with Phasmophobia and Power Wash Simulator 2

23:33 - Dispatch

58:42 - BALLxPIT

01:16:07 - Consume Me

Referenced article: "Coming-of-age horrors cut deep in Consume Me", by Giovanni Colantonio, https://www.polygon.com/consume-me-review/

Watch the live stream recording of this episode on YouTube here:

https://www.youtube.com/live/VfDPY5IK1Hk?si=l6Ji_QAHVBftQo8U

Side Quest

tinyurl.com/opolivebranch

Operation Olive Branch is a grassroots collective effort to amplify Palestinian voices and their GoFundMes – visit the link to learn more or visit their Instagram page at @operationolivebranch.

About Pixel Therapy

We're a podcast queering and transcending video games for all kinds of gamers and those who love them--get cozy with us! If you like what you hear, please take a moment to rate us, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts (or your listening app of choice) and subscribe! Want more? Join for free at patreon.com/pixeltherapypod

Bricks and sticks, pixels and lines. This week we cover a crop of endearing and surprisingly emotional indie games that have carried us through some tumultuous past few weeks. Also, Spencer draws an unhinged connection between Zach Cregger's summer thriller Weapons and Okomotive's atmospheric alpine expedition game Herdling. I feel like you guys will get it.

Games discussed this episode:

01:36 - Phasmophobia - Kinetic Games

10:19 - Herdling - Okomotive

29:29 - Is This Seat Taken? - Poti Poti Studio

36:05 - Time Flies - Playables, Raphaël Munoz

46:56 - LEGO Voyagers - Light Brick Studios

Watch the live stream recording of this episode on YouTube here: https://youtube.com/live/m8Ijpui2RCY

Side Quest

tinyurl.com/opolivebranch

Operation Olive Branch is a grassroots collective effort to amplify Palestinian voices and their GoFundMes – visit the link to learn more or visit their Instagram page at @operationolivebranch.

About Pixel Therapy

We're a podcast queering and transcending video games for all kinds of gamers and those who love them--get cozy with us! If you like what you hear, please take a moment to rate us, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts (or your listening app of choice) and subscribe! Want more? Join for free at patreon.com/pixeltherapypod

It's more common than you think. Join us this week as we load up our top-heavy backpacks, strap our tiny sentient dolls to our hips, and unpack DEATH STRANDING 2: On the Beach, Kojima Productions' and Sony Interactive Entertainment's much-anticipated sequel to 2019's polarizing Death Stranding. While we likely could have spent 6+ hours unpacking this genre-defying experience of a game, what we can promise is this: Opposing viewpoints! Can something be somehow super trans AND super not queer? Norman Reedus MPREG fantasies! Gender essentialism?! AND MORE!

**Heads up! We unfortunately were having some significant internet connection issues while recording, some of which did carry through to the final podcast. Apologies!

02:12 - Pixel Therapy is looking for a third

09:55 - Twisted Metal Season 2

14:53 - Main Topic: Death Stranding 2: On the Beach

01:14:04 - SPOILERS BEGIN for Death Stranding 2

01:57:59 - END OF SPOILERS, Outro

Referenced article - "The Women of Death Stranding 2 Are Stuck in a Sad Cycle" by Maddy Myers, https://www.endlessmode.com/video-games/death-stranding-2/the-women-of-death-stranding-2-are-stuck-in-a-sad-cycle

Side Quest

tinyurl.com/opolivebranch

Operation Olive Branch is a grassroots collective effort to amplify Palestinian voices and their GoFundMes – visit the link to learn more or visit their Instagram page at @operationolivebranch.

About Pixel Therapy

We're a podcast queering and transcending video games for all kinds of gamers and those who love them--get cozy with us! If you like what you hear, please take a moment to rate us, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts (or your listening app of choice) and subscribe! Want more? Join for free at patreon.com/pixeltherapypod

In the midst of an ongoing apocalyptic meteor shower that has forced the world's population of adorable pixelated animals underground, a kitten named Shell awakens to discover her mother missing. Join us as we dig into Nautilus Games' Everdeep Aurora, published by Ysbryd Games, which we had the pleasure of demo-ing at PAX West 2024!

01:38 - Death Stranding 2 impressions

08:24 - Quick film/TV talk (The Bear S4, Superman, Yuri on Ice)

16:06 - Everdeep Aurora discussion

Referenced in this episode: "Everdeep Aurora review: Searching for a home at the end of the world", Will Borger, Shacknews - https://www.shacknews.com/article/145053/everdeep-aurora-review-searching-for-a-home-at-the-end-of-the-world

Watch the live recording of this episode on YouTube at https://youtube.com/live/qjH3LH3kMS4

Side Quest

tinyurl.com/opolivebranch

Operation Olive Branch is a grassroots collective effort to amplify Palestinian voices and their GoFundMes – visit the link to learn more or visit their Instagram page at @operationolivebranch.

About Pixel Therapy

We're a podcast queering and transcending video games for all kinds of gamers and those who love them--get cozy with us! If you like what you hear, please take a moment to rate us, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts (or your listening app of choice) and subscribe! Want more? Join for free at patreon.com/pixeltherapypod

This Pride Month, we played three iconic LGBTQ+ visual novels that are each a little spooky, a little spicy, and have a whole lot of heart: Midnight Scenes: From the Woods (White Blanket Games), Mediterranea Inferno (Lorenzo Redaelli, Santa Ragione), and We Know the Devil (pillowfight)! Plus: Is the Babdook a queer icon? Are trans people actual biblically accurate angels on earth? Does kink belong at Pride? (yes) All this and more await you!!

05:18 - Why does the horror genre pair so well with stories that explore LGBTQ+ themes?

12:59 - Midnight Scenes: From the Woods discussion

30:03 - We Know the Devil discussion

45:35 - Mediterranea Inferno discussion

01:16:00 - Some final thoughts

Watch the live recording of this episode at https://youtube.com/live/RWv4zXg0YIE

Side Quest

tinyurl.com/opolivebranch

Operation Olive Branch is a grassroots collective effort to amplify Palestinian voices and their GoFundMes – visit the link to learn more or visit their Instagram page at @operationolivebranch.

About Pixel Therapy

We're a podcast queering and transcending video games for all kinds of gamers and those who love them--get cozy with us! If you like what you hear, please take a moment to rate us, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts (or your listening app of choice) and subscribe! Want more? Join for free at patreon.com/pixeltherapypod