I’ve been waiting for Steam’s Year in Review to release, which it did this week. While it doesn’t fully show my gaming for the year – one of my perennial faves I play via a different client – it still has most of the info I needed to do my own review.
This is Steam’s summary. The first two counts have been amusingly over-inflated by the fact that over the course of two days I played a large number of hidden cats games. I completed each one in about fifteen minutes, and each came with many, many achievements.
I’m also not sure how I managed that streak, seeing as I was away from home for a total of at least twelve days during January. Maybe I just don’t understand what Steam means by a streak.
My three most played games this year were Power Wash Simulator, Baldur’s Gate 3 and Sims 4, but I played quite a few others along the way. I’m going to go month by month, listing the top game by hours, and because it’s not always the same thing, my favourite. I’ll also list an honourable mention game when there is one – one that didn’t take long to play but deserves acknowledgement.
January
Hours: Power Wash Simulator
Fave: Power Wash Simulator
HM: The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe
I don’t always play PWS, and its recent sequel PWS2, in a healthy way. In fact I often use it in the same way that others might use meds. It’s not a complicated game. You are presented with a long series of very dirty places or things, and you spray high pressure water at them until they’re completely clean. The only challenge is adjusting to the right nozzle types and lengths, and changing your own posture, to be able to reach every tricky corner. Achieving 100% is quite satisfying in a similar way to completing a jigsaw.
What isn’t like a jigsaw is the way the game affects my brainwaves. For as long as I’m playing it, listening to the white noise of the spray and cleaning away mess, my emotions flatten and my focus narrows. That might not sound great, but when I’m beset by anxiety or other negative emotions, it feels like release.
When I was in labour with my daughter, I developed a strong appreciation for ‘gas and air’. For as long as I held the mask over my mouth, the pain receded. As soon as I stopped breathing the gas, the pain came back. PWS functions just like that for me, but not for physical pain. The relief is real, but lasts only while I play, which I realise makes it a recipe for addiction.
Anyway, 92% of my play time in January was spent on PWS, so that should say a lot about how that month went for me! Here’s Steam calling me out in a way that feels personal!
February
Hours: Sims 4
Fave: Sims 4
HM: Solasta II demo
While there was still some PWS (mis)use this month, a six-week game event encouraged me to open up Sims 4 again. While I can’t be sure, as EA doesn’t produce stats the way that Steam does, I’m pretty sure it would easily win on hours played in Feb.
I’m more of a builder/decorator than a player in Sims, but the events they run these days around the launch of each new expansion do tend to take me back to my legacy family each time to experience them.
This couple, Ruth and Gloria, are actually the results of two different attempts at creating a legacy. (A legacy in Sims is a gameplay style where you follow a family through multiple generations.) Ruth’s family came first, and she’s technically the fourth generation of her legacy, but unfortunately that savefile became hopelessly corrupted a couple of years ago. I gave up on it, eventually starting a new legacy with Gloria’s parents.
Many months later, when the Life and Death expansion came out, I decided to see if I could rescue Ruth’s parents from the broken savefile and move them to a brand new save. I succeeded and they promptly had a child through which I could, once Ruth was grown, experience the new expansion.
I enjoy making super-sims with every single permabuff they can earn, and both Ruth and Gloria are super-sims. They’re both second gen witches too. As I played Ruth in Life and Death, I realised that she really was almost identical to Gloria, so I decided they should be married! (Every normal sim would find themselves in a very unequal relationship with either of them as a partner, after all. Both had been unlucky in love before.)
So I imported Gloria and her parents into Ruth’s save. I didn’t have to force the relationship between them, just put them into proximity, and of course they immediately had ‘amazing compatibility’, being near to identical. That’s how Sims attraction works. They joined their family names when they married, so they are now Ruth and Gloria Gold-Frost. Yes, Gloria is a Father Winter baby, which’ll mean nothing to non-sims players. Think Father Christmas/Santa Claus.
They and their three cats live in Ravenwood, which is the neighbourhood that came with the Life and Death expansion – basically the fantasy goth world. I love the house I adapted and completely refurnished for Ruth, and then expanded even further when Gloria moved in. Here are pics of a couple of my favourite witchy rooms within the property. (Yay for CC.)
March
Hours: Civilization VI
Fave: Civilization VI
HM: /
The release of Civ VII in February, and all the fuss being made online about it, good and bad, prompted me to dust off Civ VI again. It had taken me a very long time to make the move from Civ V to Civ VI. I was very resistant. And I think I benefited by taking so long because every Civ game is judged to be wanting at the time of release.
By the time I picked up Civ VI, I was able to get the game complete with all the expansions, fixes and add-ons that had come since release for a small fraction of the original price. Plus all the must-have mods had been developed and perfected by then as well. In the end, it was only because Civ 5 started consistently misbehaving that I forced myself to learn VI, but now I love it and wouldn’t go back.
Maybe one day I’ll feel the same about Civ VII.
April
Hours: Baldur’s Gate 3
Fave: Lushfoil Photography Simulator
HM: Lushfoil Photography Simulator
Apparently it was time to return to my favourite waste of time this month – BG3. I finished a playthrough that had been stuck languishing in the middle of act3 for several months.
While BG3 definitely won the month on hours, Lushfoil Photography Simulator has stayed with me. It was strangely magical for a game that is little more than a scenic walking simulator with some spurious achievements to collect along the way.
I have recognised the real places it took me to in photographs on line, and my first reaction is always that I’m seeing a picture of a place I’ve been to. It seems some part of my brain now really does believe I’ve visited both the French and Italian alps, as well as West Australia, Nepal, both Kyoto and Yamagata in Japan, Shengshin Island in China, and Iceland.
May
Hours: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered
Fave: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered
HM: Various Hidden Cats games
Oblivion Remastered was a surprise release to me, so of course I had to play it. It’s been almost two decades since I played the original, but I enjoyed it just as much this time around, perhaps even more as the remaster seems significantly less janky.
I logged in to take a pic for this post, only to remember that I was now permanently invisible. Sure I could have removed my gear, but no one wants to see a naked TES wood elf.
June
Hours: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Fave: /
HM: Hogwarts Legacy
Of course, after Oblivion, I had to play Skyrim again, but I want to talk about Hogwarts Legacy here. Impulsive curiosity made me buy it when it was offered to me by Steam for just £12. To my dismay, I found I really quite liked it. It’s a great family friendly game. But in the end, my guilt spoilt my enjoyment, and I had to stop playing. I felt like I was betraying every trans person I know or simply respect from afar by liking it.
To give the game credit, the devs have done their best to counteract JKR’s bigotry. The cast of characters is enormously multicultural, and there’s an important trans side-character played by a trans actress. But I still felt like a quisling, so that was that.
July
Hours: Cyberpunk 2077
Fave: Cyberpunk 2077
HM: /
I’ve owned Cyberpunk for ages but never played it until now, put off because it’s first person and because I suspected my dyspraxic arse wouldn’t be up to the task. I was wrong, at least on normal difficulty.
While I’m a truly terrible game driver, and that’s stopped me being able to play some games at all in the past, looking at you GTA5, I learnt to be just about acceptable in CP after forcing myself to just drive around the city for an hour. I was really enjoying the story too, but somehow I managed to get distracted, and I haven’t yet got back to it. I will do.
August
Hours: Sims 4
Fave: Sims 4
HM: /
Sims 4 was the winner again this month, thanks to another in-game event and the release of the Enchanted by Nature expansion. My sims had a child, Angel, via the ‘science baby’ interaction, and I played through his infancy and toddlerhood, making sure to get him the permabuffs for doing everything right. He also has the ancient bloodline buff thanks to his parentage, which means magic will come very easily to him later as well.
I also built and decorated a couple of new houses in my ‘build the world’ save file. Most of the builds in this save are based in Henford on Bagley, a kind of idealised Cotswold village. As a result they’re mostly old structures – thatched cottages, converted barns and churches, a huge old farmhouse and so on. I decided there should be at least a couple of modern builds, both with an eco/green emphasis to fit into the lush countryside.
Not the best screenies, I’m afraid.
September
Hours: Baldur’s Gate 3
Fave: Baldur’s Gate 3
HM: /
Back with BG3 again. I’ve been playing this game since 2020, if you count early access. I have 1392 hours total in it, have completed honour mode (the hardest setting) twice, once with a single character, and yes, I’m still not bored.
My new run is a duo. Fellbat (named after a Palworld pal) is a gloomstalker assassin (very sneaky, very deadly attacks from distance), and she’s the character with which I completed my lonewolf honour run last year. I decided to remake her and give her a friend – Fairbat, a hexblade warlock (fights up close, hard to see/hit, very deadly). This is what this pair of reprobates look like most of the time…
and this is what they really look like. Short, sneaky characters of the Realms unite!
October
Hours: Power Wash Simulator 2
Fave: Sims 4
HM: Blue Prince
PWS2 was released this month, so of course I had to play all the way through for the silly storyline, but now that’s done, I can take my time with a replay and actually enjoy it.
This was also the month I put quite a lot of hours into Blue Prince before deciding that there were much better ways to waste my life away in pointless circular activities, such as another Sims 4 event! I got Angel through childhood, getting all four primary aspiration permabuffs, plus one of the new ones too, and completed the Scout badges for that permabuff as well. He was also the perfect player for the Forever Friends event challenge, which was best played by a child.
He’s now a rather buff-looking teen after all the physical exercise he’s been doing.
November
Hours: Planet Zoo
Fave: /
HM: Detroit Become Human
I played too much this month, at least during the weeks I was at home, and neglected the real world. I replayed one of my favourite narrative games from start to finish – Detroit: Become Human, and almost got the perfect ending. Everyone lived at least, and two of the three main characters got their perfect ending.
While I can’t decide on a fave between these two games, in terms of hours, the winner was easily Planet Zoo. I started a new franchise focusing on African animals and made it a roaring (ha!) success, and in sandbox mode, I made a completely covered ‘vault’ zoo in the arctic tundra for all the most critically endangered animals in the game. I can’t build spectacular architectural zoos like some I’ve seen, but I like my zoos just fine all the same – I pride myself on the happiness of my animals, staff and guests (in that order of importance).
In retrospect, I’m not sure why I took aerial pics of the zoo structures rather than cute images of the animals…
December
Hours: Palworld
Fave: Palworld
HM: /
Palworld was one of my big three games last year, and oh dear, the addiction has returned as I explore the considerable updates the game has had since I last played. It’s a survival/crafter/base-builder/monster hunter game – think Pokemon meets Minecraft meets the Long Dark.
Palworld is cute on the surface and darkly humorous underneath as you capture, enslave, breed and even slaughter wholesale adorable animals and monsters in order to grow in power sufficiently that you’re now able to capture, enslave, breed and even slaughter wholesale even more powerful adorable pals.
I love it.
Apart from my unhealthy use of PWS as an anti-anxiety drug, I’d say it’s been a good year for games, but perhaps not a great one, as most of my hours were spent in games released over a year ago if not much longer. In 2026, I intend to see Cyperpunk to its conclusion, to thoroughly explore the new Palworld content, and to replay Witcher 3. Other than that, who knows?
APOPHENY 
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