2025 in review, and the OverClockWorked 2025 Game Awards

“Hey, MSX, isn’t this just a blatant copy of what Mitch does for Game Boy Abyss?”

Um, yes. But regardless, it’s been a fairly big year for the site in a lot of ways, and I guess I’m in a reflective mood. 25 reviews, a site rebranding, an in-depth shrine dedicated to one of my favourite games, and a list of ten insulting animals, making this my most productive year for the site by far. I hope to keep this rolling into 2026 as well!

This project as a whole has done good for me too. To get somewhat personal, writing reviews has helped me deal with a common situation I’ve found myself in in the past. I would play a game, enjoy it, finish it, and then ask myself “okay, so now what?” I would feel no satisfaction regardless of how much I enjoyed the game, just a feeling of emptiness and a voice in the back of my head telling me I’m wasting my time that would not go away. A game can have the most satisfying, climactic finale imaginable, but the second it just… stops? I just start wondering what even matters anymore. I developed a weird fear of endings as a result. They get me existential to a degree. Everything ends eventually, and all, just like these video games.

But this is getting a bit heavy for a video game review site. What matters is that this site has become a way for me to find a personal purpose in playing these games, other than just overcoming the challenges of the game itself. When I finish a game, the question of “so now what?” is answered by reflecting on and analysing what I just played, writing my thoughts out and sharing them online. I’ve started looking at the games I’ve beaten far more positively now, and almost see the 32x32 icons on my review index as trophies of games I’ve finished and found some kind of meaning in. Whether I like a game or not, if I write about a game on my website, I am glad that game exists. It gave me something to think about, write about and share with my friends and the web as a whole. OverClockWorked is made for myself as much as it is for others, which I genuinely believe to be important with such hobbyist projects. If you’re making something for free, make sure you enjoy it. Ensure that no matter how many eyes are on your creative output, that even if you are the only one that looks at it, that it matters to you. That enthusiasm and passion can be infectious.

As such, I decided to provide at least one award to every single game I reviewed this year. No matter how insulting, backhanded or inflammatory any of these awards sound, I again want to make it clear; I am glad all of these games exist. Even if the game in question lives in my mind as one of the worst things I’ve ever played. A game that fails can be just as fascinating to analyse as one that succeeds.

Weirdest game: I played a lot of bizarre games this year. Harry the Handsome Executive and Putty are up there, but I think that something that plays its weirdness completely straight faced is weirder than something doing it for the sole purpose of comedy. As such, I give the prize instead to Mazeworld. Nothing can quite top the earnestness of Mazeworld’s snails monologuing to you about the destruction of their world, the breaking of the walls between realities and the genocide of snailkind, followed immediately by those snails slithering straight into a horde of amoeboids and being devoured.

Funniest game: Harry the Handsome Executive meanwhile can easily take this win. Delightfully absurd and playing that for the most amount of laughs it can possibly muster. Any time you think it’s peaked, it keeps getting crazier, resulting in one of the most entertaining stories I experienced in gaming this entire year.

Best sequel: If you don't count Cave Dig 2 which is less a sequel and more an updated version, I only played two sequels for OverClockWorked this year, those being Lemmings 2 and Tomb Raider II. I consider both of them good sequels, even if I don't like them quite as much as their predecessors. I think Lemmings 2 gets the win here however, going far above and beyond with its wide variety of new mechanics and exploring new territory, as opposed to Tomb Raider II that is more notable for its refinement on the mechanics of its predecessor.

Best refinement: Here you go, Tomb Raider II. Even if the more action-focused enemy and level design isn’t my preference, Tomb Raider II absolutely makes some great improvements to the base mechanics and general controls of Tomb Raider that are so consistently implemented across the following games in the series that it’s easy to forget that they weren’t always there.

Least favourite game: I am deliberately choosing this wording because I don’t particularly like calling a game “just bad”, especially when it’s one that has an important place in gaming history. So, although I respect the significance of Dark Castle’s release in the early Mac gaming scene, I just really do not like playing it and feel that it’s only marginally better than the Mega Drive port that’s heavily ridiculed. Sorry, Jonathan Gay.

Hardest game: Oids I guess by virtue of it being the one game here I didn’t actually beat. I’m so sorry Oids, you’re a great game, my nerves just couldn’t take it.

Easiest game: I’d probably say Cave Dig 2. It’s Cave Dig 1, which is already pretty easy, but now with more responsive controls. Add on top of that the fact that I already knew all the puzzle solutions, and bam, pretty easy game.

Cutest game: Cave Dig 1. And just all of the cave games I looked at. Absolutely adorable.

Longest game: Water is wet, fire is hot, shoot-em-ups are short, RPGs are long. Take your trophy, Avernum. Excellent game that I highly recommend if you're after a massive, sprawling RPG to really sink into.

Shortest game: Treasure Island Dizzy, in spite of it feeling torturously long.

Best game I had played before reviewing: Making this a separate award from "best game I hadn't played before reviewing", as including my old favourites on a ranking of “best games I played this year” seems wholly unfair as that would result in me asking one of the games I played for the first time this year to top something I have adored for the last two and a half decades. Yeah, it’s Lemmings, but Bubble Bobble isn’t far behind it frankly.

Best game I hadn't played before reviewing: I think it’s between Avernum and Unreal for me, but I’ll ultimately give the trophy to Unreal. Between the two, it’s the only one that I played through two times in a row. The weapons, the atmosphere, the music and the world are all just so compelling and fascinating, and it’s a game I can easily see myself revisiting time and time again in the future.

Best Mac original: Referring to any game that was released on Mac OS before making it to other consoles. I want to say Avernum, but that almost feels like cheating given that it was only Mac OS exclusive for two months before the PC port came out. Hey, Realmz hasn’t gotten any awards in this list so far. That’s sad, it’s a good game. Here you go Realmz, take this one.

Best Mac port: This award is specifically judging the quality of the port in comparison to the original, so enhancements and extra content will make the difference here. This award has gotta go to Civilization. Looks great, plays great, has a lot of quality of life and UI improvements, has an uncapped resolution, it’s excellent.

Best Amiga game: Lemmings 2 steals another award. I almost wanted to give this to Rock ‘n Roll just so there’d be less repetition in these awards. Umm… wait, I have an idea.

Best use of a trackball mouse: Rock 'n Roll. There we go.

Most based game (according to my girlfriend): Putty for Amiga. She really loves a good source of dead baby jokes.

Best orgasm sound effect: This is a professional and mature educational website about gaming history, I will have you know. It also just happens that several of the Mac games I’ve played have an erotic moan in them for some reason. Anyway, Crystal Quest gets this one. Not just for the sound effect, but also for the vaguely Freudian imagery that accompanies the sound effect.

Game I feel I was too mean to: Poor, poor Warcraft. I really didn’t enjoy it, but I do feel a bit guilty going so hard on it when it was such an early and influential entry in the RTS genre. I really need to track down a copy of Warcraft II and review it so that Blizzard can have their redemption arc on this site.

Most hypnotic game: I swear that Hang-On puts me into a trance with its sound design, smooth scrolling and excellent audiovisual feedback. I really should play more arcade-style racing games like that, they’re fun.

Most misfortuned protagonist: Surely Dizzy, right? Getting shipwrecked on an island where absolutely every tiny little thing is capable of instantly killing him? Nah, Dizzy only got shipwrecked on one island. The protagonist of Ocean Bound meanwhile got shipwrecked on 60 islands back to back.

Best Master System game (and best home port of an arcade game): Bubble Bobble on Master System. It’s bordering on being a remake with all of the extra content it adds, but even underneath all that, it’s still an excellent conversion of the arcade original, which is one of my favourites of all time. This does mean I need to think of another award for Wonder Boy though, so…

Most faithful home port of an arcade game: Here you go, Wonder Boy. Honestly still pretty impressive just how close you look to your arcade original despite the weaker hardware.

Best gateway into the furry fandom: Wow, that Superfrog intro animation by Eric W Schwartz was cute and charming, wasn’t it? Maybe you should check out the other Amiga animations he made. Then check out his webcomic, Sabrina Online. Then check out his rule 34 art. Then…

Most Atomino game: Chiral.

Most disproportionately long review: I am genuinely baffled as to how I managed to write five pages worth of content for a review of an Asteroids clone. Good job Maelstrom. Honourable mention to Pipe Dream.

Best 3-note long music loop: Pipe Dream’s music really feels like it should have gotten extremely annoying, and yet it somehow managed to wrap around from being anxiety inducing to instead weirdly satisfying. I feel like that deserves some kind of award.

Plans moving forward

I very much intend to continue with Amiga reviews for the immediate future. I’ve owned an Amiga 600 for 10 years now, and I have barely used it in that time, despite thinking it’s a really neat platform! As of this past month, I have started saving up money to eventually buy an Amiga 1200 with, in order to play the more demanding Amiga games incompatible with my current Amiga 600. I also have ordered some more RAM for my Amiga 600 to help beef up my current wimpy Amiga in the meanwhile. Mac reviews will of course also continue! In general, reviews on home computer platforms other than DOS and Windows are my favourite things to cover for the site. Don’t get me wrong, I have no ill will towards DOS or Windows either, they’re just also significantly more widely documented. I really enjoy getting to showcase the libraries of platforms that have somewhat fallen into obscurity in recent years. I’d also like to make another shrine. I started work on a shrine for the Lemmings series shortly after replaying Lemmings 1 for OverClockWorked, and I intend to keep chipping away throughout 2026.

Ultimately, before starting this site, I actually wasn’t even that familiar with Mac games beyond Bugdom, Nanosaur, Lemmings and Crystal Caliburn. The reason I chose to cover Mac games was because I like using original hardware, and my PowerMac G4 Cube was the only retro gaming platform I had available that allowed me to take in-game screenshots without relying on an external capture device, as I have to with consoles or Amiga. As a result of finding more and more games to review, I ended up quite fond of PowerMacs, to put it lightly. You can see my inexperience with Macs showing in the Monkey Shines review, the first Mac review I did for this site, where I didn’t even understand basic things such as “don’t use virtual memory when playing Mac OS 9 games” and “disable the mouse input so it doesn’t override your keyboard controls”. I’ve learnt a lot about Mac OS 9 and its game library as a result of this site, and I intend to keep learning more and covering more and sharing it with you all as I do. I hope to achieve the same with the Amiga as well! And any other vintage computer I cover, frankly. Eventual MSX2 reviews perhaps?

Fun fact: Pocky is actually the name of a series of eroge titles on MSX. No, I did not intentionally name myself after an eroge, Pocky was a nickname that my friends gave to me over a decade ago, long before I knew of the MSX’s library. No, I’m not changing my screen name because of the eroge association either. I think that’s too funny. Happy new year to all!

- Page written by MSX_POCKY, 31st December 2025