Throughout 2025, I shared with you what I was Reading, Watching, and Listening To (audiobook-wise), I also covered a little bit of videogaming in a couple columns. But I figured I’d talk about some of the games I played this year, in one post. Utilizing my approach from my Conan Pastiches article during Cimmerian September, we’ll keep it to two paragraphs each.

I do most of my gaming through Steam, with Fortnite and a couple titles on Epic. I haven’t played anything on Good Old Games in a few years now, and I don’t use Amazon gaming pretty much at all.

OUT OF THE PARK BASEBALL 26

The 2019 edition of this baseball sim is my third-most played Steam game (771 hours). And I had payed a prior version for years, as well. I upgraded to the 2026 iteration this Summer, and it’s already in my Top 20. This is a simulation, not an arcade game. You can take any team from history and manage it from year-to-year. And you can quit/get fired and take over another team. You can manage games pitch by pitch, or by batter. Or have the computer simulate the game, or even month.

I enjoy setting up World Series match ups of two historical teams. I just replayed the 2017 World Series as the Dodgers, beating the Astros, who couldn’t cheat in this baseball game. Before that, it was the 1947 Dodgers vs. the 1946 Indians. I really enjoy this option. I think any baseball wonk (which I absolutely am) would enjoy this game.

ROBOCOP: ROUGE CITY

I mostly buy games on sale, which means I’m playing older games. And, I replay more than I play new additions. But in the ‘newer’ category, this one is just from 2023, and a sequel came out this summer. It’s a first person shooter, and if you like the Robocop movies with Peter Weller, you absolutely should check this out (I got it for $5 on sale this month). It totally captures the Detroit/Robocop look and feel: the graphics may even be better than the old movie.

It uses checkpoints, not save games, which I’ve always found rather annoying, but it hasn’t held me back so far. It’s full of action and violence, and Detroit is a craphole. If you want that urban decay feel, or a Robocop shooter, you should totally grab this. And definitely on sale.

LA NOIRE

I did an entire post on this one. This is the ‘forgotten little brother’ from the makers of Grand Theft Auto, and Red Dead Redemption. I praised it extensively in my post. As is usually the case, I moved on before finishing it. But I picked it up this December, and I’ve moved on to the final third of the game. It’s still cool. The hardboiled vibe is unmatched, and I am now driving around and looking for all 96 of the secret autos. I’m about a third of the way through that mini-quest. It is my intention to complete this early in 2026. And then get immersed in Red Dead Redemption II. Playing RDII on the 52″ TV is like being in a movie. It’s pretty cool.

DUNGEON OF NAHEULBEUK
DoN: SPLAT JAYPAK’S ARENAS
NAHEULBEUK’S DUNGEON MASTER

I talked about this a couple years ago, and I’ve got an entire post coming on these three related games. But I went all in this Fall and Winter. Naheulbeuk started as a popular French audio series. It grew into novels, an RPG, and a pretty fun tactical computer game. The base game, DoN: The Amulet of Chaos, is a humor-filled, cartoony, tactical RPG that I absolutely LOVED after a few false starts. I completed the whole thing, plus the two DLCs. Some fights were frustrating, but it was a treat.

I liked it so much, I got the Arena battler, and I went through that twice. It’s, quite simply, a multi-round arena combat game, with the same characters from Dungeon. I’m not a battler fan, but I loved this too. Dungeon Master is just what the name implies. I’ve only done the tutorial, but if you like games like the Dungeon Master franchise, and you enjoy the Naheulbeuk vibe, this will probably work for you. Look for my upcoming in depth post on the whole franchise. I became a huge Naheulbeuk fan in 2025. Probably my favorite of the year.

GUILD OF DUNGEONEERING

In the fun with some silly mixed in, game category, this is a deck-based gem that I’m not sure any of my friends are aware of. The graphics are one step up from stick figure drawings, and the game is all about your adventurers (dungeoneers) getting killed. There’s a campaign, and your characters level up. But they’re disposable, and it’s upgrades to your deck, that matter.

This is about the humor, with very cool songs being sung by a bardic narrator. Games are very quick, and there’s some strategy involved in choosing which character to go in which dungeon. If you want a light deck dungeon crawler, with laughs, get this on sale. I have the Premium version and it was absolutely worth it. I suspect fans of the old Bard’s Tale will chuckle at this one. It’s fun.

FORTNITE

I still get the Daily Quests done on this, every day. My son quit playing, so now I just Solo. And I don’t know that I bought any V-bucks at all this year. I may have played a full year of Fortnite totally free.

I’ve written about this one more than once, inluding here. You know what Fortnite is. Bottom line is you can play alone, with friends, or strangers – whichever you want. Once you buy that initial BattlePass, you can grind your way to paying for the next one (you can play without the BattlePass, but the game isn’t as much fun without the skins), and never spend a dime. And once you develop your personal style, it’s a fun FPS.

TOMB OF ANNIHILATION

I am a huge fan of the Dungeons and Dragons Adventure Board Games, haven written about them here, and here. I added two more to my collection this year, and my Board Game Group had a session of Castle Ravenloft in 2025.

From 2017-2022, there was an app port of Tomb of Annihilation, on Steam. No longer for sale, I can still play the game I bought. It’s a pretty good port, and a session is relatively quick. No setup, no checking rules! I reinstalled this and am playing it through again. It’s fun.

PATHFINDER ADVENTURE CARD GAME

Rise of the Runelords is about my favorite board/card game. My gaming group is struggling through one of the other base game sets, Mummy’s Mask. Way back pre-COVID, there was a really solid port of Rise of the Runelords, for apps. I bought a boatload of the expansions for that and have spent quiet a few hours on it.

Developer Twin Sails Interactive said it would be multiplayer, and the other two guys in my Gaming Group bought it. But they never bothered to build the multiplayer, which is bullshit. I’d give this game five stars if Twin Sails had done what they promised. It’s a really good port of a really good deck builder dungeon crawler.

THE SINKING CITY: REMASTERED

Frogwares has had a successful run using their engine for Sherlock Holmes third-person adventures. Mixing in Jack the Ripper and Cthulhu, they’re edgy and not your staid Holmes mysteries. They used this engine for a straight-Cthulhu horror game.

I’m not really into adventure games anymore, and I’ve only tinkered with the Holmes ones. I’ve just played a few hours of this. I don’t like The Mind Palace approach to clues and quest solving. But the vibe is very horror/Cthulhu, and graphically it’s pretty spooky. Worth checking out on sale, but I think it has to be your type of game to work.

HARD WEST I & II

I go through phases where I like turn-based strategy games. But I usually tire of them before I get a quarter of the way through the game. Hard West (talked a little bit about it here) is a turn-based Weird Western with some pain-in-the-butt tactical battles. I have given this a short run a couple different times. Then I bogged down in some battle I couldn’t win, and I quit. It’s a neat game, but it triggers my frustration with this genre.

But I still bought Hard West II, a streamlined sequel. I like this a bit better. But early on, there’s a three-stage pain-in-the-butt battle that halted me again for now. It’s not that I can’t eventually win. It’s that it takes too many tries, and it’s not fun doing so. I like the vibe of the Hard West series, but I don’t know how much time I’m going to put into them.

MYSTERY AT MORGOTH

This is the sequel to The Curse of Feldar Vale (briefly touched on here). A sequel to Mystery has since come out. If you want the poster child for ‘Old School D&Ding,’ Feldar Vale is your game. It’s based on the early Open Game License. But compared to even the classic Neverwinter Nights game (which I just bought DLC for), this has an OSR vibe.

You can carry your party forward from Feldar Vale to Mystery, which I did. And each of the three installments is only about $5. I’d estimate 20-30 hours of game play per title. Fun throwback.

SOLASTA

I couldn’t get into Baldur’s Gate 3. I played a lot of BG 1, and 2, back in the day. And RPG games have definitely evolved. And I blog with the guy who was the Lead Narrative Designer and won a Hugo and a Nebula for it (He wrote the classic module White Plume Mountain). But I couldn’t get past the beginning of BG3. It just didn’t grab me. However, I have put quite a few hours into Solasta, which I prefer. Here are some earlier thoughts on it.

Solasta came out at the same time, and I think it would have been a bigger success if it had arrived ‘on its own.’ At best it’s now likely considered a poor man’s BG3. It’s a really fun RPG, with good game play and story, and I recommend it. Solasta 2 enters early release in a few months.

MISC

I thought I’d try Valheim as an alternative to Conan Exiles,(that is absolutely a Top Five game for me) still my favorite open world survival game. I gave up pretty quickly.

Total War Warhammer II is still a go-to game (one of my neatest posts, I think), as is Elder Scrolls Online (I need to do a deeper dive into my favorite MMO), though neither are installed at present.

Other games I played this year and I expect to play in 20226 – likely getting some Steamed coverage – Warhammer Quest II, Card Hunter, the original Neverwinter Nights (the most enduring RPG I’ve come across), Blade Runner, Wartile (NOT Wartales), Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, and who knows what else!

I spent a large part of yesterday playing City of Gangsters. It’s a sim where you try to become a Prohibition Era king. The base game is set in Chicago, but DLC expands to Philly, Atlantic City, New York City, Detroit, Pittsburgh and Cincinnati. Plus you an have a random setup. It’s REALLY hard to make money and setup your first operation, getting started. I found it frustrating most of the time, even. But I like the game, and I think it’s gonna be fun if I can get some momentum. I’m into that Al Capone Era stuff.

PRIOR STEAMED/GAME COLUMNS

Steamed: Gaming with Bob (all my videogaming posts in one)
Hardboiled Gaming: LA Noire
Guns or Butter: Total War Warhammer II
Looking Back at RTS: Myth Lords
Fortnite (one of several short looks I’ve done at it)
What I’ve Been Playing: December, 2023 (Hard West, Curse of Feldar Vale, Solasta, Dungeon of Naheulbeuk)
What I’ve Been Playing: October, 2022 (Elder Scrolls Online, Total War: WH II, Conan Exiles, Titan Quest)
Mount and Blade: Part Two
Mount and Blade: Part One

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Bob Byrne’s ‘A (Black) Gat in the Hand’ made its Black Gate debut in 2018 and has returned every summer since.

His ‘The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes’ column ran every Monday morning at Black Gate from March, 2014 through March, 2017. And he irregularly posts on Rex Stout’s gargantuan detective in ‘Nero Wolfe’s Brownstone.’ He is a member of the Praed Street Irregulars, and founded www.SolarPons.com (the only website dedicated to the ‘Sherlock Holmes of Praed Street’).

He organized Black Gate’s award-nominated ‘Discovering Robert E. Howard’ series, as well as the award-winning ‘Hither Came Conan’ series. Which is now part of THE Definitive guide to Conan. He also organized 2023’s ‘Talking Tolkien.’

He has contributed stories to The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories — Parts III, IV, V, VI, XXI, and XXXIII.

He has written introductions for Steeger Books, and appeared in several magazines, including Black Mask, Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, The Strand Magazine, and Sherlock Magazine.

You can definitely ‘experience the Bobness’ at Jason Waltz’s ’24? in 42′ podcast.