What Are We Playing? [Jan 2026]
- PostCurious
- 3 minutes ago
- 5 min read
This January's blog is another oops all video games edition! These are 5 games I played at the end of 2025 that didn’t quite make my top 12 games of the last 5 years post, but these are all close runners up and are easy to recommend.
A spiritual sequel to Strange Horticulture, Strange Antiquities is a video game where you run a shop full of strange relics. As you play, you must determine what items to give your patrons based on the item descriptions, information found while investigating the relics, and research from within your books.
This game plays similarly to its predecessor, but adds in new mechanics, such as map exploration and clue solving. As far as puzzle games go, I found it to be on the lighter side but still engaging. I also appreciated the possibility of different endings depending on the choices you made.
I had fun exploring the world and making connections, though there were a few instances where I felt misdirected. The hint system could use some improvement to help smooth over these moments, but it was serviceable overall.
If you want a mellow gaming experience that can still keep you engaged for hours, look no further than Strange Antiquities.
Difficulty: 2/5
Time: ~9-10 hours
Roottreemania is an included expansion of The Roottrees are Dead that builds upon the story of the main game and nearly doubles the amount of content. The gameplay is very similar to the original, where players need to research information to find members of the family tree, but this expansion specifically focuses on several family members’ affairs and finding their blood relatives.
Roottreemania had more false leads than the main game, so we found it a bit more difficult to find everything we needed without help. Thankfully, the hints were quite effective at getting us back on the right track. Despite this, we felt that there were too many details we were expected to meticulously notate in order to figure out the final solution.
While we wished for fewer red herrings and less frustration at the end, we overall really enjoyed uncovering the story of this game and felt the mystery was clever with a lot of fun discoveries.
Difficulty: 4/5
Time: ~6 hours
The Séance of Blake Manor is a supernatural detective mystery where you investigate the disappearance of Evelyn Deane in 1897 Ireland. I found it easy to become immersed in this game, and it was really satisfying to see how multiple characters’ storylines came together.
There are a lot of documents, conversations, and locations to wade through and, while they make for an enriching play experience, they also can be a lot to keep organized. All of the information is accessible in your records, but it can get a little overwhelming as you move through the game. Additionally, the game does make investigation webs, which I appreciated, though they could be simplified to be more easily digestible.
As I explored the rooms, I found it very easy to miss small key details or to miss talking to the right character about the right topic. This led me to want to spend more time carefully going over every room—the catch however, was that searching took in-game time, and the plot advanced and characters moved every hour. As a result, I referenced an online walkthrough a bit more than I would have liked while playing, just to avoid wasting precious in-game time.
Overall, I really enjoyed this game for its storytelling, atmosphere, and addition of folklore.
Difficulty: 2.5/5
Time: ~15 hours
Dredge is a single-player video game where your fishing adventures take an ominous turn. Players will upgrade their boat, sell the fish they catch, and uncover the secrets hidden beneath the water’s surface.
Like I often do while playing nonlinear exploration games, I fell into a time hole and finished this whole game over the course of three days. There is a mix of exploration, push your luck mechanics, light dexterity challenges, resource management, and polyomino packing strategies—this combination leads to a nice balance of gameplay. There are also narrative and atmospheric mechanics that add layers to the game. For example, if you do not sleep, navigation becomes more difficult and you start hallucinating. Monsters can offer an additional challenge, but players can turn that mode off if they, like me, prefer a less stressful experience.
Careful navigation is required for players to not damage their ship, and upgrading the ship becomes imperative as navigation challenges become harder. I found the boat movement painfully slow at the beginning of the game, so I put a lot of early effort into my ship improvements.
If you are looking for an exploration game with excellent ambiance that you can lose yourself in, or want to dredge up some freaky fish, I definitely recommend Dredge.
Difficulty: 2/5
Time: 10-14 hours
Botany Manor (not to be confused with the TERPECA-nominated escape room in Belgium, Botanist Manor) is a puzzle video game that feels like The Witness meets Strange Horticulture. In this game, you play as retired botanist Arabella Greene, exploring your estate in order to discover the habitats and properties of forgotten flora.
The onboarding of this game was very intuitive and I enjoyed the clear sense of progression throughout. I also liked the bit-by-bit narrative that was told through the succinct documents in the game.
The puzzles were overall not very difficult and mostly consisted of connecting information found around the manor to the correct actions. I appreciated that there were planting stations throughout the manor, so I never had to backtrack too far to complete a puzzle. However, I was frustrated that clues recorded in your journal were not accessible for later reference. This meant that in order to avoid retracing my steps to verify information, I had to take physical notes or screenshots while I played, which felt tedious. Simply making the clues available in the journal would have been a big quality of life update for this game. At the end of the game, I was left missing two clues without any idea of what I’d overlooked. Thankfully, I managed to sort out what to do and was allowed to proceed to the game’s conclusion.
I overall enjoyed playing through Botany Manor and would recommend it to anyone looking for a light, puzzley game.
Difficulty: 2/5
Time: ~4 hours
What have you been playing lately?