Content warning: this article contains discussions of depression and panic attacks
I’ve long held a suspicion that the videogames someone plays can tell you more about them than you might assume. If someone tells you that their favorite band is My Chemical Romance, you’ll probably assume that they’ve faced some periods of difficulty in their lives before, and a guy who really loves Rick and Morty, well… just be careful there, I think. If it’s true for other forms of media, like music and TV, then why not games? My theory is that video games work in a similar way, and I want to test that by – I guess – exposing myself.
How am I? Who am I? Each section of this article will take you on a vibes-based journey of my year, so some months are lumped together by circumstance or energy levels. The games that appear here are on a variety of platforms, including mobile, Nintendo Switch, Steam Deck, and more.
January and February: Stardew Valley and Hades
These two games might seem like an odd pairing to play interchangeably across the early months, but at the beginning of the year in the UK, two things are undeniably true: winter is Hell, and it requires you to have some cozy game vibes to help you get through. I’ve long since struggled with seasonal depression – the nights are long and dark, and I’m a creature of the sun.
A Stardew Valley replay is the main mechanism of reunion for my two closest friends from university and me, a trio so powerful that we manage to inject some life into a game that we’ve each played for hundreds of hours already. Stardew Valley, though an undisputed G.O.A.T., can actually get a little old. This run is my first run in co-op, though, believe it or not, and it’s the power of friendship that gets me through the winter.
My solo gaming vibe offers a stark contrast. I’ll admit it – until the beginning of this year, I had never touched a Hades game, and the reason for it was… dumb. As someone prone to ragequitting due to my incredibly scuffed ADHD brain, I was afraid Hades would break my indomitable spirit. My friend talks me into it, and I’m extremely glad that she does, for my winter, when not filled with sweet visions of potato farming, is consumed with visions of Asphodel and choosing Athena’s Boons every single time I can get my hands on them. As a longstanding lover of Greek mythology, I eat heartily.
Mental health score: 5/10
Personality summary: trying not to be consumed by winter
March – Pokémon TCG Pocket
March brings with it a different energy – as the world warms up, so do I. It’s bright enough that I start going outside again, and consequently, my main foray into gaming during this time is on mobile. I have some history with the Pokémon franchise, but my main interest in Pokémon TCG Pocket stems from my friends, who post pictures of their rare and artistic pulls in our WhatsApp group chat. I get in on it.
This period of time is characterized by one interaction in particular, but please bear in mind when you read this that I am cool and normal. I met a girl at the end of February, and we were casually going on dates. On our second, I remember I had a pack to open, so I did so in the car when we reached our destination, a park in London. I excitedly showed her the Triumphant Light cards I pulled, showing off the EX by dragging my finger across the screen. She was politely amused, and we kept seeing each other after that, so I guess it must have worked.
Mental health score: 7/10
Personality summary: in my going outside era
April – June: Kingdom Come Deliverance 2
If there’s one thing you should know about me, it’s that I love April and May. Frankly, I always have a stacked lineup of events – between my birthday, festival season beginning to emerge, and new video games to chew on, I live my best life in these months.
Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 is playable on the Steam Deck, and play it I do. I’m a little late, as I am with many things, because I’m not working for Pocket Tactics yet, and I’m also not making much money from freelancing, so this is a game my mother kindly purchased for me for my birthday. I seek out KCD2 for a very specific reason, in retrospect. My sadness about my precarious financial situation is both mirrored in the beginning of the game, as Henry and Hans also find themselves penniless, and is then rectified virtually as I slash my way through my enemies and steal horses for gold.
I eagerly click on the Hans romance options whenever I can, wanting the game to be as gay as my real life is: at the end of April, I officially have a girlfriend, and I have the easiest few months I’d ever had in a relationship.
Life is warm, cheap, and cheerful. My mental health score is: 9/10
Personality summary: gay
July: Blue Prince
July requires a change of pace from stomping around Trosky with Pebbles and Hans – mostly because I’m bored. I spend a lot of time in July applying for jobs, and I’ve gotten so rich in KCD2 that I can hardly relate to it anymore. Enter, one of my favorite games of the entire year, Blue Prince.
I’d heard about Blue Prince through the aforementioned friendship WhatsApp group, and via Wade from my favorite podcast Distractible. July is a very lonely and puzzling time in my life, what with the job applications and my girlfriend being away in Iowa for the whole month, so naturally I end up in front of the loneliest, most puzzling game I could find, and goddamn do I spend a lot of time in the Blue Prince mines, repeating my mistakes over and over again until I finally think to check somewhere completely obvious. That’s the Blue Prince way.
I wake up, clock in for my 12-hour Blue Prince shift, remember that I need to find a real job, and repeat the whole thing again tomorrow. I land my role at Pocket Tactics in late July, concluding my Blue Prince sessions for the most part, and starting both a period of joy in my career ambitions and a period of relative turbulence outside of my professional life. You best bet your life I find Room 46 before the month is over, though.
Mental health score: 6/10
Personality summary: lost in the Mount Holly of my mind
August: Tiny Bookshop
August is overwhelming. I love working at Pocket Tactics, but the first month in any new job is absolutely nuts, and on top of that, I have additional concerns. I struggle to find time to see friends, my girlfriend and I are having some issues after a month apart so soon into our relationship, and I’m beginning to think about finally moving out of my parents’ house. It’s a lot.
This is why, I think, I gravitate towards the calm of Tiny Bookshop. Most evenings after my first month at Pocket Tactics, I quietly load up my save file, dropping little houseplants into my shop, stocking up on the fantasy books that I kept running out of, and helping Moira and Maryam rekindle their mother-daughter bond. It’s perfect.
Mental health score: 6/10
Personality summary: frenetically caring for my plants
September: Valorant
I’m not entirely sure that I played a single minute of Valorant in September, but I certainly watched it. As you can read all about, I go to VCT Champions Paris, the concluding tournament in Valorant eSports’s main circuit of events. I have the time of my life there, meeting new friends, watching the closest of matches, and being able to say hi to my favorite players. I also ended up in the hospital.
Without going into too much detail, I have a genuine mental health emergency while in Paris. It isn’t my first, but it has been years since my last. While I’m sitting backstage in the medical room in L’Arènes de Grand Paris Sud, struggling to breathe through a panic attack and unable to communicate with the nurse who only speaks French, I keep my wallet in my hand, periodically pulling out a photo of the team that I support, Sentinels, and looking at it to calm me down. In this moment, I breathe easier while knowing that there are things in this life I can love that will not hurt me.
I broke up with my girlfriend when I got back. It’s not a decision I want to make, but it’s the right one.
Mental health score: 2/10
Personality summary: We Valorant players do have a reputation for being a bit messed up, I guess.
October: The Alters
In October, I was given a copy of The Alters as part of my work in Pocket Tactics. A selection of characters that are all different versions of the same man, Jan, after making slightly altered decisions, the game seems like the right thing to be playing.
There are seven or eight Jans in my playthrough of the game, all living and breathing on one ship. Only one of them has made the decision not to divorce his wife. He’s by far the most depressed version of Jan, but he’s also, by a country mile, the kindest version. I swallow down the feelings I have about that and cry to my therapist about seasonal depression and not being able to comprehend the passage of time. I have not yet finished the game.
Mental health score: 3/10
Personality summary: ????
November and December – Hades 2 and Ghost of Tsushima
Like many other things in life, this story is cyclical. I end up finishing the year playing Hades 2, after having started it off with its predecessor.
In many ways, I feel that I have ended up back where I started. Of course, it’s good to remind myself of what’s changed – I live closer to most of my friends now, and it’s lovely and healing to hang out with them more; I have my work at Pocket Tactics, and get to write and do so many cool things because of it; I learned things about myself through my traveling and my breakup. But much like Hades and Hades 2, beginning and end feel broadly like the same thing in a different font. In the case of Hades, this is a good thing – more fun for us fans. In my case? Well, the jury might still be out.
This blow-by-blow of my year supports my idea that the games we play shape, and are shaped by, us. Whether it’s a thematic similarity, like The Alters, or dependent on the platform it’s on, like Pokémon TCG Pocket, the games we immerse ourselves in are definitely tangled up in our brains and moods, it’s just not really in the way that non-gamers who write articles about how video games rot people’s brains imagine. It’s more that we are drawn to what speaks to our psyche at that time. Maybe, if parents are worried that their kids are shooting people online, they should ask their kid if everything is okay instead of jumping to confiscate the Xbox.
Keeping that in mind, I decide I’m going to end on a high with a game that’s been on my wishlist for I think years at this point, Ghost of Tsushima. I finally bought it in early December, and it’s my designated Christmas holiday game. If I do have any kind of power to manifest positivity in my life through video games, then I think I should do it by giving myself a little treat. I reckon you should, too.
Mental health score: 6/10
Personality summary: ‘girl who is going to be okay’ meme
2025 year mean score: 5.5/10
2026 year mean score: ?/10
