Pushing Buttons: Stray, Sifu, Tunic – what you loved playing this year

In this week's newsletter: The cat games, 80s kung fu fighters, isometric RPGs and more that our readers loved

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Our Guardian games of the year list will be live just a few hours after this newsletter lands in your inbox. For me it's been a year of life-consuming epics (God of War Ragnarok, Elden Ring, Horizon Forbidden West) balanced out by shorter games with irresistible concepts (Tunic, Pentiment, Neon White, and of course, Immortality, which I still won't shut up about).

Because I don't have as much gaming time as I'd like - which, judging from the emails I receive, goes for quite a lot of the grown-ass adults who subscribe to this newsletter - I want to play something nourishing when I get the chance, something that expands my mind or confounds my expectations in some way. I am particularly into games that give me a window into a new world, or into someone else's experiences. But sometimes I don't have the mental energy for that, and I just want to play something that makes me happy. I may have spent more total time on Splatoon 3 than almost anything else this year.