Three Games I Didn't Finish in 2025

I played more games than just Kathy Rain 2 (and Kathy Rain 1 again) in 2025, but I didn't finish most of them for one reason or another. Here are three games I was interested in that I didn't or couldn't finish in 2025. 

Tavern Talk 

I've written here before about my love for Coffee Talk by Toge Productions, and appreciation for its sequel. There's also a third game in the works I'm curious to play. Tavern Talk was a European production heavily inspired by Coffee Talk but taking place in a more straightforward fantasy setting evocative of running an inn in a Dungeons and Dragons setting

I gave Tavern Talk a more than fair go, but it's just too long. That statement needs to be qualified. I often feel sad when games I'm really enjoying end earlier than I would like; I think most of us know the feeling of enjoying a piece of entertainment to the extent that we want it to just keep going. Tavern Talk had the opposite problem. There were, for me, simply too many characters and their stories weren't engaging enough to keep me interested. On the one hand, I can appreciate why a game trying to give you the experience of being an innkeeper would want to have lots of different customers showing up, but the issue is that there are just so many and each has their own storyline that seemed to go on and on and on, and few if any of them were engaging enough for me to really care about them. Every time I felt that the game was surely reaching a natural conclusion it seemed to simply continue for even longer, and I started to get fed up. It all came to a head for me when my player character, over whose dialogue you have little control, had what seemed like a contrived falling out with one of the regulars, and at that point I just lost interest and stopped playing. I can't see myself going back to it any time soon; if I want to read something lengthy, I'll read real literature, not an overextended visual novel. I replayed the original Coffee Talk as well this year and loved it just as much, but its brevity and relatively tight core cast are major factors in why it's such a standout.

Deep Sleep: Labyrinth of the Forsaken (aka Deep Sleep 4) 

I was really keen for Deep Sleep 4 to come out. I'm quite a fan of the original trilogy of short Deep Sleep flash games and their companion trilogy of Don't Escape games. I'm a particularly big fan of Don't Escape 4, the full length point and click game from a few years ago that marked developer Scriptwelder's transition from short flash games to full blown indie adventure game development. Initially, I really enjoyed Deep Sleep for the roguelike approach to adventure gaming, with semi-randomised environments and a degree of character customisation and experience. I've often felt that point and click adventure gaming hasn't delved enough into hybridity with this kind of genre, so I was at first feeling like this was a real step forward.

What I struggled with is the combat. Deep Sleep 4's turn-based combat is meant to be part of the puzzle, involving resource management and how best to maximise damage and debuff your enemies, sort of like, say, Into the Breach (another game I couldn't get into). I understand this, but I feel like Deep Sleep 4 doesn't do a great job of tutorialising its combat; it feels very trial-and-error-y to figure out how it's meant to work, and for a good portion of the first third of the game or so I thought that you were actually supposed to avoid combat and find alternative solutions to it until I realised that it was actually a major part of the game and that to progress there were several big boss battles that needed to be played through. Scriptwelder has discussed online that there's no need to grind and that there are certain effective tactics to make combat manageable, but I feel like if the combat is meant to be like another puzzle there should be more "clues" to help the player work out the challenge of each battle scenario.

I know that due to many people's frustrated responses to the combat Scriptwelder has implemented a "story mode" that either eliminates combat or makes it much simpler, but I feel like this isn't really the experience of the game that he intended and that it's not really the "correct" way to play. I'll probably go back to Deep Sleep 4 at some point, but it really wasn't what I expected.

 

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle: The Order of Giants 

I really liked the main game of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, but I found the DLC to be a bit of a disappointment. Essentially an add-on to the Vatican portion of the game in which Indy explores other parts of Rome, what I played of it felt a bit samey. I was also put off by a puzzle involving water valves that I felt didn't make it very clear what you were supposed to do; it's a two step puzzle but I didn't realise after completing the first step that there was more to accomplish. I also became annoyed by some weird environmental choices in that part of the game that made a piece of decoration look like a ledge you were meant to be able to jump to.

Mismatched expectations come up here as well, as I think I was initially hoping that The Order of Giants, if not a fully-fledged new environment like the main exploration sections of the main game, would at least be equivalent to a sort of mini version of one of those set in a unique environment in another part of the world, not just an add-on to an existing area, but that was probably hoping for too much. I will probably also go back to the DLC at some point, but at this point I'd probably be more interested in a larger expansion or a fully-fledged sequel to The Great Circle.

One Game I Did Finish: Dredge

I don't have much to say about Dredge except that I thought that for a horror game it was quite relaxing and had nice atmosphere. So, I guess, I recommend that one.