PETER HOSKIN’s 2025 games: Stop twiddling your thumbs – and put them to work instead on some of these

What is it the gym posters say? New year, new you? Well, OK. But instead of exercising your obliques and quadriceps, how about exercising your thumbs and imagination instead — by getting into games?

2025 is likely to be a big year for video games, not least because it could see the release of the biggest game ever. 

Grand Theft Auto VI, the latest in the series of larcenous mayhem simulators, is reportedly being made with a budget of $2 billion — and might, just might, come out before the year is done.

But it you prefer your gaming less — let’s say — profane, there are plenty of other releases to get excited about in the meantime.

Starting with Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector on January 31. The original Citizen Sleeper was a tremendously evocative, affecting role-playing game that had you exploring a space station — and what it means to be part-human, part-robot — through prose and dice rolls. This second instalment looks as though it offers more, and not just of the same.

Then it’s the season for history nerds. If its predecessor is anything to go by, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 (February 4) will allow you to roam (and rage) across an absurdly detailed recreation of 15th-century Bohemia.

Grand Theft Auto VI, is reportedly being made at a budget of $2 billion

Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector is due out on January 31. This second instalment looks as though it offers more, and not just of the same.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2  will allow you to roam (and rage) across an absurdly detailed recreation of 15th-century Bohemia from February 4

CIvilization VII will be a real historical nerdfest and looks more beautiful than ever before

Assassin’s Creed Shadows (February 14) takes that venerable series to feudal Japan for the very first time.

The real historical nerdfest, though, will be Civilization VII (February 11). The era-spanning strategy game looks more beautiful than ever before, of course. But it might just play better too: thanks to new features, such as civilisations being tied to particular ages. 

Looking further ahead, it appears as though the British are coming. Both Atomfall (March 27) and Fable (later in 2025) promise to offer delightfully Blighty-fied versions of popular fantasies: the post-nuclear wasteland and medieval romance, respectively.

So what are you waiting for? Start exercising those thumbs — and do your country proud.