Hello! Welcome back to our regular feature where we share our recent gaming adventures. As we navigate the final weeks of 2026, we find ourselves in a familiar yet delightful predicament: catching up on the year's gems we missed. This week, our journey takes us from a festive robotic wonderland to a serene botanical manor and a vast, joyful open world, proving that great games continue to surprise and delight us, even as the year winds down.
Look, my backlog is a hydra—cut one game off and two more take its place—but when Team Asobi released a free winter-themed level for Astro Bot, it shot to the top of my list. It is, as expected, an absolute delight. The level transforms familiar playgrounds into a sparkling, snow-draped festival. Playing it felt like discovering a forgotten, perfectly wrapped gift at the back of the closet; it was a sudden, pure burst of joy. I was so inspired, I penned a little celebratory tune (any resemblance to existing holiday classics is purely coincidental, of course).
DualSense rings, are you listening,
What a pain, Retro Rampage
A beautiful sight,
Puzzle Piece tonight,
Walking in an Astro wonderland.
The charm is in the details: the crunch of snow under Astro's feet, the twinkling lights, and the sheer, unadulterated fun of the platforming. It's a masterclass in how a seasonal update should be done—adding genuine new content that enhances the core experience rather than just slapping on a cosmetic filter.
🌿 A Cerebral Stroll Through Botany Manor
My own end-of-year catch-up led me to Botany Manor, a puzzle game I devoured in one cozy evening. You play as a botanist in a gorgeous Somerset estate, tasked with reviving rare and exotic plants. This isn't simple gardening; these flora are like finicky aristocrats, requiring very specific, often bizarre conditions to bloom.
| Plant Example | Required Condition |
|---|---|
| Wolfglove | Recreating specific mountain wind sounds & speeds in a tower. |
| Windmill Wort | Adjusting room temperature and soil pH using crushed apples. |
I went in expecting a relaxed, 'cosy game' experience where puzzles solve themselves. Instead, I found a rigorously clever game that demands real deduction. You piece together clues from scattered notes, letters, and environmental observations. Figuring out the Wolfglove's needs, for instance, was a eureka moment as satisfying as finally tuning a radio to a clear signal from a distant star. The manor itself is a character, its sun-drenched rooms and abandoned picnics evoking a peaceful, almost melancholic summer vibe—a strange but welcome contrast to the winter outside my window.
👗 An Open World That Feels Like an Invitation
As a guides writer, I swim in open-world games, but few make me want to explore. They often feel like daunting chores. Infinity Nikki (fully launched in 2025) is the glorious exception. It doesn't present its world, Miraland, as a challenge—it extends it as an invitation to joy.
This game understands its audience perfectly. The world is built not to overwhelm with icons, but to deliver moments of happiness:
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Riding giant, bird-like Sky Monarchs over pastel-coloured landscapes.
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Helping adorable Faewish Spirits with their whimsical problems.
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Discovering hidden hot air balloons and magical hopscotch courses.
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And, of course, collecting thousands of clothing items to dress Nikki in any style imaginable.
Yes, it's massive, but its scale serves the mood. Exploring Miraland feels like flipping through the pages of a beautifully illustrated storybook where every corner holds a potential smile. It has some typical launch-era bugs and collectibles, but its heart is so unabashedly upbeat and cheerful it's impossible to resist. For a series born from mobile dress-up games, this evolution into a full-fat, joyous adventure is a wonderful surprise.
🐉 A Pixar-Fantasy Comfort Play with Dragon Age: The Veilguard
I'll be honest: I've never been Dragon Age's biggest fan. As a fantasy RPG lover, it should click, but previous entries always felt a step behind for me. Dragon Age: The Veilguard (released late 2025) finally shifted my perspective, albeit in an unexpected way.
The game is visually stunning. With its rounded character models, flamboyant hair tech, and soft lighting, it feels like playing a Pixar movie crossed with a high-fashion advert—a L'Oreal commercial set in Thedas. The streamlined, action-focused combat is more akin to Mass Effect and is better for it.
However, jumping in after years away from the lore, the story felt like navigating a dense fog without a compass—confusing and emotionally distant. As a mage, combat became frustratingly repetitive, focused more on dodging enemy attacks (which seemed perfectly synced to interrupt my spells) than on strategic spell-flinging. The lock-on mechanic was as reliable as a chocolate teapot, constantly disengaging.
And yet... I finished it. In the context of 2026, after a year packed with complex, demanding RPGs, Veilguard' very straightforwardness became its virtue. Its checklist missions, follow-the-marker quests, and simple combat loop were the video game equivalent of comfort food—mindless, predictable, and exactly what I needed to unwind on the sofa. It was a palette cleanser, proving that sometimes, 'good enough' is perfectly fine.
So, there you have it—our eclectic holiday gaming mix for 2026. From Astro's festive platforming to Botany Manor's intellectual greenhouse, Nikki's boundless joyful exploration, and Dragon Age's flawed but functional fantasy, it's been a season of wonderful contrasts. It reminds us that games, in all their forms, continue to be incredible portals to different kinds of joy: clever, cozy, cheerful, and comfortably mindless. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a few hundred more games from Spring 2026 to investigate before the New Year's bell tolls! 🎮✨
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