For anyone interested, I dropped my list in the official thread. Sorry, I had not the time to participate more this year. But thanks for keeping it alive!
Also some honorable mentions (the mentioned platforms are the versions I played, most are available on more). I hope there is something new for you to discover in my list or these mentions.
Barony (2015, Linux)
Barony is an actual rogue like, meaning it is like the 1980s game Rogue. Except with 3D first person voxel graphic instead of ...text. But the other things are like Rogue. The dungeon levels are randomly generated, you have permadeath and start all over after death, there a lot of crazy items and spells and NPCs. The effects can be wild. In one run I was afflicted with blindness, but could play on - just with a black screen. This means I could find possibly a solution to my affliction, although I took the more likely route and died. The game support up to four player co-op. Also it is receiving meaningful updates for many years now. It just might be the new nethack with endless replayability.
9 Kings (2025, Windows)
9 Kings is a simple game: upgrade your kingdom, build an army and fight other kings. This becomes increasingly difficult with each step. The battle is mostly an autobattler, you play by upgrading your kingdom. And there are crazy combination that help you survive. For instance one unit called soldiers will get stronger with higher numbers. Meaning each single of the soldiers will be stronger if there are more of them - and there will be more of them. Add to this the upgrade farm, which adds units to neighboring fields each turn and you get a fear-inducing troop. There are many such crazy combinations.
Doom: The Dark Ages (2025, Xbox Series)
This years Doom was not everyones cup of tea. But for me the fast paced gameplay of the most recent entries was not the greatest and so I enjoyed a somewhat slowe, more deliberate approach. This is supported by the sound effects and the general feel. Every action feels heavy with a certain satisfying oomph — and I like that. That is supported by the cool weapons which include a lot more melee. The ranged weapons also all sound heavy and impactful. The shield is great to support a gameplay which is slower, yet still puts you in the middle of the battlefield. And it has a chainsaw built in! I couldn't care less about the weird story, but that didn't distract too much from the gameplay and the levels look all sufficiently for a game called Dark Ages.
Luck be a Landlord (2023, Linux)
Luck be a Landlord is like a deckbuilder game - but instead of adding cards you add symbols to a slot machine. You need to make the money for your landlord in just a few spins, so invest in good symbols to add. This is not just simply of a symbol adding a certain amount of money to pay your rent, they actually have combos if certain symbols end up in adjacent or in the same row or something like this. Additionally you have upgrades outside of symbols. And soon you earn thousands of coins with one spin, instead of ten.
BallxPit (2025, Xbox Series)
BallxPit is using the Survivors formula, but applies it to brick breaker games like Arkanoid or Breakout. Instead of a paddle you have a character, shooting the balls in a direction you determine. Most bricks (aka enemies) need multiple hits to break and you lose health if they reach the bottom of the screen, until your health is depleted. Each level has 3 bosses. If you beat a level with enough characters you unlock more. There are a lot of different balls for you to use, with differing abilities that can be used for combos and also balls can be fused for new balls with combined effects. There is a high number of characters with different abilities. All this combined with an good pixel-art-style (as you would expect from a Devolver game). This is definitely worth some fun, although not the best use of the survivors formula (which for me still is 20 minutes till dawn, which is in my TOP 50). But it is worth checking out if you like the survivor style gameplay.
