Like the previous year, I want to follow up last week’s list with my favorite albums of 2025 by discussing the themes of some of the better video games that were published in those same twelve months. And as was the case then, I am a bit apprehensive about doing so. You can read more of my deliberations by clicking here, but to summarize: while encountering music is nearly unavoidable in one’s daily life, video games appear to many as a distant, unvisited country.¹ And when people do play them, it is often a very specific kind.² The games that I discuss today were therefore selected because they tell stories which, I think, appeal to every reader imaginable. What’s more, the games themselves are – if I can be candid for a moment – more or less an excuse to talk about certain subjects within the humanities that are a good fit for Bildungblocks but would otherwise not suffice to fill an entire blog by themselves.

The following five video games are very different from each other, as is the extent of my discussion of them. I treat the first four, that being The Roottrees Are Dead, Mind Diver, Blue Prince, and Arctic Awakening, rather swiftly. The last game, Lost Records: Bloom & Rage, requires a few more words, though. Because this game not only tells a great story, but it can also be viewed through a lens that has my increased interest lately: that of disability studies.

This blog is also available in Dutch.

5. The Roottrees Are Dead and the Ethics of Technological Remembrance

After a plane crash, the affable magnate Carl Roottree who oversaw a vast candy imperium, as well as wife Brenda and their daughters Rhayna, Carly, and Rhiley, have tragically died. Obviously, every one of their blood relatives is about to get fabulously (more) rich. It is up to you, a private detective, to aid the Roottree estate and work out a definitive edition of the complicated family tree. (By now you have probably noticed that the title of this video game is a genealogy pun…) And this includes verifying the claims of those who assert that they are related to the Roottrees but were born out of wedlock – with one guy, literally named ‘Guy’, being responsible for most of them. There is one twist, though. The year is 1998 and you are forced to rely on the library, newspaper clippings, old pictures, and the embryonic internet.³

The nineties were not that long ago; many people who lived through these times still do remember them vividly. But perhaps even for these people, it has become difficult to accurately recall how much harder it was to acquire information and how fewer ways there were in which we could keep track of our own past lives as well as those of others. Now that the default external depositories of memories are technological, one does not have to be as famous as the fictional Roottrees to have your life be traced through (semi-)publicly available sources.⁴ With all of our current digital search tools at your disposal, the game would not be half as fun! But both the sheer abundance of digital information as well as the way in which the (social) media through which we often primarily remember currently function, can also aid in new forms of forgetting and misremembering that were less likely before their advent.⁵

The Roottrees Are Dead also illustrates another aspect of the proverbial Faustian bargain of technological remembrance.⁶ Remembering through digital means does make some things easier, including keeping mementos of loved ones or being a private detective tasked with compiling a family tree. But there are drawbacks. In the Netherlands, for example, there is an ongoing debate whether the digital catalogues of individual pupils’ behavior and progress in school, like the commonplace registry program Magister, hampers their autonomy and the possibility to reinvent themselves while growing up.⁷ It remains important that in these and similar conundrums, the learned discussions in fields like the digital humanities are taken into account when making decisions regarding the societal role of technological remembering.⁸

4. Mind Diver and the Right to Forget

Our second game likewise illustrates the need for the digital humanities, even when it comes to something innocuous like the aforementioned mementos of loved ones. In the world of this game, trained technicians can examine a person’s mind and reconstruct the memories therein – even those that we cannot readily recall ourselves. You play as an investigator who is tasked to look into a disappearance that seems to have to do with a group of people who employ this technology to enable a person to relive a memory of choice. As you can imagine, many people use this opportunity to spend time with those loved ones they’ve lost. This may sound benign, but through your research the practice appears to have several problems. And this includes both its addictive nature and the risk of brain damage. You have therefore no time to waste!

Living in the past in general and using memories as a crutch to escape one’s current predicaments in particular, are a well-trod area in fiction, philosophy, and research. My impression is that the current state of inquiry is nuanced. To linger on that what came before is not universally viewed as a mere malady. The past can offer hope for a better here and now, as well as for a brighter future.⁹ And the same is true of the role of our shared past and personal memories in our popular entertainment: there are both good and bad sides story tellers can emphasize.¹⁰ This also comes through in Mind Diver. At the end of the game, the player understands that it is important and beneficial to remember those we cared for when they are gone. But an irreplaceable piece of the puzzle of remembering is involving our current loving relationships. Because then the past is not merely a memory, but part of who you are now.

Mind Diver, like The Roottrees Are Dead, also makes us think about current societal issues. For example, the debate about what should happen with the social media profiles of the deceased.¹¹ And, when we indulge in the possibility for more fantastical technology one more time, we may ask: if we do develop instruments to relive memories, would it be wise to use them? Isn’t it part of our resilience as human beings, that we are able to at least partly move on and slowly get used to losses – however tragic and impactful? But if one argues for the necessity of a right to forget, it is important not to dismiss the inspiration that even our the darkest memories can sometimes also offer. Let us learn from the philosopher Richard Rorty who, when reflecting on the past as a reservoir for inspiration, had “[t]he hope that someday, any millennium now, my remote descendants will live in a global civilization in which love is pretty much the only law.”¹²

3. Life, Fate, and Blue Prince

As with The Roottrees Are Dead, the name of this game is a pun. In this game you play as Simon Sinclair, a 14 year old boy who has just inherited his great-uncle Herbert’s estate and fortune. Both have to be earned through puzzles, though. You see, Herbert’s mansion has 45 rooms, but you only definitively receive your inheritance if you can access a secret room 46. Naturally, the mansion is also magical. Every morning it reverts to an empty blueprint – yep, there is the pun, just say the title of the game out loud and be amazed! – and you have to draw that day’s rooms yourself. But in your search, you discover much more than just room 46. Amongst other things, your family is secretly the long-lost heir to a kingdom with a blue crown – which makes you a blue prince who has experimented extensively with blueprints.

This is one of the most meticulous and lovingly crafted games I have ever come across. There is more depth here than can be discovered in a week, a month, or even a year. But not all your hours with the game are spent discovering, some are sacrificed on the altar of fate. Because you cannot freely choose which rooms to put in a day’s blueprint. For every 45 slots, minus the entrance hall, you get to pick from three randomly selected options. As such, even if you know which room you want to visit or which combination of rooms you need to draw to unlock another mystery regarding this fascinating fictional world, it can take several in-game days to achieve it. And this was one of the few criticisms of this game that I could find: it does not respect your time.

But I can see another side to this, even though I am almost positive it was not meant to be read as such by the game’s developers. The story of Simon Sinclair and his family revolves around birth rights. You are the heir to a lost kingdom, now ruled by other families. And the crown, scepter, and throne room you find are meant to signify something. Especially because the current regime, at least in local writings, is portrayed as cruel. But, as said, the character you play is just a boy whose main skill is solving increasingly obscure puzzles. It is only the accident of birth that makes him a candidate for the throne. Something that long has been derided as a bad way to structure society!¹³ When fate once again crosses us while we try to draft the perfectly constructed mansion, it may serve as a warning that mere fate does not signify much – and especially not that you are fit to run a country or reunite a lost kingdom.¹⁴

2. The Humanity of Artificial Life in Arctic Awakening

You know what is worse than crashing your plane into the arctic wilderness, many miles from any proper infrastructure? Being accompanied on such an ordeal by a court-mandated therapy robot named Alfie who will establish whether you are fit to see your kids again. But that is the situation you find yourself in when you play Arctic Awakening and eventually you do begin your trek to civilization while also looking for the other member of your cabin crew. And on the road, you and your mechanical companion find strange structures that defy explanation. Can this adventure perhaps bring the grumpy human and the upbeat robot closer together?¹⁵

One of the first questions that this short summary raises, I think, is whether I used the right vocabulary. To become closer to a human, an artificial life form arguably needs to be sentient. And whether a robot – let alone a therapy robot! – can be sentient is still an open question.¹⁶ Though what level of sentience is needed and which kind of interactions we should define as a friendship, can be debated. In his book Synthetic Friends, Hendrik Kempt argues, among other things, that our relations with artificial life should not entirely be measured by what we expect from other humans. They can also be defined on their own terms. When we attempt this, we may even notice unique and unexpected traits of human-machine friendships.¹⁷ And this is what we see being implied in Arctic Awakening. Alfie can maintain relationships and when you need to choose between his survival and that of other humans, it is indeed difficult.

1. The Physical Toll of Chronic Illness in Lost Records: Bloom & Rage

We are once again back in the 1990’s and four young outcasts from the northern United States of America develop an unlikely friendship which lasts one memorable summer, before circumstances beyond their control draw them apart. During that one summer together, they discover a magical grove, which seems to represent their anxieties about being young and thus relatively powerless to change their lot in life. One of the kids, Kat, is especially drawn to its magic. And that is immediately understandable, as she lives on a farm where deer are bred to be shot by tourists. Almost any child would recoil from such cruelty and being forced to live there while it happens is arguably not very pedagogically responsible. And Kat does not have the time or opportunity to move away and combat these practices when she is older. Because she is suffering from childhood leukemia and it is unlikely she will see the next year. Luckily, she can get one small victory in, as her friends help her to free the deer that were bred for the next hunting season. And that fact alone makes this undisputedly the greatest game of 2025!¹⁸

What sets this game apart, except for the small victory over willful animal abuse, is the representation of being young while physically impaired through a disability or chronic illness. Funnily enough, it is only after two-thirds of the story that the other kids find out that Kat is suffering from leukemia. But the player, if they paid attention, may have noticed some subtle – and less subtle! – hints as to her condition in the hours they played before that reveal.

First, there are the outward manifestations of Kat’s physical problems. Immediately obvious to me was the fact that she foregoes to stand at every possible opportunity. Whether it is an enclosure, a tree stump, or merely the ground – anything can be a chair when your body does not function in the way others expect it to. Furthermore, you notice that the character has pronounced good and bad periods when it comes to how much their ailments affect them physically. As such, her appearance can drastically differ throughout the week or even throughout the day. But underneath these fluctuations, there is a clear trend throughout the summer: Kat gets increasingly weaker because of the burden of her illness, the medications that she has to take, and the therapies she must undergo. Though Kat valiantly pushes back against the constrains that her illness brings with it – she really tries to be ‘normal’, if such a state of being even exists. And with some success, because it takes her friends weeks to find out. Which brings us to the game’s portrayal of the mental impact of being physically impaired.

What makes Kat perhaps the most beloved character of this game, more admired even than the character you play as, is her continuous rebellion against being overprotected. Be it her parents, her sister, of her friends – Kat does not take kindly to unsolicited assistance. Granted, she does not like assistance at all. But if she needs help, she can ask for it herself, thank you very much. It is an interesting form of representation. Because, as a player you are inclined to do ‘the right thing’ as it is commonly defined and help Kat where and when you are able. But often, this is not what physically impaired persons want or even require, and it is laudable that the developers at Dontnod have included this social dynamic in their game. Another aspect of the mental impact of a physical impairment which is expected to worsen, is also portrayed admirably. That is, trying to do what you find important while you are still able, because you do not know whether the chance will come again. And with the frankly shocking fragility of all our bodies, this is perhaps an attitude every one of us could cultivate more to some extent.

For all its triumphs, Lost Records: Bloom & Rage has not become a universally beloved video game. Much of this has to do with people’s objections regarding the ending. As we do not find out how the magic grove came into being, what eventually happens to our main character, and whether any of the supernatural occurrences were even real, some consider the game too open-ended.¹⁹ But I do not think that leaving some room for speculation diminishes this game. After all, the origin of the magic grove does not matter as much as what it symbolizes. And the possibility to experience and achieve some of the things that she finds important through access to magic is perhaps for none of the characters more important than Kat. Because her youth is all she has and her relative powerlessness is exacerbated by her physical impairment.

As video games continue to mature as a medium to tell stories, there have increasingly been attempts to represent more diverse aspects of the human condition.²⁰ And for regular readers of Bildungblocks, this is no surprise. The Life is Strange-franchise for example, which we discussed last year, features a character with paraplegia.²¹ And as more games tackle living with disability and chronic illness, there are more avenues for everybody – young and old – to find acceptance or acquire knowledge regarding an existence that is at least partly determined by impairment. After all, we are all likely to become disabled one day, if we keep on living long enough. It is important, though, to eschew sensationalism and harmful prejudices.²² Kat’s life – though portrayed as full of joy, creativity, and dreams in addition to the discussed setbacks – was perhaps more characterized by illness than most of us expect for ourselves. But hopefully this fictional story can help real people with their own handling of our shared and fragile human condition.

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References

1. Nicholas Cook, Music: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), p. 2.
2. I avoid the term ‘genre’ here, as the current use of specific genres in the video games industry has been criticized as an inadequate measure for distinction, see: Thomas H. Apperley, “Genre and Game Studies: Toward a Critical Approach to Video Game Genres”, Simulation & Gaming 2006, 37 (1), p. 6-23.
3. Yussef Cole, “The Roottrees Are Dead: Reviewed on the PC”, The New York Times February 4^th 2025, The Arts/Cultural Desk, p. 3.
4. Florent Thouvenin, Peter Hettich, Herbert Burkert & Urs Gasser, Remembering and Forgetting in the Digital Age (Cham: Springer, 2018).
5. Rodney Harrison, “Forgetting to Remember, Remembering to Forget: Late Modern Heritage Practices, Sustainability and the ‘Crisis’ of Accumulation of the Past”, International Journal of Heritage Studies 2013, 19 (6), p. 579-595; Stefka Hristova, “Occupy Wall Street Meets Occupy Iraq: On Remembering and Forgetting in a Digital Age“, Radical History Review 2013, 40 (117), p. 83-97.
6. Yoni van den Eede, “Technological Remembering/Forgetting: A Faustian Bargain?”, Empedocles: European Journal for the Philosophy of Communication 2011, 2 (2), p. 167-180.
7. Irene de Zwaan, “’Magister bepaalt niet of ouders meekijken met cijfers’”, deVolkskrant December 18^th 2025, Ten Eerste, p. 18-19.
8. For a recent edited volume on the subject, see: Qi Wang & Andrew Hoskins (eds.), The Remaking of Memory in the Age of the Internet and Social Media (New York: Oxford University Press, 2024).
9. Michael S. Roth, Memory, Trauma, and History: Essays on Living with the Past (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), p. 171.
10. Peter Rietbergen, “Verbeeldingen van het Verleden in Woord, Beeld en Spel: Een Complex Cultureel Continuüm voorbij de Wetenschappelijke Tekst”, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 2004, 117 (2), p. 187-206.
11. Ruud Ubels, “Wie Niets Regelt, Leeft Online Door: Zeven Tips om een Digitale Erfenis te Regelen”, Nederlands Dagblad November 7^th 2024, p. 6.
12. Richard Rorty, “Anticlericalism and Atheism”, in: Santiago Zabala (eds.), The Future of Religion (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), p. 40.
13. One of my favorite writings on the moral insignificance of the accident of birth is John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice, see: John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), p. 73-74; Norman Daniels, ‘Democratic Equality: Rawls Complex Egalitarianism’, in: Samuel R. Freeman (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Rawls (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 245.
14. The publicly accessible sources on this game, which can be expected to be available for the foreseeable future, were far and few in between. In addition to my own experience, I made use of the following publication: Jason Rodriguez, “I’ve Played Blue Prince for 70 Hours and Its Roguelike Room-Based Puzzles Have Consumed Every Waking Moment of My Life”, Techradar April 11^th 2025 (retrieved on January 7^th 2026).
15. There were again few sources on this game that can be expected to be accessible in the longer term. But the gist of my summary can be found here: Emma Flint & Sam Smith, “Arctic Awakening Review: An Eerie Mystery Not Fully Realized”, The Escapist September 23^d 2025 (retrieved on January 8^th 2026).
16. S. Shree Shankar et al, “The Behaviour and Sentience of Artificial Intelligence”, in: Paulraj Dassan, Sethukarasi Thirumaaran & Neelakandan Subraman (eds.), Intelligent Computing, Smart Communication and Network Technologies (Cham: Springer, 2024), p. 323-325. And one can also wonder what level sentience is necessary for us to, for example provide robots with fundamental rights, see: Tobias Flattery, “The Kant-inspired Indirect Argument for Non-Sentient Robot Rights”, Ai and Ethics 2024, Vol.4 (4), p. 997-1011.
17. Hendrik Kempt, Synthetic Friends: A Philosophy of Human-Machine Friendship (Cham: Springer, 2022). For a quick overview, see: Hendrik Kempt, Chatbots and the Domestication of AI: A Relational Approach (Cham: Springer, 2025), p. 5-6.
18. Isis Verbruggen, “Lost Records: Bloom and Rage – Review”, IGN Benelux February 18^th 2025 (retrieved on January 8^th 2026); Palle Havshøi-Jensen, “Lost Records: Bloom & Rage – Tape 2”, Gamereactor April 18^th 2025 (retrieved on January 8^th 2026).
19. Isis Verbruggen, ” Lost Records: Bloom and Rage: Tape 2 – Review “, IGN Benelux May 7^th 2025 (retrieved on January 8^th 2026).
20. Nicholas Sellers, “Games for Good: Exploring the Potential for Traditional Video Game Narratives to Reduce Mental Health Stigma”, in: Erin Willis & Chad Painter (eds.), Communicating Disability : Expanding Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Health Communication and Mass Media (New York: Roudledge, 2025), p. 154-155.
21. Luis de Miranda, “Life Is Strange and ‘Games Are Made’: A Philosophical Interpretation of a Multiple-Choice Existential Simulator With Copilot Sartre”, Games and Culture 2018, 13 (8), p. 829, 831.
22. Ria Cheyne, Disability, Literature, Genre: Representation and Affect in Contemporary Fiction (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2019), p. 1-2; Katarzyna Ojrzyńska & Maciej Wieczorek, “Disability and Dissensus”, in: Katarzyna Ojrzyńska & Maciej Wieczorek (eds.), Disability and Dissensus: Strategies of Disability Representation and Inclusion in Contemporary Culture (Leiden: Brill, 2020), p. 1.