Game of the Year 2025: Day 4

January 1, 2026·1 hr 55 min·5 clips

In Seance of Blake Manor, every clue you investigate costs you a minute on a ticking weekend-long clock.

The show starts out like a loose New Year hangout. The crew moves through an ad read, jokes about making it into 2026, and quickly settles into that familiar feeling of a new year arriving before anyone is fully ready for it. Mike's remembered backflip gets dragged back into the room. That turns into the kind of physical-comedy nonsense the panel likes, with the hosts riffing on celebrations, cheese sticks, and how ridiculous it would be to try to bring that same energy to the bar. Then they get back to games. The main stretch is a long breakdown of a museum-management game that keeps widening its own scope instead of staying put. The hosts explain how each museum is basically its own little campaign, so the player is not just decorating one building but learning different rules, different goals, and different progress gates as they move from a Natural History Museum to an aquarium and then into stranger territory. They spend time on how exhibits unlock approval, guests, and milestones, and on how the game rewards careful placement of donation boxes, cameras, and patrols. Security becomes part of the joke and part of the strategy. The crew keeps circling back to thieves, escape counts, and the oddly specific challenge of keeping a museum from turning into a burglary simulator. They like that the game lets decoration matter without making it feel mandatory in a punishing way. That balance gives the conversation its shape, because the hosts can admire the systems while still laughing at the weirdness of building a space museum with shape-based batteries and archaeology teams blasting off into orbit. The panel also notices how the game keeps creating new loops instead of just inflating old ones. That progression is what makes the discussion stick, since every new museum type changes the problem just enough to feel like a fresh toy without dropping the core management fantasy. They do what the show always does and keep slipping into side jokes, but the jokes keep feeding the point instead of replacing it. The show's rhythm stays quick and disruptive, with one person launching a thought, another cutting in with a better bit, and a third dragging everyone back to the rundown once the derailment has gone far enough. By the end, the crew is fully in closing-mode gratitude. They thank viewers, thank the support, and wrap the day with that familiar feeling of a work session that also happened to be a hangout. The final goodbye is messy in the best way. That is the point, really: this is the show as a long argument with friends, with a real game buried inside it and a lot of personality around the edges.

As heard by us

A loose year-end game chat that turns museum management into a systems-heavy conversation.

An end-of-year game chat wanders into museum management, and the draw is how many systems keep unfolding as it goes. The first stretch leans into sponsor reads and New Year chatter, so the conversation takes its time finding the game, but the shift pays off once the museum talk…

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want a loose hangout that still lands a real systems breakdown.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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