The best games environments in 2025

Environments are a huge part of what gives a game a distinct personality. Some games create cozy, comforting worlds for players to explore (and/or decorate), while others offer creepy settings that still manage to be inviting, despite the unsettling vibes.

We at Polygon have played through loads of incredible games this year, from terrifying horror titles to charming bookshop management sims and everything in-between. While many of the games we played were visually stunning, some went beyond beauty, featuring enticing environments that made us wish we could waltz into the game itself and set up shop.

Here’s a closer look at all the best gaming environments of 2025 — a collection of spaces so sumptuously rendered, we want to live in them. —Claire Lewis

The Crossroads (Hades 2)

The central hub locations in each Hades game couldn’t be more different. The House of Hades in the first game feels like a prison, but throughout Hades 2, the Crossroads is a mysterious and magical refuge, the one safe place in a mythical apocalypse. A lantern-lit sanctuary that exists outside the normal flow of time, the Crossroads is the one place in the universe that Chronos cannot reach.

Early-game flashbacks depict protagonist Melinoë’s childhood in the Crossroads as a cheerful one full of games like hide and seek, despite her entire family being removed from time itself when she was just a baby. Hecate, the Titan goddess of Witchcraft, is nothing short of intimidating. Yet she raises Melinoë with a great deal of tenderness — and also trains her to be a powerful witch capable of taking down Chronos.

True to developer Supergiant Games’ format with these games, this central hub starts out simple with only a few NPCs to talk to (including the openly hostile Nemesis). As you progress through the game, Melinoë gathers the resources to craft items that make the Crossroads a cozy little home where mundane routines become a restorative respite between the frenetic violence of each run. A small garden rewards patience, a bustling tavern provides a nice place to relax over a pint of Ambrosia, and you can even go fishing with your besties every now and then. You get so much character development at the Crossroads over time, and the real highlight is all of the “bonding” that happens at the Hot Springs… where characters strip down naked to unwind and unburden themselves of their worries, if only for a little while. —Corey Plante

Zephyr Town (Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar)

Image: Marvelous via Polygon

Who wouldn’t want to live in a tight-knit, walkable community home to a thriving weekly marketplace, not to mention a population packed to the brim with charming singles? That’s the world of Zephyr Town in Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar, the 2025 remake that expanded and improved upon the 2008 Nintendo DS version in nearly every way. Known for its windmills and bracing breezes, one of the ways players get around town is by floating on the breeze with a glider, which is one of the most whimsical forms of transport I can imagine. Zephyr Town embodies the platonic ideal of community, with a mayor who’s just as friendly as the little old lady who runs the café, and with its lush greenery filled with nature sprites, its overall oeuvre is that of natural magic. —Deven McClure

That camper I decorated (Camper Van: Make It Home)

Image: Malapata Studio via Polygon

One of my dream vacation scenarios involves renting a camper van, driving around the country, and staying anywhere that takes my fancy for as long as I want. Camper Van: Make It Home lets me live out a little bit of that dream. Of the many (many) vans I’ve designed, my first one, a cozy little nature-toned retreat nestled under a lighthouse on a beach, still stands out as a favorite. It’s simple, maybe even slightly bare. But the idea of laying back on that comfy bed, blanket, book, and headphones in reach, watching the clouds roil and tumble over the ocean, the faint promise of someplace new lingering just beyond where the sun meets the horizon? Pure, unfiltered bliss. —Josh Broadwell

Bookstonbury (Tiny Bookshop)

Image: Neoludic Games, Skystone Games

Tiny Bookshop was such a cozy refuge for me when it launched over the summer. It offered a charming take on a reality I know all too well: the horrors of working retail. In Tiny Bookshop, I could sell books all day long without having to worry about leaky toilets or customers staining my books with coffee. Better yet? I made so much bank; Bookstonbury’s citizens seemingly bought books and only books. It offered the ideal world for a bookseller to live in. I also got to adopt a dog that hung out by my tiny bookshop. Immediate 10/10.

It helped too that the town of Bookstonbury was a charming place to inhabit, nestled along a New England-like beach. Its people were nothing but kind and welcoming, and I looked forward to every end-of-season celebration to hang out with the lot of them. I wouldn’t mind retiring in an IRL version of Bookstonbury someday. —Austin Manchester

Vatican City (Indiana Jones and the Great Circle)

Image: MachineGames/Bethesda Softworks via Polygon

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle nabbed a high spot on Polygon’s best games of 2025 list for many reasons, including its array of sumptuous environments it sends you to. Like Anthony Bourdain’s Part’s Unknown or the Mission: Impossible films, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle doubles as an envy-inducing travelogue. A jungle village in present-day Thailand. A dusty desert camp by one of the Seven Wonders. And best of all, a small city state smack in the center of Europe’s third-greatest city.

Yes, if I could go to any place from any 2025 game, I’m availing myself of a one-way ticket to the Vatican City level of Great Circle — not to putz around the Sistine Chapel or anything, but to use the opportunity to walk five feet over to Rome proper. We’re talking daily Montepulciano in the Regola, sunset cocktails on a Trevi rooftop, hijinks in Trastevere. I’d be at Jerry Thomas so regularly they’d have to name a drink after me. (Is my desire to follow in Indy’s footsteps simply to…. drink a lot? Look, there are a lot of excellent watering holes in the Eternal City. When in Rome!)

Italian cities have appeared in plenty of video games, but few have captured the vibe as well as Great Circle. It’s almost intangible, but the little details — the way sunlight illuminates rust-hued bricks, the way everyone moves at a pleasantly glacial pace, the way you can almost smell the espresso and tobacco emanating from the screen — capture its vibe in a bottle, spurring an unquenchable wanderlust in me like no other 2025 game. —Ari Notis

Ebisugaoka (Silent Hill f)

Image: Konami via Polygon

Prior to its release in September, Silent Hill f’s creators stated that they wanted players to “find the beauty in terror,” which might sound like a tall order for a horror game full of disgusting monstrosities, copious amounts of body horror, and intense jumpscares. But as I explored the foggy, flowered streets of Ebisugaoka — the game’s fictional setting in 1960s Japan — I began really warming up to the place. Yes, there are terrifying monsters around every corner, but once you’ve cleared them out, it’s really not so bad. The lack of people on the streets makes for a solitary experience, but the striking red flowers covering much of the corrupted town’s real estate really started to grow on me after a few hours.

There’s been a lot of debate about what the “f” in Silent Hill f stands for. Some think it means “female” (due to the female protagonist and themes of sexism). Others think it means “five,” as the game is (arguably) the fifth mainline Silent Hill title. Personally, I think it means “flowers.” Silent Hill f marks the first time in the series that the corrupted “otherworld” has taken on a flowery aesthetic, rather than the rusted, bloody look featured in previous Silent Hill games. Higabana (red spider lilies, often seen as a symbol of death) cover buildings and block pathways, while White Claudia (a fictional hallucinogenic flower often featured in previous games) blooms near waterways and rice paddies.

The end result is a distinct visual aesthetic that is both spine-chilling and breathtaking. Some of the game’s monsters are even covered in flowers, and this juxtaposition of gorgeousness and grotesquerie ultimately made me want to crawl through my monitor, Samara-style, and take up residence in one of Ebisugaoka’s many abandoned, flower-covered homes. Sure, the place is about as cursed as it gets, but even the town’s freakiest supernatural inhabitants don’t negate its impeccable vibes. —Claire Lewis