Nintendo Life eShop Selects (January 2025)

Image: Nintendo Life

Thank goodness January is over, right?

January 2025 felt like the longest month ever — thankfully, we’re here to brighten your day with our first eShop Selects for the year.

We’re starting things fresh for 2025 and going back to basics — focusing on the games we’ve reviewed. The winners are voted for by Nintendo Life staff and contributors, who pick their top three from the eShop games listed below.

Before we dive into what has been a surprisingly packed January for the eShop, let’s look back at our final Readers’ Choice winner: the adorable Quilts & Cats of Calico. Based on the board game of the same name, you have to make lovely quilts for the cosy cats. It can be played solo or with up to three friends, so it’s the perfect cosy party game.

While we wait for more details on the Switch 2, there are plenty of games to get lost in. So let us indulge you on the very best eShop releases in January…

Honourable mentions

Like we said above, January was a packed month, particularly over the final few days. Five of the eight games featured here launched on or after 28th January — so we’re sure plenty of you were scrambling like us to get your ducks in line and make space for some excellent games.

This month, everything eligible got at least a 7/10 from us — you’re spoilt for choice if you’re a Metroidvania fan, as you can see.

It was an incredibly close month for votes, with every game getting at least one vote from the Nintendo Life team. But here are the ones that we consider to be the cream of the crop…

The first Tails of Iron came up in one of our Games We Missed features back in 2023. We’re very glad we had a chance to go back and play that game in preparation for the sequel, because Tails of Iron 2: Whiskers of Winter is everything a follow-up should be and more.

Extremely challenging and beautiful to look at, Tails of Iron 2 challenges your combat mastery with tough boss battles and rewarding combat. We may have scored Tails of Iron 2 a respectable 7/10, but it’s a worth choice for third place here — only repetitive level design and excessive backtracking hold it back from being the big cheese.

This one’s been a long time coming — Laika: Aged Through Blood launched on PC and other consoles in late 2023. The Switch version was meant to follow in 2024, but it got delayed very last minute (as in, it actually launched and was then pulled from the eShop, so some of you have probably already played this).

Luckily, the wait was worth it. The second brutally difficult game on this list, Laika: Aged Through Blood is one of the most unique Metroidvanias we’ve ever played. Motocross exploration mixed with stylish gunplay combat and beautiful visuals, we awarded Laika a 9/10 in our review.

One of our most anticipated games of the year has delivered in Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector. Bigger, bolder, but still just as thoughtful as the first game, Citizen Sleeper 2 expands the scope of the game by giving you your own ship and crew, allowing you to explore the Starward Belt.

You’ll take on contracts and forge friendships throughout your time, but you also need to manage your stress levels in order to survive. Its deeply anti-capitalist message and focus on bonds and relationships elevates this beyond the 2022 original in our eyes.

Congrats to Citizen Sleeper 2, the first winner of our eShop Selects in 2025. Hugely deserved. If you can’t tell, we absolutely love this game, so check out our 9/10 review to find out exactly why.

< Nintendo eShop Selects – December 2024

As always, you can vote in our January 2025 poll to let us know what your favourite eShop release of the month was. If there’s one we haven’t covered here, then select the ‘Something else’ option and let us know — or save it for our Games We Missed feature, which will be making a comeback in the spring.

Not only that, you can also vote for the best of all 2024’s eShop Selects winners, too. 2024 was a fantastic year for indies, so you’re spoilt for choice from the 12 options below. Pick your favourite and let us know what your picks were in the comments.

How we decide our eShop Selects top three: As we reach the end of every month, the Nintendo Life staff vote on their favourite titles from a list of games selected by the editorial team. To qualify for this list, these games must have been released as a digital-only Nintendo Switch eShop title in that particular month, and must have been reviewed on Nintendo Life; we select the qualifying games based on their review scores.

Staff are then asked to vote for three games that they think deserve to sit right at the very top of that list; first choice gets three points, second choice gets two points, and third choice gets one point. These votes are then tallied to create a top-three list, with the overall winner taking that month’s top prize.

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