December 30, 2025|

Filed under: Editorial, Highlight Article

The 2025 Source Gaming In-Game Screenshot Art Gallery

EDIT: December 31, 2025: replaced the text of Hamada’s Kirby Air Riders entry, which was from an earlier draft.

It’s December 30th, 2025. Temperatures have fallen to horrifying lows up in the northern hemisphere. Prices on goods keep increasing thanks to asinine geopolitical shifts. Metroid Prime 4: Beyond turned out to be… basically fine. A new year promises hopes and fears alike. And here at Source Gaming, the SG team is here to show off some more of our in-game photography skills. For the past two years, this has been a fun, end of the year epilogue for us. Many of these were taken for articles; others were taken in games we were just playing for fun. But to some extent, all of them let us be artists using the games we play as a medium. I hope you enjoy viewing these as much as we enjoyed taking them.

Image: Source Gaming. Still Wakes the Deep.

Wolfman Jew: I collected many, many, many screenshots over the course of “Passing the Buck,” but as it was a weekly series with tight deadlines, I didn’t get many chances to get those perfect shots. There are a lot that look really good, but they were functional. It was rare for me to get many that I just loved, which makes this one from Still Wakes the Deep so shocking. I liked Still Wakes the Deep, but I also rushed through it, and it’s a game—an Amnesia-esque first-person indie horror—that doesn’t lend itself to that kind of photography. That makes this still all the more surprising to me. It gets so much out of the graphics, lighting, and perspective. It was one of the first pictures of the year I deliberately chose not to use in a piece because I had the gallery in mind.

Image: Source Gaming. Lil Gator Game.

However, this piece from Lil Gator Game was taken a couple weeks earlier, and partially for the gallery. The game is great for photography in general due to its gorgeous graphics and simple UI, but I especially like the Photo Mode. It’s diegetic, because it’s a flip phone the Lil Gator uses. You can flip the perspective to take selfies with the press of a button. This is set during the postgame, and while I took it with the idea that it could be used in the article, I was also just excited to play with the mechanic. In the most committed act of role playing I did for a game all year, I tried hard to position the character and the camera in exactly the right way. I wanted their big head taking up the right amount of space to be realistic, and I wanted characters to be in or badly cut out of frame in the most accurate way possible.

Image: Source Gaming. Control.

I upgraded my television relatively soon after “Passing the Buck” ended. I’m playing in 4K, yo! However, that turned out to bring some complications with it in the screenshot department, and thank the lord this happened after a weekly series. Xbox will only record images at your resolution exactly (Nintendo does as well, just with whatever resolution you’d get in the Switch or Switch 2’s portable mode), so 4K images became a pain to move around. Even worse, around the time I started playing Alan Wake 2 in August, I noticed that it struggled to handle my admittedly excessive number of captures. Still, if any games would be worth the tsuris, it would be the ones by Remedy. This screenshot of Control wasn’t taken for my Ashtray Maze article; it was just me goofing around in the game’s expressive and strong Photo Mode. You have a lot of options, but you also have really good material thanks to gameplay that incentivizes ripping everything apart. This here’s got particles, fire effects, debris, psychic powers, and a pretty perfect capture of tone.

Image: Source Gaming. Control.

As my obsession with video game photography has grown, I’ve spent more and more time on posing. When I pull off a shot, I gotta make sure the muzzle flare’s at its brightest or the explosion at its largest. If in-game UI has to be there, the words and numbers better be fully onscreen and not mid-appearance. Ironically, though, many of the pictures that take the most time are the ones with absolutely no combat or movement or danger. This other Control shot is simple: Jesse approaches the psychic TV while the ominous red light reflects off the crazy architecture. There are no enemies, no challenge, no stress. And yet I think it took me like twenty minutes to take it. Maybe Jesse’s legs were in a weird position, or maybe she was over the ramp that the game disguises as a flight of stairs. In the end, it’s led to a photo where all I see are the flaws, but I’m including it here because damnit, this took effort.

Image: Source Gaming. Alan Wake 2.

As for Alan Wake 2, one of the things I latched onto most was how it played with setting. Control is all interiors, bold colors, and brutalist magic. Alan Wake 2 sets itself in a seedy New York City and a Northwest forest village, and while I did capture shots of the former, Bright Falls ended up being my favorite space for photography. It’s the kind of spooky woods where it’s basically night even during the day, and where you have trouble seeing the difference between sunrise and sunset. The hazy atmosphere comes through really well here, and I like how Saga’s FBI letters pop in as she’s enveloped by the light. I unfortunately grabbed far fewer images from this game as my irritation with Xbox’s capture button increased (and at least politically speaking, I’d maybe also like to distance myself a bit further from the console). There’s an incredible one from the end of the game, but I mean, I don’t wanna spoil that because you all should play Alan Wake 2! I’m not sure if anyone reading this has played it. So I think this’ll be my only one.

Image: Source Gaming. Donkey Kong Bananza: DK Island & Emerald Rush.

I used the Photo Mode in Donkey Kong Bananza with fiendish glee. I had so many crazy screenshots of fights, of destruction, of DK and Pauline just goofing about. Like Control, it’s a bounty of crazy particle effects, and like Alan Wake 2, it’s got those really sumptuous levels. However, it was this shot from the DK Island & Emerald Rush DLC that instantly became my favorite. It’s so perfect. Donkey Kong’s expression and Pauline’s reaction. The way the water seems to sputter up onto the camera. The lens flare. The collage of wonderful colors. This image has a ton of character to it, so much that it perfectly captures the energy of Bananza without featuring a single bit of ground deformation.

Image: Source Gaming. Mario Kart World.

I’d also gotta represent the way Mario Kart World does Photo Modes. It works pretty much like any other game (though you lack some of the graphical overlays, not that I use those much), but you can actually reposition your character. Every character’s pose, like the animations they do when pulling off tricks, is selectable. It lets you give the image so much personality, and in the dozens and dozens of pictures I took, I used it with relish. However, somehow this picture of Fish Bones might be my favorite. It’s not the most photogenic (it’s in one of the least colorful parts of one of the most colorful stages, the glorious Dry Bones Burnout), but somehow I managed to get the Dash Food in such a position that it was right in the jaws of Fish Bones’ pose. Dude’s just so excited to munch on potato chips! As much as I’d like to show more Mario Kart pictures, and I definitely have ‘em, none of them could top the silliness of this.

Image: Source Gaming. Kirby Air Riders.

You can really feel the lack of that feature in Kirby Air Riders. It’s arguably far more robust of a mode thanks to graphical overlays and a feature where you can independently alter the character and background’s perspective, but they have to be in the exact position, and probably in the air, to boot. Marx’s design is pitch perfect, but pause while he’s on the ground and it mostly looks like he’s slithering. So I kinda dismissed the mode out of hand for a while until getting the true ending in Road Trip. Look, if I’m going up against an end boss I might never fight again, I should commemorate the event. Lo and behold, you get Meta Knight in the air, on Dragoon, wreathed in Flame Wings, with death lasers fired at him from every which way that you admittedly can’t see here, and backed by the red skies of Farthest Reach. It was this and a few others that made me realize Air Riders’ potential for ridiculous photography, something I’ve played with every time I boot the game up now. Many shots are a bit more professional than this, but I like the exact way this came out.

Image: Source Gaming. Hollow Knight: Silksong – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition.

Hollow Knight: Silksong presents a very different challenge as it, like most sidescrollers, doesn’t have a photo mode at all. It is also Silksong, i.e. super hard. You pretty much need both thumbs working Hornet’s movement at all times during a fight. Getting specific shots during combat require a lot of planning, and this might be my favorite example of the bunch. It’s relatively simple; the Cogwork Dancers are about to do their super attack, and Hornet’s just jumping out of the way. But her relatively closeness to the center of the screen, the very obvious leadup to a powerful move, and Silksong’s extraordinary artwork makes it feel very special. I wanted to use this picture for months, and it was going to go into the “Tangible Bigness” article, but in the end I decided it was best here. Also, months after this photo was taken, months after my review, and one day before this article got published, I finally finished Act III (and also World of Goo, but that’s less impressive)! Exactly twenty-two seconds shy of an eighty-five hour completion time. That was one of my biggest priorities this year, and man, it feels good having that complete.

Image: Source Gaming. Balatro.

This is not the highest ante I’ve reached in Balatro (which is, incidentally, the only screenshot that didn’t come from something I wrote about, just because I was writing so much this year). It’s not even the highest I reached in screenshots taken for an article last year! But, it is a great showcase for one of my single favorite cards, the Hanging Chad. It retriggers a single card, which is great if you, like me, like Balatro strategies that involve playing individual cards as often as humanly possible. Every time I played a 2, the (obscured by the UI) Wee Joker bolstered its pile of Chips. Every time a Lucky card triggered, the Lucky Cat multiplied the multiplier all the more. And Oops! All 6s doubled that chance of happening. I ended up with a Lucky Cat with a x43 multiplier and a Wee Joker carrying over four thousand Chips by the time I lost.

Image: Source Gaming. Mario Kart World.

Actually, I am gonna go back to Mario Kart. We have a hard limit of no more than twelve photos per writer, and I waffled a lot on which to include. It’d have been nice to get something from Metroid Prime 4, especially if I don’t bother writing about it next year, but almost all of those pictures got deleted. That’s true of a lot of screenshots I’ve taken this year. There are so many great ones I never used and got rid of for time or space or the false assumption that I’d lose all my screenshots by adding my all new MicroSD card. In all the months, however, this one stayed. It was taken in late July and, like a few other Mario Kart and Donkey Kong pieces, never left the hard drive. I think I intended to use it for an article or a header in the Avocado’s Weekly Video Games Threads. That never happened, and we’re at the end of the year, so here it goes to sum up my ongoing photography journey.

Image: Source Gaming. The Walking Dead Episode 3: Long Road Ahead.

And finally, some dialogue. I’m not the biggest fan of capturing dialogue or cutscenes for these galleries as my obsession with Photo Modes has increased, but I do love adding in humor. And boy, were there options. There were two unfortunately timely bits of comedy in Resident Evil 3 (in which a character states that Americans “know better” than to buy a car without brakes) and Skyward Sword (in which Beetle lies about the price of goods going up). Hoo boy were those a lot to read in 2025. I could’ve also gone with almost anything in Hypnospace Outlaw, a game that is both incredibly important to me on an emotional level and about the opposite of conventionally photogenic. But for the sake of not bringing the mood down, here’s one of the brightest parts of The Walking Dead. It’s the little things that make that game as much as the big ones.

Image: Source Gaming. Claire: Extended Cut.

Cart Boy: When brainstorming potential topics for Halloween, I always rummage through my collection in search of something obscure, something spooky. One game in contention this year was Claire: Extended Cut, though I decided against reviewing it halfway through. Why? Well, navigating it is tedious, but what really dissuaded me was Claire’s glitches. Regardless of which difficulty you choose, it’ll probably bump you up to Nightmare Mode on a whim (mercifully, it isn’t that tough). And at the midway point, the door leading out of a save point frequently failed to function—instead of a quick transition back to the overworld, Claire simply… phased through the door and into an endless black void whose only comfort was the glow of my candle.

Image: Source Gaming. Outlast 2.

Following that, Outlast 2 was refreshing! Sure, it slavishly retains the formulaic, mediocre gameplay of its predecessors, the novelty of which had long since dissipated. But while I was fleeing future “Character Chronicle” subject Marta, the main threat during Chapter 1, I was just happy that Outlast 2 worked properly. Roughly four minutes later, I clipped through the elevator that was meant to take me to the next area. Somehow, the Temple Gate guardian failed to notice; she’s longingly looking at where I’m supposed to be here, not where I actually am… in other words, basically right next to her. Game development is grueling, and I feel bad being so harsh on these two indie games, but… man, next Halloween I’m gonna play something polished, something good.

Image: Source Gaming. Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing Transformed.

To end on a more positive note, Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing Transformed is pretty fun! Soaring across Dream Valley is always a treat as a NiGHTS buff, and a while back I spent a day or two taking screenshots for my article explaining why. Weirdness characterizes my contributions to this year’s gallery, and this odd results screen is easily the least offensive one; in case it isn’t clear, it’s supposed to show NiGHTS, not a pixilated A button. But, hey—I’d take an A button as a racer over Danica Patrick any day.

Image. Source Gaming. Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition.

Hamada: Since 2025 saw me at my all-time busiest, I rarely played games with enough leisure to take screenshots. Thankfully, I played Xenoblade Chronicles X before the workload boom, so I got to experience a setting as photogenic as Mira in all its glory! In areas like Noctilum and Sylvalum, you’re encouraged to take in the incredible OST, whip out that camera, and feast your eyes on the light shows Xenoblade worlds are famous for. I’m choosing to rep the latter region in this gallery, since it hosts my favorite weather pattern in the game: pink aurora borealis! For added oomph, we’re using the vibrant sky to complement the iconic Noctilucent Sphere landmark. I love how this tree looks even more breathtaking than its surroundings, but if you ever find a way in, you’re in for something truly abhorrent…

Image. Source Gaming. Kirby Air Riders.

Image. Source Gaming. Kirby Air Riders.

From one bad omen to another, Kirby Air Riders blew me away with City Trial! It’s fun, colorful, and inviting, but resembles Sylvalum in that it’s got its own hidden terror… When I beat Road Trip and unlocked the Gigantes Legendary Machine, I didn’t think much of it. Even worse, its parts never spawned in game, so I forgot about what was sure to be some sort of Hydra reskin. Imagine my shock when I saw YouTube raving about Air Riders’ playable raid boss: Gigantes, the city-sized, uncompromised final boss. Although unlocking the damn thing in Stadium was a worse grind than the Mario Kart World characters, finally completing that chore—as shown by my Rick’s desperate charge—was satisfying. To truly appreciate this machine, though, I had to assemble it online… When I did so, mowing through fifteen unassuming players was one of the funnest things I’ve ever done in a Sakurai game!

Image. Source Gaming. Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket.

And now, to follow up on last year’s humble submission, behold: my updated Pokémon TCG Pocket collection! Of the first year’s card lineup, here are the thirty I’ve spent many spare moments gathering. Admittedly, in-game binders’ way of only giving you three columns and ten rows makes this hard to show off, but hopefully you get the gist. So far, Pocket’s given special attention to the Kanto, Johto, Sinnoh, and Alola regions, so I did the same thing here. We’ve got two Trainers from each (plus Lillie’s and Lusamine’s alternates), along with rare versions of the most fitting Pokémon I could find. My methods included pulling, trading, and taking advantage of an oversight that’s since been patched out, adding up to this ever-changing roster that’s likely to keep shuffling stuff in and out. Overall, given this busy year of mine, it’s been a great pastime!

AShadowLink: I didn’t take a ton of screenshots this year, but I have to spotlight the RE2R Classic mod. I frankly feel obligated to. I love Resident Evil. My favorite game in the series is Resident Evil 6, but shortly following that is the original Resident Evil for the PlayStation. Not the one that replaced the music with farts, but the original. There’s something about the fixed camera angles of that iteration of Resident Evil that feel so thoroughly cinematic.

The game’s remake has garnered a reputation for being ahead of its time with stunning pre-rendered backdrops in 2002, but time has caught up to it. It feels very static, and the higher the resolution gets, the more you can see the seams. So this mod that adds fixed camera angles to its sequel’s remake, the 2019 Resident Evil 2, caught my eye. I finally took it for a run on a few playthroughs, and man, something about the camera angles just changes the way I process information in the game. I began to think of each camera angle as a “room,” rather than the actual physical rooms.