There have been video games with great uses of data visualization before, but before this year, I don't think I'd ever played a game that was Really About The Charts. And this year I played two! And both were kind of awesome in very different ways.
Mostly by default, Mario von Rickenbach has made the definitive piece of art about working in business intelligence. Pocket Boss is a mobile game. You play as a data worker, remotely communicating with your boss through chat DMs. Each level is a chart your boss needs you to clean up.
Gameplay wise, it has a bit in common with some kids apps I love like Windowsill and Sago Mini. To make the bars on the chart "go up" or whatever your current objective is, you tap or drag or swipe. It's tactilely satisfying with just a splash of puzzling.
But the reason to the play the game is for the writing, which I found very funny and shockingly relatable. Although all my managers have been wonderful and open-minded people, in my career in business intelligence, it's hard to totally escape the feeling that the numbers don't matter, we're just making pretty pictures to justify whatever decision management was going to make anyways. Pocket Boss deals with these existential questions of the data worker with with
There were even more new entrants into the little daily word game racket in 2025. Bloomberg launched their Games section in September that included Alphadots, created by crossword constructor Jeff Chen. You are presented with a crossword-style question mark clue. And the letters are displayed in a line chart, ordered alphabetically along the Y-axis. Hints let you add horizontal baselines.
It has doesn't have anything to do its chart based nature, but what really keeps me coming back are the consistently solid "?" clues. A light, satisfying bit of wordplay every day with a novel solving mechanic. I can't remember another word game I've played where alphabetical order played any role. It adds a unique texture to which puzzles are easy or heard: As are always easy to identify, repeating letters are also crucial information, and most of the your time is spent wondering if those dots in the middle are Ls, Ms, or Ns
And it's really a chart game! Unlike Pocket Boss, Alphadots actually actually asks you to interpret some data. You start with a chart. It might take a little time to decode, but the chart has all the information you need solve the puzzle. It's a good time.