My picks for GOTY 2025

Picking games I'd love to see win The Game Awards (even if they won't)

Source: The Game Awards

It’s Game Awards week, everybody!

Don’t know about you, but this year, the evening of December 11 feels like Christmas to me. I can’t wait to hang out with some awesome gaming friends to watch some trailers, discuss the nominees, debate the winners (in good fun), diss Keighley’s shoes (maybe in not-so-good fun), and generally ride that little wave of gaming monoculture for a day or two.

The anticipation of fun is delicious.

With the barrage of TGA coverage coming this week, I’m not too sorry to say I’m about to add to it because I want to ride the hype train to participate in the conversation and pass the time until the big day.

This isn’t something I shared widely, but I contributed as a nominating and voting jury for The Game Awards this year, even if it was a drop in the bucket. The Canadian tech publication I occasionally write for, Mobile Syrup, is on the TGA jury list—one of the very few from Canada. Their gaming editor invited me to help them cast their votes, and I was honoured to do so. I also voted for my faves as a member of the public. (Just a quick reminder, you can still vote too, if you haven’t already!)

So, given that I’ve had a glimpse of the inner workings of nominating and voting, I’m a little biased and armed with perhaps just a drop of insider knowledge. I’m not going to try to predict who wins unless it’s obvious; rather, I’d like to tell you whom I’d love to see win based on my personal preference and very subjective personal opinion alone.

Here are my picks for some of the major categories of The Game Awards 2025. If a category is missing, it means I know nothing about its contenders and/or couldn't come up with a witty enough remark on it.

Let’s go!

Game of the year / Best game direction/ Best narrative/ Best art direction

Nominees:

• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

• Death Stranding 2: On the Beach

• Donkey Kong Bananza

• Hades II

• Hollow Knight: Silksong

• Kingdom Come: Deliverance II

• Ghost of Yōtei

• Split Fiction

• Silent Hill f

Yes, I sacrilegiously lumped all of them together, and yes, I’m not doing the song and dance of going from minor categories to major ones. Let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way first.

With a few Silent Hill f here and Ghost of Yōtei there, the nominee list is the same across the four heavyweights. Clair Obscur, Death Stranding, Hades II, Silksong. Donkey Kong, Split Fiction, Kingdom Come Deliverance II. Rinse and repeat. The lineup is a touch boring for its predictability, but there is no doubt that all of these games are capital G Good.

Who do I want to win? My feelings here are complicated.

I’m certain that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is going to absolutely mop the floor with every other contender on the list.

Do I want them to win? Yes.

Do I also want to see the world burn Hades II or KCD2 snatch a prize, any prize? Absolutely yes.

Is that likely? No.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is the game of the year 2025, whether you and I like it or not. The temptation to add “and it’s not even close” is great, but I actually do think it’s close, just not close enough for anyone to beat Clair Obscur. Games have been just this good this year.

The only exception where I’m not sure who I’d love to see on stage more is the narrative category. My pick is a toss-up between E33 and Kingdom Come: Deliverance II. I think the surprise and delight factor is on the E33’s side, but I also want to acknowledge how good a story KCD2 has delivered, pun intended. Still, I’m going with Clair Obscur in this one, too.

Best score and music

Nominees:

• Hollow Knight: Silksong

• Hades II

• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

• Ghost of Yōtei

• Death Stranding 2: On the Beach

I loved the score in Silksong, and I adore the work of Darren Korb in Hades II (and the original Hades as well, of course). Oya has a wonderful article on Hades with an in-depth section about the soundtrack of both games—well worth a read!

Still, this is the one category where I can confidently proclaim “it’s not even close.” Lorien Testard for Clair Obscur is an absolute winner—I can’t wait to see a musical performance of any of his bangers from the soundtrack at the Game Awards.

Best audio design

Nominees:

• Battlefield 6

• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

• Death Stranding 2: On the Beach

• Ghost of Yōtei

• Silent Hill f

South of Midnight was robbed of the best audio design nomination, robbed, I say!

In their absence, my vote goes to Battlefield 6 as the Canadian representation on the list. Plus, people who know more than I tell me that fighting games are usually the ones that take this category. Godspeed, Battlefield Studios.

Best performance

Nominees:

• Ben Starr as Verso, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

• Charlie Cox as Gustave, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

• Jennifer English as Maelle, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

• Erika Ishii as Atsu, Ghost of Yōtei

• Konatsu Kato as Hinako, Silent Hill f

• Troy Baker as Indiana Jones, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

Yes, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is eligible for this year’s game awards, because it missed the cutoff for last year’s! Yes, it’s kinda stupid, because who remembers Indiana Jones and the Great Circle by now? Not with Clair Obscur hulk-smashing through every possible chart. My pick here is Ben Starr as my boy Verso, even though I’m positive the lovely and deserving Jennifer English is going to take this one, too.

Innovation in accessibility

• Assassin’s Creed: Shadows

• Atomfall

• Doom: The Dark Ages

• EA Sports FC 26

• South of Midnight

Love, love, love this category, even though I’m no expert in accessibility. This is something that I pay attention to with every game I play, whether I use the settings or not; it’s important to me to know that studios and developers take the needs and different abilities of their player base seriously.

I’d love for South of Midnight to win this one because they put a lot of thought into difficulty settings and ways to mitigate the challenges of gameplay in different ways. They also thought a lot about the impact of the stop-motion animation style and the accessibility issues that go along with it. (Shameless self-promotion: I’m working on an article that details exactly that part of South of Midnight’s development.)

Steve Saylor aka The Blind Gamer has an awesome GOTY accessibility explainer where he discusses each nominee on the list and why they made the cut. I highly recommend it:

Games for impact

Nominees:

• Consume Me

• Despelote

• Lost Records: Bloom & Rage

• South of Midnight

• Wanderstop

I loved Wanderstop when I played it, not only for its accurate portrayal of burnout and the subversive ways it treats the cozy genre, but also for the fact that the studio that made it is Canadian. In fact, three out of five contenders for this category are 🇨🇦 *waves flag*

---

This week: Wanderstop

---

It sucks that merely making a game about Black folks and almost exclusively Black characters is automatically a label “for impact”, the same way featuring teens with a range of bodies and sexualities is. (I haven’t finished Bloom & Rage yet, though, so maybe there is something else there that would qualify it.) Still, representation matters a great deal, and I’m having a hard time deciding who I want to take home the award. I’m yet to check out Consume Me and Despelote, so my vote goes to Wanderstop, after all.

Best independent game / Best debut indie game

Nominees:

• Absolum

• Ball x Pit

• Hades II

• Hollow Knight: Silksong

• Blue Prince (also nominated for Best Debut)

• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (also nominated for Best Debut)

• Despelote (nominated for Best Debut only)

• Dispatch (nominated for Best Debut only)

The best indie category is my new GOTY, look, it even has half of the GOTY nominees in it! What a crossover, hmm?

My pick is Blue Prince for both, and it’s not even close. Not, even, close!

---

Catching up on the best games of 2025: Blue Prince

---

For these two categories, I would actually be mad if Clair Obscur won. Not because it’s not indie (it is), but because I love Blue Prince so much and want it to have its time in the spotlight. More players should come visit Mt. Holly and stay a while. A good long while.

Best action/adventure

Nominees:

• Death Stranding 2: On the Beach

• Ghost of Yōtei

• Hollow Knight: Silksong

• Indiana Jones and The Great Circle

• Split Fiction

I skipped the best action category because the only game on the list I even know of is Hades II. Not so for action/adventure! Oh look, it’s Indiana Jones and the Great Circle again! Who remembers this one?

Listen up, devs. If you want to be considered for awards, don’t release your game from November onwards. Unless you’re Rockstar, of course, then you can do whatever. With the announced release date of November 19, 2026, GTA 6 is going to miss the cutoff of The Game Awards 2026, but it’s still going to win it, probably. Somehow. Unless it doesn’t come out at all. Who’s to say!

I’m going with Split Fiction in this one.

Best RPG

Nominees:

• Avowed

• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

• Kingdom Come: Deliverance II

• Monster Hunter Wilds

• The Outer Worlds 2

I admit: looking at this category, I don’t even understand what “RPG” is supposed to mean here. Are we roleplaying, as in creating our character and molding them to our liking with different in-game choices? Or are we just pretending to be someone else, a well-written and defined character with a few dialogue options? Because that’s the most games on the list, unlike the former. And also that’s like, any video game, man. (Looks like an exploration of the genre is in order.)

---

What is a "cozy" game?

What is a Soulslike game?

---

Avowed fits the spirit of the category best, in my opinion, and I have warmed up to it since writing out my first impressions. Even so, I’m going with Kingdom Come Deliverance II—Henry of Skalitz does contain multitudes.

Best family game

Nominees:

• Donkey Kong Bananza

• Lego Party!

• Lego Voyagers

• Mario Kart World

• Sonic Racing: Crossworlds

• Split Fiction

That’s a lot of LEGO and a lot of games that look to be a lot of fun to play as a family. As a proud non-owner of the Switch 2, I have no way of knowing how good Donkey Kong Bananza is, but I have it on good authority that it’s very, very good. It will probably win, but I’ll vote for Split Fiction, because it’s adventure-packed, super-pretty, very family-friendly, and I’ve actually played it. Uh-huh.

Best sim/strategy

Nominees:

• Final Fantasy Tactics — The Ivalice Chronicles

• Jurassic World Evolution 3

• Sid Meier’s Civilization VII

• Tempest Rising

• The Alters

• Two-Point Museum

For a self-proclaimed life sim game lover, I sure did play none of these games on the list! Two Point Museum is going to be my vote as it comes highly recommended as the chillest of the bunch that’s more sim, less strategy. I did dabble in strategic empire-building in small ways this year, but it’s still not the genre I go for often. I would probably enjoy The Alters, too, but… you know.

---

The Alters, Clair Obscur, and the curious case of AI nonchalance

---

Best multiplayer

Nominees:

• Arc Raiders

• Battlefield 6

• Elden Ring Nightreign

• Peak

• Split Fiction

I’m a single-player gamer through and through, so the only game I’m familiar with on the list is Split Fiction. Good enough! Let them win, and if not them, then the Canadians on the list with Battlefield 6. Is anyone out there still playing Elden Ring Nightreign? It sure didn’t stay top of mind very long… The videos on YouTube were entertaining, though.

Most anticipated game

Nominees:

• 007 First Light

• Grand Theft Auto VI

• Marvel’s Wolverine

• Resident Evil Requiem

• The Witcher IV

I think it is extremely silly that The Witcher IV is on the list—my future GOTY of all time, to be sure, but still—a game that’s years away with no information about it in sight, while the hyped Rise of the Dawnwalker isn’t.

Of course, it’s GTA6 that everyone’s waiting for, so any other nominee is irrelevant. They could have omitted GTA6, and it would still win.

In other words, go Witcher 4!

*waves flag*

---