Rogue's 2025 GOTY awards recap

We spaced our Game of the Year (The Rougies) out over the last two weeks of the year so that we could still put some stuff on the site while all of us took some time away after a really long and tough year. So hey, thanks for indulging us on that and for engaging with our community surveys!

But we also realize that the holidays can be busy for everyone. Or, if you're better than other people, a time where you try to unplug a little bit. The many awards articles also kinda cluttered up the website a bit.

So we're killing two birds with one stone here and giving you a quick and easy recap for our winners and their essays (as well as links to all of our community award winners and nominee articles), and we're going to clean up the site a little bit while we're at it.

You can also see how our GOTY awards work here. We also had an "It's On My List I Swear" award for games we wanted to play but didn't, and you can find those winners here.

The Rogueiolis (silly categories)

The Rogueiolis are our personal awards and our sillier categories. We didn't want everything to just be "MOST GAME OF 2025" so we tried to spice things up a little with these and award some games that didn't make it into our top 10 but still have a place in the GOTY discussion.

Alice's Game of the Year — Tempest Rising

Click me to see the original Alice's Choice article.

Given the current state of EA and the Command & Conquer license in general, it's unclear whether we’ll ever see another mainline entry in this franchise. But this year, we got the next best thing with Tempest Rising. A fast-paced, micro-heavy RTS with an awesome soundtrack featuring tracks by the legendary Frank Klepacki of C&C fame.  

While I’ll continue to hold my breath for a remastered version of Tiberian Sun or Red Alert 2, Tempest Rising fills the need for a modern, original RTS quite nicely. 

In addition to a healthy multiplayer scene that’s been receiving regular attention from the developers, Tempest Rising includes a pair of substantial single-player campaigns that echo some of the best RTS titles ever made.

-Alice Jovanée

Runners-up:

• System Shock 2: 25th anniversary edition
• Commandos: Origins
• Two Point Museum
• News Tower
• Wheel World
• Cataclismo
• Warhammer 40K Dawn of War: Definitive Edition

Cass’ Game of the Year — Look Outside

Click me to see the original Cass' Choice article.

Look Outside puts the player in an apartment building seemingly under siege by some potent cosmic force. To look outside, even through a reflection or photograph, is to become hideously mutated and perhaps lose all humanity. The protagonist is Sam, an unemployed hermit with a few friends in the building, must survive for fifteen days.

If you’re familiar with classic JRPGs, then you’ll be able to pick up Look Outside right away. Sam scavenges the building when he can, collecting party members and defeating the building's denizens who have turned hostile after witnessing the Visitor outside. After finding supplies, survivors, and earning some experience, Sam heads back to his home base. The apartment slowly becomes filled with friends, and it provides Sam a place to rest. He can also play video games, cook, and prepare his arsenal for the next trip out. 

The building itself is warping under the influence of the Visitor, creating spaces that should be too big for the structure and binding hapless witnesses to massive pieces of machinery. Look Outside offers some phenomenal boss fights, often building up suspense by having the creature advance upon the player over the course of the fight. There are many ways for the story to end, and even more ways for Sam to die — or fall into some hideous fate worse than death. 

Despite the onslaught of horror, Look Outside is a fundamentally empathetic and optimistic game. It is beautiful, it is horrible, and it is awe-inspiring all at once. It was made by a small team over the course of months, and yet this game hit me harder than competitors with ten times the budget and manpower. Look Outside is a perfect example of making art for sickos instead of chasing crowds, and I’m glad the game was rewarded with a successful launch and critical acclaim.

-Cass Marshall

Runners-up:

• Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2
• Jump Space
• Expelled!
• Consume Me!

Ryan's Game of the Year — Death Stranding 2: On the Beach

Click me to see the original Ryan's Choice article.

I have no problem admitting that I was emotionally manipulated by Hideo Kojima in 2025. And if Death Stranding is what we get from that, he's free to emotionally manipulate me every day.

I was a fan of the original Death Stranding, even before all the great Director's Cut edition stuff. But Death Stranding 2 just elevates the series to another level. The performances are just so damn good, and the delivery-based gameplay is even better than the original. I have OCD, so getting to build out this incredible world that allows me to become a super-efficient delivery boy in the apocalypse? Thank you, Mr. Kojima, may I have another?

But what Death Stranding does well across the board for all, it does even better for parents, in my experience. It's a game about the deep fear and anxiety of losing a child, and what happens to someone when that anxiety becomes real.

My daughter is a little older than Lou at the start of the game, but she does have that light blonde hair. And I'm not sure I've ever been hit harder by a game. It pulled me into the world and had me willingly empathizing with Norman Reedus, which is an incredible feat on its own. I'm not "this media is making me upset, I have to stop," but I almost turned it off during a particularly traumatic cutscene in the first two hours.

It's rare that games truck in grief so effectively – although it is funny that this and Expedition 33 came out in the same year, as it also nails its melancholy grief narrative – and Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is therapeutic in its approach. It's beautiful for parents, but that's only a piece of what makes the game so great. It just happens to be the perfect time for it to hit me this hard. I'm not sure I've been as emotionally invested in a game since Mass Effect 3, which came out a few months before I graduated high school, as I was preparing to say goodbye to all of my friends.

And that's why Death Stranding 2 is my personal Game of the Year.

-Ryan Gilliam

Runners-up:

• #2: The Bazaar
• #3: 9 Kings
• #4: Donkey Kong Bananza
• #5: Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
• #6: Hades 2
• #7: Blue Prince
• #8: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
• #9: Hollow Knight Silksong
• #10: Dispatch

Jeff's Game of the Year — Blue Prince

Click me to see the original Jeff's Choice article.

I was about 14 when I played Myst for the first time thirty (goddamn) years ago. I played alone in the stiflingly hot computer room, scribbling my notes — by hand, with a pencil — into the back of the instruction book. 

You see, children, we used to have to dedicate a whole room to the computer and you couldn’t talk on the phone at the same time that you used the internet and we didn’t have phones in our pockets and I had to walk to school uphill both ways. In the snow.

My experience with Myst was solitary by necessity. I am only mostly sure the computer I played it on even had a modem — and if it did, it was a 14.4kb/s dialup modem. There was no community online where I could find help. Google was barely a thing yet. I’m sure guides existed, but I don’t think I even thought to look them up.

And that made Myst all the more powerful. I was uncovering all of these secrets and stories and puzzles all by myself and solving these mysteries with just my brain. It made it deeply personal. It made it joyous. It made it empowering. It made it formative. Myst remains one of my favorite games of all time.

A few years later, I got Riven for Christmas. The next day, my friend came over and we played the entire game start to finish in one sitting, trading off the mouse as we went. This time, we were both taking notes, comparing our answers, and playing together.

I’ve been chasing that high ever since.

Hell, I’ve made a career out of talking about games and writing the very guides I didn’t have all those years ago. It’s the same experience of sitting down at the same computer, sharing the same mouse, just with a bigger audience.

Blue Prince is the first game that has made me feel the same way Myst and Riven did all those years ago. It’s the game I’ve most wanted to share with everyone I talk to. It’s the game I bought for my niece so she could experience it.

Blue Prince is just so lovingly and carefully crafted. The clues are all there, scattered throughout the estate, once you learn where to find them. It’s challenging, but it’s never impossible — which is an impressive feat for a game built around both puzzles and random roguelike mechanics. It makes solving each puzzle satisfying in that same personal, I-did-this way.

There’s a moment in the first Portal game (another of my all-time favorites) where you duck behind a panel for the first time — literally stepping behind the curtain — and see a bigger picture than just the puzzles. It’s a mildly mind-blowing meta reveal. Blue Prince has that too — it took me days to realize, when you start a run, you can just turn around and go back outside (I never claimed to be a smart man). And outside, you find even more of the world with more of its almost-hidden story.

Like Myst and Portal, that deeper story, the story just outside of the puzzles, is the real game. And Blue Prince’s story is one of antiauthoritarianism, parental love, and wanting to leave the world a better place than you found it.

It’s a good message and a great game.

-Jeffrey Parkin

Runners-up:

• Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping
• Plan B: Terraform
• Static Dread: The Lighthouse
• Look Outside
• 9 Kings
• Death Stranding 2: On the Beach
• Carimara
• It Takes a War
• Baby Steps
• Puzzle Parasite

Most Frustrating Game — Hollow Knight: Silksong

Click me to see the original Most Frustrating Game article.

Hollow Knight: Silksong is a bastard game made by bastard people, and I will hold firm to that belief forever, no matter how much I grow to enjoy the game. 

I wrote in my review for Silksong that what helped the game finally click for me is this realization that it wasn’t made for me. The folks at Team Cherry built something they wanted to make and that shines through. But they wanted to make it mean and hateful, and tricky. It is intentionally designed to frustrate you and they know that. 

But that gets into the idea of this award of ours in the first place? Is it chastising a game for being shitty? I’d like to think not. Instead, I see this as a celebration of friction. Without friction, you have a boring experience that’s barely even memorable by the time you get to the end. But you feel something with Silksong – at least I did. And that thing might be white, hot rage. But it’s also passion.

There were games I played this year that made me a lot less angry than Silksong, but that anger fueled me to the end, and I’m so glad it did.

— RG

Runners-up:

• Cronos: The New Dawn
• Elden Ring: Nightreign
• Metroid Prime 4: Beyond
• Nintendo Switch 2: Welcome Tour

Best New Character — Lodi from Destiny 2: The Edge of Fate

Click me to see the original Best New Character article.

In a list of incredibly strong new characters, it’s pretty wild that our winner is the new guy from Destiny 2, of all things. But that’s part of what makes Lodi so good, and why he wins our award. Lodi came into Destiny 2 nearly eight years after it came out, and 11 years into the franchise. He came out in the worst expansion the game has, arguably, ever had. 

But despite all of the gameplay problems with The Edge of Fate, the story is the one thing players almost universally praised. That’s Lodi.

Lodi’s deal is that he’s basically a 50s G-man pulled out of his time and into the far, far future of Destiny. Everyone he’s ever known is gone, and he is never going back. He’s a linguist who has been chosen to channel 9(ish) gods and become their new emissary. And he’s fascinated, and depressed, and confused, and grieving, and excited. And he’s kind.

I have loved Destiny for over a decade, and I will straight up tell you that its story has not always been worth following. But in recent years, it’s become one of the highlights of every expansion. The Edge of Fate stands out not only because of how many things it broke, but because of how it sets up an exciting new story. And if the writing team didn’t absolutely crush it with Lodi. If his voice actor, Brian Villalobos, didn’t nail the assignment, the community would only know Edge of Fate as an expansion that ruined a lot of their favorite things about Destiny.

But through the power of a good story, talented performers, and brilliant writers, Bungie saved at least part of the expansion’s legacy. That’s not all on Lodi, but those who brought him to life carried the hardest.

It’s hard enough, I imagine, to introduce new ideas and characters into a franchise as old as Destiny. But I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one this good come this late in a franchise’s lifecycle. And that’s why he, and people who birthed him at Bungie, deserve our Best New Character of 2025.

— RG

Runners-up:

• Nate from Baby Steps
• Robbie (and Invisibitch and Chase) from Dispatch
• Sibyl from Look Outside
• The Hive from Warhammer 40K: Darktide

Guilty Pleasure winner — PowerWash Simulator 2

Click me to see the original Guilty Pleasure article.

There’s an emerging (sub)genre of games that can be best described as something like “chore sims” or “dad sims.” They’re pretty brain-off games that just let you fall into the satisfaction of mindless tedium. No game exemplifies this better than PowerWash Simulator 2.

One of the first times I played PowerWash Simulator 2, my partner walked in. She watched for a minute and then announced, “You know the siding on our actual house that we live in needs to be actually powerwashed, right?” If that’s not the definition of a guilty pleasure game, I don’t know what is.

— JP

Runners-up:

• Clover Pit
• Farmer was Replaced
• Megabonk
• Troleu

Not Technically Eligible But — Warhammer 40K: Darktide

Click me to see the original Not Technically Eligible, But article.

Darktide was a great game at launch, but it was also one where Fatshark seemed afraid of its core fanbase’s reception. I let the game fall to the wayside as Fatshark tweaked talent trees, adjusted the classes, and introduced a crafting system. I would return here and there, but it wasn’t until the release of the Arbites class in June that I got back into the game in earnest. Darktide always had incredible core gameplay – it has some of the best and most visceral melee in the genre, along with guns that feel absolutely fantastic to fire – but its grown into a tightly tuned co-op shooter I can’t put down.

Granted, there are technical issues, and I’ve logged out after a few too many crashes here and there. But when Darktide works, it’s transcendent. The roar of bolter fire, the banter between comrades, the pounding synth soundtrack by Jesper Kyd … it’s enough to lure me into a trance. My lizard brain fully engages, and all I care about is smashing heretic skulls and downing corpse starch ... and I’m all out of corpse starch. The Hive Scum class, launched on Dec. 2, only makes the chaos even sweeter by adding a new set of big personalities to the mix.

— CM

Runners-up:

• Against the Storm
• Helldivers 2
• Metroid Prime: Remastered and Donkey Kong 64

Biggest Surprise — Absolum

Click me to see the original Biggest Surprise article.

I first encountered Absolum over the summer, when Jeff and I were looking for cool Steam NextFest demos to highlight for readers of BigFriendly.Guide, our mostly-guides blog that preceded Rogue. I downloaded it because the art looked gorgeous. But I didn’t expect much out of it, because beat-em-ups were always coin-devouring novelty games to me, not something I’d want to repeat over and over again.

But Absolum has depth. And Absolum has legs. And, against all odds, Absolum is fun to play every time you load it up. So few games with art like Absolum’s are able to live up to the beauty once the gameplay begins, but the game looks just as good in motion as it does standing still. And the mechanics inside the game – the way you grow and improve your account, and the way the devs continue to throw challenges at you even after the credits have rolled – ensure that you have good reason to stare at that art for a long, long time.

— RG

Runners-up:

• Blue Prince
• Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping
• Silent Hill f
• Skin Deep

The Pierogis (serious categories)

The Pierogis were our serious categories. We announced their nominees in separate articles that housed essays for each over the course of the weeks, and then announced the winners in a part 1 and part 2 batch on Dec. 24 and Jan. 2 respectively.

Each of these also had an audience choice award, which was voted on by our community via social media and a survey embedded in the nominee articles.

Best Cozy Game — Strange Antiquities

Click me to see the original Best Cozy Game article.

You’re already spoiled for choice in the cozy game category, with a nearly endless catalog of games attempting to replicate the success of Stardew Valley and other homesteading simulators. Which is why it's so refreshing when a game that does something different can elicit those same vibes. Strange Antiquities with its musty tomes, warm environments, and chill (if occasionally eerie) music, is what made it our Best Cozy Game of 2025. Because for me, there’s nothing cozier than solving mysteries as the owner of an occult bookstore filled with reliquaries and other haunted items.   

— AJ

Runners-up:

• Is This Seat Taken?
• Plan B: Terraform
• Tiny Bookshop
• Wanderstop

Audience choice:

• Strange Antiquities

Best Horror Game — Séance of Blake Manor

Click me to see the original Best Horror Game article.

There are tons of great horror games out there riddled with jumpscares and body horror so grotesque you feel like you could contract tetanus just by playing them. But Séance of Blake Manor succeeds in scaring the pants off of you by leaning into the less common elements of horror. The manor itself and its guests deliver an experience so atmospheric that I had second thoughts about playing this in the dark. We award Séance of Blake Manor a single turnip-flavored Pierogi for our favorite horror title of 2025.

— AJ

Runners-up:

• Cronos: The New Dawn
• Look Outside
• Silent Hill f
• Static Dread: The Lighthouse

Audience choice:

• Séance of Blake Manor

Best Co-op Game — Peak

Click me to see the original Best Co-Op Game article.

Peak will shatter you in a variety of hilariously horrible ways. Me and my friends have enjoyed a variety of doomed ventures: missing a jump and falling into an icy ravine, getting swept up in a tornado and caught in cacti, chased by spore-ridden zombies, spooked by a skeletal scout master, poisoned by tasty looking mushrooms, and left to perish from hunger in a cave.

There are some very clever choices that help Peak really sing as a co-op game. Proximity based audio chat makes climbing both harder and far funnier; there’s nothing quite like hearing a lost comrade scream in the distance, or better yet, yell as they plummet past you. Death is a pretty low-stakes consequence; a perished player can stick around as a ghost, acting as a spectral walkie-talkie between separated scouts, and the dead can be resurrected at each biome checkpoint.

But there are also moments of triumph – managing to reach out and pull a friend up a cliff they couldn’t climb on their own, making it all the way to the Peak with a group of pals and celebrating on the helicopter, having one player take control and shepherd the crowd through a moment where all seems lost… That’s the good stuff, and Peak delivers it in spades.

— CM

Runners-up:

• Absolum
• FBC: Firebreak
• Fellowship
• Jump Space

Audience choice:

• Peak

Best Strategy Game — 9 Kings

Click me to see the original Best Strategy Game article.

9 Kings takes our award for best strategy in large part because of its recently added quest mode. This game mode gives you the standard buildings and troops, but in a ludicrous scenario. And the best part about that is that it offers not only a chance to become super OP in a really fun way, but it also teaches you a ton about the game and how truly deep it can go.

I first played 9 Kings almost 6 months before this update came out, and regularly came back to the game for new updates every few weeks. But I had kings that I gravitated toward, and buildings and troops that I always passed up because I thought they were awful. But the quest mode alone taught me the value of so many new strategies that it felt like it unleashed an entire new side to the game.

Quest modes aren’t enough to just make something the best strategy game of the year. But with 9 Kings, it acted more like a gateway to anything else. I already thought the game was deep and expansive and impressive, but seeing how much I had been missing secured that no game has had me more delighted by my own big brain thinking and creativity this year than 9 Kings.

— RG

Runners-up:

• The Bazaar
• Cataclismo
• Star Birds
• Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War Definitive Edition

Audience choice:

• 9 Kings

Best Action Game — Hades 2

Click me to see the original Best Action Game article.

We all showed restraint in 2024 by not showering Hades 2 with awards when it was still in Early Access. But now that Supergiant has graced us with the 1.0 version of its second Olympian roguelike, we can finally give Hades 2 its well-deserved accolades. Collectively, we’ve agreed that Hades 2 delivers a well-rounded, accessible, and honestly intoxicating experience that manages to build on the success of the original in interesting and unexpected ways, earning itself a single, delicious, golden Pierogi for the Best Action Game of 2025.   

— AJ

Runners-up:

• Absolum
• Donkey Kong Bananza
• Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
• Megabonk

Audience choice:

• Hades 2

Best Story — Look Outside

Click me to see the original Best Story article.

Look Outside is a very strange game. There’s a cosmic horror hanging outside your window, and to even glance at it is to surrender your flesh and sanity. The apartment building you live in has warped, growing larger than its physical limitations would otherwise allow. Strange visitors appear at your door every night, haggling for supplies and offering precious video games. There’s an evil, soul consuming hat you gotta watch out for.

And yet, all of this comes together into an incredibly compelling narrative. This is a game with many different endings, especially if you consider all of the terrible fates protagonist Sam can meet. Some of these endings are a fate worse than death, and some are these strangely optimistic and beautiful looks at how humanity might come together after an apocalypse. There are mysteries explained in just enough detail to leave the player satisfied, but with enough left up to the imagination to keep the setting strange and mysterious. Look Outside made me laugh and cry, and it owes that weight to its excellent story.

— CM

Runners-up:

• Death Stranding 2: On the Beach
• Dispatch
• Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
• The Séance of Blake Manor

Audience choice:

• Dispatch

Best Indie Game — Blue Prince

Click me to see the original Best Indie Game article.

Blue Prince is the epitome of an indie game. It kind of had to be an indie title. The unexpected blend of point-n-click puzzler with a roguelike just isn’t worth the risk for a big studio. The painstakingly crafted world is so much more of a personal passion project than could be pulled off by a big group of developers.

And Blue Prince is just so, so good. Every part of it works so perfectly to create such a perfect whole — it was my personal game of the year and nothing else even came close.

— JP

Runners-up:

• 9 Kings
• Absolum
• Keep Driving
• Skate Story

Audience choice:

• Skate Story

Best AAA Game — Death Stranding 2: On the Beach

Click me to see the original Best AAA Game article.

It’s really hard for this category not to come across like “most money,” and I really want to avoid doing that, because it does Kojima and his team a disservice here.

But Jesus, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach sure looks like it cost a boatload of money. There are the A-list actors from the last game back for more, George Miller’s facial capture is all over this damn thing, they got one of the rising (I know she’s been around for a long time, but she had a great year) stars of her generation in Elle Fanning, Chvrches runs a goddamn zoo. It’s crazy, man.

In 2025, AAA almost feels like something that makes people want to pull away for something in favor of indie or even AA games. But it’s important to remember what that AAA budget offers a game when used well: scope. Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is better than its predecessor in every single way, and I love that original game. What Kojima Productions have managed to do with Sony’s money is nothing short of astounding here, turning what could be one of the most niche and strange video games ever made into a palatable title for the masses, all without losing what made Death Stranding Death Stranding? Come on, man.

Kojima has always impressed, and I’m not going to make any kind of grand claim that DS2 is his most impressive yet. But it’s a reminder of why I’m so glad he went the route he did with Sony and big publishers rather than scale down to a scrappier squad. Kojima is a man made to build epics, and Death Stranding 2 is the perfect case for that particular point.

— RG

Runners-up:

• Donkey Kong Bananza
• Ghost of Yotei
• Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
• Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2

Audience choice:

• Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

Most Innovative Game — Consume Me

Click me to see the original Most Innovative Game article.

Consume Me! Is familiar at first glance; it builds off the success of personal narrative games like Florence and Unpacking. What makes it innovative is the way that it adds RPG systems, mini-games, and little challenges to the game in order to simulate the day-to-day drama of a teenager’s life. Whether I’m playing a little game of Tetris with veggies and protein, scrubbing down the bathroom for some extra spending money, or planning a week of dates with a cute boy, I’m locked in. 

I’ve never played a game quite like Consume Me!, and while part of that is undoubtedly due to the deeply personal and autobiographical nature of the game, part of it is due to the harmony of minigames, RPG leveling systems, visual novel storytelling, and the unique cadence of following Jenny’s calendar.

There’s no game like Consume Me!, but I hope it serves as an inspiration for the next generations of developers. Its storytelling is fearless, funny, and deeply affecting. I’m glad to see an experiment turn out so well, and hopefully there are more games like this in our future.

— CM

Runners-up:

• The Alters
• BALL x PIT
• The Bazaar
• Pokemon Legends: Z-A

Audience choice:

• Consume Me

Game of the Year winner — Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

Click me to see the original Game of the Year article.

Let me clue you in to an industry secret: the memory of the gaming press is very, very short.

In order to do this gig, you have to play a lot of different games. This is a blessing 95% of the time, don’t get me wrong (and we thank you all for your support), but it does mean that things you really want to spend more time with tend to pass you by. And games that came out even last year don’t stick in the memory the way they did before you started working in the industry.

With that in mind, you must understand how incredible it is that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is our Game of the Year for 2025.

I have been voting for my GOTY at a major site every November for nearly a decade. And at the end of every year, people go “everyone remember that X game came out in December so it’s eligible for next year’s awards. Make sure to write that down to vote if you liked it next year,” and nobody ever remembers. But MachineGames did such perfect work with Indiana Jones and the Great Circle that at least three of us at Rogue remembered to bring up that it should be eligible for our awards this year.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle benefits from a bunch of different things, all of which have helped make the movie franchise a massive success. First, it’s filled with great performances from people that know just the right line to walk between serious historical fiction and whimsical action. Second, it has some astounding set pieces that allow the globe trotting adventure to really shine. And third, punching Nazis will never go out of fashion (no matter what Twitter tries to tell me).

I always had faith that this game would be great, because I can’t imagine anyone better than those who revived Wolfenstein to build an Indiana Jones game. But the way they perfectly nailed the dungeons and the puzzles, the way Indy talks to himself like Harrison Ford does while also offering hints to the player. Even the combat, which mostly relies on fisticuffs over firearms. It’s all stellar.

I wouldn’t tell you off the top of my head that Indiana Jones is one of the more important film franchises to my childhood, but when I play this game, it reminds me of all the times I watched the movies with my dad. I grew up religious, and my dad used to work with the church to teach classes to people looking into getting baptized. He always tried to make stuff like that fun, so when my parents would do marriage mentoring to people, they’d show scenes from The Princess Bride, stuff like that. For baptism class, my dad would bring in our Last Crusade VHS to show Indy conquering the faith-based challenges in the temple of the grail. And I remember sitting in that room, after church, waiting to leave and watching that part of the movie over and over again. It’s burned into my brain, and I loved sharing it with my dad. 

But I think about moments from The Great Circle the same way, like the confrontation with the giant snake, navigating the submarine lost in the mountains, or the fountain puzzle hidden inside Vatican City. And it makes me want to share those moments with my dad the way we shared the movies together when I was young.

Everyone recognizes that power in movies, but games don’t often click that same way with the older generations. Thankfully my dad is more open to games (he loved God of War’s 2018 reboot, and my wife regularly quote the text he sent me when he finished it: my son is Loki?), but to be able to share with him a game like this from a franchise that we’ve loved together for decades? And for me to be able to share it with him knowing it’s an amazing video game and one of the best Indy stories ever made? That’s a true gift. And it’s just one of many reasons why 2024’s Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is Rogue’s 2025 Game of the Year.

— RG

Runners-up:

• #2: Hades 2
• #3: Blue Prince
• #4: Death Stranding 2: On the Beach
• #5: Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2
• #6: Dispatch
• #7: Look Outside
• #8: Absolum
• #9: 9 Kings
• #10: Donkey Kong Bananza

Audience choice:

• Blue Prince

GOTY podcast extravaganzas

As part of our GOTY deliberations this year, we recorded two podcasts (a pt. 1 and a pt. 2) going over our vision for each category, why we selected the nominees, and the reason the game that won ... won!

You can listen to the audio version or watch the video versions of each below! You can also find the audio versions on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and other podcast services.

GOTY extravaganza pt. 1

GOTY extravaganza pt. 2