The Rogueies: 2025 Game of the Year nominees

We can't do an award season without awarding a best of the best for the year. Our nominees range from big AAA games to tiny indies, but they're all great games.

9 Kings

9 Kings is the kind of strategy game that just gets deeper and more fun to engage with the longer you play. Every time I feel like I’ve figured this game out, I learn a new piece of tech to expand my mind even further than before. I’m never satisfied to just do the same thing over and over again in 9 Kings because there is so much more that I could be doing.

The expansive nature of 9 Kings is what makes it an amazing strategy game, but how successful Sad Socket and Hooded Horse have kept it relevant with new updates and exciting expansions is why it’s one of the top 10 games of 2025.

— RG

Absolum

I struggle to remember a game I enjoyed looking at recently more than Absolum. And if we had a best art category, it would almost surely win. But Absolum deserves far more accolades than just best art, because it’s also an exceptional roguelite in a year filled with amazing roguelite games. 

Absolum manages to tick so many boxes between its innovations in bringing a beat-em-up into the roguelite genre, its beauty, the creativity and inspiration of its world, that it’s hard not to imagine it ending up as one of our best games of 2025.

— RG

Blue Prince

Blue Prince was nominated for our Best Indie Game award and it won my Jeff's Choice award, so I'm not going to pitch it all over again here. Blue Prince is just such a perfect little puzzler, lovingly and adeptly designed, and such an incredible experience to play, that it ending up on our GOTY list was a given.

Taking the, frankly, tired genre of puzzler and mixing it with a clever roguelike twist created such a creative and beautiful game that it just has to be recognized.

— JP

Death Stranding 2: On the Beach

Death Stranding 2: On the Beach embodies everything that a video game can be as an art form. With an auteur director, a stellar cast, a bonkers story, a tightly designed gameplay loop, and an astronomical budget, On the Beach becomes more than just a game — it elevates the medium as a whole.

— JP

Dispatch

Dispatch is a game I didn’t think I wanted or needed in 2025, or in the several years preceding it, if I'm being honest. But Dispatch has so much heart, such strong writing, such amazing art, and such well-performed characters that it gained a good enough reputation that I figured it was worth trying once all the episodes had come out. And I inhaled it over a single weekend, falling head over heels for everything AdHoc was doing.

But the reason Dispatch is so well loved, and why it belongs on this list, is that it does more than just tell a really great superhero story in a world that’s become exhausted with superheroes. It also has a totally kickass management simulator built inside it. And AdHoc does a terrific job marrying its narrative and its sim together, creating a game that feels like it’s changing as the developers are telling you their story.

— RG

Donkey Kong Bananza

As a longtime Donkey Kong fan who was always that obnoxious kid who insisted that Banjo-Kazooie and the Rare catalog of platformers is better than Mario 64, I’m not sure I ever imagined we would get Bananza. I mean, I still think I’m right that Mario’s earliest 3D platformers are overrated, but Mario Odyssey is one of my favorite games on the Switch family of systems. Mario was king of the platformers, and he earned it fair and square.

So to see Nintendo skip Mario entirely for the first year of the Nintendo Switch 2 in favor of a Donkey Kong game instead is a massive shock. But thank god they did. Nintendo has been in a bit of a “oh shit, Breath of the Wild is a real game changer” mode for a while now. And everything – including Metroid Prime 4 – is still taking inspiration from it. But Donkey Kong Bananza (which I know also has challenge levels, but so did Odyssey, so leave me alone) feels like another, different creative stretch from Nintendo. Instead of just demanding a bigger, more open game from a landmass perspective, it feels like it demands openness from a creative perspective. Entire puzzle solutions and collectibles are just hidden in the walls, and it’s up to you to smash the hell out of them to get where you need to go. It’s refreshing. And it’s really cathartic as well. 

Donkey Kong is one of Nintendo’s oldest characters, and he has such a fun cast of villains and supporting characters to pull from. But he’s played second fiddle to Mario for so long that I kind of thought we were done with DK being anything more than a sidekick. Thank god we live in a world where Bananza disproves all of that, and may we live to see Donkey Kong ride the Bananza success wave to even greater heights.

— RG

Hades 2

Hades topped tons of GOTY lists thanks to its inventive narrative, fantastic cast of characters, and breakneck action. Hades 2 switches a few things up – you’re playing Zagreus’s younger, witchy sister Melinoë, the vibe is much more apocalyptic, and the core cast from the first game are frozen in peril. Once again, it’s time to start throwing yourself at the roguelike circle, trying and dying again and again.

Much like its predecessor, Hades 2 has a beautifully designed cast of characters, a few unique weapons that can be altered and tweaked to suit your playstyle, killer music, and a few wonderfully challenging boss fights. You’ll fall short again and again – just one more run. Just give it one more shot. You can’t give up now! Just one more try! Next thing you know, it’s 3AM and you’ve just barely scraped out a win. It’s a less novel experience, but no less thrilling.

— CM

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

The 80s and 90s did irrevocable damage to licensed games. It doesn’t matter how many Batman Arkhams come out, we’ll still get Suicide Squads and – as much as I’d hoped it would be good – Avengers. It’s gotten so bad out there that even absolutely incredible licensed games like Guardians of the Galaxy absolutely flop because people perceive them as a cash grab.

To see Indiana Jones and the Great Circle come out and just consistently blow me away was such a delight. I never imagined that we’d get an Indy game that’s good, let alone one that’s so good that we’re including it on our top 10 GOTY nominees list 13 months after it came out.

— RG

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2

Historical fiction, a sprawling countryside and beautiful medieval cities, tough sword duels, and lots of murder – this is the combo that pulled me deep into Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. This is a massive world, and protagonist Henry is kind enough to help with all sorts of problems, from serving unruly patrons at a tavern to infiltrating a castle and rescuing a hapless lord. Warhorse Studios are unafraid to make you fail, and that leads to some of the most interesting moments in the game. One of my fondest memories is fleeing a merchant with loads of stolen goods, only to struggle to flip them to another store. 

The first acts of the game are defined by the tension between who you are – effectively a nobody at best, and a wanted criminal at worst – and your goals, which are nothing less than saving the kingdom of Bohemia from the invading forces and achieving revenge for the deaths of your family. Eventually, Henry is able to ascend into being an unstoppable force, taking our enemy knights and going into battle. The immersive sim genre is tough to pull off in such a wide space, but Kingdom Come 2: Deliverance blends it with RPG elements seamlessly, and it’s a wonderful adventure.

— CM

Look Outside

Look Outside is an old school style RPG set in an apartment building, starring a homebody named Sam. There’s a cosmic Visitor hanging in the sky, and looking outside transforms and mutates any witnesses. The Visitor will be there for fifteen days, so Sam has to find survivors, gather supplies, and find a little time to play video games. Each day is a nightmare festival of extreme body horror, depicted with cartoonish pixel art that doesn’t lessen the disturbing implications. There are half a dozen deaths from that game that linger in my brain even now, weird and uncanny fates that worked their way right under my skin.

Despite the fact that this is a legitimately horrifying game, I still found myself fascinated by the greater mysteries at hand, and the core RPG mechanics are so satisfying. There’s a complex network of relationships, wants, secrets, and leverage between the various neighbors in the building, and the more Sam digs, the more he uncovers. This game offers a ton of different endings to reward that curiosity, and it’s fascinating to see how the various branches resolve themselves. This is a truly special game that only comes along once in a rare while, and one of the highlights of the 2020’s as a whole.

— CM