Welcome to the first annual Rogueie Awards!

It's Game of the Year season everywhere, and that includes here at Rogue.

But we realized something when we started talking about what GOTY could look like at Rogue — we make the rules now. And what we came up with is a combination of traditional GOTY and broader awards like the Oscars. Yes, we'll be picking winners and a GOTY, but we'll also have room to be a little silly and poke fun at ourselves.

We'll be giving out two kinds of awards: Our serious awards, Pierogies (pie-Rogue-ies, get it? We're very clever.); and our silly awards, Rogueiolis. These are spread across 20 categories. I promise this will make sense.

We also have an award for games we know need more attention but we haven't played yet, AKA: the Rogueitonis.

The rules

We have a mixture of fun and serious categories. When we say "nominee" here (last time I'm putting that in quotes), what we mean are "these are the games we as a staff played and then put down as potential candidates for this award."

Basically, this isn't the Game Awards or the Oscars where we have a set number of nominees. These are all the games we're thinking about, and they'll be all the games that appear on the community polls that you all can vote in for our community awards (plus a write-in section for stuff we've missed).

As for what's eligible for nomination, we are going by pretty simple rules: any game that had a major release, update, or expansion in 2025 counts. If you're curious, that means early access games do count for our rewards here, and it's very possible that an early access game like 9 Kings could show up again in 2026. That's the nature of gaming these days, so it doesn't make much sense for us to wait for a full release if an early access game helped define our year.

Two quick notes before we get on to the categories themselves:

1. We were kind of fuzzy about the start date and didn't strictly stick to the calendar. This is what we'd call correct a sin from the past. Some games weren't eligible for the 2024 awards at That Other Place We All Used To Work. We're trying to be better about December games (hence the later runtime for the awards), but made an exception for December 2024 games this time (this is only really reflected by Indiana Jones and the Great Circle). We plan on just doing the calendar year going forward, so Metroid Prime 4 won't be eligible in 2026.
2. We are a small team, and we have a wide variety of tastes. That means there are going to be games – big games that you and everyone loves – that are underrepresented on this list or aren't represented at all. We do have an award category specifically for this situation — our backlog award — but think it's worth calling out here at the top. For example, sadly, only one of us has played Expedition 33.

Pierogi Awards

We'll be giving out 10 Pierogis including the Platinum Pierogi for Game of the Year.

• Best Cozy Game. Cozy games are stress-free, chill, and let you play at your own pace. A cozy game doesn't have to be pastel-paletted or be about farming, but it helps.
• Best Horror Game. Horror is a broad genre — you've got body horror, cosmic/existential horror, monsters and monstrous creatures, general spookiness, and just good old blood'n'guts.
• Best Co-op Game. We wanted a category that would cover everything from team shooters to co-op chaos games.
• Best Strategy Game. Strategy games are a little harder to define. They're puzzle-y, think-y, strategery-laden games. Some are more RTS-like, while other are more puzzle-based.
• Best Action Game. Shoot'em up, hack'em up, punch'em up, move move MOVE.
• Best Story. You don't have to have a great (or good) story to have a great game. But the stories that move us are an art that deserves to be recognized.
• Best Indie Game. Small studios tend to get steamrolled in GOTY coverage by big studios and, frankly, safe nominations. We wanted to make sure that they would get recognized, even if they don't get GOTY. We don't draw the line at "has a publisher," but we also don't think something like Expedition 33 is an indie (sorry, Game Awards).
• Best AAA Game. Big studio games with multi-million dollar budgets are almost a genre unto themselves. And we're going to treat them as such.
• Most Innovative Game. Video games are nearly 50 years old, but that doesn't mean there's not room to try something new.
• Game of the Year. We promise we'll do a better job than Pantone.

Audience Polls

For every one of the Pierogi awards, we'll also be running an audience poll. We'll post the poll when we post our nominees.

Audience winners for each category will be announced along with our winners.

Rogueiolis

We'll also be giving out nine Rogueiolis. These categories are where each of us Rogues get to decide the award on our own and a few categories that are more non-traditional.

• Alice's Choice. An award decided by our very own Alice Jovanée.
• Cass's Choice. An award decided by our very own Cass Marshall.
• Ryan's Choice. An award decided by our very own Ryan Gilliam.
• Jeff's Choice. An award decided by our very own Jeffrey Parkin. Yes, I know I did these last two out of alphabetical order. I do not know why I did this, but it happened early on in the planning and I never fixed it.
• Most Frustrating Game. Some games just make you want to break a controller. And when it's done well, it deserves an award. These games aren't bad! This is not "I Hate This Game: The Award," 'cause that kinda sucks. Elden Ring would go here, for example, and that's a Game of the Decade contender.
• Best New Character. Gaming is full of some of the most iconic characters in all of art. We wanted to pick our favorite new one, be it from an existing IP that's added someone new in a sequel or an expansion, or a brand new game with a fresh cast.
• Guilty Pleasure. Not all games are high ahhhhhrt. Not all games are widely appealing. But some games are just comfort food that we keep going back to. You don't have to hate yourself for playing these games, but it helps if you hate yourself a little every time you load it up.
• Not Technically Eligible, But. Games have a long shelf-life and stick around for a long time these days. Just because a game didn't come out in the last calendar year doesn't mean we're not still playing it.
• Biggest Surprise. These are the games that delighted us. Maybe they were novel, or maybe they were just unexpected.

Rogueitonis

Look. There are so many games you guys. We can't get to all of them. But we will. One day. We swear.

So we'll be giving out [number TBD] Rogueitonis for It's On My List, I Swear games. These will go to all of the games we know are good and we really should get around to playing, but we just haven't found the time for yet.

The schedule

We'll be rolling out our GOTY coverage over the final few weeks of December, ending on January 2.

There are two major reasons for this:

1. We wanted to give ourselves time to play any late-comer December games (*cough* Metroid).
2. We wanted to take some time for ourselves and our families after a hard year without leaving the website empty for the final two weeks of the year.

The rollout will start on Monday, Dec. 15 and will conclude on Friday, Jan. 2. We won't be posting anything on Christmas, New Year's Eve, or New Year's Day. And, if you're curious, the staff will be mostly off (or, at least, mentally checked-out) from the 22nd through the 2nd.

Starting on December 15, we'll post one Pierogi category's nominations and article (along with the audience poll) and one Rogueiloi Award (and accompanying article) each weekday.

On Christmas Eve, we'll post our first The Rogueies special podcast and article, covering the first five Pierogi categories where we'll announce our winners. The second half, covering the rest of the awards and our Platinum Pierogi for GOTY, will go up on January 2.