Geoff Keighley and company are back again, revealing the nominees for the 2025 edition of The Game Awards, which will stream live from the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles on Thursday, December 11, 2025. This year the one to beat is Sandfall Interactive’s Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, which has received 12 nominations, and the most in the show’s history.
Those 12 nominations nearly double the next nearest nominee in Kojima Productions’ Death Stranding 2: On the Beach and Sucker Punch Productions’ Ghost of Yōtei with seven. Supergiant Games’ Hades II has six nominations, while Team Cherry’s Hollow Knight: Silksong has five.
Making things interesting is that Clair Obscur, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, Hades II and Hollow Knight: Silksong are all up for Game of the Year, alongside Warhorse Studios’ Kingdom Come: Deliverance II and Nintendo’s Donkey Kong Bananza.
Meanwhile, horror fans have a few nominees to cheer for this year, with Konami’s Silent Hill f receiving four nominations (which is sadly less than what Bloober Team’s Silent Hill 2 received last year), id Software’s Doom: The Dark Ages garnering three, and Compulsion Games’ South of Midnight getting two nominations.
From Software’s Elden Ring Nightreign received its lone nomination in Best Multiplayer Game, while Survios’ Alien: Rogue Incursion has a nomination in Best VR Game alongside Twisted Pixel Games’ Marvel’s Deadpool VR and MoonHood’s The Midnight Walk.
Capcom’s Resident Evil Requiem and CD Projekt Red’s The Wticher IV also received nods in the Most Anticipated Game.
Fans can vote now in all categories via the official website.
I tried the expedition 33 game but couldnt get into it quick enough so I just refunded it and scooped a bunch of better priced steam sale games. Any one here stick around with the game long enough to convince me why I made an ill-guided choice?
Like you I could not get into it, but I gave it the old college try. Got about eight hours in and can’t get a refund now.
I don’t blame you at all. It’s styled after the old final fantasy games, meaning very fiddly with a lot of different abilities, and with the added twist of having to dodge stuff fairly precisely which involves a lot of learning. There is a “story” difficulty which makes the game much less punishing, but I still didn’t feel like playing it.
I did watch my girlfriend play though, and soon I was the one telling her to play so I could watch because the story and soundtrack are that fucking amazing. Just watch a playthrough of at least all the major fights and cutscenes and you’ll understand.
I had a similar experience. I’d honestly prefer boring turn based combat to the ridiculous QTEs in the game.
The story was extremely well-told. Great voice acting and production value. But the actual plot didn’t hook me. It just seemed so arbitrary. I don’t know if there’s some big reveal or anything that makes it make sense.
I only played it on Game Pass, so luckily I’m not out any money. I would have given it another chance eventually, but the Game Pass price hike made me cancel.
Its an incredible game but not for everyone. I’ve been saying for a while that a game for everyone is a game for no one. These guys picked a specific genre and set out to tell an interesting/artistic story with a very specific vision and IMO they hit a grand slam/it is executed very well. If you bounced off it thats completely fine, not everyone is looking for what this game has to offer. It just happened to really click with me.
Not true. Pong is AMAZING!
See, there’s this square dot, and these two paddles…oh, I won’t spoil the plot! Just play it!
I picked it up in a sale recently, it’s not normally my type of game but I thought I’d give it a shot. I’m only a couple of hours in and loving it so far.
The story is sucking me in and I’m starting to appreciate the combat, things seem to be unlocking at about the pace I can understand. I’m a little worried it’ll be repetitive but it looks like there’s plenty of opportunity to be creative to keep it interesting.
Definitely my solo game for the longer nights ahead.
The game wants you to break it. Some of the late game bosses are so over the top you need the broken maelle build just to have a chance. Thats what is fun about it too, you can make the game as hard or easy as you want depending on your strategy and mods.
Simon? I mean, you could one-shot him in both phases, but I doubt he was designed with that in mind. There are videos on YouTube where people beat him legitimately (as in, don’t skip the entire fight by not letting him do a single turn), after all.
Myself, I resorted to doing the entire third act, side-activities included, the easy way, but that’s because I’m bad at dodging and parrying and not patient enough to retry the same fights over and over again.
It depends on how much you like QTE gameplay and turn based JRPGs. If neither appeals to you, then the refund was a great idea. If one or the other appeals to you, then I think it’s worth sitting through because both gameplay mechanics are executed well enough and the narrative is good. If both appeal to you then you’ve missed out in getting a refund.
I really enjoyed this game. The gameplay is intuitive, but challenging; the narrative is engaging; the soundtrack is incredible.
That’s an accurate description. The game itself tries to present the highest difficulty as “real-time mechanics” oriented, but all that really does is make QTEs more punishing. After some frustration, I just swapped back to the normal difficulty and am enjoying the game a lot.
I think I’d want something between normal and hard difficulty. Normal makes most fights trivial when you hit most QTEs, while hard kills you on single QTE fails almost.
I haven’t really enjoyed JRPG combat, so this mix works really well for me
What if you like turn based JRPGs but hate QTE? lol
Your can turn off the QTEs for optimizing attacks which I definitely did. Dodging/parrying can’t be avoided but if you turn the difficulty to story mode it’s generally pretty trivial.
Even on Normal you can just build defensively and use Maelle with Egide to tank through like 99% of the game even without nailing a single parry or dodge. It’s only maybe the optional superboss that might give you trouble.
It’s a quite enjoyable game, though some elements grew old towards the end. The visual design and music is also amazing. Unfortunately they dropped the ball on the ending a little, and it is very likely that this is the result of a flubbed rewrite, as there are certain hints within the game that imply very strongly that at least at some point things were clearly meant to be more complicated. The version of the ending we got has a very clear message as to what the writers intended to be the right choice.
The gameplay itself is just “okay”. Turn based JRPG combat with some QTE not much different from Super Mario RPG on the SNES.
I think the attention it has received is based on how well they tie together the quality of storytelling, dialogue, art direction, music, and the universal theme that resonates with everyone:
It’s an interactive cinematic experience that had me in emotional shambles multiple times throughout the playthrough.
If you’re dead inside like me and desperate to feel anything, it’ll do it for you :>
Hands down, my favorite rpg in years. It has also been one of the super rare games that I kept playing past the end of the main story just so I could stay in the world a bit longer. It will also be one of the only games I’ve bought after playing it on Game Pass too.
You’re not alone. The visuals are nice, the voice acting is good, and the music is gorgeous, but the gameplay is very repetitive JRPG combat with a minor twist.
As art, I could see it winning awards. As a game, I think others are more deserving.
For me, I found it to be a beautiful work of art and a heartbreaking story about family.
It’s not a mass appeal title that absolutely everyone will love though. The game is not particularly easy and it takes time to develop the story.
Every time you get to the end of an act in Expedition 33 there is so much emotion. If you aren’t following the story, don’t get emotionally attached to the games you play and the stories of the characters, and aren’t patient enough to enjoy it then obviously it won’t be for you. That’s ok. It’s all art. They all mean different things to each one of us.
I’m confident we’ll get another hades, another silksong, another death stranding. I’m sure they’re all the very best representation of their iterative releases and worthy of the highest of praises too. I don’t even know how donkey kong got in the list though, maybe they are being manipulated to include a nintendo title in some way.
I don’t know if i’ll ever be as impressed by another title as I did by expedition 33. Baldur’s Gate 3 amazed me in other ways a couple years ago and it’s a huge feat. Before that for me it was Elden Ring, amazing for other reasons.
I haven’t started kingdom come deliverance 2 yet, and I never played the first one, so I don’t want to say too much. All of the impressions i’ve heard sound like it is very deserving though. My assumption is that this and Exp33 have been the two GOTY contenders, but we’ll see.
It’s one of the best reviewed games this year, it’s in a classic but underrepresented genre, and it’s the flagship title of the fastest selling console of all time. Maybe you’re just a little disconnected on this one?
Ah cool, so it’s better than say either of the Zelda games? since multiple releases this year seem to be on that tier.
I know it has high reviews but I am always doubtful it’s more of a hype review especially when people are desperate to justify their $500 hardware+game bundle purchase on top of their $70 20-hour game
I don’t understand why you’re mentioning Zelda? There was one Zelda game this year, released a couple weeks ago, but it’s actually a Warriors game.
I’m sure Bananza is getting a boost from the Switch 2 hype, just like E33 is getting a boost because of its indie roots. None of this happens in a vacuum. But the hype wouldn’t do anything if either of these were bad games.
I’m saying Zelda Breath of the Wild and Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. I figured it was implied. Those are both goty tier flagship titles for the old switch.
I’m asking if you think donkey kong bananza lives up to those or surpasses those. DKB is a 18 hour game according to how long to beat. Everything else in the running costs less and/or has way more play hours.
I like Bananza more than BotW, but I didn’t think BotW was that good. I didn’t play TotK for that same reason.
I don’t think Bananza’s length is a mark against it. It has more than 18 hours of content, so the time to beat it is irrelevant. Cost is also irrelevant to the quality of the game.
Look at it this way: remember when large portions of the internet community were all up in arms about the cost of games and predicted that the Switch 2 was definitely going to fail?
If your perspective on games this year aligns with those communities, then you only need to look at the runaway success of the Switch 2 for proof that you’re missing a big part of the picture.
It’s a good game. People like it. I don’t even like it that much, but I can still see why it’s a successful and popular game.
I wasn’t one of those people who thought the switch 2 would fail though. I knew it would be a huge commercial success. Just like how every single zelda game that ever comes out will be a huge commercial success, same for pokemon, metroid, mario, and other titles with enormous multigenerational fanbases. They could release the worst game of all time and still get 9 figure revenues out of it from branding alone and reviewers would still slap a 8/10 or 9/10 on the game. At least nintendo generally isn’t another EA/sportsball/call of duty style yearly release churn like so many devs though. I’ll give them that.
Pokemon still sucks compared to Palworld or any number of other pokeclones that are less commercially successful due to lack of brand recognition. The last metroid game that isn’t a remaster was less than ten hours long, which also sucks.
The switch 2 is also the first console release in many years to not have extreme scarcity. It’s been less than a year and I can pickup at msrp a switch 2 today at the closest B&M stores to my house. I’m right by a major city and we’re usually the last ones to have stock available due to population density. It took years to be able to buy a ps5 at retail without getting very lucky. Not surprised that nintendo has made so many sales.
Will say though I have completely stopped using the switch 1 ever since I picked up a deck in 2023. Monthly active users for Steam have doubled since Jan 2020. https://steamdb.info/app/753/charts/#6y - there are more pc gamers than ever, and we’re seeing consoles start to fade away it feels like, like the arcade cabinets before them. I don’t think steam will replace nintendo in any way, but I do think there is way more potential for growth on the PC side than the nintendo side.
Donkey Kong inclusion was definitely Nintendo fan tax 🤭
I kind of figure death stranding too. It at least has sounded like it deserves to be up there even though it basically just fits in to the “ps5 exclusive” slot.
Blue Prince sounds like it’s the Myst of this generation too, but that kind of game just doesn’t draw appeal in modern times. Everything i’ve heard about it points to it being a game that way more people should probably try, but they just haven’t. Puzzle games rarely get mass appeal.
I think Blue prince would have made more sense than another installment of Donkey Kong 🤷♂️
“another installment of Donkey Kong”, as though we’re flooded with them?
This is the first DK game in 11 years, and the first 3D DK game in 25 years.
Nah, if it didnt hook you in the beginning nothing would happen later to change that. Good story, acting, visuals, but combat gets repetitive and needed something more to shake it up.
You didn’t really offer any insight as to why you moved on…