2025 has gone by in a flash, hasn’t it? Well, apart from the days I’ve spent tabulating all your Game of the Year votes and presenting the results here – that has felt like an eternity and I think has given me permanent neck pain. But, let’s not worry about that. I’m sure you’ll agree it was worth the sacrifice.
I’m sure you’ll skip down to the bottom to see the winner (maybe you’ve already done that before reading this – it’s your life), but you might like to know that your Game of the Year earned more points than the No.2 and No.3 games combined. Well done Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour, you did it against all the odds!
I joke, obviously (although it did receive some votes, it didn’t make this Top 50). Eurogamer’s own top 50 list of our staff 2025 Best Games will follow soon, but today it’s all about you. Now, remember to head to the comments and argue for days about it all. Have fun!
50. Anno 117: Pax Romana
- Developer: Ubisoft Mainz
- Platforms: PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S
“Nothing like a huge time sink and a game you can have on in the background whilst watching TV (as long as you’re in profit). beautifully paced it’s a real comfort game watching your village develop into a city.” -Metal Gear Simon
49. Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time
“It was just a really fun cozy game. I spent about 80 hours and I’ll probably never play it again and that’s fine. The time I did spend was great and well worth the price.” -Da_bubbarator
48. Skin Deep
“If we’re basing GOTY on how many times a game made me cackle with glee, Skin Deep is the runaway winner. Even without that metric, this is a masterclass of pure, untethered systemic game design – where every level is tailored to encourage creativity and playfulness. Match that with Blendo’s idiosyncratic humour, visual design and smash-cut heavy storytelling, and you’ve got the wonder that is Skin Deep.” -maccydee
47. Hell is Us
“I had little interest in this on the surface, the trailers gave me a knock off amalgam of Death Stranding 2: On the Beach and Demon Souls feel. I was very wrong, this game while not completely unique eschews a lot of the modern AAA “quality of life” features like maps, and direction indicators, and trusts that you the player will figure things out. It has some of the most compelling puzzle designs, world building, and general theming I’ve played in years and while the combat is a bit basic everything else works so very well. I hope a lot more AAA games take this as a good example for not always needing to sand down the friction points in their games. Sometimes the friction points are fun.” -splayer88
46. Despelote
- Developer: Juliรกn Cordero, Sebastian Valbuena
- Platforms: PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox Series X/S
- Despelote review
“A game of remarkable intimacy and intelligence. While it primarily presents itself as a remarkably vivid portrait of a very particular place and time, it’s hard to grasp the true nature of Despelote until its final few sequences. Suddenly the game reveals itself as a thoughtful work on the very nature of autobiographical art and storytelling – the clash of fact and fiction that is necessary to tell a nostalgic tale rooted in personal experience. It does so with some of the most electrifying formal tricks of the year.” -maccydee
45. Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii
“Best game featuring an extended FMV sequence where a chubby Japanese comedian drinks yoghurt-masquerading-as-wine in a horribly misguided attempt to woo a model.” -Rogueywon
44. Wheel World
“I noted that the reviews were a little mixed, but I knew as soon as I saw a screenshot of a cell-shaded European landscape that I was going to play this. I’m a sucker for all things road cycling, and while Wheel World perhaps didn’t do a lot to portray how much suffering is involved in even the lowliest of amateur races, it captured the sheer joy of free-wheeling downhill past vineyards and windmills absolutely perfectly.” -fleabitmonkey
43. Baby Steps
“I’ve never played a game that reflected my experiences coming to terms with my sexuality so perfectly.” -Peter
42. Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter
- Developer: Nihon Falcom
- Platforms: PC, PS5, Switch
“I was kind of worried this would be awful, ruin the original, be an action game, or turn it into a total slog. Instead, they seem to have captured and preserved everything about the original while making it snappier and beautiful. It’s a fascinating, surprising remake for not being all that surprising, and not completely reinventing the wheel like some other efforts to modernize classic RPGs by turning them into bloated budget action games.” -jesse_dylan
41. Ninja Gaiden 4
“It’s a fantastic return to form for Platinum Games and everything I could have wanted in a revival of one of my favorite franchises. -blackpaladin105”
40. Cronos: The New Dawn
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“Bloober’s follow-up to the Silent Hill 2 remake is such a well-written and intriguing story that wrapped around some great level design and performances. It might take a while to really get going, but once it does, I couldn’t stop playing. Don’t get me wrong, the first half of the game is fun, but the last half of the game has some of the best level design I’ve even played through, and the mysterious story takes on whole new layers in new game +. A few underwhelming bosses can’t stop Cronos: The New Dawn from being one of my favorite horror games.” -Sente Graphs
39. Monster Hunter Wilds
“New mechanics feel great and amazing new bosses added.” -Anonymous
38. Lumines Arise
“So many delightful surprises. Crunchy capsicums. Toucans. There’s even a grime track.” -Proboscus #3874
37. The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy
- Developer: Too Kyo Games and Media.Vision
- Platforms: PC, Switch
“A hugely ambitious visual novel, with loveable characters, crazy plot lines, and surprisingly engaging turn based strategy combat.” -ShadowRJ
36. Sektori
- Developer: Kimmo Lahtinen
- Platforms: PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S
“As I get older, I can feel my reaction times worsen. So I was a bit anxious when I bought this, thinking it would not be for me. But I shouldn’t have worried, it’s such fun! Even if I can’t make it past level 2.” -chattyjinjo
35. Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater
“What a remake! Every detail is fine tuned whilst still being loyal to the original, a truly awesome game now with a truly awesome reboot. Lets hope 4 gets resurrected from its PS3 grave.” -Metal Gear Simon
34. Sword of the Sea
“The game I wanted Journey to be. A visually stunning and joyous experience that doesn’t really need much more explanation. “4 hours long and highly polished” really needs to be a gold standard for developers to aim for.” -Duckbum
33. Mafia: The Old Country
“Call me a sucker for a Mafia story but I do love them. Oftentimes you see the ending coming from a mile away, and this one was not a surprise in the least, but I liked the characters – even the ones I didn’t enjoy – and it was just wonderful playing a more focused game that didn’t have you do a million and one things to progress. Its recreation of Sicily is also absolutely stunning and a joy just to walk around in. Lastly, has there ever been a (male) game character as attractive as Luca Trapani?!” -Joshua#5367
32. Final Fantasy Tactics – The Ivalice Chronicles
“The legend returns! The updates make this much more playable than it was but gosh, it is still very hard.” -Madame-Drofla
31. The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered
- Developer: Virtuos
- Platforms: PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S
“Another great remaster. I hadn’t touched Oblivion since 2006, but this gripped me as much as it did the first time around. It shows that good game design and unintended jank are a winning combination. The world somehow feels even more alive than most modern games.” -Portman_Road
30. South of Midnight
- Developer: Compulsion Games
- Platforms: PC, Xbox Series X/S (coming to PS5 and Switch 2, Spring 2026
- South of Midnight review
“Went into this with low expectations but got completely sucked into its beautiful aesthetic, the sights and especially the sounds, what a soundtrack! The combat arenas were a little tired by the end but the combat had a nice rhythm to it once you had a few upgrades.” -Grubby_Gryffin
29. Absolum
“The added Roguelite mechanic really gave this game so much replay value. Along with the new things to find with each stage revisit. This blew my socks off whilst I was still combo juggling some poor enemy from Stage 1 whilst on the final stage!” -gizzaciggy
28. Shinobi: Art of Vengeance
- Developer: The Game Kitchen
- Platforms: PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
“Ragebound manages to nail the feel and pace of the NES Ninja Gaiden games while adding a touch of modernisation. It’s the best action game I’ve played since Ace combat 7.” -Retr0gamer
27. Lost Records: Bloom & Rage
“Don’t Nod absolutely on form here with an incredibly emotional piece that really speaks to my own childhood memories of heading out into the woods behind my childhood home with the friends (and lesbian crushes) I’d make over a summer. I literally went out and bought a brand new walkman after playing this and spent my entire summer listening to the soundtrack on tape.” -PrincessEntrapta
26. Elden Ring Nightreign
“I never expected what appeared to be a roguelike multiplayer spin on Elden Ring to captivate me so much. As I look back months later, I’ve put more time into this than anything else this year, derailing my playthroughs of Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, Age of Imprisonment and more. The gameplay hook is ridiculously addictive, the botched runs are often hilarious and it’s just all round a superb time of making some wonderful hype moments in the FromSoftware playbox. The character designs are absolutely peak and the Nightlords are epic. I look forward to what they can cook up with The Duskbloods.” -[STARS]TyranT #9295
25. Citizen Sleeper 2
“Fittingly being slept on this award season, but when we talk about gameplay supporting a story, and games telling stories movies and books can’t, Citizen Sleeper 2 is what we mean. A truly perfect game.” -loran1212
24. Promise Mascot Agency
“A wonderful, delightfully charming game that I was able to slide into without having to worry about stressful combat or rankings or level ups. Just a nice game, with a wonderful world to drive about it. The giant psychotic severed finger you drive around was just icing on a beautifully bizarre cake.” -Cheeky Devlin
23. Atomfall
- Developer: Rebellion
- Platforms: PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
- Atomfall review
“Maybe not the second best game I played this year, but Atomfall was definitely the game I had the second best time playing. I loved the weirdness, the open-endedness available to the player, the multiple endings, and most of all the sheer Britishness of the whole thing.” -BingoBango
22. Metroid Prime 4: Beyond
“None of the previous Metroid prime games really connected to me. This one, because of the light guidance from NPCs (which really wasn’t much), I found much more approachable than the others in this series and actually the Metroid franchise on the whole. 2025 seems to have a lot of great games on paper, but this one at the end of the year was the first I really connected with.” -Piphodgkinson
21. Keeper
- Developer: Double Fine
- Platforms: PC, Xbox Series X/S
- Keeper review
“It’s weird and it’s chilled-out and it’s got some great puzzling stuff going on, but mostly I just adore the art design and the vibe that’s both optimistic and sad.” -Britesparc
20. The Alters
“A game that has just the right balance of the tension of a ticking clock and the release valve of interpersonal interactions, with some neat twists along the way and some delightful vibes of cinematic classic Moon.” -PrincessEntrapta
19. Assassin’s Creed Shadows
“An exceptional game that holds nothing back,” wrote StormbringerN. “Hard to the core and with the design and gameplay to back it. Stalker places complete trust on the player to find their way. We need more of these!” Added Moxyz1: “My most played, favourite series of all time.”
18. The Outer Worlds 2
“Obsidian doing what Obsidian does best, a good RPG with a great sense of humour” -Cardboard Box
17. Doom: The Dark Ages
“Fun. Constant, over-the-top fun. Interesting weapons, varied challenges, and cool maps filled with horrors to kill. I made sure to see and do absolutely everything in this game, it was a joy.” -BestJonnyT
16. Avowed
- Developer: Obsidian Entertainment
- Platforms: PC, Xbox Series X/S
- Avowed review
“I had exactly zero expectations of Avowed and it won me over with its tight focus. Yes, NPCs don’t move around the towns at all. Yes, most non-parity interactions are paper thin. There’s nothing “new” here and it’s not the Skyrim-lite that I think some wanted. But oh boy is it fast, tight and lots of fun. Loved the combat, loved the party dynamics. There were decisions throughout this game that I thought about for longer than I ever do in most RPGs. The general quality of life throughout felt great and it was the perfect length for me. Was expecting a 6 or 7 out of 10 – and maybe it is in reality – but for what I was after it was much, much more.” -raxshasa
15. Ball x Pit
- Developer: Kenny Sun
- Platforms: PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch, Switch 2
- Ball x Pit review
“I’ve had to stop playing, due to the sleep deprivation it’s caused. One more run.” -Stephen Smyth
“The best 2025 game to (let itself) play while you are trying to complete a 9000 piece jigsaw puzzle.” -Gallows82
14. Battlefield 6
“I never really got on with FPS on consoles until BF6 and it’s been a huge amount of fun to play with a wide variety of different modes. Additionally hardly any bugs or crashes from day one release. Which shouldn’t be something worth mentioning, but I guess that’s the current gaming landscape “high bar”. Sigh!” -MonkeyMajiks
“It’s been so many years since Battlefield was at its best imo but now with 6 I feel like they are back and it’s so much fun to play! The single player campaign could have been better but the multiplayer is the best there is out there right now imo!” -Mac_da_man
13. Silent Hill f
“I didn’t think Silent Hill f would be the best Silent Hill game since the second. It isn’t. It’s the best Silent Hill game, without qualification. It’s a remarkably potent combination of thematic maturity and full-spectrum horror.” -Rogueywon
“God who thought this would actually be good? And then it’s great! And weird! Weirdly great! So great I don’t mind having to do a second playthrough which is rare.” -MrTomFTW
12. Mario Kart World
“It’s gorgeous, the controls are tighter than they’ve ever been, the tracks are large and accommodate 24 drivers, the knock out tours are fun, and the open world offers both hours of single player exploration and a training ground to master the new techniques.” -spookyxelectric
“The new tracks alone are worth the ride, but the real joy kicks in when 24 karts pile up in glorious chaos! Suddenly, cows are casually strolling across the track like they own the place, and I’m out here racing as one! A cow. With wheels. Mooooove over, Luigi!” -MiniBenso
11. Dispatch
“Dispatch! Which saw me completing it in one week, and my wife playing the whole thing the following week, a situation absolutely unprecedented in my many years of gaming. Not least because I wasn’t married for much of them. But is Dispatch a game or a TV program?
Put it this way: It’s the most fun I had while holding a controller this year. By far. I look forward to all the clones largely made by AI arriving over the next few years.” -MarcusJ
“I’ve always thought that episodic games had massive potential, and handled correctly they could be great. AdHoc Studios made them Super. They’ve blurred the line between TV show and video game and the result is a binge worthy series with great pacing, an incredible cast, and truly funny writing. While the season stands complete on its own, I hope we get a second season and get another story set in the world AdHoc Studios have crafted.” -EvilAspirin
10. Arc Raiders
“My multiplayer days are behind me (or so I thought). Too reaction heavy, too time consuming, too toxic. And yet something about the look and sound (oh my the sound! Of course it’s ex-Battlefield devs on this) hooked me in and I haven’t been able to leave since. I haven’t enjoyed a multiplayer shooter like this for literal decades. It’s genius. Funny, scary, tense, exciting. Just enough nudge to keep you playing but nothing too soul demanding. All built around these perfect 20 minute raids. It’s the little details that make it. The echo of your own footsteps. The agonising, noisy wait for an evac. The chu-chick, chu-choonk of every slow reload. Years of expertise and testing have gone into it and it shows. But it’s the community that makes it. I’ve howled with laughter at some of the voice chat and generally comical behaviour of my fellow Raiders. Far more so than I’ve cursed the odd back-stabbing one. What a game” -Taffer #2026
“Over the last 20 years I’ve read so much about ’emergent gameplay’ and how certain games aspire to create non-scripted setpieces and and stories. For my money, Arc Raiders is the first game to properly deliver on that promise. Its clever combination of extraction mechanics, fantastic PvE gameplay and a genuine social experiment in how you interact with other raider squads should you encounter them, throws up some incredibly emergent and fun moments.” -captain-T-dawg
9. Split Fiction
“Played this with my daughter during a time when she was sick and provided us with my needed escapism. It was also great the way they combined so many game genres. Those end levels are fantastic.” -Thesnowman
“A heartwarming game to play with your loved ones which at the same time pushes technical and game design boundaries like no other game in 2025 did. Insanely bold, risky direction for a high-budget AAA game. We need more mainstream publishers to take note – if there’s love and passion behind the project, it is possible to create something original and make a profit.” -Bogdan Gontar
8. Ghost of Yōtei
“I loved Ghost of Tsushima and Yotei improves upon what made that game so good and makes it awesome! Loved every bit of it, looked and played amazing with a great soundtrack and a classic story of revenge!” -Mac_da_man
“Hitting parries in the Ghost games is a hit of dopamine I didn’t realize I needed this year.” -traxor
7. Death Stranding 2: On the Beach
“The reduced friction (earlier access to vehicles, less fiddly combat) is what allowed me to warm up to DS2 much faster than the original. But it was a moment of pure hopelessness that won its place in my heart. Half way up the game’s central mountain, an avalanche obliterated my truck, my character, and a cargo of materials and stray packages I’d been building since the start of the game. I was left with no choice but to lug my precious few remaining items to the top of the mountain on foot. Half an hour of hiking and one classic Death Stranding 2: On the Beach needle drop later, I made it, with a renewed love for the hardships that make the series so unforgettable.” -JCC
“For a game that’s central theme is about letting go of grief in order to move forward, I didn’t want this game to ever end. Spending over 240 hours in its world, absorbing as much as I possibly could before heading into that insane finale, is something I’ll never forget. It’s currently the best game on PS5.” -THEREISNOGOD1
6. Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2
“KCD2 is among the best-realised worlds I have ever experienced in a game. The production quality is off the chart, the story is magnificent and it held my attention for the 100 hour span. Truly an incredible achievement of a game.” -Wrathbone
“KCD2 is quietly ambitious in a way so many other bigger releases aim to be but aren’t. Playing it back to back with the Oblivion remaster that released at a similar time really shows how much Warhorse have not only captured the open world magic of a Bethesda-style RPG, but expanded and improved on it to create a tactile, believable and lived in world on an impressive scale, while discarding many conventions around simplifying and dumbing down game mechanics while still creating a snappy and approachable game. Its ambition is impressive and the fact that it pulls it off, even more so.” -9of9
5. Donkey Kong Bananza
“As I played Donkey Kong, smashing stuff, head bopping to tunes, colours popping off the screen, the sheer mechanical joy of it, I had a feeling that I’d not felt in years. It was fun. It wasn’t a trial, it wasn’t Git Gud, it wasn’t dour and gritty it wasn’t a story-focused game, it was just fun. Sure there are games with better graphics, harder challenges, more immersive stories, but this was a game. A game I wanted to play. A game I loved playing.” -Modhabobo
“So much innovation, heart, and greatness packed into one package.” -Kings#8977
4. Hollow Knight: Silksong
“The gameplay is absurdly tight, and this combined with the extreme maneuverability given all the special moves makes you feel like the character is being controlled directly by the player’s brain rather than your brain controlling your hands which push buttons on a controller. And it’s just so ridiculously fun. That’s why it works being rather difficult, because when I lose to a boss I can’t wait to get back into it, just because the game is so incredibly fun to play on a moment-to-moment basis. And then of course the art, animation, music, and sound design create such strong vibes. They are not just great, they are extremely cohesive and expressive. Everything comes together cohesively and synergistically to create an incredible and unique experience that is simply more fun than any other game this year.” -Mark T
“I never knew Team Cherry could best the quality of Hollow Knight, let alone meet and exceed the overblown hype. I bow to them! -@shrug”
3. Blue Prince
“If you had told me a year ago that a roguelike about arranging rooms in a house would have some of the best layered puzzles and worldbuilding that gaming has ever seen, I wouldn’t have believed it.” -Katosepe
“I’ve literally never been so obsessed with a game as with Blue Prince. It consumed every waking (and sleeping) thought I had for weeks.” -Aerynus
“Bought on a whim for my partner and for the next three months we pored over every pixel in the game hunting for clues. A vortex of discovery. I’m calling it: the best puzzle videogame ever made.” -Tomo
2. Hades 2
“I bought the game on day 1, played for a few minutes here and there, and then realised ‘few minutes’ was actually 80 hours. I have never played so much of a game in such a short space of time. Utterly moreish.” -m77t
“One of the most rewarding games I have ever played with a close to perfect gameplay where even the failed runs progress the game. Nice music and excellent storytelling are the icing on the cake.” -Scottie Ferguson
“No game this year kept me hooked like Hades II. The craftsmanship. The music. The balancing, timing, sheer learnability. The size, all while keeping everything perfectly focused and with great attention to detail. This is Supergiant at their best.” -Exarch
1. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
“I can’t find a single negative thing to say about this game. The story, art direction and music are excellent, the gameplay is immaculate, it reinvents the JRPG-style turn based combat in a compelling way, all the characters have depth and real motivations… I could go on for hours. Playing it was as great as eating a still warm, freshly baked baguette filled with oozy camembert. A classic.” -carloorlac
“It’s been a while since a game has completely blown me away and that’s exactly what Clair Obscur did. It felt like a game that had everything I would want. The story was excellent, with plenty of twists and turns (some pretty wild!), the acting was outstanding to go along with it. The art style was lovely, in particular featuring my favourite ever over-world map. And the soundtrack is just an absolute all-timer. Then we get to the game itself, with for my money, the best iteration of turn-based combat out there, making every encounter exciting, and with the impressively deep Picto and Lumina system, allowing for some absolutely wild builds in the end game.” -Zombie-Hamster
“Possibly the best game of the last decade. Clair Obscur shows what happens when an AA studio has a vision and delivers passionately on it. Dripping with French style, amazing music, and a top tier voice cast. This is absolute cinema.” -RealStyli
“It’s just wonderful. I could talk about the narrative and the setting and the characters and talk about how it made me think about my relationship with art and my relationship with death and how death is inevitable and that it’s when you die that’s important and how it made me cry three times, and that would be covering half of what makes the game so great. But mechanically it’s fantastic, too. Every party member has such wildly different mechanics, and they synergise in the most fun way. It’s a game that isn’t just happy for you to break its systems, but actively encourages it. There are bosses in here that I was only able to beat by building my party in such a way that they simply never had an opportunity to attack. At the same time, if one was skilled enough, they could take down any boss purely by parrying and counter attacking and never levelling up a single character. It’s absolutely marvellous.” -2much
