The Game Awards 2025 nominees have been announced

The Game Awards 2025 nominees have been officially announced. It has been an exciting year for video games, but who's going to get the trophies?

You can check out the nominees at the official website. But I'll be listing some of the major categories here.

Without further ado, these are the "Game of the year" nominees.

• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 - Sandfall Interactive / Kepler Interactive
• Death Stranding 2: On the Beach - Kojima Productions / Sony Interactive Entertainment
• Donkey Kong Bananza - Nintendo EPD / Nintendo
• Hades II - Supergiant Games
• Hollow Knight: Silksong - Team Cherry
• Kingdom Come: Deliverance II - Warhorse Studios / Deep Silver

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle was released in Dec 2024, and has been widely praised. It's kind of surprising it didn't make the cut for GOTY.  The game was released on GOG recently, if you want to pick up a DRM-Free copy of it. Blue Prince not making the list is also rather odd. This is a tough one, but it's probably going to boil down to Clair Obscur and Silksong.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has received 12 nominations in total, three actors for best performance (Ben Starr, Charlie Cox and Jennifer English), best narrative, best score and music, best art direction, best game direction, best audio design, best independent game, best debut indie game, best RPG, and of course, GOTY.

Death Stranding 2: On the Beach and Ghost of Y?tei have 7 nominations each, while Hades 2 and Silksong, have 6 and 5 nominations respectively.

Best Game Direction

• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
• Death Stranding 2: On the Beach
• Ghost of Yotei
• Hades II
• Split Fiction

Best Narrative

• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
• Death Stranding 2: On the Beach
• Ghost of Yotei
• Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
• Silent Hill f

Best Art Direction

• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
• Death Stranding 2: On the Beach
• Ghost of Yotei
• Hades II
• Hollow Knight: Silksong

Best Score and Music

• Christopher Larkin - Hollow Knight: Silksong
• Lorien Testard - Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
• Darren Korb - Hades II
• Toma Otowa - Ghost of Yotei
• Woodkid and Ludvig Forssell - Death Stranding 2: On the Beach

Best Audio Design

• Battlefield 6
• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
• Death Stranding 2: On the Beach
• Ghost of Yotei
• Silent Hill f

Best Performance

• Ben Starr as Verso – Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
• Charlie Cox as Gustave – Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
• Jennifer English as Maelle – Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
• Erika Ishii as Atsu – Ghost of Yotei
• Konatsu Kato as Hinako Shimizu – Silent Hill f
• Troy Baker as Indiana Jones – Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

Kato is the only non-English performer to be nominated for the award.

Best Independent Game

• Absolum
• Ball x Pit
• Blue Prince
• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
• Hades II
• Hollow Knight: Silksong

I'd like to see Blue Prince or Hades II win this one, but that's no easy task.

Best Debut Indie Game

• Blue Prince
• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
• Despelote
• Dispatch
• Megabonk

Best Action Game

• Battlefield 6
• Doom: The Dark Ages
• Hades II
• Ninja Gaiden 4
• Shinobi: Art of Vengeance

Best Action / Adventure Game

• Death Stranding 2: On the Beach
• Ghost of Yotei
• Hollow Knight: Silksong
• Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
• Split Fiction

Best RPG

• Avowed
• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
• Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
• Monster Hunter Wilds
• The Outer Worlds 2

MHW has no business being here. Avowed was good, not great. I'm not sure about this, but if it comes to Expedition 33 vs KCD 2, it'll probably be the former.

Best fighting game

• 2XKO
• Capcom Fighting Collection 2
• Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves
• Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection
• Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O. World Stage

Best Sim / Strategy Game

• The Alters
• Civilization VII
• Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles
• Tempest Rising
• Jurassic World Evolution 3
• Two Point Museum

Civ 7 being nominated for best sim / strategy has to be a joke, right? Not including Europa Universalis 5 is also puzzling. It's hands down the best new one in the genre.

Best Sports / Racing Game

• EA Sports FC 26
• F1 25
• Mario Kart World
• Rematch
• Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds

Best Multiplayer Game

• ARC Raiders
• Battlefield 6
• Elden Ring Nightreign
• Peak
• Split Fiction

Best Mobile Game

• Destiny: Rising
• Persona 5: The Phantom X
• Sonic Rumble
• Umamusume: Pretty Derby
• Wuthering Waves

Here are the nominees for the "Most anticipated game"

• 007 First Light (the James Bond game) - releasing on March 27, 2026, for Windows PC, PS5, Xbox Series X / S, Nintendo Switch 2
• Grand Theft Auto VI -  releasing on November 19, 2026, for PS5, Xbox Series X / S.
• Marvel's Wolverine - TBD
• Resident Evil Requiem - releasing on February 27, 2026, for Windows PC, PS5, Xbox Series X / S, Nintendo Switch 2
• The Witcher IV - TBD

This is a rather silly category, but I would be very surprised if GTA 6 didn't win it.

The Game Awards 2025 will be announced on December 11, 2025, the event will be live-streamed on YouTube, Steam, Twitch, Amazon Prime, X, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok at 4:30 PM Pacific Time, 7:30 PM Eastern Time, 9:30 PM (Brazil), and on December 12 at 6:00 AM (India), 8:30 AM (China), 9:30 AM (Japan), 11:30 AM (Australia), 12:30 AM (U.K.).

Note: A word of warning, the TGA website seems to be quite slow, buggy and very intensive on resources. Do I get an award for putting up with the site?

Personally, I'm not a fan of such events, but it's an interesting way to discover games, especially indie games, that may have slipped under your radar.

How many of these games have you played?

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Wednesday 19 November 2025 at 5:14 am AEST (my time).

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