The Game Awards, a celebration of exceptional video games, announced the 2025 nominees on Nov. 17, recognizing nearly 30 categories of game design excellence. Nominated for Game of the Year (GOTY) are Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Death Stranding 2: On The Beach, Donkey Kong Bananza, Hades II, Hollow Knight: Silksong, and Kingdom Come: Deliverance II. After almost a month, the winner was announced, and Clair Obscur walked away from the event with the well-deserved Game of The Year, also winning seven other categories.

In addition to having colon-full names, many of this year’s nominees share another commonality; with the exception of Donkey Kong and Death Stranding 2, all games nominated for GOTY were independently developed. To qualify as independently developed, a studio not only has to be small, it also must lack the financial backing of large studios. This results in many “indie” games being a passion project with almost none of the resources provided to AAA studios like Nintendo.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, the popular choice for the award, is the debut game of the French studio Landfall Games, with 97% of Steam reviews being overwhelmingly positive.

However, all games up for the award had a claim to the title. Silksong crashed Steam servers after a seven-year wait for its release. Four of the nominees were sequels of previously acclaimed games and franchises, receiving a positive response after release.

At the end of the day three of Clair Obscur’s competitors got awards at the event, leaving only Death Stranding 2 and Kingdom Come without an award.

This piece was originally published in Zephyrus’ print edition on Dec. 18, 2025