So, 2025, huh? Hell of year, even just limited to gaming. Peak was a smash hit co-op adventure that proved there truly is no better comedy than a group of friends trying (and usually failing) to complete a task together. Blue Prince became a critical darling thanks in large part to its creative twists on the rogue-lite formula and never-ending mysteries. Date Everything took the visual novel and dating sim genres to absurd new heights, asking fever-dream-tier questions like, “What if a dust bunny was a literal girl in a Playboy Bunny suit and you could ask her for a smooch?” And all the while, this bumper crop of new IPs stood in stark contrast to the big budget franchise space, be it Monster Hunter: Wilds being so poorly optimized that even high-end rigs struggled to run it well, Civilization VII introducing questionable new mechanisms that left many players scratching their heads, or Pokemon Legends: Z-A seeing fans lamenting its derivative design and blasé visuals as needless cost-cutting and time-saving measures for one of the biggest multimedia properties on the planet.

Here’s the kicker: I played none of those games! Some of them certainly made it onto my wishlist, and I watched other people play a few, but as a fully independent games journo with far too many other hobbies demanding my attention (and money), my 2025 was defined by the smaller, more niche titles, even in the indie space. Plus, things have been so busy as of late that several releases from later in the year fell by the wayside, despite being in my library. Looking at my backlog, there are at least ten games that released this year that I wasn’t able to get to, which … uh … coincidentally is also the number of new releases I actually did play. All that is to say, this is going to be a much smaller-scale awards ceremony compared to the last time I did this — and I can’t believe I’m saying this — eight years ago. Also, small twist from the 2017 Olives: since the pool of games to choose from this year was a lot more limited, I’ve restricted myself to maximums of one winner per category and one award per game, mostly in the name of keeping this more interesting for me to write and for you to read. With all that faff out of the way, though, let’s get into it!