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.
Donkey Kong is such an outlier as GOTY. They frequently need a nintendo game there to please the basement dwellers but still, Hades, HKSs and mainly ClairObscure are so far above DK it’s almost insulting seeing them together in the same category.
I feel like Nintendo gets a consolation slot with whatever the best game was in their closed ecosystem, but it’s not going to be competitive with the other candidates.
I also think they’ll give GOTY to an indie given what an unbelievable year it was for indie titles. Probably COE33, just based on the quality and production value they accomplished with a relatively small team and budget. But Silksong and Hades are also outstanding.