After all, why not? Why shouldn’t I create my own end-of-year award ceremony? LIke Bilbo Baggins turning over the ring in his hands, I, too, had an egotistical revelation wash over me earlier this week. Surely, it wouldn’t be too much trouble to collate my thoughts into little award-shaped blurbs at the end of each year, and offer accolades of questionable relevance to the hard-working developers and publishers that have kept my brain and fingers busy over the past twelve months?
With that, and a probably-too-short amount of time thinking of a name, the Postmode GOTYs were born. I do have some experience in this field — I have served on the voting jury for The Game Awards and the Golden Joystick Awards several times throughout my career. Which ones, you ask? The ones where your favourite games won, of course! And, as of this year, I will be voting on the BAFTA Games Awards too, so that’s the three big dogs covered.
With my critical wrap sheet out of the way and such palpable electric tension in the air — my god, what will this guy I don’t know pick? — Let’s crown our winners, shall we? Just keep in mind that we’re going to play pretty fast and loose with the categories here, so expect the classics alongside some Postmode originals. Alright. Here goes…
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The Postmode GOTY | Game of the Year
Death Stranding 2: On The Beach
“Just to make it more romantic…”
A Sisyphean depression quest that masterfully paces its own monotony, Death Stranding 2: On The Beach is a game that could have easily been a novel, but you can’t help but respect how it wields MMO-lite interactivity to elevate its shared storytelling and deliver an experience that feels entirely new. Like its predecessor, Kojima Productions’ latest blurs highbrow and lowbrow reference points, rendering something so esoteric and self-aware that it is difficult to comprehend without reading between the lines, like scrolling through the algorithm of a total stranger. Lift the carpet and lose yourself to its contradictory Australian landscape, though, and you’ll find a deeply profound riposte to our overconnected, brain-rot-addled internet age.
The Indie GOTY | Indie Game of the Year
Blue Prince
I almost didn’t spend 135 hours in the ever-shifting confines of the Mt. Holly Estate this year. Despite being revealed in the Future Games Show (a digital showcase series that I write), it wasn’t until I caught some journalists murmuring about Blue Prince on social media that I asked for a code. From there, I ended up in a Press Discord where we spent weeks trying to figure out the game’s most profound mysteries, sharing clues but keeping solutions to ourselves in an ode to the game’s nature.
In my review, I called Blue Prince ‘Riven for the indie roguelike generation,‘ and I think that just about sums it up. It’s a puzzle game with the atmosphere and meticulous detail of a Cyan Worlds classic, elevated by a roguelike structure that ensures each day you spend in the grounds is different and has the potential to deliver revelatory, retentive nuggets of archaeology storytelling. Some bristled at the brutal nature of its recurvate loop, but I can’t imagine Blue Prince without this sense of difficulty, the type that forces you to open notebooks and tire your brain.
The MultiGOTY | Multiplayer Game of the Year
PEAK
Co-operative multiplayer games live and die by their ability to force you to communicate. Left 4 Dead 2, Payday 2, DOTA 2, GTA Online… the connective tissue between these hall-of-famers is the yapping. The chaotic babbling, the raucous laughter, the arguments. It’s all memory-making. PEAK is impressive in how it condenses this valhallic experience into something that everybody can play, finessing it with proximity chat, a meaningful item pool, and slapstick-friendly climbing mechanics. Like Among Us years earlier, PEAK served as an excellent excuse to catch up with friends and family in 2025. Epidemic loneliness and internet-induced isolation have helped negotiate the arrival of these ‘third spaces’ for social endeavour, and I’m glad that thoughtful developers are continuing to make them, and with such imagination!
The OnGOTY | Ongoing Game Of The Year
skate.
I accept that skate. has a lot of faults. The mobileification of the game ensures it is messily divorced from the eternally cool culture it should be attached to. Despite big modern names like Dime and Adidas arriving, it also feels like Full Circle is struggling to embed the game with any relatable grit, contemporary streetwear silhouettes, or cultural ambassadors as time goes on (why peg your seasons around the 80s and 90s???). It’s as if they don’t know what to do with the golden goose they’ve been raising.
Regardless, I haven’t stopped playing skate. since launch, and that’s because the developers have refined the Flick-It System into a position of immense, undeniable power. Put simply, skate. is the best skateboarding game ever made… from a purely mechanical perspective, and I don’t hate the addition of parkour mechanics to help the rest of it congeal. I cannot stop playing skate. to chill out, and even though I’ve maxed out my Neighborhoods and Rip Score, I keep coming back for more.
If Full Circle can keep slinging content down the pipe and hire some stylists and creative consultants, I genuinely think skate. can beat the ‘dead game’ allegations. The game’s biggest problem is that it’s lame — surely it’s just a case of involving the community, and getting some famous faces and brands onside who actually care about the product? We’ll see how it goes, but I’ll be there each week for the time being.
The MechaniGOTY | Mechanic of the Year
Donkey Kong Bananza
Despite preordering a Nintendo Switch 2, I really didn’t take to it until Donkey Kong Bananza landed in July. The gimmicky mechanics of the Welcome Tour kept me interested for a spell, but it wasn’t until I started smashing through voxels that the real potential of this console came into focus. Bananza’s destructible environments feel, sadly, like something that only Nintendo EPD or an erstwhile indie developer would attempt these days — a spin-slapping riposte to the AAApathy we’re seeing elsewhere in blockbuster video games. If another big publisher were to wield this kind of technology, it feels as if they would focus on the fleeting sense of scale it can provide, rather than its ability to pique the imagination of level designers to conjure thinky puzzles and hamburger hideouts. Bananza’s driving mechanic is well-explored throughout the game’s runtime and consistently allows for Tears of the Kingdom-esque experimentation to overcome obstacles in a way that feels personal.
The Sleeper GOTY | Sleeper Game of the Year
Stray Children
It’s overly challenging in spots, sure, but I think Stray Children delivered the most impressive narrative and art direction in video games this year. Like Terrible Toybox with Return to Monkey Island, Onion Games looks through a metatextual lens to inspect its own legacy across a different format — the satirical RPG. I came to this genre the wrong way round, with Undertale leading me to Earthbound and Mother 3. Still, even without playing Moon: Remix RPG Adventure (the spiritual predecessor to Stray Children), I adored this game’s world and connected deeply with its message about retaining one’s humanity through creative scars, the clown-car crush of capitalism, and the unexpected, constantly shocking turmoil of adulthood.
The Future GOTY | Future Game of the Year
ENA: Dream BBQ
It’s easy to forget about games that launch in the first third of the year when it comes to awards season, but Chapter 1 of ENA: Dream BBQ has been on my mind since I played it in March. A new-school adventure game based on an avant-garde animated series that was born on the internet, there is simply no other game like it this year, and it’s free-to-play, so you’d be a fool to miss it. A surreal odyssey full of mixed-media mascots and non-Euclidean environments that draws you into a hilarious, charming story, the internet already knows this is a cast-iron hit. Still, I feel like it’s criminally overlooked in this year’s discourse, despite how much it features the eye-popping work of an ensemble of groundbreaking young artists. Future chapters will have a greater impact and even deeper secrets, I’m sure, but when Dream BBQ finally reaches an end-to-end state, you’re going to wish you were on the bandwagon now rather than later.
The SGOTY | Sonic Game of the Year
Deltarune Chapters 3 + 4
Editor’s note: This award is about sound, but wouldn’t it be funny if a Sonic game won it one year?
Whenever I play a chapter of Deltarune, I never want it to end, and this year’s treks to the TV World and the Dark Sanctuary somehow kept raising the bar within a series that has already hit some legendary highs. It’s common knowledge that Toby Fox likes to brandish a leitmotif like an emotional haymaker, and it seems he knows it based on the sly, tearjerking remixes of songs like Don’t Forget that have cropped up across the last two chapters. Not just tracks, though — it’s also the team’s use of sound effects throughout that continue to dazzle. The bitcrushed ‘IT’S TV TIME!’ and ‘YOU’RE TAKING TOO LONG’, stick in the craw, of course, but it goes all the way down to reverberations in darkness and splodgy floor muck. Wizardry and a clever ear for audio gags ensure Deltarune blends its heart-rending subject matter with constant laughs, and I can’t wait to see where we’re going next.
The Postmode ROTY | Remake of the Year
DRAGON QUEST I & II HD-2D Remake
I was born in the same year as Chrono Trigger, so by the time I was able to appreciate an RPG, they were all 3D anyway. This means I have many blind spots when I read a list of ‘the greatest games of all time’. Thankfully, Square Enix has helped enormously in this regard by remaking the first few Dragon Quest games in glorious HD-2D, fleshing out their stories while retaining the gorgeous crunch of the initial renders. I own plenty of Dragon Quest merchandise (I’m afraid the silver slimes are too cute), to be a poser who hasn’t played one. It’s safe to say I get it now.
Dragon Quest is the most reliable and comforting of all RPG Franchises. Not much changes between entries, but each game thrives due to an eternally-humorous soul, and the adorable creature designs and high-stakes stories keep you engaged throughout. Having tried and failed to engage with the Dragon Quest 1 iOS port, I can say this remake is a night-and-day quality-of-life shift that will keep these critical historical texts alive for new generations to enjoy. Isn’t that the point of a remake, after all?
The Olden GOTY | Game Of The Yesteryear
Lost Judgment
Lost Judgment is more than four years old, but it looks like it came out yesterday. A modern-day Like A Dragon dripping with gloomy intrigue and a series-best combat system — what’s not to love? I adored Infinite Wealth’s hybrid turn-based system, but I challenge you to show me a game with better brawling than this. There are few things as satisfying as using the Aikido-inspired Snake fighting style to counter bullies and gracefully neutralise troves of gangsters. It’s by no means the best story Ryu Ga Gotoku has ever produced. Still, Lost Judgment offers a selection box of brilliant side activities and a dazzling recreation of Yokohama that I don’t mind exploring for hours on end. With Gang of Dragon and Stranger Than Heaven on the horizon, Lost Judgment feels like the best game to play in anticipation — hopefully they both learn lessons from what feels like Takayuki Yagami’s last dance.
The ‘We’re So Back’ Award
Silent Hill f
I can’t believe it either, but Silent Hill is actually back. Bloober Team did a fine job handling the Silent Hill 2 Remake — and I wish them the best with the first game, where there’s a lot more room to innovate — but I wasn’t going to feel happy about the franchise revival until KONAMI published something that could stand alongside the initial Team Silent quartet. Neobards came out of nowhere to deliver a stellar Silent Hill, one that understands what made the old games so legendary. Silent Hill f widens the series’ thematic lens, tackles thorny subject matter tastefully, and provides memorable, atmospheric frights in an entirely new setting. Yes, the combat system is a bit too ambitious for its own good, but the story, penned by Higurashi legend Ryukishi07, is unforgettable — a sinister rumination on womanhood framed by beauty and decay.
The Postmode COTY | Collaboration of the Year
Fortnite x The Simpsons
Despite reviewing the game when it was called Fortnite: Save The World, I never got into Fortnite as a Battle Royale game. PUBG caught me first, and by the time I pivoted towards Epic Games’ cartoon effort, everyone was too good at building, and I couldn’t cut the mustard. Now, with Zero Build and the lure of an IP that speaks to my weary, nostalgia-vulnerable heart, I am a Fortnite person, and it’s all thanks to Homer Simpson et al. This year’s mini-season flipped the map into a cel-shaded recreation of Springfield, complete with treehouses, alien invasions, and a whole slate of secret quests based around old Groening gags. One of my favourites involved racing to Burns Manor at the start of each game to ‘Release The Hounds’ from his desk and catch competitors off guard. The quick cadence of new content made it easy to log in and follow the evolving story, which did well to connect two disparate worlds, both inside and outside of the game. It’s a rare collaboration where it felt like both stakeholders actually cared about the other’s source material, and now that we’re in the meandering and lacklustre Chapter 7, I miss Springfield sorely.
The Postmode HOTY | Hardware of the Year
Backbone One | DEATH STRANDING 2 Limited Edition
I’m a sucker for transparent technology — but a see-through gadget with functionality and a thoughtful connection to my game of the year? The Death Stranding 2-themed Backbone One was a stylish must-have that delivered on substance, too. It’s small enough to slip into a pocket and features cute Drawbridge decals, but it’s also carried me through countless rounds of Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 Zombies, most of Hollow Knight: Silksong, plenty of skate. challenges and an entire chapter of Deltarune.
I have a Steam Deck, but when I’m on the move, I don’t want to reach for something so bulky in public. The thumbsticks on the Backbone could be a bit better, sure, but I accept that compromise in the name of convenience. And, it doesn’t track at all if you’re playing turn-based games. As Geforce Now, Amazon Luna, PS Remote Play, and Xbox Cloud Gaming become more stable and compelling, having a Backbone in your back pocket becomes easier to justify. Here’s hoping Sony follows suit with a cloud gaming app, though, as that would really level the playing field.
