We approach the end of 2025, and the year has seen another ridiculous haul of great games. The Game Awards 2025 showcase will announce one winner from six glorious nominees, but we simply can’t overlook the four games that easily could’ve been included in the pool.
Awards and ceremonies are all subjective at the end of the day. Just like a review, the verdict is reached by either one person or a select panel of people. The Game Awards 2025 will congratulate its own GOTY winner, but you might have had your own favorite. Games like Hades 2 and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 deserve their place on the nominee list.
In our opinion, some mentions go beyond the tag of being ‘honorable,’ and we’ve identified four prime candidates.
Best The Game Awards 2025 GOTY Nominees Not Included
Blue Prince
The roguelike and roguelite genres have been on fire the last few years. Games like Hades and Balatro have not only been nominated for awards, but they’ve won many of them. It feels like a bizarre oversight to have not included Blue Prince. It was the highest-rated game of the year for a while, and won over critics and fans with its unique hunt for the 46th room in an inherited house. The trick is that the house’s floors and plans reset every night.
You only have so many steps and resources to move around, and if you don’t do it in time, you start from scratch. But you uncover new items, the game opens up, more locations and secrets are discovered, and it’s a masterful roguelike. According to Metacritic, it’s the third-best new game in 2025 (discounting the Switch 2 Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom ports) with a collective score of 92/100, so why wasn’t it included?
Dispatch
A ‘Superhero workplace comedy’ sounds like a strange concept without context. It’s all the more impressive that AdHoc Studio’s new IP not only works, but Dispatch crashed onto all screens with a triumphant superhero landing. The episodic title features an all-star cast of video game voice-over royalty, streamers, and even renowned stars, including Aaron Paul and Jeffrey Wright.
The intertwining narrative changes across all eight episodes. Your decision-making skills impact the story beats—similar to the Telltale Games formula—and there are also mini-games and other QTEs to break up the conversation and plot development. It’s also fun seeing the fun and different side of superheroes, with The Boys and Watchmen springing to mind. The late addition to 2025 has been instantly revered, but did it come too late for The Game Awards 2025?
Split Fiction
Josef Fares masterminded another co-op-only classic with Split Fiction. It carries on the immaculate work of It Takes Two by placing you and a friend into the shoes of Zoe and Mio. You experience a series of mini-games and creative gameplay mechanics at breakneck speed, giving you more variety than a family-sized picnic fruit basket.
It’s meticulously crafted, it looks gorgeous, and highlights the unbelievable work that Hazelight Studios continues to produce with each new game. It Takes Two won The Game Awards GOTY category in 2021, but Split Fiction—despite being the fourth-highest-rated game of 2025, according to Metacritic, with a score of 91 based on 100 critic reviews—doesn’t even get into the final 6 games. Go figure.
Ball X Pit
It’s only fitting to finish off with a roguelite. The irresistible gameplay loop of ‘rogue’ games is none more evident than in Ball X Pit. Its curious name might confuse you, but there’s nothing ambiguous about its gameplay. Block-breaking games aren’t new, but not many try to build a full game around the concept, and to such an overt degree.
Each Ball X Pit game lasts 5-15 minutes. You move along the stage in semi-on-rails fashion, and you earn XP and power-ups as you play. Pickups give you choices, which determine your build for each run, and it leads to this great chase for OP playthroughs where you destroy enemies, crush bosses, and earn lots of resources toward your next effort. It’s been labeled as the ‘Balatro of 2025,’ and this would be doing a disservice to Ball X Pit in some ways—it’s that good!
The Game Awards 2025 is sure to be another interesting ceremony with opinions, shocks, and much post-show discussion. Do you agree with any of our GOTY nominees who missed out? Did any not make it who you think deserved a spot? Let us know through the Insider Gaming Discord Server.
You should also check out the shocking revelation that No Xbox Exclusive Has Been Nominated For GOTY Since 2010.
