2025 Game of the Year Awards — Achievement Awards

New games are what help drive the industry forward. These are daring and brave developers who think they have the next best idea that everyone will love. Sometimes it really does work and most of the time it just does not. Not all new games become multi-million dollar blockbuster franchises, but can also spark intrigue into a niche crowd or interest and become successful that way.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

Clair Obscur pretty much came out of nowhere. We got a lot of awesome new games this year and it was hard to choose just one, but sparking new interest into an already growing stale genre from a French studio is something I didn’t expect. Yes, it had the large budget to allow something like this, but large budgets for JRPGs are usually reserved for tried and true franchises and even those are shrinking every year. Clair Obscur may be snuggling safe into a huge genre, but it has some new ideas and takes on the genre that really helps lift it above all others. Games like this only come once a decade.