PC Gamer's Game of the Year Awards 2025

Welcome to PC Gamer's annual Game of the Year awards. Below you'll find our picks for the best PC games released these last 12 months, along with our overall Game of the Year for 2025.

Rather than try to shoehorn our favourite games into a handful of fixed categories, we ask each member of the team to nominate up to six games released this year. Then we tally up the votes, hop into a big, global call, and argue over which games are worthy of an award—as well as picking our Game of the Year itself. Once the games are chosen, we assign award categories based on what quality we think that game specifically excels at. That's why there's a different selection of categories each year.

And what a year it's been—full of surprises, some disappointments, and a handful of games that dominated the conversation throughout. Let us know in the comments which games you've loved the most this year.

Best Adventure Game

Best Adventure Game 2025 – Old Skies

Fraser Brown, Online Editor: Old Skies is a classic adventure game. It's not filled with branching paths, social puzzles or characters who remember that you once killed their mum. Those things are great, sure, or at least they can be, but Old Skies is a reminder that there's a very good reason this genre used to be the reason to get a PC back in the '80s and early '90s. Evocative settings, charming characters, clever storytelling twists and striking art—sometimes that's more than enough.

Time travel narratives are notoriously tough to wrangle, but developer Wadjet Eyes does so with a level of skill that is exceedingly rare, putting it up there with classics like Primer, 12 Monkeys and Timecrimes. But it also has something these movies don't: characters you'll actually like, who may very well make you cry (like I did). What begins as a compelling adventure about protecting the timeline slowly unfurls into a deeply personal story about love, loss and isolation.

And if you're even more jaded than me (impossible, surely), then you'll at least enjoy it as a fun sci-fi romp, letting you explore the past and future, viewing it through the eyes of sensitively written, lively characters with a personal connection to each era. The puzzles are great too! They're accessible and playful rather than brutal headscratchers, but they're absolutely engaging enough to keep you dangling on their hooks.

Robin Valentine, Senior Editor: The thing I love about Old Skies' storytelling is that it establishes these very defined rules for its time travel, and then it just lives in the consequences of them.

You start to notice all these really bleak and nihilistic implications of what's happening, and at first you think those must be oversights in a light-hearted time travel story, but no. The game is very happy to let you stew in those implications, growing ever more disturbed by the reality of a world where the wealthy can change the past on a whim.

And then, once you fully understand the quiet horror of what's going on, it hits you with some of the most powerful emotional sucker-punches I've ever seen in an adventure game.

All this in a game that also pulls off a series of silly gags about salad delivery drones. Amazing.

Best Immersive Sim

Best Immersive Sim 2025 – Skin Deep

Evan Lahti, Strategic Director: A singular game from a boutique studio, Skin Deep is slapstick Die Hard in space. As deep-freeze insurance commando Nina Pasadena, you're deployed into laundry ships and other lowly starfaring barges that've been overtaken by space pirates, sent to rescue their feline crew. You try to prowl these ships stealthfully, without being spotted by guards or cameras, improvising with canisters of pepper, stolen walkie-talkies, or actual banana peels.

Beneath that goofiness is a very well-designed first-person game. Skin Deep's fluid movement is a joy—lunging into and out of air ducts is so smooth, you feel like your whole body is lubricated in 2" of vaseline. The whole experience is built within the most artisanal of game engines, idTech 4, which was used for Doom 3 and gives Skin Deep a neo-retro look and feel that no other game replicates.

Wes Fenlon, Senior Editor: You know a game is special when it simulates both chambering a single round in a machine gun and guards dying by slipping on bars of soap. Why did immersive sims spend 30 years taking themselves seriously (while accidentally producing moments of comedy gold) when they could've gone full Austin Powers at any time?

Play it even if you don't think you like stealth games: the comedy is a perfect gateway drug for appreciating the deep interactions between every single object aboard these calamitous space sandboxes.

Jake Tucker, PC Gaming Show Editorial Director: Skin Deep is a game that takes deeply silly things incredibly seriously. At first glance it's all cats and floating headed-guards, but this is a hard as nails immersive sim that maintains a rigid consistency to its own ridiculous internal logic. It's my favourite game of the year by far. I now live in fear of shards of glass, clouds of pepper and whatever those swordfish drones are modelled on.

Morgan Park, Staff Writer: One time, I threw a homing grenade at a guard. He was so pissed that he started blasting bullets all over the room, which immediately broke a window, sucked the guard out into space, and almost took me with him. My savior was a random key, which bumped the window seal button in all the gravitational madness, restoring gravity and leaving just me left in the room. I celebrated, then immediately cut my foot on glass. Skin Deep is excellent.

Best Horror

Best Horror 2025 – Labyrinth of the Demon King

Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: Labyrinth of the Demon King is a singular, uncompromising horror game and one of my favorite releases of 2025. You're told you are a low-ranking ashigaru foot soldier, set on the trail of the titular demon who slew your lord, but there's something off about this cover story.

The thing that secured this game's place in my heart is the atmosphere: This desolate Japanese castle sent to the Silent Hill rust dimension, with striking music and hellish sound design from musician Remu Daifuku that ensure you're only ever at ease in the tea shop safe haven (complete with soothing save room music).

My time with Demon King was full of moments of profound, unsettling discovery, like crawling down a narrow cave to emerge in a hidden chapel that feels like it's at the center of the earth, the base of a Kanji-covered pillar commemorating a human sacrifice rising into the cavernous ceiling to support the castle above.

Demon King has excellent first person combat with an unforgiving stamina system⁠—its pace is languid, with you anxiously struggling against your character's slow movement and swings, but it's possible to reach a state of flow and mastery not unlike the tank control Resident Evil games.

But you're never fully safe or in control: The crushing atmosphere, limited resources, and omnipresent threat of an unkillable yokai you accidentally released by blaspheming against the Buddha (it makes sense in context) ensure that Demon King is tense from start to finish. And similar to films like Oldboy, no amount of combat mastery will let you shake the queasy feeling that this story can't possibly have a happy ending.

Shaun Prescott, Australian editor: Labyrinth of the Demon King borrows a lot from FromSoftware's '90s console RPGs, but unlike most other indies exploring similar nostalgic ground, J.R. Hudepohl infuses his work with a sense of paralysing, insensate dread I haven't experienced in a game since P.T. or Murder House. The contemporary indie horror scene is an embarrassment of quick and nasty riches, but Labyrinth feels remarkable even against the bigger budget horrors of 2025.

Best Cozy Game

Best Cozy Game 2025 – Promise Mascot Agency

Lauren Morton, Lead SEO Editor: That the best cozy game this year is about driving around a beat-up old truck collecting adorable friends and making boatloads of money to reinvest into a languishing town will surprise no one. That it's also an absurdist open world adventure about an exiled Yakuza tough with a giant talking severed finger for a sidekick? That part's surprising.

I've got to stress that this isn't tongue-in-cheek disrespect to the cozy games trend. Promise Mascot Agency is a narrative-led small town drama about redemption for a lovable group of misfits—textbook cozy game stuff. It's also about helping your sobbing giant-block-of-tofu mascot navigate high stakes hurdles like slightly askew walkways so they can delight the customers of a reopened shopping center.

Of course I finally get PC Gamer to award a Best Cozy Game and it's also the next best thing to a new Yakuza series game; this is about as on brand for me personally as it gets.

Well done to the developers who upended the way we thought of detective stories with Paradise Killer, taking our award for Best Adventure Game in 2020, for coming back five years later with the most unexpected cozy game concept.

Wes Fenlon, Senior Editor: Credit to reviewer Maddi Chilton for looking beyond PMA's charming absurdity in some of the sharpest writing we published in 2025:

"What's tremendous about Promise Mascot Agency is that the excessiveness of its concept only serves to anchor it deeper in our own material reality … At the beginning you're presented with a thousand layered systems you can't imagine you'll ever be able to afford, chipping away at a fraction of a fraction of money owed, and then all of a sudden you have more money than you know what to do with, and all that money can do is make you more money. I will go to the train station and buy 100 onigiri from the nicest man I have ever met without blinking an eye. I will empty every vending machine in the game. I will put so many stickers on my car. I can and will become god-king of Kaso-Machi through extreme financial benevolence. And yet… those spiraling millions of yen barely make a dent in the debt."

Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor: It's rare I can be bothered getting all the achievements in a game, but I 100%ed Promise Mascot Agency. An upgradeable kei truck turns out to be the perfect way to experience an open world full of sidequests and collectibles and hidden mysteries, transforming what might normally feel like filler into a pleasant way to spend an evening.

You can throw that shitbox down the steepest incline and it'll keep going when it lands, you can haul it across uneven fields at top speed, you can even abandon the land and drive through the water. "Japanese engineering sure is amazing," I'd say as I performed the most impossible videogame physics nonsense you can imagine just so I could get to the other side of a mountain where a secret door was hidden.

Mollie Taylor, Features Producer: It is perhaps for everybody's benefit that this game flew under my radar until recently, because I have since become an insufferable cheerleader of Kaso-Machi and its unsettling-yet-endearing cast of freaks.

It's some of the best 25 hours I've spent in a videogame in a hot sec—helping a severed finger overthrow the old guard in her mayoral campaign, rescuing a crying tofu block from humiliation after tripping over an uneven pavement, all while operating out of a run-down love hotel as an exiled yakuza.

The absurdity of it all played with a delightfully straight face, like witnessing a slapstick comedy being acted out like a Shakespearean tragedy. Kaso-Machi may be a dead town, but Promise Mascot Agency is full of life.

Phil Savage, Global Editor-in-Chief: I was on board from the moment I realised that Takaya Kuroda—who plays Kiryu in the Yakuza series—voiced Promise Mascot Agency's main character. It's a fitting choice. The way Promise balances gritty crime drama, social commentary and absurdist characters echoes the Yakuza series at its best.

Best Roguelike

Best Roguelike 2025 – Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor

Fraser Brown, Online Editor: Not being a fan of Deep Rock Galactic, I was suspicious when senior editor Robin Valentine started espousing the merits of Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor. But he was spot-on in his 90% review. This is a helluva game.

It's tighter and trickier than big daddy Vampire Survivors, not just letting you snowball into a demi-god in 15 minutes. Instead, the missions, gear loadouts and weapon masteries give its progression a long tail, slowly letting you take on increasingly deadly challenges.

But what it does mimic is that incredible moreish quality. It's totally ruined my sleep, ever since I installed it on my Steam Deck. I simply cannot go to bed before 3 am now, because I am far, far too busy levelling up flame turrets and trying to find the perfect combination of class, gear and weapons to finally eradicate every bug in the universe.

Robin Valentine, Senior Editor: I love how much more tactical it feels than its many genre-mates. So often in these games it's about working your way to an unstoppable build, and then just sitting back and watching it run. That has its own fun and satisfaction, don't get me wrong, but Survivor's approach keeps me far more engaged, chasing the weapons and buffs I need but also looking for ways to take advantage of my environment and misdirect my enemies. It feels like a really mature step forward for the genre.

Evan Lahti, Strategic Director: The destructible terrain is genre-changing—borrowing this mechanic from the base Deep Rock Galactic Game was genius. Each biome has different stuff that shapes your decision-making, like thorned vines, crystal clusters that drop down giant bug-crushing stalactites from above, or blobby trampolines that can launch you out of danger. You spend the terrain like a resource, picking the right moment to dig a path, but knowing that when you cut into that rock, you're also creating new paths for the swarms of bugs to follow. This is what the survivors genre needed to be more than a mindless "number go up" experience.

Best Comedy

Best Comedy 2025 – Baby Steps

Wes Fenlon, Senior Editor: Baby Steps is a masterpiece in the art of the troll. Like a perfect dril tweet, it's hilarious and stupid while also insightfully skewering a certain Type of Guy—the type who might scream 'im not owned!' as they slide down the side of a mountain in a soiled onesie.

Like designer Bennett Foddy's QWOP and Getting Over It, Baby Steps is intensely interested in the simplest physical acts that most games take for granted. It's just walking, but every footstep you take as 35-year-old basement-dwelling loser Nate is fraught with slapstick peril. Raise one leg a little too quickly and Nate will topple over with a moan. Lean forward a tad too far and he'll faceplant in the muck. A shallow stream in Baby Steps is scarier than any monster in Labyrinth of the Demon King.

The game frequently confronts you with the idea that it doesn't have to be this hard—that life doesn't have to be this hard—as Nate refuses every offer of help, and as the open world taunts you with shiny baubles and meaningless challenges. A couple hours in I'd grown cocky enough to see something glimmering in a tree beside a steep drop, and think 'yeah, I can climb that.'

That hubris cost me half an hour, but the frustration sparked a level of introspection few games inspire. In what ways am I like Nate? What value do I place on relentless progress? Why do so many of the characters Nate meets have big floppy donkey dicks? All things to ponder as I eat shit off a precipice because I decided it was important to kick over a stack of rusty cans.

Kara Phillips, Evergreen Writer: I spent a lot of time playing QWOP when I was in school, and Baby Steps was just a reminder that I still don't have any sort of coordination when it comes to something as simple as walking. With that said, once you eventually get into the swing of things and find your rhythm, all the frustration pays off. Until you slide to the bottom of the mountain for the millionth time, that is. Then, not so much.

Christopher Livingston, Senior Editor: The Baby Steps devs (fun fact, their studio doesn't actually have a name) did something I hope more games will do in the future: improvised dialogue recorded with the performers together. When Nate talks to Jim or Mike or any of the half-naked donkey men, their conversations are messy, with lots of crosstalk and stammering and stumbling over words.

The result isn't just funny, it feels so much more natural, like genuinely awkward conversations you might have with strangers in real life. In most games dialogue is recorded by one actor at a time without their co-performers to bounce off of or react to, but the improvised dialogue in Baby Steps feels way more dynamic, and way more funny.

Shaun Prescott, Australian Editor: I love the improvised cutscenes too, but I also love that Baby Steps is a funny game that doesn't lean too heavily on its writing. It's funny in ways that other mediums cannot be. The feel of it in your hands is funny.

Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor: The only part of Baby Steps that isn't funny is the sandpit, where I spent way too long because I knocked down a plastic shovel I could use as a bridge and didn't realize it would go back to its starting position if I just went to the menu and back. That whole area, and the ant's nest maze inside the castle, can go and do one.

Best FPS

Best FPS 2025 – Battlefield 6

Jake Tucker, PC Gaming Show Editorial Director: Multiplayer shooters have felt static for a really long time. Battlefield 6 doesn't blow everything up and start again like we saw with 2007's Modern Warfare, but it's a thoughtful reinvention of a lot of tropes. The playerbase are up in arms over perceived slights, but Battlefield 6 is an exceptional shooter.

There’s a physicality at the heart of Battlefield 6. Things like rolling as you hit the ground to negate fall damage or hauling your squadmate into cover to revive make your character feel a little more real and lived in. Elsewhere, new and exciting gadgets like the acoustic mine or the er, ladder, come together to create a fun sandbox to shoot people in.

Morgan Park, Staff Writer: Battlefield came back in 2025, and wouldn't you believe it, DICE actually pulled off the comeback. The military FPS's greatest achievement is making a regular Battlefield one of the most exciting games of the year. It really feels like the FPS scene is exiting an era where small-scale, team-based shooters were all anyone wanted to play, and entering a new one that welcomes the casual shooter back into the fold.

It's remarkable that Battlefield 6 has no ranked mode and barely a whiff of a meta. I love that some of its bigger features include a server browser (which isn't a true browser and definitely needs improvements) and an elaborate map maker that allows for custom UI and AI scripting.

At a time when I'm looking for something lowkey to play after work—something that's actually fun to play alone and as fun to lose as to win—Battlefield 6 has become my go-to. It is inherently unserious, explosive fun that's difficult to find outside Call of Duty. It's also better.

Speaking of the big bad, Battlefield 6 also succeeds because of what it's taken from its main competition. This is the best that Battlefield guns have ever felt, and I commend DICE for upping its sound and animation game while maintaining an important aspect of Battlefield gunplay that sets it apart from CoD: Dispersion. Tap-firing is a must, a fact that singlehandedly makes long-range engagements more interesting.

Its issues are apparent—too many small maps, lackluster server browser, expensive skins—but the nice thing about more studios making non-free-to-play shooters again is that Battlefield 6 already feels complete.

Elie Gould, News Writer: I'm not sure Battlefield 6 has clicked for me yet, but I do enjoy turning my brain off, jumping into a tank and hitting players with a high-explosive round point-blank in the chest. The chaos of fighting two tanks and a gaggle of engineers is what keeps me coming back.

Rory Norris, Guides Writer: I think Morgan's bang on the money when noting that Battlefield 6 is as fun to lose as it is to win. Its sandbox is as chaotic and comprehensive as ever (though I would like boats to return), and it means you're always guaranteed to have a blast.

One of Battlefield 6's biggest highlights for me has been the addition of the Escalation mode, which is effectively Conquest with all the dials turned up. It's got the perfect match flow, starting as your usual Conquest experience, and quickly ramping up with more tanks and air support cramped into a smaller space. I love it. I couldn't imagine a Battlefield game without it now.

Best Characters

Best Characters 2025 – Dispatch

Harvey Randall, Staff Writer: If I sit down and think about it—and I mean, really think—then I don't think Dispatch has very good worldbuilding. It's a vague hodgepodge of comic book superhero nonsense, and the frankly dystopian fact that saving human lives is something you need a subscription for? Barely comes up. Not even relevant to the story, really.

Which is a funny way to start off praise for a game's writing, but I think it's all the more telling that Dispatch stands on its own two feet because of its characters. Which leads to the award of… well, look above.

The cast of Dispatch is so thoroughly endearing that I'm not surprised at all AdHoc decided to narrow in a laser-focus. The worldbuilding is cardboard-flimsy because that's not what Dispatch is about, it's about people. The Z-Team, a merry band of screw-ups, keeps the game bumping through its sometimes-repetitive management sim segments with distilled 'friend group on a Discord call at 4 AM' energy.

Personalities like: A cokehead techbro bat, a gay icon with fire powers, and an almost-literal wet sponge of a boy bounce off each other like rubber balls. Also my boy Golem, who can do no wrong.

But Dispatch nails it when it comes to the dramatics, too. Robert Robertson III is sharply-written and gets some absolute all-time dunks in, but he's also a deeply interesting blend of superhero tropes—someone so dedicated to the duties of hero work that his apartment's entirely unfurnished. The man's body is a tableau to self punishment, he sleeps in a plastic chair because he doesn't think he deserves anything better, and I need him carnally (as does everyone else at the SDC and a good 2/3rds of Tumblr, let's be real).

Fraser Brown, Online Editor: In choice-laden games, I tend to take an adversarial approach—I know, who'd have thunk it?—but in Dispatch I simply couldn't. I desperately wanted this gaggle of z-list villains-turned-heroes to like me. Even the Z-Team's douchiest member, who I set on fire in the game's very first episode.

They're all washouts who complain about everything, but I love each of them to bits. Even when they're pranking me in the office, turning the conference room into a battlefield, or leaving work early despite the fact that we have a city to save.

All the jokes and bants might trick you into thinking you're dealing with the MCU superhero model established in the first Avengers movie, but these are not your quippy, two dimensional do-gooders, and their interpersonal conflicts are so much more appealing than Cap and Iron Man's alpha dog bickering.

Dispatch's writers and artists fire on all cylinders, but it's the talented voice crew who brings them all to life, and everyone simply kills it. When I realised a bunch of the cast were streamers, I expected a disaster, honestly. I was very, very wrong. I'm never going to be the kind of person who watches the latest reaction video from a man in his 30s calling himself 'MoistCr1TiKaL', but I will happily watch him play a venture capitalist who is also a bat.

Rory Norris, Guides Writer: Dispatch's most surprising feature is actually its gameplay. You don't awkwardly walk around at all in Dispatch; no interacting with random junk between story moments here. Instead, most of the gameplay sequences are a dispatching minigame that's so much fun that it could be a standalone game. Seriously.

What I love most about it, though, is that your team—the Z Team—are ultimately reformed villains doing community service. They're not quite heroes yet, and they're almost always at each other's throats.

Sometimes you'll send someone to a call and they'll simply run off; sometimes they sabotage each other and throw away an easy win, injuring their squadmates in the process; sometimes they just won't listen to you at all. Why would they? You're a washed-up superhero on the other end of the phone. The story is wisely reinforced through the gameplay, which frankly most games still struggle to do, not just Telltale-likes.

Best Action

Best Action 2025 – Hollow Knight: Silksong

Harvey Randall, Staff Writer: Silksong is hard, Silksong hates you, Silksong is cruel and capricious, and more than anything, Silksong is so, so worth sticking with.

While I don't think it's inherently good for a game to be punishing, it's been a while since I've played a game that's so completely uninterested in my comfort. Maybe I'm just a bit of a masochist, but as Team Cherry continued to torment me with ill-placed benches and hostile runbacks, I started to respect that viciousness as a part of Silksong's character.

It's also not as scary as it seems. Silksong has a high skill floor, but once you're acclimated, it has some of the most satisfying combat I've played in an action game. Hornet controls deliberately, and mastery over her needlework is more often about finding the right tools for the job than anything else.

If anything, the only crime it commits is taking too long to open up those tools to you—on the other hand, turning Pharloom from an unassailable challenge into your own personal playground is a feeling I've not had since Dark Souls 1. Team Cherry is not afraid to sucker punch you, and that's what makes getting one over on its insectoid nightmare labyrinth all the more fulfilling.

Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: 2D platformers, metroidvanias especially, have been so thoroughly explored and saturated, I find it hard to get excited about new ones. The fact that Team Cherry so thoroughly hooked not just us, but so much of the gaming world, is a testament to its exacting craftsmanship and the time these developers took to hone Silksong into something truly special.

Sean Martin, Senior Guides Writer: I think the ultimate testament to Silksong's best-in-class action platforming can be seen in the sheer number of players that persevered with the game despite its, frankly, vindictive difficulty at times, many of whom were most likely new to the genre considering how many played.

Guiding Silksong, I was obliged to complete its hardest challenges, whether Bilewater's horrific Groal boss run up, the High Halls gauntlet, or the Passing of the Age jumping puzzle, but despite bringing me to rage multiple times, the game felt so good I never put it down. I spent three hours beating Skarrsinger Karmalita and not once did I feel that was the game's fault—its action, movement, and ability systems are so good they almost drive you to lock in and overcome.

Robin Valentine, Senior Editor: Beyond the challenge of it, I just love Silksong's atmosphere and personality. It surprised me how pleased I was just to return to the Hollow Knight setting, meet more of its strange little bugs, and explore more of its dark and mysterious corners. I really think that is truly what good soulslikes and metroidvanias are all about—the process of discovering and mastering an enthralling world.

Shaun Prescott, Australian Editor: I agree with Robin. When the dust settles, I don't think difficulty will be the thing I remember about Silksong. I'll remember it for bringing an unusual—possibly unmatched—level of artistic detail to the sidescrolling platformer.

Few independent studios have the freedom to spend eight years embellishing a world with the level of exquisite detail present here, but everywhere in Pharloom it's evident that Team Cherry wasted none of that time. As much as this game pained me, I can't help but love and admire the very texture of the thing.

Best Co-op

Best Co-op 2025 – Abiotic Factor

Fraser Brown, Online Editor: It looks like a co-op Half-Life survival romp, but Abiotic Factor is really a madcap playground—one where you can make soup out of poo or, like my partner, dedicate yourself to the noble pursuit of stealing every single plant in a Black Mesa-like facility so you can make a verdant, cosy little base for yourself.

My regular Thursday gaming group has bounced between quite a few survival games, but none of them have made us laugh as much as Abiotic Factor, or given us so many entertaining misadventures, whether it's trying to hide from building-sized monsters in another dimension, or just trolling one of our number by filling their sleeping area with skeletons and extremely loud TVs.

Andrea Shearon, Evergreen Writer: Like Fraser, Abiotic Factor has kept my friends and I occupied for months now. I've gone fishing for freakish aquatic life in nuclear waste, been jumpscared by a grunting brain, and contracted an alien virus that made me shit myself to death. There's no eloquent way to describe the journey, but it's co-op all-timer.

Steam says I've put 130 hours into Abiotic Factor, and I still don't feel done with it. Even after completing the story, there's still plenty of side adventures to go on and more updates on the way. I'm eager to keep at it, assuming I ever leave my base again. The game's cable management toys are too satisfying.

Morgan Park, Staff Writer: I was screaming to everybody who would listen about Abiotic Factor when it came out in early access last year. It's only gotten better since hitting 1.0. It's enough that it features the greatest setting and map ever conceived for a survival game, but it's Abiotic Factor's quieter qualities that I cherish most: its base building that requires moving into existing spaces, its dozens of status effects that reward you for taking care of yourself, the way mouths bob up and down when you speak over voice chat. It's an astounding package that's best experienced with friends.

James Bentley, Hardware Writer: Abiotic Factor has been one of the best co-op games for two years in a row now, because even in early access, the game's utter weirdness and creativity shone through clearer than any handcrafted torch or low-res photon can.

That scientific aesthetic isn't just a facade either, because under Abiotic's nostalgic shell sits a mass of wires that you plug together to build bases, take down bosses, and most importantly, mess with your friends. It's a game as deep as it is wide, and one of the only survival crafters I can go back to without wanting to restart.

Phil Savage, Global Editor-in-Chief: What impresses me most about Abiotic Factor is how intuitive its objectives and progression systems are. That might seem like an odd thing to focus on, but I'm too used to survival games that are made with the understanding that you'll have the wiki open on the second screen. Here the objectives may be obscure, sure, but there's always a moment of satisfying discovery—an NPC or door or crafting idea that reveals the next logical step and gives you some proper direction. I always leave our co-op sessions excited about the next task.

That excitement is always rewarded by some cool new discovery—a portal to some weird alien dimension, or a new tool or weapon to help our industrious band of nerds tackle the next big problem. Its Black Mesa-esque environment is the perfect environment for leading you through a perfectly formed linear adventure, even if you're frequently compelled to take a break from the critical path in order to redecorate and rewire your home base.

Best Multiplayer

Best Multiplayer 2025 – Arc Raiders

Morgan Park, Staff Writer: "Best multiplayer" suits Arc Raiders nicely, because it's worth celebrating the ways Embark has broadened the extraction shooter in ways that almost defy the genre label. Yes it has loot lust, yes it has gear fear, but by tweaking the incentives that drive players toward each other and uniting the community against a common threat, Arc Raiders has achieved the improbable: A PvPvE environment where most people are pretty chill.

As I wander around picking apricots and asking strangers for directions to a field depot, Arc Raiders scratches at the edges of an MMO environment—a shared world where everyone's doing their own thing, even if that thing is sometimes shooting innocents on sight.

Evan Lahti, Strategic Director: It's also one of the technical achievements of the year. Four distinct, gorgeous maps that run at a very high framerate. Enemy AI and pathfinding that beats everything else in the genre. Launched with zero major bugs. You load into matches incredibly quickly. Only modest server issues despite a popular launch.

Jake Tucker, PC Gaming Show Editorial Director: Sometimes I spam the Don't Shoot voice line when I find solo Raiders and then shoot them in the back as they run past me, just to feel something.

Sean Martin, Senior Guides Writer: That was you?! Honestly, I enjoy how peaceful Arc Raiders is. I'm so used to playing extraction shooters where I'll get ominously executed by some sweat who was waiting for me in a bush for half an hour, that it's super refreshing to work together to take down a bigger threat, in this case: giant murderbots.

In many ways, Arc rewards you more for forming tentative alliances for mutual profit, than it does for blasting everyone in sight, and that's just one of the many things that distinguish it as a great multiplayer game.

Rory Norris, Guides Writer: I think Arc Raiders' most impressive feat is how it's finally brought the extraction genre into the mainstream—which is ironically what Bungie is trying and so far failing to do with Marathon. As successful as the likes of Escape from Tarkov are, they've never quite caught on until now, and that's in large part because of how intimidating and punishing they can be.

Arc Raiders introduces a handful of mechanics that take a weight off your shoulders, from surprisingly strong free loadouts to a rooster that collects basic materials for you. It's never enough to make combat and losing your items trivial, but you won't ever feel like you're getting punished for failing.

Phil Savage, Global Editor-in-Chief: Rory's correct—Arc Raiders is the extraction shooter that finally helped me understand the appeal of the genre. The joy of trekking across the map towards whatever quest objective you're working on, dodging arcs and tense player encounters; or the desperate panic of transporting a backpack full of good loot to the only safe exit with only minutes to spare. While I often find that the playerbase can be a bit too civil in solos, trios has been a delight. Most encounters are shoot on sight, but the 10% that aren't inevitably lead to fun and memorable stories.

Best Story

Best Story 2025 – Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

Harvey Randall, Staff Writer: Clair Obscur really surprised me—as it did most people. I went in expecting a solid RPG with a humble budget and scope. What I got was a great RPG, and more to the point, one which managed to punch way above its weight class.

That's thanks to some clever choices. For example, Sandfall managed to knit excellent mocap performances with voiceover work, snagging an impressive cast without breaking the studio's bank. Not only was the result seamless, but it also produced some of the most naturalistic dialogue I've seen in a while, which is hard, given you're combining two completely different actor's performances together.

That blend of ambition and genuine skill works its way into every inch of the game. I don't think our accolade of 'great story' is just referring to its script, which is by all means great (buoyed by a killer twist in Act 2) but also its art direction, its setting, its absolutely bonkers 154-song soundtrack.

This game has an unrelentingly vivid imagination that completely drew me in, and the complete enthusiasm that went into making it—not just for the game itself, but for the many JRPGs it unapologetically feasts on—turns it into a stand-out.

It's by no means flawless, but that's only because it takes such enormous swings, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Sean Martin, Senior Guides Writer: Besides a very strong prologue, Expedition 33's first act didn't grab me, but as I progressed it became clear I was witnessing something special. It's one of the few games I've played which has so completely stuck the landing in narrative terms, unveiling its central mystery in a way that feels totally unexpected—a feat most stories struggle to accomplish.

Besides its vivid imagination, as Harvey says, it's also such a tonally unique game; all of its elements working together to conjure the dark and fantastical limbo that its characters find themselves exploring.

Andrea Shearon, Evergreen Writer: I dove into Expedition 33 after director Guillaume Broche cited Final Fantasy 8 as a childhood JRPG influence, and boy oh boy does it ever deliver. SeeD sickos will notice the obvious bits, like the Gunblade's trigger mechanic at the heart of its battle design, but there's pieces of the '90s RPG cleverly woven throughout the world in details big and small.

There's a clear reverence there for the Japanese classics that inspired it, and like my colleagues, I'm smitten by the dialogue and individual character journeys. So many of those moments unfold around the type of heartfelt campfire gatherings Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy taught me to love—it's truly a delight to see Expedition 33's team unabashedly own that part of its identity.

It's all so earnest, and the script nails everything from the goofy, endearing side characters to the cast's constant disbelief and reckoning with the state of their world. I'm a bit of a sap, so I ugly cried from start to finish, and if you play the main theme in my presence I might get all misty-eyed again. That soundtrack is absolutely devastating.

Phil Savage, Global Editor-in-Chief: This is a confident debut by Sandfall Interactive—a love letter to a specific era of JRPGs, but one that has plenty of new tricks too. It frequently punches above the weight of its own limitations thanks to some inspired characterisation, dialogue and design. I didn't love Clair Obscur as much as some—its compelling Act 2 twist deserved a better third act in my opinion—but I can't deny that it's a singularly striking experience throughout. And in a world of design-by-committee second screen dialogue, it's hard not to root for a game that has such a specific vision, especially when it's executed this well.

Best Design

Best Design 2025 – Blue Prince

Christopher Livingston, Senior Editor: Imagine a mansion with 45 rooms, and in each room there's a clue that when used with clues in the other 44 rooms becomes the solution to a puzzle. Now imagine that those 45 rooms are in a completely different configuration every time you play—but that mansion-wide puzzle still works perfectly.

That's just one of the brilliant bits of design in Blue Prince, where you build a whole new mansion each time you explore it, hoping to find your way into the elusive room 46. Another great bit of design: finding room 46 isn't really the end of the game, but the beginning of an even bigger and far more sprawling one.

At the start of Blue Prince, playing as a child trying to prove his worth, I felt very much at the whim of the roguelite's RNG, which could be cruel: dead-ending promising runs could leave a bitter taste in my mouth when I felt I'd done everything right but still failed. But gradually I accumulated knowledge and abilities that gave me more and more control over the house until RNG became less and less of a factor. I was capable of making my own luck.

Eventually I could shape the mansion almost exactly how I desired and extend my runs nearly as long as I wanted. I no longer desperately scrounged for spare keys to unlock doors: I had more keys than the house had rooms. All that time in the ever-changing mansion had changed me too. When I finally inherited that bizarre mansion, I really felt I'd earned it.

Wes Fenlon, Senior Editor: Falling in love with videogames, especially when you're young, is like learning a language. You come to intuit when a door is fake or real, when a character will react to your new outfit or look right past it. Virtual worlds that at first seem limited only by our imaginations end up much smaller as we internalize how to distinguish an emergent moment from a scripted one.

We cling to the nostalgia of playground rumors—Mew hiding under the truck in Pokémon, a bigfoot still out there somewhere in the hills of San Andreas—because they speak to some secret we believed when we were young and innocent, that the world of a game could contain mysteries beyond our practical understanding.

Well, Blue Prince is a whole game built around actually fulfilling that impossible fantasy. I can't tell you how many times I wondered "Does that mean something?" and it meant not just something, but multiple somethings, layers of mysteries with meanings that would pay off 10 or 20 or 50 hours down the line.

There are puzzles that are fun, challenging, and revelatory to pick apart within a single room, and others that spiral out into the sort of cryptic codes that demand—inspire—notes and screenshots and spreadsheets. It is a truly astounding achievement that just keeps going deeper. Follow it as far as you can; no matter how many times you ask "what if?" Blue Prince will find a way to surprise you.

Phil Savage, Global Editor-in-Chief: It's not PC Gamer's Game of the Year, but Blue Prince was definitely my favourite game of 2025—and by far the one I've thought about the most since I finished it. It's impeccably constructed, taking its roguelike gimmick and consistently adding new layers both to the design and worldbuilding, giving the whole thing a fantastical sense of place. Its central mystery—which lurks behind the surface level objective of finding an impossible room—is creepy and compelling, slowly unravelling into something much bigger and more significant than ever seemed possible.

I know some people bounced off its RNG systems, but to me they missed the point: Blue Prince's early game is a sprawl of clues and lore, and all of them hint at mysteries yet to come. Sure, it can feel frustrating if you're doggedly pursuing a single goal—Room 46, for example—but it's incredibly rewarding if you meet it halfway, exploring every nook and cranny and seeing what new scrap of information you can learn with each run. It all pays off eventually, and by the time those mysteries coalesce into a coherent post-game, you'll have plenty of ways to bend the house to your will. I spent over 75 hours in that mansion, and enjoyed every minute—except, maybe, the handful I spent trying to figure out the Gallery puzzle.

Game of the Year

Game of the Year 2025 – Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2

Joshua Wolens, News Writer: KCD2 is just so unlikely. It's a weirdo game for weirdos—obsessed with persnickety details that in any other RPG would send people with normal brains running for the hills. I have to equip a gambeson before I can put on armour? A single bandit is liable to beat me to death for the first 10-or-so hours of the game? I have to brew my own save game potions?

And yet, it works. It works so well that it's PC Gamer's 2025 Game of the Year and is already regarded as a beloved RPG classic more widely. Perhaps we just respect a game that truly commits to the bit, but I think it's more to do with how steadfast KCD2 is in its commitment to its simulation of 15th-century Bohemia and how wonderfully, dazzlingly ambitious it is in that simulation. 'Immersion' is an overused term but, once you pick past KCD2's peccadilloes, you'll find a reactive world that sucks you in and keeps you there, joyfully, for tens or even hundreds of hours.

And you can kiss Hans. Amazing stuff.

Morgan Park, Staff Writer: KCD2 isn't just my favorite game of 2025, it was my 2025. Over 100 hours and eight months, I squeezed and squeezed this juicy RPG expecting its supply of engrossing stories to run dry. It did not. I adore that KCD2 is a game about talking that occasionally features silly little swordfights. I adore that it's the sort of game that arrested me for stealing a skill book not because anybody saw me do it, but because a guard had caught me trespassing earlier in the night and connected the dots.

Most of all I adore that its sidequests are just as substantial as, and often better than, its main story. That's the sort of praise I haven't held for any RPG since The Witcher 3. I'll never forget the Kuttenberg serial killer, the tournament arc, nor my trek to acquire a stone that may or may not be magical. And I won't forget Henry of Skalitz, a simple lad who reinforces my belief that it's more interesting to roleplay a person with existing flaws and beliefs than sculpt a blank slate according to my will.

Fraser Brown, Online Editor: It's a Czech Morrowind. And I love it.

Mollie Taylor, Features Producer: Listen, when a game unites Josh and Morgan—two of our writers on opposite ends of the videogame tastes spectrum—that's how you know it's real good.

KCD2 is fussy and frustrating in all the right ways, it's the kind of stuff that makes medieval nerds rub their hands together like a cartoon villain and giggle with glee. Everything from clashing swords with bandits to brewing potions is deliberate and methodical in a way that really forced me to switch up how I usually tackle these sorts of RPGs—no vertically scaling horses up cliff faces or opening a menu mid-fight to chug every potion under the sun.

The writing is top-notch too, and full of witty side quests that have me clicking through every dialogue choice just to absorb more of it. I will be gladly inserting the phrase "are you yanking my [insert adjective here] pizzle" into every possible conversation for the foreseeable future.

Phil Savage, Global Editor-in-Chief: The true successor to your Morrowinds and Oblivions: An immersive, systems-based sandbox RPG where you can have just as much—arguably more—adventure travelling along a dirt road picking flowers as you can working through its main quest.

In a world where the few singleplayer games still produced by big publishers all seem terrified that players might be alienated by esoteric systems and rough edges, it feels appropriate to celebrate Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 for swinging so hard in the other direction. Mollie nails it when she calls it "fussy", but its uncompromising design choices are all in service to making KCD2 a satisfying RPG with something to say—both about the era in which it's depicting, and about game design itself. A proper PC RPG. A triumph.

Past Awards

Want to see the best games from years gone by? Here are our Game of the Year picks of the past.