Golden Joysticks 2015: what should win best PC game?

Voting for the Golden Joysticks awards is well underway, and there are loads of great PC games in contention this year. In fact, the PC has its very own category featuring a diverse collection of top-quality strategy, action, puzzle and narrative games.

PC Game of the Year

1) Cities: Skylines (86%, our review)
2) Elite Dangerous (86%, our review)
3) Pillars of Eternity (92%, our review)
4) Kerbal Space Programme (96%, our review)
5) Endless Legend (89%, our review)
6) GTA 5 (92%, our review)
7) The Talos Principle (84%, our review)
8) Heroes Of The Storm (84%, our review)
9) Invisible, Inc (80%, our review)
10) Her Story (90%, our review)
11) Alien Isolation (93%, our review, and our GOTY 2014)

Phil Savage: Kerbal Space Program

Kerbal Space Program is the extreme version of show-don't-tell design. It asks you to learn rocket physics on the fly as you attempt to send little green astronauts into space. It rarely goes well, at least at first, but the failures are what stop KSP being a dry, educational lecture. You get to learn and progress by doing; by building rocket ships and then figuring out why they don't work. It's an incredible sandbox, and the hundreds of ship parts give you the scope to build everything from unmanned satellites to space stations. It's deep, challenging and huge, but most of all it's fun.

Chris Thursten: Invisible, Inc

Invisible, Inc is an astonishingly well-designed game, a cyberpunk heist simulator that reliably delivers stories of chance, genius, and tragedy. You guide a rebel spy agency through (potentially) the last 72 hours of its life, sending agents to rob mega-corporations to gather the gear, secrets and personnel you need to survive. Each turn-based stealth mission is tense—it only takes one mistake for the job to go south—but you’re always in control and always given the information you need to succeed. This level of transparency prevents a very difficult game from becoming frustrating, resulting in an experience that merges the style and freedom of Deus Ex with the thoughtfulness of XCOM.

Tom Senior: Pillars of Eternity

The great RPG resurgence continued this year with Pillars of Eternity. It's a beautiful nostalgic throwback to the CRPG golden age, and a must-play for anyone who enjoyed Baldur's Gate and its like. I was expecting Pillars to be overly deferential to the Forgotten Realms tradition, which demands that all RPGs be set in muddy fields full of oppressed peasants and goblins. Pillars pushes past that with unusual character classes, strange soul magic and tactically rich combat. The hybrid use of voice and text allows for reams of reactive dialogue, and many novels' worth of background lore. It’s a brilliant RPG that deserves your Golden Joystick vote.

Andy Kelly: Alien: Isolation

Alien: Isolation is a rare, irresistible opportunity to step inside one of the greatest sci-fi movies of all time: Ridley Scott’s Alien. The Creative Assembly lavishly recreated the retro-future look of the film’s iconic sets, using it as a platform for a brilliantly tense horror game. This is the first time HR Giger’s creature has felt genuinely threatening and intelligent in an Alien spin-off game, with dynamic, unpredictable AI that forces you to make smart use of the gadgets and tools at your disposal. With a powerful predator that you actually have to outsmart, Isolation is more than just another haunted house.

Over to you! Argue your case in the comments and drop a vote on the Golden Joysticks voting page.

PC Gamer is the global authority on PC games—starting in 1993 with the magazine, and then in 2010 with this website you're currently reading. We have writers across the US, Canada, UK and Australia, who you can read about here.