After weeks of collecting ballots, it's time to reveal The 2025 Giant Bomb Community Game of the Year. This is my third year being in charge of it and it was the first time in many years that we couldn't use the built-in polling feature in the old Phoenix CMS. So, what does that mean? Well, it meant some extra work on my side to manage all the misspellings and... unique ways some of y'all decided to use hyphens, apostrophes, colons, and parenthesis. But, on the plus side, I was able to pull more stats from the data than before. In the old system, it just spit out two reports; raw votes and weighted score. Now, we can get a little more granular.
Disclaimers
I tried to be consistent with how I handled how people filled out the ballot. For the most part, what you put and how you wrote it is what got recorded. I didn't want to go down the slippery slope of "I bet they actually meant X, so I'll change it."
However, if something was clearly a typo or error, such as voting for MLB The Show 26, which doesn't exist yet, I did change it to 25. Just know that I spent hours on this and did my best to generate accurate results.
This is the seventeenth year that we've had a Community GOTY. So, before we get into it, I want to thank Matt Rorie for keeping it going from 2016-2022 and thatfrood for handling it with no official support back in the day.
Community Participation
This year, we had a whopping 1380 ballots cast for a total of 11,447 votes (not everyone fills out all 10 slots). Is that a lot? Well, it's the most we've had since 2021 and way more than last year's 443. I think that's a pretty good indicator for the health of the website. We also had 1206 different games nominated, which is more than double last year's 573.
For the last couple years, we've had tight battles for the #1 spot. In 2024, Balatro edged out Astro Bot. And, in 2023, Tears of the Kingdom beat out Baldur's Gate 3. That's...not what happened this year. "Landslide" might not be a strong enough word.
TAke a look, y'all.
The Top 50
Observations
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 took #1 and it wasn't even close. It had more first place votes (421) than the other Top 5 games combined (413)! If I deleted all 421 first place votes, it'd still be in the Top 5. With just the first place votes, it'd have enough points to be in second place. You get the idea. Total domination.
This is only the 6th time in seventeen years that the community has agreed with the site's GOTY. It is the 3rd time in the last six years though. Previous agreeing years were 2010 (Mass Effect 2), 2014 (Shadow of Mordor), 2020 (Hades), 2022 (Elden Ring), and 2023 (Tears of the Kingdom).
Hades II was a solid #2, but then it gets a little more contested. In fact, Donkey Kong Bananza and Blue Prince were tied in points about an hour before I shut down the voting.
A total of 26 games earned over 100 votes.
We don't have any rules regarding what games people can vote for, and some of y'all took advantage of that by voting for not just old games, but some truly weird stuff. A total of 724 games only got one vote. Of that 724 games, 36 were first place votes and 95 were tenth place votes.
Megabonk was the highest ranked game with no 1st place votes (#27).
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle was the highest rank game not originally released in 2025 (#30).
Balatro was the highest ranked game not released at all in 2025 (#57).
The highest ranked game with no 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place votes was Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist (#124).
The game with the lowest number of votes in the Top 100 was Caves of Qud (13).
Thirteen different Final Fantasy games were nominated, but not XIII.
Nine different Pokémon games were nominated, but one voter is going to Nintendo Jail™.
One sicko put MindEye on their ballot.
The Top 25 Full Stats
Top 25 Charts
* = I removed any games with fewer than 10 votes.
Percentage
The first sign of Expedition 33's domination is the fact that over 60% of people voted for it. This Top 10 is the same list of games as the overall Top 10, but just jumbled around a bit.
- 60.7% - Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
- 44.2% - Hades II
- 39.8% - Donkey Kong Bananza
- 37.7% - Blue Prince
- 34.8% - Hollow Knight: Silksong
- 25.3% - Dispatch
- 18.6% - Ball X Pit
- 17.8% - Death Stranding 2: On the Beach
- 17.2% - Avowed
- 17.0% - Ghost of Yōtei
First Place Percentage*
The first new stat I was able to pull from the data. I think it's incredible that of all the people who voted for Expedition 33, over half of them put it as 1st place. This stat also shows us that some games don't have hundreds of votes, but the game greatly impacted those who played them. For example, the people who love Kingdom Come LOVE Kingdom Come. KCD2 ranked #13 on the overall list, but #2 here. And Deltarune jumps all the way from #41 to #4.
- 50.2% - Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
- 30.6% - Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
- 30.6% - Hollow Knight: Silksong
- 28.9% - Deltarune
- 26.7% - Elden Ring
- 25.0% - Blippo+
- 23.5% - Warframe
- 23.1% - Caves of Qud
- 23.1% - Look Outside
- 22.9% - The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy-
Top 3 Votes
This is the combined total of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place votes a game received. The only main difference here is that Silent Hill f replaced Ball X Pit in the Top 10.
- 673 - Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
- 349 - Hades II
- 323 - Hollow Knight: Silksong
- 265 - Blue Prince
- 241 - Donkey Kong Bananza
- 158 - Dispatch
- 144 - Death Stranding 2: On the Beach
- 92 - Ghost of Yōtei
- 68 - Avowed
- 68 - Silent Hill f
Top 3 %*
From a game's total votes, what percentage were 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place? A good indicator of games that are truly beloved regardless of their popularity.
- 80.3% - Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
- 69.2% - Caves of Qud
- 67.3% - Hollow Knight: Silksong
- 58.5% - Death Stranding 2: On the Beach
- 57.2% - Hades II
- 55.3% - Deltarune
- 54.0% - Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
- 52.9% - Warframe
- 51.0% - Blue Prince
- 50.0% - Path of Exile 2
Mid Votes
This is a total of a game's 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th place votes. If you look at the spreadsheet, see those red numbers indicating max value? DK is the king of this category. Bananza had more 5th, 6th, and 7th (and 8th) votes than any other game.
- 226 - Donkey Kong Bananza
- 214 - Hades II
- 183 - Blue Prince
- 147 - Dispatch
- 134 - Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
- 126 - Ball X Pit
- 125 - Hollow Knight: Silksong
- 113 - Avowed
- 99 - Ghost of Yōtei
- 90 - Mario Kart World
Mid %*
A game's percentage of total votes that were 4th-7th. It seems like a bunch of people either picked up Star Wars Outlaws on sale early this year or maybe it got a Switch 2 boost. And Baldur's Gate 3 is still going strong out there.
- 69.2% - Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound
- 69.2% - Star Wars Outlaws
- 64.7% - Lies of P: Overture
- 64.3% - Hades
- 63.6% - The Drifter
- 63.6% - Wanderstop
- 63.6% - Kirby and the Forgotten Land – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Star-Crossed World
- 63.3% - Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor
- 62.5% - Baldur's Gate 3
- 61.0% - Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo
Low Votes
Total votes obtained in 8th, 9th, and 10th place. It's always interesting to see what people put at the bottom of their list. Mario Kart was the leader in 9th and 10th place votes, so no surprise it took #1 in this category.
- 99 - Mario Kart World
- 82 - Donkey Kong Bananza
- 72 - Blue Prince
- 71 - Ball X Pit
- 57 - Avowed
- 56 - Metroid Prime 4: Beyond
- 47 - Hades II
- 45 - Split Fiction
- 44 - Dispatch
- 43 - Ghost of Yōtei
Low %*
When you're trying to figure out the end of your list, sometimes there's five games with only three slots left. Sometimes there's three slots left and there's just nothing you feel too strongly about. These are the games that maybe best fit those scenarios.
- 64.3% - Date Everything!
- 60.0% - skate.
- 57.9% - A Game About Digging a Hole
- 57.1% - Dynasty Warriors: Origins
- 53.3% - Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist
- 52.6% - Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment
- 52.0% - Sid Meier's Civilization VII
- 51.2% - Sword of the Sea
- 50.0% - Cronos: The New Dawn
- 50.0% - To a T
Staff vs Community vs Guests
If you missed my Data Dump article, I combined all the guest lists together. So, this is the comparison. The red games are unique.
Full Results Spreadsheet
If you'd like to see the whole-ass spreadsheet with all 1206 games and all the raw data, you can do that right HERE.
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Duder, it's over! Thanks to everyone who participated this year. The turn out was incredible. Maybe we'll have a new way to do this by the time December rolls around. Either way, I look forward to doing this again.