The official tldr.games Game of the Year: where gamedev excellence meets concise recognition. Every year I celebrate the best in the industry - the games that either left an indelible mark on the gaming landscape itself, or just overwhelmingly appealed to my personal sensibilities.

Visceral, satisfying combat, sublime art, great sound/music and a good challenge. Relatively unforgiving but ultimately very rewarding. An extraordinarily cinematic, violently masterful blast.

Creative gacha garden & town designer. Immensely cute, addictive, relaxing & cozy. Kinda wish there were more items, but great little game for a virtually-solo dev, and I’m sure they’ll come.

You know what it is. Not as good as Odyssey, and that wasn’t particularly good either. They have to look at refocusing and reinventing the franchise at some point… right?

Extremely well put-together, heavily story-driven roguelite, doubly impressive as a studio debut. Great world, intuitive and satisfying combat, and noteworthy sound design. Good challenge & very fun.

Cool game, but peaks early and feels like an explosion of ideas never quite came together. Great to look at and feels quite nice, but ultimately not particularly satisfying or compelling. Brief fun.

The Game Awards is an annual awards ceremony honouring achievements in the video game industry. Established in 2014, the shows are produced and hosted by game journalist Geoff Keighley. These are the titles which took out the prestigious “Game of the Year” category.

I struggle to think of a franchise I have less interest in than COD, but MW2s DMZ mode is surprisingly fun. A more accessible Tarkov, simplifying the systems all the way down, potentially too far.

My worries for such a fundamental shift, turning Darkest Dungeon into a roguelite, are completely quashed. Its predecessors brutal, punishing heart is still here, inside an absolute masterclass in presentation.

See: 2018 Spider-Man. It’s more of the same - not a bad thing.