Last year was a pretty big one for The Game Awards, marking the show’s 10th anniversary since its inception in 2014. Now, the nominees for this year’s Game Awards have dropped ahead of the big show on Dec. 11, and the competition is fierce.
For the big ticket award, Game of the Year nominees include Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, Donkey Kong Bananza, Hades II, Hollow Knight: Silksong, and Kingdom Come: Deliverance II. Interestingly, among these nominations is that half are independent games, with Hades, Silksong, and Expedition 33 all also nominated for the Best Independent game award, and Expedition 33 also being nominated for Best Debut Indie alongside cryptic puzzle game Blue Prince, retro-inspired rogue-like Megabonk, and superhero narrative phenomenon Dispatch.
Expedition 33 is also a Game Awards record-breaker. According to the Game Awards on Twitter/X, the French indie RPG is the most nominated game in Game Awards history with a total of 12 nominations, including three in the Best Performance category for Ben Starr, Charlie Cox, and Jennifer English. Death Stranding 2 and Ghost of Yotei follow close behind it this year with seven nominations each.
Other notable nominations include PEAK, the indie hit of the summer, and ARC Raiders, the recently released extraction shooter, both of which are nominated for Best Multiplayer Game. Both A Minecraft Movie and The Last of Us’ second season have been nominated for Best Adaptation. Hades II, Silksong, and Split Fiction have respectively been nominated for six, five, and four awards.
Sources: TheGameAwards, SandfallInteractive, KojimaProductions, Nintendo, Steam, TeamCherry, Steam, Steam, Steam, Steam, X/Twitter, IMDB, IMDB, IMDB, PlayStation, Steam, Steam, IMDB, IMDB, Steam
Images: X/Twitter, X/Twitter, X/Twitter
