There will always be games that were not on our radar and suddenly hit us hard by how great it is. This category celebrates the games that caught us off guard- with little to no hype in the lead up to its release but speaks louder by its quality.
Surprise! Didn’t expect it to be this good now did we?
- Baba Is You
- Disco Elysium
- The Outer Wilds
- Tetris 99
- Untitled Goose Game
Deliberations Summary
The start of the list has a bit of an overlap with the Best Games We Didn’t Play, but the key factor here is that surprise factor. Games with little pre-release fanfare are the ones running for this award. And there’s an unspoken rule of not including titles from bigger publishers and developers.
Baba Is You is one of those games you might have dismissed just for the lousy title and its non-inspiring, familiar art. That said, the game got some post-launch buzz as more people discover the brilliance programming logic puzzler. In this hard-coded logic, Baba Is You is a coherent title, and a concept that you must understand to fully grasp the quirks of the puzzler where you can go outside the box and bend the rules to your advantage.
Disco Elysium had a pretty long development time, and at one time was called No Truce With The Furies. The detective RPG concept was core to the gameplay during the lead-up, but no one expected this indie studio’s debut title to hit hard right out of the bat. Various CRPG concepts are interpreted in a different way that most video games of its ilk didn’t. And these ambitious ideas, surprisingly, work.
There was resistance at first for Tetris 99 to make it to the list, because it’s Tetris. But this is the better surprise battle royale hard drops of the year, and the sole reason that make the inadequate Nintendo Switch Online worth subscribing. Tetris 99 bends the expectations of what a battle royale game should be, and the fact that it’s not just a silly gimmick but something serious Tetris players are giving it time is not something you expect to see. Especially since we already got a new Tetris game last year.
Untitled Goose Game is a delight. So are the memes. But the antics of one horrible goose resonates this loud and spread this far was never the expectation. Who knew a game about just being a nuisance without killing others is a game we all wanted.
The winner, however, embodies a lot of the spirit of these other games. It has, on the surface level, a lousy name (because it sounds similar to another bigger game). It uses a familiar but not often used mechanic but makes it appealing again (time loops). And it stands tall as a competent game in and of itself. That is The Outer Wilds.
Congratulations to The Outer Wilds for winning the GM GOTY Award for Most Surprising Game!
Previously, we crowned the winner for Best Story. For the full list of awards, have a look at that here.
Check back tomorrow for the winner of… The Daniel’s Trashfire Award for Most Disappointing.