Surprise! Didn’t expect it to be this good now did we? For the game that came out of nowhere with no hype, or just plain good beyond our expectations
The GM GOTY Award 2020 for Most Surprising Game nominees are:
- Fall Guys
- Frog Fractions: Game of the Decade Edition
- Journey To The Savage Planet
- Half-Life Alyx
- XCOM Chimera Squad
Deliberation Summary
Given the ambiguous name, everyone one of us have many different ways we define “surprising”. Some reserves it for smaller indie titles with no little to no track record for making a game this good prior to their breakout release. Others believe games released to no hype/marketing with a short span of wait from announce to release is in the spirit of this award.
And then there’s Half-Life: Alyx. On the surface, Valve does have a great track record before, and there is pre-release marketing for the VR exclusive. But it’s been so long since Valve has made good video games- remember Artifact?- that we won’t be surprised if younger folks never realised the owners of Steam used to be highly-lauded game makers.
XCOM Chimera Squad makes the list for its short time it went from announcement to release. This XCOM side-story was sold at a major discount at launch after barely any marketing which sets the game with the right expectations. It’s more of a wild experimental release rather than a full-fledged sequel, and for the most part it succeeds. The new Breach system at the start of combat, more worldbuilding, and a fixed cast of playable heroes that interact with each other. The shortcomings can be brushed off as the product of “an XCOM side-story was sold at a major discount at launch”.
Journey To The Savage Planet is the indie favourite here that came out of nowhere. A silly first-person Metroidvania that inched close to an immersive sim (it’s not), the little game from the now-Stadia first-party developer brings the horrors of capitalism and colonialism in a cheeky package that rewards your efforts in exploring the world.
Frog Fractions: Game of the Decade Edition epitomizes “Most Surprising” in a lot of ways. Nobody expected a Steam release. Nobody expected a pretty expensive DLC for a hat. And surely nobody expected the expensive DLC is not as expensive as you first thought. This educational game about frogs learning fractions and maths is a rabbit hole game that the longer you deep, the wilder the things you discover. And the fact that it took us three months after the release to realise what the Steam release of the former Flash game is really about, makes it a strong contender.
However, nobody on the list can beat the breakout indie game almost everyone has heard. It’s a multiplayer battle royale game from the makers of countless not-so-noteworthy games. A game that sets out to replicate the hilarity of obstacle course challenges seen in the Japanese TV show Takeshi’s Castle. A game that went free on PS Plus on launch, sold millions still, and had server outages as well as cheater problems. And wildly cursed official Twitter account helping promoting the game.
Despite the “dead game” replies on their tweets, this game bumbled to be the winner. You dropped this crown stumble chum, the winner of Most Surprising Game is Fall Guys!
With tomorrow the last day of 2020, we will reveal the final two awards- the Trashfire Award as well as GM’s Top 10 Games of 2020. The Game Of The Year Awards is coming to an end!