Chris Lawn Present's Chris Lawn's Alt Game Of The Year Awards, Brought To You By Press Play Gaming (AKA Chris Lawn's Blog)

Welcome, welcome! The snow is falling / the sun is shining, the holidays are nearly upon us, and with the unrelenting march of time comes the inevitable: GOTY Awards season.

In the spirit of it all, I’ve decided to host my own little awards show. It’s just like the one and only “The Game Awards”, except with a few minor adjustments:

Instead of a big flashy livestreamed across the globe experience with celebrity guests and Sting… we have 10 web pages.
Rather than Massive Hype and World Exclusives, we have… uh, more awards?
In place of gigantic, heavy statues, we award… a shoutout in a tweet, maybe? But we won’t tell you who wins there, because we want you to come read the articles, so not even that really.

Before we get into the thick of it, a few things to keep in mind as you read through:

Every single game in every single list is 100% worth your time. Go check out their Steam pages. Add them to your wishlist. Shout them out on social media. Show the developers some love.
Though plenty of games fit in multiple categories, every game is only mentioned once. This is purely to shout out as many games as possible that deserve the attention.
There are 182 games nominated here, but this is still not an exhaustive list. Let me know on the Twitter thread about any cool games I missed!

OK! Without further ado, lets get into it!

PLAY By Genre, Part 1

Most Innovative FPS | Best Metroidvania | Best Roguelike | Best RPG | Best Isometric RPG

PLAY By Genre, Part 2

Best City Builder / Management Game | Best Survival Game | Best Immersive Sim | Best Tactics/Strategy Game

Get -Immersed-

Best First Person Adventure | Best First Person Perspective Art Game | Best First Person Mystery

Tell Me A Story

Best Narrative- and/or Choice- Based Game | Best Visual Novel / Interactive Fiction Game | Best Left-To-Right 2D Story Focused Game | Best Top-Down 2D Story Focused Game

It’s All About The ~Aesthetics~

Best Chill Vibes | Most Visually Stunning / Awe Inspiring | Coolest Mechanics | Best Embodiment of the 90s

Oh So Fresh

Best Game Involving Cards & Deck-building | Best Photography Focused Game | Best Hour Long Or Less Experience | Best Free Game

The Penultimate

Best “Hey, it came to Switch!” Game | Most Promising Early Access Game | Best DLC | Best AAA Game | Best Indie Darling

The Actual True Game Of The Year

;)

Choose a topic to dive down, or go through them one at a time. There are games aplenty - I’d even be willing to say it’s almost a certainty you’ll find a game you haven’t even heard of before somewhere in here. That’s the Chris Lawn Guarantee, or 100% of your money back.

Happy reading!

Next: PLAY by Genre, Part 1

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Chris Lawn Present's Chris Lawn's Alt Game Of The Year Awards, Brought To You By Press Play Gaming (AKA Chris Lawn's Blog)