Game of the Year 2025 – Best Puzzle Game

As Dr. Kawashima’s low polycount face reminded us all in the early 2000s, working out the brain is important to keep it sharp, and there’s one genre that works out your brain more than others. At least you would hope so, and that is the puzzle genre. The puzzle genre is wide in scope, with experiences that range from simply putting pieces together to other experiences where you need a notebook to write down everything so you can refer back them as things get more complicated. Our winner is definitely on the complex side of the puzzle genre.

Blue Prince is a massive achievement in the puzzle genre, providing an experience that just has so many layers to it. What seems to be a simple premise of finding a way to a secret room in a mansion, eventually spirals into a major multiroom and multirun experience where anything in the environment could be a clue for something else.

Blue Prince is a game that has spawned whole communities working together to figure out the different conundrums that pop up, from uncovering switches to open new areas, to working out what certain objects across different rooms actually mean and deciphering their importance. Blue Prince is the ultimate puzzle game of 2025, and it will be one that confounds new players for years to come.

Lumines Arise – Runner Up

Enhance and Tetsuya Mizuguchi have seemingly made it their mission to make games about making blocks disappear in a sense overloading explosive celebration. The team smashed it out of the park with Tetris Effect in 2018 and has now shifted focus back to Mizuguchi’s own Lumines to revolutionise it for a new generation. Lumines Arise takes the puzzle element of building up your score by repeatedly forming blocks of matching colour, and presents it in such a way that you become utterly engrossed in the action.

Lumines Arise is a stunning audio and visual package which doesn’t just provide an environment in which to solve the puzzles, but pulls you to be enveloped by music and art which are as essential to each puzzle as the blocks themselves. Lumines Arise is proof that puzzle games can be some of the most breath-taking games imaginable.

Is This Seat Taken? – Runner Up

One of the biggest social challenges we face pretty early on in life is finding a place to sit, be it at school or family gatherings. Choosing a seat is more than just finding a comfortable place to plonk yourself, it determines who you could be interacting with for the duration of being seated. And what if you sit somewhere when the person already sitting there wants to be left alone? Is This Seat Taken? takes that situation and makes a game of putting people in the correct seats while they go on a journey.

Is This Seat Taken? is a nice and simple premise that creates ever increasing challenges as you figure out where people should be seated, while keeping everyone happy. If you have ever done a seating plan for a party or wedding, you know how difficult that is. The game gives you different issues to deal with. Someone might be very chatty and want to sit with someone who will indulge them in conversation, while someone else might be a bit smelly so hardly anyone wants to sit by them, and some people will want to be left alone. While not the most difficult of puzzle games Is This Seat Taken is certainly unique, taking a relatively normal part of human life and turning it into an engaging experience.

Honourable Mentions (in alphabetical order)

• The Drifter
• Umami
• Squeakross: Home Squeak Home

That’s it for today’s first GOTY award, so come back a little later for another!

Tags: Game of the Year 2025