Gayming Awards Meet the Nominees: Game of the Year Award

While every category at the Gayming Awards has viewers excited, none have the audience talking more than the nominees for the 2026 Game of the Year!

This title honors the projects that offered gamers an experience they couldn’t put down, creating exciting gameplay all while fighting to make this medium more inclusive for all. Whether it be unique mechanics, stunning visuals, or godly levels of queer representation, every one of these has a solid case for why they deserve to go home with the title of Game of the Year. 

Only one of these games will win the top accolade at this year’s Gayming Awards. Let’s see what makes each so great and try to guess which one will be named the 2026 Game of the Year!

Ball x Pit

Widely regarded as an ‘indie phenomenon,’ Ball x Pit stands as one of 2025’s biggest success stories. Players were instantly intrigued by the game’s premise; it turns your typical brick-breaker game into an intense rogue-lite, evolving these simple mechanics into an intense strategy system filled with deadly enemies, complex weapons, and dozens of unique protagonists for people to play as. 

It’s this combination of the classic mechanics folks love with nuanced gameplay that made Ball x Pit such a huge success — both in going viral online, and in huge game sales! Gamers are still applauding the project for how it exemplifies the excellence that indie developers can create today. And at this year’s Gayming Awards, Ball x Pit is nominated for how it continues to inspire developers while offering players one of the most addictive games of the past year!

Blue Prince

Puzzle games are a niche yet beloved genre, with the best additions to this medium drawing players in for hours with their tough challenges and intriguing mysteries. 2025 saw many great puzzle games get released — but none have had as much of an impact as the critically acclaimed Blue Prince. 

Blue Prince sees players take on the role of the newest caretaker at a sprawling manor where each room offers a new puzzle to be solved. The game has been applauded for its unique selection mechanic; players get to pick what kind of rooms exist in this mansion, not only giving them autonomy in what puzzles they solve, but ratcheting up the mystery as they try to uncover the secret room the house doesn’t want them to see. This seamlessly merges puzzle games with the thrilling tension that narrative-driven projects are renowned for. It’s a sophisticated fusion that earned Blue Prince top design honors at the 29th annual D.I.C.E. Awards — and it may just help the game secure Game of the Year at the 2026 Gayming Awards!

Ghost of Yōtei

Ghost of Yōtei managed to be not only a massive commercial success upon release, but has been credited as a true innovation of open-world games altogether — and that’s all while being a huge supporter of the LGBTQ+ community!

The story follows a mercenary as she hunts down the people who murdered her family, with Ghost of Yōtei filling this revenge story with jaw-dropping artwork and a stellar voice cast. It’s through that voice cast that the game’s LGBTQ+ representation shines, with the lead, Atsu, being voiced by famous nonbinary voice performer (and co-host of the 2026 Gayming Awards), Erika Ishii!

The game is nominated not only for its great gameplay but for its commitment to telling diverse stories, with its stacked cast and historic Japanese setting providing marginalized players with representation they don’t often get to see in modern gaming. It has set new standards for historical action games, making it no wonder why Ghost of Yōtei has already won dozens of gaming awards while selling over 3.3 million copies — and that was just in its launch month!

Hades II

How do you follow up a game that is considered perfect by the general gaming public? It’s an impossible task that Hades II, the sequel to the hit 2020 rogue-lite Hades, easily accomplishes. 

The game follows Melinoë, princess of the Underworld and bisexual icon as she tears through dungeon after dungeon to save her family from the god-eating Titan, Chronos. Hades II features everything fans enjoyed about the first game and more; it evolved the nonstop fighting mechanics while deepening the breathtaking lore and visuals that made Hades so narratively striking. And along with its gameplay, Hades II stands as one of the only rogue-lites ever to feature an openly queer protagonist, with Melinoë’s identity being a source of pride for this godly heroine and the many deities that surround her.  

Hades II was an instant hit upon release and has only grown in popularity since — it seems that even more than a year later, the fanbase can’t get enough of this ultra queer dungeon crawler!

South of Midnight 

Recognized for its emotional and cultural resonance, South of Midnight is an adventure game that portrays the American deep south in a way players have never seen before. 

The game is an action-packed dive into Southern folklore; South of Midnight follows the scrappy Hazel Flood as she’s drawn into a magical world filled with haints, cryptids, and various wilderness deities from her childhood storybooks. Her fights against these beings introduce the game’s exciting exploration and combat elements, though where South of Midnight really shines is how it uses mysticism to explore the utterly human experience of trauma. These metaphorical battles Hazel wages against all-too-real monsters create a narrative driven by a cultural heritage far too few people understand today. And with this storytelling being paired with exhilarating gameplay, South of Midnight promises a resonant experience that gamers will never forget. 

Hollow Knight: Silksong

After nearly a decade of fans waiting for a Hollow Knight sequel, this past year saw them finally get their wish — and so, so much more — with the thrilling follow-up Hollow Knight: Silksong. 

Silksong impacted the gaming industry even before its full release; numerous other studios delayed their own projects because they knew how excited fans were for this sequel. This set high expectations that were completely fulfilled as, when it was finally released, millions of fans instantly fell in love with this 2D action-platformer. Silskong builds on the parts of Hollow Knight that fans adored by expanding on the franchise’s existing mechanics and creating a heartfelt story of fan-favorite princess Hornet fighting to save her kingdom. It completely dominated the 2025 gaming landscape with over seven million copies sold, and it continues to make history today as one of the most successful games to ever come from an indie developer. 

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