Community GOTY 2020: Voting Begins!

2020: It had games! It's time to vote on your favorites! You can do so via this form, or you can read on for more information!

If you're curious to revisit the days of yore, have a link to our our 2019 GOTY, 2018 GOTY, 2017 GOTY, our 2016 GOTY, or our 2015 GOTY lists!

CLICK HERE TO VOTE!

When does voting end? Let's go ahead and say January 25th!

Can I change my votes later after I play more stuff? Sure, up until voting ends! Just clear out your choices and select new ones, then hit Submit again.

I haven't played ten games this year; can I still vote? Sure, just vote for whatever your favorite games were. You can just vote for one game, if you want.

How does this work? This is a weighted-voting system, so your first-place game will be weighted more heavily than your tenth-place game when we tally up the votes in the end. We'll also include pure voting results without weights for the data nerds.

I can't find my favorite game in here! Our search system is very special and might not always return the expected results. Some games might have older-than-expected release years in the search, or may not appear at all. Let us know in the bug reporting forum if you can't find something!

Hah, I'm going to vote for ET on Atari ten times, suckers! Feel free! You can add any games you want to your list, but we'll just remove anything that wasn't released in 2020 when we run the final results. We're mostly focused on American release dates here; Jeff will ultimately decide on any edge cases. (If something came out of Early Access in 2020, feel free to include it as well. Honestly, feel free to throw anything on your list and we'll figure it out later!)

If you have any issues finding a game in the search box, please let us know via this thread in Bug Reporting.

Thanks, I love you.

At least we got some good games during this horrible nightmare of a year.

We've all collectively decided to include Among Us as a 2020 game, right? Also if I could specify, my entry for Tetris Effect is for Connected.

It was a weird year of games, but Hades easily sat at the top of my list.

I am yet to play all the 2020 games on my list (Moon: Remix RPG Adventure, Watch Dogs: Legion, Cyberpunk 2077 & Kentucky Route Zero) but here's my list as it stands!

Maneater managing to sneak onto my list because Pathologic 2, which was my 2nd favorite on my write up, came out last year.

The lack of KENTUCKY ROUTE ZERO in a lot of the GOTY conversations distresses me greatly.

Initially I didn't feel like this was a strong year for games, but then I realized that I left a few heavy hitters that didn't really resonate with me that hit others way harder, and still feel like I'm not scrounging for a top 10, which means this year must have been incredible.

1. FF7Remake
2. 13 Sentinels Aegis Rim
3. Kentucky Route Zero
4. Hades
5. Yakuza: Like a Dragon
6. Astro's Playroom
7. THPS1+2
8. Ori and the Will of the Wisps
9. Spider-Man: Miles Morales
10. Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Honorable Mentions: Genshin Impact, the hundreds of hours I accidentally put into Fortnite, The Avengers' campaign, Carrion, Streets of Rage 4, Umurangi Generation.

Pretty disappointing year for my tastes, 6-10 wouldn't have made my list at all in previous years. Two edge cases: the new levels in the Doom 64 re-release, and a Wipeout clone called Pacer which was sort of maybe already released as Formula Fusion three years ago?

1. Spelunky 2

2. Prodeus

3. Final Fantasy VII Remake

4. Fall Guys

5. A Monster's Expedition

6. Doom 64 The Lost Levels

7. Pacer

8. Microsoft Flight Simulator

9. Dreams

10. Dezatopia

Here is my list

This has been somewhat revised from my write up of the year because I only played Risk of Rain 2 and Murder By Numbers recently after I finished writing it. I think this is a better fit for site voting anyway :P

This ended up being some really good games this year.

@stune: For Real!

#1 - Hades

#2 - Kentucky Route Zero

#3 - Ori and the Will of the Wisps

#4 - Risk of Rain 2

#5 - Final Fantasy 7 Remake

#6 - Ghost of Tsushima

#7 - Nioh 2

#8 - Doom Eternal

#9 - The Last of Us Part 2

#10 - Spelunky 2

The sequel to Desert Golfing came out this year. You can put spin on the ball now, it's pretty rad.

Hades is excellent and IMO is shoo-in for GOTY. But I couldn't "solve" the combat the way a lot of folks did. I put 30 hours into it and only finished 2 runs, and kinda burnt out on it.

SMB3 is no. 1 purely for political reasons, I've honestly only played SMB2. But it's SO damn good and those games deserve more recognition. I want more sports games that focus on fun gameplay and not just improving the sweat tech and adding more microtransactions.

I hope KRZ counts for GOTY due to Act 5 and the TV Edition releasing in January.

Thank you Vinny and Brad for bringing Astroneer to our attention. And I really wanted to put Astroneer way higher but it didn't come out in 2020... Oh well, its still super awesome!

how did I not know this

I think the only other game I played that came out this year was Cyberpunk lol

I spent a good chunk of 2020 catching up on my backlog, and I didn't really sink a ton of time into too many 2020 releases.

Lots of older ones on my list but games and the people I played them with really helped me get through 2020.

1 Half-Life: Alyx
2 Hades
3 Death Stranding (PC release)
4 Monster Hunter: World Iceborn (PC release)
5 Risk of Rain 2
6 Monster Train

Not many games on my list this year. Played more but theese are the only that come to mind. And 2 of them are PC-releases, sigh... exclusivities/timed exclusivities sucks for sure.

The way MH World suprised me and became my favorite game all-time, I wanted to go into MHW Iceborne with zero spoiler, and had to unsubscribe to all the MHW media that I followed. Managed to stay the 5-6 months almost spoiler free and it was worth it, MHW still provides being a great game.

Death Stranding however, I was almost overinformed on. Knew little about the story luckily, but I knew what to expect with the gameplay. Got it on the steam wintersale and marathoned the entire game and then some during the holiday. Gameplay was satisfying and relaxing, with action/stealth sprinkled in to enforce your planning and resources(did the right thing to play on hardest difficulty from the get-go) and every play-session left me wierdly exhausted, but contempt and happy. Yeah, the story is a shitshow, some of the dialogue is awkward but it pulls thru and kept my interest to the end.

Death Stranding would be my number one game of the year -... but Hades and Half Life Alyx exists, and they're pretty good games, welp.

Not final list possibly.

Cyberpunk on PC to be clear. It has been an amazing time with very few issues for me. The most "next-gen" experience I've had this year, not finished, but 40hours+ in which is very rare for me these days.

Can we have a stream of Jeff in full wrestler's court gear making binding decisions on edge cases?

I haven't played as many games this year as I ordinarily do, and reserve the right to move Yakuza, Spiritfarer, and Paradise Killer up (or down) the list if I manage to finish them in the next two weeks before the submissions close. Still, some fanastic releases in 2020.

Cuphead came out for PS4 in 2020! I want to show that game some love!

Kind of interesting that no one in the comments has placed Last of Us 2 anywhere on their lists too. The duders on here wasn't that into that one I guess.

Hades is my GOTY by a country mile. It made be care about stories in games again when most stories felt hollow and flat to me for so long. In what could have easily been a dark, cynical, and amoral jaunt through hell with a cocky wise-cracking anti-hero; Supergiant create a heartfelt story about love, loss, and the fragility of familial bonds. I wanted to earn those victories and help Zagreus find what he was looking for, and the pay-off was worth it. Not the mention how tight, frenetic, and fun the combat was. And how every aspect of the design was build to support the framework of a rogue-like, pushing the genre forward. I hope to see "Hades-likes" in the future.

Among Us isn't a great game per se, but it helped me connect with my nephews and casual gaming friends in a way not many games have been able to achieve.

Tetris Effect: Connected wasn't in the list, and I would have bounced Among Us for that. I really dug the multiplayer, especially the co-op boss-rush mode.

Deep Rock Galactic, to me, is one of the most underrated games running right now. Great co-op gameplay, fun tone and world-building, interesting procedurally generated levels. Who knew gigging for a mining company as a Space-Dwarf could be this much fun?

There's a lot of hot takes still flying around the internet and this site about CP2077. I played it on PC, and was underwhelmed after all the hype. It's still a good game, but could have been a great game. I found (I think there's one in the forums here) a list of features and concepts which didn't make it into the final version of the game, and I can't help but feel like this was a huge bait & switch.

Happy New Year, duders.

Most of my year was spent playing games from last year or so. Hunt: Showdown, Escape From Tarkov, the handful of games that were on EGS for a year before coming to steam...

I had to cheat a little to get 10 games; I didn't play Fuser but I still think its fantastic and will get it someday. I def played more than 9 games from 2020 but there were a few that I just wouldn't rank due to not liking them enough (Amnesia Rebirth, Iron Harvest, Moon RPG). I might've put DOOM higher but everytime I think about it I just remember how I still can't buy the damn soundtrack.

I'm racking my brain and... I don't think I turned on my PS4 at all? For the whole year? That sounds wild to me but I'm pretty sure its true.

here's mine

Shout-outs to CrossCode and the Trails in the Sky trilogy, my actual favorite games I played last year, but are not 2020 games.

13 Sentinels was a fantastic surprise, and Granblue Versus is one of my favorite fighting games in a while. I didn't play that many 2020 games last year so I kind of had to scrounge near the bottom of the list. Monster Sanctuary is pretty sick, though, and I rather enjoyed the ToM remake even though it's pretty budget.

Don't really have anything off the top of my head to put on the list so it's 9 at the moment. Satisfactory would've been way up there but I decided to wait until next year, maybe? I already put 100+ hours into it this year I think.

DQ Builders 2 bored me to death but I still managed to make it near the end I believe before I said I had seen enough. And I liked Carrion.. but it was maybe a little too simple/short for me /shrug Didn't finish Ghost of Tsushima, also think I'm near the end. FF7R would be higher if it weren't for the lame combat system and the ridiculous Nomura story bullshit.

Edit: Actually, I'll toss Factorio on there. It already got #2 on my 2016 GOTY year list, because that's when I played it, but it hit 1.0 finally and needs love. I ranked it on here based on how I currently feel about it, having not played it in years.

1. Demon's Souls (Perfect showpiece for the PS5 and one of the best games I have ever played. A true Remake in every sense of the word.)

2. Monster Hunter: World Iceborne (PC release) (Probably the game I spent the most time with. Plus it looks and plays awesome on PC after playing on a base PS4.)

3. World of Horror (Damn cool game. More people should play it.)

4. Astro's Playroom (Nostalgia + charm = a damn good time and a great way to show off why the DualSense is an amazing controller)

5. Silent Hill 4: The Room (GOG release) (Admitedly kind of a rough game, but the last one by Team Silent so it has a special place in my heart. Was great to see it pop up on GoG.)

6. Bugsnax (Bunger.)

7. Cyberpunk 2077 (Kinda rough, but still a solid game. Shoulda delayed it again to work out the kinks, but it ended up biting them in the ass.)

8. Phasmophobia (A creepy good time solo or with friends.)

9. FF7 Remake (didn't finish it)

10. The Last of Us Part II (didn't finish it)

I'm sure World of Horror, Silent Hill 4 and Phasmophobia wont fly, but these are the only 2020 games ive played aside from Doom Eternal (which i fell off of really fast) and 13 Sentinels, which I barely even started yet. But Demon's Souls easily takes GOTY for me. Lucked out and scored a PS5 right before my birthday and it blew my fucking mind. What a masterpiece. What a weird year. Good riddance to 2020.

This is a tough one. I feel like I played a lot of games in 2020 all the way through, but still Ghosts is making it on here, even though I've only put a handful of hours into it since I'm just enjoying the beginning of this game so much. Doom Eternal's path to the end and final boss just soured me on that game, and as much as I enjoyed my time with Call of the Sea, it had some weird and too frequent pain points for a game as short as it is. I still suggest people check it out!

But the 6 on my list I just enjoyed so much this year, and although I've not quite finished the campaign of Fuser, it is a real fun game and scratches a very specific itch. Also Iceborne for PC!!

Damn, no love for Desperados 3 in this thread? I haven't been as pleasantly surprised by a game in a long time, it's so fun and clever, I was constantly excited by it.

I don't have a PS5 but I know Demon's Souls would be up there for me if I'd played it.

Also, I put a lot of time into AC during initial lockdown but I don't think it's a particularly good game in all honesty.. plus it gets enough love already

I thought this would be much harder to put together but it really was a great year for games. I had never played Demon's Souls on PS3 (only played Bloodborne prior) and got completely hooked. One platinum trophy and 160 hours later it's still the game I want to go back to. Excited/Terrified for GOTY podcasts. Umbasa.

yay, video games!

shout out to the actual best game of the year, Persona 5 Royal. It's not on here for redundancy of being on my list in 2017

Auto Museum and Rainy Season are on itch (maybe I will add them to wiki, but: lazy). Tetris is the Connected update, not sure if that counts as a new release, which I prefer to keep my top 10 to. New to me tho!

Videogames just keep getting better and better, is my opinion.

EDIT: If you have not played P5R because you played P5, know that the additions are substantial and great (with the usual caveats about Atlas's vis representation). Also trigger warning on Spirit farer, as I think they handle dementia very poorly in one specific quest.

Here's my top ten. It was a great year for PC gaming! Cyberpunk would be at #11, and would be higher if it didn't have so many story breaking bugs. Played on PC, had no performance issues, but the bugs were unbearable. Will check it out again when they've patched it more.

Oof. Most of my list are edge cases. Things like Monster Hunter World: Iceborne on PC, Hades, Factorio, Among Us, etc.

Almost want to say that I sought comfort this year in things that were known to be good and that have continued to be good rather than risk on new unknowns.

Probably why I sank so much time into Warframe, and why I didn't even bother to try to get one of the new consoles.

Again, Oof.

Pretty confident this is my finalized list. Most of what I really loved is just catching up on my backlog, but some of these games were really good.

(Guh, I had to edit this cuz I keep forgetting about Good Sudoku!)

I may write up a blog explaining my love for these games (maybe after I've had a chance to finish more of them) but here's the list as it stands:

1. Kingdom Hearts 3: ReMind DLC
2. Final Fantasy VII Remake
3. Persona 5 Royal
4. Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition
5. Hades
6. Animal Crossing: New Horizons
7. Kingdom Hearts Melody of Memory
8. Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore
9. Monster Train
10. The Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope

My list is unlikely to change before the deadline however there are many games that I only got in December and haven't played much, if any, yet. These include:

• Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity
• Ghost of Tsushima
• Umurangi Generation
• Noita
• Signs of the Sojourner

Similarly, there are many titles that I'm waiting to release on another platform (or waiting to get a next generation console) before I play.

Only finished 8 2020 games it seems. I like all these games, though. A few of these are on here because they were released for the XONE for the first time in 2020.

This is my list. Frog Fractions 4 (which doesn't have a wiki entry? Maybe I should get on that) and Murder by Numbers were the only games from 2020 I played on there (lol). The rest of the list is a combination of things I wish got more coverage on the site + just some cool-looking stuff

Holy shit I didn't know that. I gotta check it out.