He did WHAT to Miss Piggy?
Hello and welcome to what I’m sure is your most anticipated Game of the Year list. No, don’t look at the publication date, it’s still 2025 in my mind.
It’s been a long year. A very long year, especially in games journalism. It’s been a year stacked with layoffs, bad news, and terrible revelations, but it’s also been a year absolutely packed with new video games – some of them brilliant, some of them terrible, and some of them absolute masterpieces. Here, I present a selection of games and gaming moments that fit into arbitrary categories that I myself have created to restrict my choices for absolutely no reason, so get excited!
Game Of The Year
In 2015, Undertale came out of absolutely nowhere to become not only one of the most beloved games of that year, but a cultural phenomenon. Possibly one of the most influential RPGs of the modern era, developer Toby Fox’s small indie project took expectations, ripped them apart, and told people to think differently about how they approach games. But how exactly do you follow up on something like that?
The answer, it turns out, is that you make something completely different, yet intimately familiar.
Deltarune is described as a ‘parallel story’ to Undertale. What this means (so, at least, since the game is episodic) is that it has characters from Undertale, but placed into different situations. Asgore is no longer the isolated king doing what he thinks is necessary – instead, he’s a divorced gardener. Sans isn’t some mysterious otherworldly power who hides behind a facade of humor – he’s just the janitor of a grocery store (and also the only employee there, don’t ask). This is not a sequel or a prequel to Undertale, because Fox knew that making it either of those things would be an impossible standard to set.
The same thought process extends to the gameplay – Undertale is a TouHou-style bullet hell that insists that you get better with the very limited tools that you are given. Regardless of your choices, you are going to have to learn attack patterns quickly. Deltarune subverts that by essentially becoming a classic Final Fantasy game that also happens to have bullet hell built in. You’re given three party members – a damage dealer in the form of Susie, a healer in the form of Ralsei, and then the jack-of-all-trades in the form of Kris –and you have to choose what each of these characters does each turn. Like in Undertale, there are peaceful and violent outcomes to almost every fight, but it somehow feels more involved here because you’re dictating the actions of three separate characters. You’ve still got to learn attack patterns and how to dodge massive strikes, but it’s more than that about choosing the correct thing for a party member to do in any given turn.
Deltarune easily has the most memorable characters in a game I’ve played all year. Sure, isolated characters in other games stick out to me – Hazel from South of Midnight, Pauline from Donkey Kong Bananza. But Deltarune has such a memorable cast of new characters that it’s hard to even pick a favourite. Do I go with Lancer, a well-meaning but slightly chaotic prince? Maybe Rouxls Kaard, who somehow gets into a throuple and then breaks up with said throuple in the course of about an hour? What about Mr ‘Ant’ Tenna, a TV host who is desperate for any attention at all to the point that it’s driven him slightly mad? There’s more character depth in Deltarune’s first four chapters (the full game is going to be seven chapters, but this year saw an actual paid release for the game that came with the first four chapters, two of which were previously available for free as a kind of demo) than there is in entire game releases from AAA studios.
Something that I really love about Deltarune that I think will only become more pronounced as more and more of the game releases is that it isn’t your story. Undertale is your story – you’re the one who crashes down to the Underground, you’re the one who can save or ruin all of these wonderful creatures. You’re centered as the main character. In Deltarune, you create your character, you name him, and then you’re told that none of that matters. You may be controlling the actions of the characters, but you’re not the main character. Kris is the main character, despite also being the player character. They’ll fight against your choices and your actions; they’ll do things completely divorced from your actual motives. You are not the hero here.
There’s probably a decent number of people reading this insisting that making my game of the year a title that hasn’t yet fully released is cheating. But to them I say this – why can’t a partially released game be a Game of the Year? Isn’t this all about the impact that something has had on you as a person?
Runners up:
- Pokemon Legends Z-A
- South of Midnight
Game That I Wanted To Like More Than I Did
I’ve written extensively about Hades 2 and how much the narrative of the game disappointed me. The reason for the disappointment isn’t that the original Hades has what I’d describe as a narrative that absolutely destroyed expectations, but it did have characters that felt fully rounded and realised. Hades 2, in contrast, feels like it underserves any of its new characters in favor of older characters being given more time in the spotlight.
It stings even more because I think that the depictions of the Greek pantheon that appeared in the first game were brilliant representations of those ancient myths. They felt larger than life yet still ‘human’ in a way – they’re flawed, they’ve got issues, but they’re actually believable. When it comes to Hades 2, I don’t really see any of that in the new characters. I can’t tell you a ton about new protagonist Melinoe, outside of the fact that she’s the daughter of Hades. I can’t really tell you anything about any of the Unseen outside of the fact that they’re working behind the scenes to defeat Chronos. Chronos himself is yet another problem – literally every piece of marketing for the game is about the fact that the only way to end the chaos that has unfolded in the world of the Gods since Hades 1 is to kill Chronos himself – kill time. But his story ends in a subversion that feels almost arbitrary, and makes the entire narrative of Hades 2 a hollow retelling of the first game, with a few things switched out. It results in a game that just left me unsatisfied.
Developer Supergiant Games gave the new mechanics of the sequel the focus they deserve. Instead of introducing them and then just ignoring them, Supergiant makes it so that each mechanic is paramount to actually beating the game – if you don’t learn how the Hex mechanic works, then you’re just not beating Chronos. You can’t rely on your past experiences to help beat this game; muscle memory will only go so far here. But the characters just aren’t here to complement that gameplay.
Runners up:
- Donkey Kong Bananza
- Atomfall
Best DLC That Probably Should Have Been Part Of The Base Game
Pokémon Legends Z-A is an evolution of Pokémon that felt like it should have happened a long time ago – real-time combat that requires you to adapt on the fly and change up your strategies. It also follows up on a beloved mechanic from previous generations in the form of Mega Evolution, introducing new Mega Evolutions while also bringing back old ones, and takes players back to Generation 6’s Lumiose City. It’s something that fans have been crying out for for years.
But just before the game was released, Nintendo and The Pokémon Company also announced DLC for the title, Pokémon Legends Z-A: Mega Dimension, which adds new Mega Evolutions, a host of new Pokémon, and also a new story to the title.
Mega Dimension is great fun. It’s not unusual in the modern era of Pokémon for the games to get DLC that adds old Pokémon into a newer game – it’s been done for years now. But seeing those old beloved Pokémon, such as Starraptor and Raichu, running around the new Hyperspace locales and giving those Pokémon new mega evolutions, is absolutely brilliant. There’s even a host of legendary Pokémon added to the game – there’s the ones that you’d expect, like Rayquaza, Groudon, and Kyogre, but less beloved Pokémon like Heatran and Zeraora are also given their time in the sun, along with new Mega designs.
Those aforementioned Hyperspace locales are also cool subversions of the geometry of the base game – you get into them by making donuts packed with a rare type of energy, and they offer you a small slice of Lumiose City to explore, but those slices are packed with either extremely powerful Pokémon or extremely powerful trainers to beat. You’re given a series of tasks to fill in a quota that gates progress, and since you have a limited amount of time in each Hyperspace area, it can start to feel monotonous. It’s never quite enough to stop the experience from being fun, but this should have just been part of the base game.
Pokémon Legends Z-A has a very meager post-game, with only a few things to do after you beat the main story of the game. Now, not every game needs a post-game – sometimes it’s fine to tell a story, then end. But Pokémon games are expected to have more to do after you roll credits. Some games basically have entire games hidden behind their credits (looking at you, Pokémon SoulSilver & HeartGold). All of the additional content in Pokémon Legends Z-A: Mega Dimension should have been in the base game. The DLC actually requires you to beat the game first, because otherwise, you’re not prepared for it. Being part of the base game would also make the frankly insulting amount of grinding required to see everything less insulting – instead of it feeling like I’ve spent $30 just to be told to go do busywork, it’d feel like I’m actually doing something monumental.
Did I still buy the DLC? Yes. Am I still part of the problem? Yes. But as fun as Mega Dimension is, it probably should have been in the base game.
Runners up:
- Every Single WWE 2K25 Character
- Donkey Kong Bananza: Emerald Isles
Best Game That I Wish I’d Played More Of
Dune: Awakening is a game that probably shouldn’t have worked. Considering how much a game set in the world of Frank Herbert’s magnum opus has to cram in, it’s no wonder that the vast majority of them try to avoid being huge worlds to explore. But Dune: Awakening doesn’t deal with Paul Atreides. It instead takes place in a timeline where, as originally intended by the Bene Gesserit (a group of space witches that control the flow of events to achieve their own goals), Paul was instead born as a woman, so now the planet of Arrakis is up for grabs. There is no Muad’Dib; there are only those who are willing to do what it takes to get what they want.
What this results in is a very fun MMORPG that’s also one of the most stressful things I’ve played all year. In order to survive in the desert world of Arrakis, you need to gather supplies and find shelter. You need water, sourced from plants and the blood of your enemies (don’t ask). But to find any of this stuff, you need to make your way across the dunes, and in the dunes, there are worms that will rip you apart if you make too much noise. Seeing a worm erupt from the sand had me scrambling to cover, somewhere that I couldn’t be devoured – because if I was devoured, I lost my inventory, and if I lost my inventory…. Well, that’s a lot of progress gone.
It’s a game that demands attention. And in a field that wants you to play as many games as possible, it just wasn’t a game that I could keep playing, even if I wanted to do so. It didn’t help that there’s a mechanic in the game that essentially makes everything that you’ve built up for grabs if you’re offline for a certain amount of time. It’s a good mechanic, encouraging people to play the game consistently and also allowing for player turnover, but I’m terrified to boot the game up again, knowing that everything I’ve ever worked for will be gone. Maybe I’ll just start over – if anywhere is good for that, it’s Arrakis.
Runners-Up:
- Split Fiction (Turns out playing a multiplayer only game is kinda hard as an adult!)
- Skate Story (Only got a chance to start this late in December, but I’m excited about it!)
Best Handheld That I Bought On A Whim Because I Have Literally Zero Impulse Control
I was skeptical of the Nintendo Switch 2 when it was first revealed. My Nintendo Switch has sat in a drawer now for what feels like years, thanks to a combination of some utterly horrendous build quality (the joy-cons on the original Nintendo Switch are a crime) and because I bought a Steam Deck in 2022. It’d come out of the drawer every now and again, mainly for Pokémon games, but otherwise it just stayed there gathering dust.
I was passing by a store on the day the Nintendo Switch 2 was released. On a whim, I poked my head in. Surely they weren’t going to have a spare stock of a highly anticipated console, I thought to myself. I came out of that store with a Nintendo Switch 2. Six months later, I’m pleased that I bought it.
I’ve spent more time on my Nintendo Switch 2 this year than literally any other console. I’ve barely switched on my PS5, while I’m constantly picking up my Switch 2 just to have a quick Pokémon battle or have a quick match in WWE 2K25. It’s a shockingly good system, and it helps that a lot of older Nintendo games have been given free updates that improve their performance, while several have paid upgrades that add new content in the form of levels or modes. To paint a picture of how well-built a system the Nintendo Switch 2 is, it can run Cyberpunk 2077 almost as well as an Xbox Series S, and it makes it so that the game is playable in 1080p in handheld mode. Honestly, it feels like somebody sold their soul to get this thing working as well as it does.
The Nintendo Switch 2 is so well built that it makes the original Nintendo Switch look like a knock-off that somebody is selling on AliExpress. The Switch 2 has a heft to it that the Switch 1 doesn’t have, but it’s still light enough that you can lie in bed with it, and travelling with it is easy. It’s the perfect in-between for people who want the quality of the Steam Deck but who want something lighter. The Switch 2 Joy-Cons actually feel like controllers designed for a premier piece of hardware, with the new mouse mode helping with aiming in titles such as Metroid Prime 4.
I can’t see this being discarded and forgotten in a drawer anytime soon, and if Nintendo keeps up their brilliant updates for older games, it’ll also get me to play games that I wouldn’t have touched otherwise.
Runner Up:
- Steam Deck OLED
Best Thing That Has Haunted My Every Waking Moment
There are honestly a few things that could have won this award. There’s the obvious stuff, like the way that A.I is permeating the entire gaming ecosystem. It’s becoming harder and harder to trust anything. There’s the slow and methodical dismantling of anything that resembles games journalism, leaving independent outlets like this very site to pick up the pieces that they can find and try to put them back together. Yet none of these have haunted me quite as much as the following exchange from December 11, 2025.
Miss Piggy: “Hello! Hello, to all of you gaming fans out there! And hello to you, my little Geoffy-Poo.”
Geoff Keighley: “Piggy, it is so good to have you here at The Game Awards. Thank you for accepting our invitation.”
Miss Piggy: “Oh, you know I’d never turn down an invitation from you. Not after Bora Bora.”
A lot of things happened at the 2025 Game Awards. But the one thing that I’m going to remember for the rest of my life is the implication that Geoff Keighley, son of IMAX executives Patricia and David Keighley, has known a Muppet carnally. And it broke my brain.
Miss Piggy was first introduced in 1974, and at the time, she was already a grown woman. Geoff Keighley was born in 1978. By the time he was born, Miss Piggy was already on a nationally beloved TV show. Let’s assume that, in her first appearance, Miss Piggy was around 30, judging by the way that she speaks and how she seems to already be rather well-known in her initial appearance. Okay, so she’s 30 in 1974. That would make her around eighty years old right now. Up until 2015, she and Kermit the Frog were in a committed relationship. It was a turbulent relationship, mainly due to the fact that she’s several times his size and easily agitated, but they were still together, and there’s no evidence of cheating (and frankly, the idea of a cheating Muppet might break me worse than this did). In August 2015, when Kermit and Miss Piggy announced that they were splitting, she also revealed that she was in a relationship with Topher Grace. Cool, right, that tracks as a rebound relationship that probably lasted until the start of 2016. Why she chose Topher Grace, I don’t know, considering he wasn’t exactly a massive name in 2016. But who am I to judge her? She was clearly hurting.
So that frees her up to be with Keighley after that point – but there’s a wrench. Miss Piggy loves the limelight; she loves famous people. In 2016, The Game Awards was watched by just under four million people. I don’t think that she’s going to fawn over Geoff over those numbers. But in 2017, that number almost tripled to 11.5 million. It’s here that I think that Miss Piggy took an interest in Keighley, in between texting Tom Cruise and turning down the lead role in La La Land. And it’s in 2018, the year that Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice won the Game of the Year award, that I think the pair linked up.
But that’s all backstory. What I really want to know, what has really been haunting my every moment since The Game Awards, is how they had sex. When a Muppet fucks, is the puppeteer still in the room with them? Canonically, is the Muppet a separate living entity that just so happens to have a hand up their ass? Or are they essentially just Pinocchio?
Hang on, I’m getting a strange look from my friend who is in the room as I write this (Ed.note: And your editor as he reads this). One moment.
Okay, apparently, it isn’t normal to spend this long fixated on how Geoff Keighley and Miss Piggy slapped felt tips. But it can’t just be me wondering this. The people demand answers, and why not do it in a list celebrating the best and weirdest mo- Oh, he’s taking my laptop away from me.
Runner-Up:
- The Slow Implosion Of The Entire Industry
Thanks for reading! Check out our official Skybox Game of the Year 2025 podcast for our full breakdown on everything, and stay tuned here at Skybox (and use the GOTY 2025 tag!) to keep up with our written companion pieces!
