The annual Game Developers Choice Awards for 2025 (or GDC) were recently held, awarding some of the biggest and best games released last year. This year, the hit indie roguelike deck-building card game Balatro from developer LocalThunk ended up taking home Game of the Year, which is a pleasant surprise considering the stiff competition it was up against in that category. Here’s the full winners list.
Balatro was one of the big contenders during last year’s awards season, notably winning Best Debut Indie Game, Best Indie Game and Best Mobile Game at The Game Awards 2024, where it was also nominated for Game of the Year. However, it ended up losing that honour to Team Asobi’s Astro Bot. It seems that game developers favoured Balatro a bit more this time as it ended up winning the biggest award at GDC.
The winners are as follows:
- Game of the Year – Balatro
- Best Audio – Astro Bot
- Best Debut – Balatro
- Best Design – Balatro
- Best Narrative – Metaphor: ReFantazio
- Best Technology – Astro Bot
- Best Visual Art – Black Myth: Wukong
- Audience Award – Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
- Innovation Award – Balatro
- Lifetime Achievement Award – Sam Lake
- Pioneer Award – Lucas Pope
- Social Impact Award – Life is Strange: Double Exposure
Sam Lake, the creative director at Remedy Entertainment best known for being the face of Max Payne and directing several award-winning titles including Alan Wake 2 and Control, won the Lifetime Achievement Award while Papers, Please and Return of the Obra Dinn game designer Lucas Pope took the Pioneer Award.
The game description for Balatro reads:
“Balatro is a poker-inspired roguelike deck builder all about creating powerful synergies and winning big. Combine valid poker hands with unique Joker cards in order to create varied synergies and builds. Earn enough chips to beat devious blinds, all while uncovering hidden bonus hands and decks as you progress. You’re going to need every edge you can get in order to reach the boss blind, beat the final ante and secure victory.”
Source: Variety
