Despite a strong year for games in 2025, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has been picking up Game of the Year awards left and right. So much so that just three weeks into 2026, with GOTY awards for 2025 still being handed out, Expedition 33 has now won more of them than any other game in history.
ResetEra’s thorough GOTY awards tracker has been keeping an eye on Expedition 33’s progress for weeks. It became the game with the second most awards at the turn of the year, and its campaign to be the best ever continued as it sailed past 400 awards last week.
Elden Ring’s Record Has Been Broken
To become the very best and top the pile, however, it needed to amass a total than the huge figure Elden Ring achieved in 2022. Winning 435 awards and smashing past The Last of Us Part 2’s previous record of 326, it felt like Elden Ring’s record might never be broken. Here we are, just three years later, and Expedition 33 now leads the pack.
It’s not over yet, either, of course. Even though 2025 is in the rearview mirror, there are still more awards to be handed out. The rate at which they are being issued has slowed, of course, but it’s highly unlikely Expedition 33’s GOTY journey ends here. Elden Ring’s record may have been broken, but a new final total has not yet been set.
Clair Obscur Had Twice As Many Votes As The Next Best Game In Golden Joysticks’ Game Of The Year Race
Nothing’s stopping the Clair Obscur GOTY train.
ResetEra’s tracker keeps an eye on every game to have been given a Game of the Year award by a website, podcast, or awards body deemed prestigious enough for that award to be added to the total. Even though there were some fantastic games released in 2025, none of them came close to picking up as many awards as Expedition 33.
Who Were Expedition 33’s Closest Competitors In 2025?
The runner-up is currently Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, which has been crowned GOTY 38 times so far. Hollow Knight: Silksong is third with 22 awards, Donkey Kong Bananza has 15, and then Hades 2 and Blue Prince are tied for fifth place with 14 awards each. All games that had they been released in different years would have comfortably hoovered up a lot more awards without Expedition 33 to compete with.
Expedition 33 has managed to become the most awarded Game of the Year despite having one of its awards taken away. Sandfall’s first game got caught up in the controversy surrounding Larian’s admission that it used generative AI to help bring ideas to life for its new game, Divinity. Sandfall admitted to having used AI during development, which resulted in its Indie Game Awards GOTY being revoked and awarded to Blue Prince instead.
- Released
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April 24, 2025
- ESRB
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Mature 17+ / Blood and Gore, Strong Language, Suggestive Themes, Violence
- Developer(s)
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Sandfall Interactive
- Publisher(s)
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Kepler Interactive
