Prima Games | Game of the Year 2020 – Indie

The Prima Games team have come together to pick nominees and a winner for the 2020 Game of the Year in the indie game category. We’re breaking up the awards between AAA and indie because there were so many incredible indie games released this year, and we want to be able to highlight more of them as nominees.

With that out of the way, let’s take a look at the nominees and Game of the Year winner! 

Prima Games | Game of the Year 2020 – Indie

Nominees

• Spiritfarer

• Hades

• Ori and the Will of the Wisps

• Phasmophobia

• Bugsnax

• Coffee Talk

• Mortal Shell

• Roki

• World of Horror

• Curse of the Moon 2

• Umurangi Generation

• Bug Fables

• Monster Train

• Blaseball

• Monster Sanctuary

• Carto

And the winner is…

Winner: Hades

Here’s what the staff thinks of Hades, and why the team ultimately ended up choosing it as the Game of the Year in the indie game category.

Lucas

Hades gets it from me becuase it defied everything I thought I knew about this flavor of game. I’ve bounced off of nearly every Supergiant joint to this point, because I’ve always had issues with the writing being kimda pretentious and the action mechanics never feeling good.

Hades is a total 180 from that, with super appealing, character-based storytelling, and action gameplay that (almost always) feels good (even when Supergiant still Supegiants and makes weapons have weird properties). It’s also an excellent example of the merits behind Early Access as a delivery method, because there’s no doubt Hades would be the game it is now if it didn’t have so much player feedback invested.

Also I reviewed it here, so you can take a look at that. Games get 7s, 8s, and 9s all the time but I make sure to hold those 10s back as much as possible.  

Jesse

Ever since I first played Hades in 2018 I knew it would be my GOTY whenever it officially launched. Come to 2020 and here we are. I can’t sing the praises of this game enough, and it’s one of the few indies that really reached outside of the gaming community.

I had friends texting me about Hades who don’t generally play a lot of games outside of FIFA or Call of Duty. It was a blast getting to swap harrowing tales of their journey through the Underworld and who they wanted to romance. Hades ranks among my favorite games ever, and it’s easily the culmination of everything Supergiant has done up until this point. 

Morgan

As a fan of Supergiant Games, I knew that Hades would be something special after it was announced and added to the Epic Games Store in 2018. During my time with the game in Early Access, Hades met and exceeded all of my expectations. When the game formally released this year, the praise and positive response to the game was overwhelming. 

All of a sudden, it wasn’t just Early Access gamers talking about the game on the Hades subreddit, everyone was talking about Hades. It was a great feeling, and it made picking an indie game GOTY exceptionally easy. I’d honestly say that across the board, Hades is this year’s GOTY. It’s one of the best things to have happened this year, both the game, and the discourse around it.

Congratulations to Supergiant Games. You deserve this GOTY and so, so, so many more.