What game could still release in 2025 and steal the top spot from your current GOTY pick?

This year has been chock-full of fantastic games already, with a handful of them already being touted as Game of the Year contenders. Titles like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, Donkey Kong Bonanza, Split Fiction, and Blizzard Watch house favorite, Blue Prince are current frontrunners, and the range of genres from those games alone speaks to how well gamers have been eating this year.

But we still have five months left in the year, and there are games on the horizon that could conceivably steal the top spot from any of the current competition. Ghost of Yōtei releases in October and if it’s anything like its predecessor, Ghost of Tsushima, it’ll be an instant GOTY pick for a lot of folks. Meanwhile — though significantly less likely, given its genre — Silent Hill f releases a month earlier and could theoretically join the ranks of GOTY contenders.

Of course, not all upcoming games even have release dates.

Hades 2, for instance, recently released its final major early access patch and gone full-steam-ahead on its 1.0 build and full launch. It doesn’t have an official release date yet, but there’s still every chance it’s ready to go before the end of the year. And if that happens? Instant GOTY pick for me.

The game has been incredible since its very first early access build. It not only builds upon everything the first game did so well, it expands upon it in ways that are both unexpected and perfectly natural fits. I don’t want to spoil too much, so I’ll just leave it at this: I was blown away with how much game Supergiant managed to fit into the first Hades. The sequel takes that and more than doubles it. More biomes, more interactions, more lore, more everything — and it all has the incredible polish Supergiant excels at.

Granted, none of that may matter if Hollow Knight: Silksong releases this year. That’s another game that could theoretically release any time in the next five-to-100 months. Will it live up to the hype and steal the GOTY from everything else here? Only time (and maybe a Gamescom demo) will tell!

For now, I’d love to hear which game(s) haven’t come out but will — or realistically could — in 2025 and steal the top spot for your Game of the Year. Sound off below!