The Game Awards needs to add a Best Horror Game category

Game Awards season is approaching and 2025 Nominees Announced to the usual mixture of adulation and horror. But now I don't really care who was nominated and who wasn't. Instead, I think about the awards themselves. Like the damn best horror game still not an award category at the annual gaming Oscars?

Horror is one of the most popular genres in gaming, with YouTubers and Twitch streamers like Markiplier and Jacksepticeye racking up millions of views by streaming the latest spine-chilling games to their audiences. 2025 in particular has been a fantastic year for goosebumps-inducing games. Silent Hill f sold over a million copies in the first 24 hours – a feat Silent Hill 2 redo it took three days to implement – and currently I have a score of 86 on Metacritic. Steam Reviews for Bloober Team's Kronos: A New Dawn are “very positive”: 87% of 2,600 reviews gave it a “thumbs up”. Dying Light: Beast it sold 1.5 million copies in its first five days of launch. More than 1 million of those sales came from Steam alone, where 86% of those surveyed also found it “very positive.” 51,400 players left reviews. Like I said, it's been a very good year for horror games.

In fact, the year of horror was so outstanding that in October we even held an unofficial The best horror games of 2025 vote. The winner of this was Eyes of Hellfire: An obscure game based on an Irish urban legend that, outside of this site, I have yet to hear anyone mention in relation to The Game Awards. Silent Hill f my personal game of the year, and it came second in our poll despite not nominated for Game of the Year. Just like our winner Eyes of Hellfireour third and fourth places – Hell is us And Kronos: A New Dawn – didn't receive any nominations for this year's Game Awards.

I'm not saying horror doesn't happen. any love at The Game Awards. Chiaroscuro: Expedition 33 arguably falls under the horror umbrella, and it's received a colossal 12 nominations, making it the most nominated work. in the history of the awards. But while we're on the subject of Game Awards history, it's also worth noting that in the 11 years since the Game Awards' inception, only one horror game has walked away with a major win: The Last of Us Part 2which won Game of the Year in 2020. Yes, The Game Awards treated the horror genre more favorably than, say, the Oscars. (In 96 years, the only horror film to win Best Picture was 1991. Silence of the Lambs.) But with so many amazing candies hitting consoles and Windows PC every year, I think there's still room for improvement.

Horror games deserve a place to shine, and although smaller, new awards show such as Horror Game Awards (created in 2022) will definitely give the genre more prominence, I still think these Beautiful, makes you think, heartbreaking games deserve their own category, especially given the existence of more nebulous awards (like Best Game Direction and Games for Impact), as well as awards that have nothing to do with actual games at all (for example, “Best Adaptation” and “Best Adaptation”). Content Creator of the Year). Horror is a beloved genre, and “Best Horror Game” isn't a category that voters will have a hard time defining.

As a genre, horror allows for incredibly flexible stories. Some games are similar Chiaroscuro are serious masterpieces that make many players misty-eyed, while such “friend” games as Phasmophobia can lead to shared tears and laughter. Silent Hill players experience stories that rely heavily on a slowly building sense of impending doom, while Resident Evil games often involve screams loud enough to wake up the entire neighborhood. Horror games are more than just cheap jump scares. Sometimes they are beautiful, sometimes they are disgusting, sometimes they are both at the same time. Horror is quite versatile and, if done correctly, evokes a strong reaction from players. It's time to give the genre its blood red decaying flowers.