It's been a tradition for as long as anyone can remember that the RPS team ends the year by choosing their 24 favorite games from the previous 12 months. In December, we reveal our picks daily. We call it RPS Advent Calendar.
It is also tradition that our readers, avid gamers, place bets on which games we will choose. crawling through our reviews, “What are we all playing this weekend?” postsand communicating on social media to gain insight into our choices. I swear I saw the commentator's face at my kitchen window last night, looking around the room for evidence of my choice. Thank God, everything they saw was evidence of my strictly regimented batch-making process.
This year marks the thirteenth year of the RPS advent calendar guessing game. If this were a child, they could now legally create a social media account and post abuse to the RPS team for including a game in the advent calendar that we had not reviewed or even written about once in the previous 12 months. The event organizer Aerothorn put in an incredible effort and it's great to see everyone getting involved.
To take part in the competition, you need to follow the link RPS Discord server And join the channel #2025-advent-calendar-guessing-game. There you will find a thread where you can express your guesses. The first post on the channel contains the full rules, but I'll freely copy and paste the main ones below:
“On December 1st, Horace will emerge from his lair and show us one of the greatest computer games of 2025. He will do this for 24 days, and on the last day he will present the best game of the year. Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to predict which twenty-four games will be selected.
“In the Submissions thread, post a list of 24 games that you think will be included in the RPS advent calendar. Indicate which game is Day 24, which is “Best Best Game”. This is the first tiebreaker. The order of the others does not matter.”
[The second second tiebreaker question is: “How many of the Advent Calendar picks didn't receive a review on RPS?” We're looking for an officially labeled review – not a news story, supporter post, etc.”]
“You get a point for every choice that appears on the calendar. At the end of the competition, the person with the most points wins, the second-highest is the runner-up, and the third-highest is the runner-up. In case of a tie we will use the following tiebreakers:
“The person who correctly guessed the Bestest Best game is the winner.
“If both leaders (or neither) guessed the Bestest Best game, the one with the highest probability of guessing the second tiebreaker wins.
“If the tie still remains, we will prepare additional prizes for the winners.”
What is it? Prizes?
Yes!
- 12-month subscription to RPS for 1 place
- 6-month RPS subscription for 2nd place
- 3-month RPS subscription for 3rd place
Some additional information to help you make your choice.
All RPS team members vote. This year that means me, Callum, Edwin, James, Jeremy, Mark and Ollie. We all privately select ten games, ranking them from first to last. The first place game is worth ten points, the second place game is worth nine and so on, and the tenth place game is worth one point. I then add them all into a spreadsheet, add up the totals for each game, and the top 24 games become our advent calendar for the year. (However, we do not publish them in order of rating, with the exception of the game presented on December 24th, which we consider the best game of the year).
To be eligible for this year's RPS Advent Calendar, the game must have been released or received a significant update in the last 12 months. This also means that games that are in early access continue to work. Sometimes we choose games from December of the previous year because we had already completed voting for that year when they came out.
This year will be especially difficult to predict as we have seen significant changes in the team. For example, I only joined in October, and the game I wrote about the most was Wall World 2 – and not particularly positively.
Don't worry though, everyone who guesses will be in the same boat, and in previous years the winner has often managed to succeed with less than 60% of their guesses correct.
