Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Has Another Big Night and Wins “Game of the Year” at the 2025-2026 DICE Awards

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and Ghost of Yotei were nominated for eight awards ahead of the 2025-2026 DICE Awards ceremony. However, when it came time to hand out the statuettes, Sandfall Interactive’s RPG continued its awards season dominance in Las Vegas.

As it did at The Game Awards, Clair Obscur was named “Game of the Year” by DICE’s voting body of more than 30,000 industry professionals. The game’s developers also collected four additional awards, including “Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction”, “Outstanding Achievement in Story”, “Outstanding Achievement in Game Direction”, and “Role-Playing Game of the Year”.

But don’t worry, Sucker Punch didn’t go home empty-handed. Ghost of Yotei earned three awards at this year’s DICE Awards, including “Outstanding Achievement in Original Music Composition”, “Adventure Game of the Year”, and “Outstanding Achievement in Character” for Atsu.

Other big winners at the ceremony included Kojima Productions’s Death Stranding 2: On the Beach (“Outstanding Achievement in Audio Design” and “Outstanding Technical Achievement”) and Tonda Ros’s Blue Prince (“Outstanding Achievement for an Independent Game” and “Outstanding Achievement in Game Design”).

The DICE Awards honored quite a few other games this year with their genre awards, including Hades II (“Action Game of the Year”), Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection (“Fighting Game of the Year”), Mario Kart World (“Racing Game of the Year”), and more.

A complete list of all the nominees and winners at the 2025-2026 DICE Awards can be found after the break. And you can also catch a replay of this year’s ceremony, which was once again hosted by Greg Miller and Stella Chung.

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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Racks Up Nine Wins, Including “Game of the Year”, at the 2025 Game Awards

Geoff Keighley’s Trailer-Palooza, also known as The Game Awards, was shaping up to be a tad more anti-climactic in 2025 than ever before. Sandfall Interactive’s Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 went into the ceremony with 13 nominations, the most of any game in Game Awards history. With most critics and commentators treating its victory as inevitable, we were probably going to have to look elsewhere for surprises. But then…

…the thing that everyone expected to happen actually happened.

Yes, the critics and commentators (the people who actually vote on the winners) turned out to be right. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 won “Game of the Year” at the 2025 Game Awards. The throwback RPG also collected an additional eight trophies, including “Best Game Direction”, “Best Narrative”, “Best Art Direction”, “Best Score and Music”, “Best Role Playing Game”, and “Best Performance” for Jennifer English. And not to add more fuel to the fire over what qualifies as an independent game, but Clair Obscur also won both “Best Independent Game” and “Best Debut Indie Game”.

While the night definitely belonged to Clair Obscur and the team from Sandfall Interactive, a handful of other games also took home some Game Awards hardware, though each was limited to a single category. Battlefield 6 (“Best Audio Design”), ARC Raiders (“Best Multiplayer”), South of Midnight (“Games For Impact”), Doom: The Dark Ages (“Innovation in Accessibility”), Umamusume: Pretty Derby (“Best Mobile Game”), and The Midnight Walk (“Best VR/AR Game”) each scooped up a statuette.

Meanwhile, Hades II (“Best Action Game”), Hollow Knight: Silksong (“Best Action/Adventure Game”), Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves (“Best Fighting Game”), Donkey Kong Bananza (“Best Family Game”), Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles (“Best Sim/Strategy Game”), and Mario Kart World (“Best Sports/Racing Game”) were victorious in the genre-specific categories.

And that pretty much does it for the 2025 Game Awards. I’m struggling to think of anything that didn’t go according to plan, and all I can come up with was that extra-weird trailer for the upcoming Street Fighter film adaptation and the reveal that Capcom dropped the numerals from the upcoming Mega Man 12 in favor of a subtitle.

A replay of the 2025 Game Awards ceremony can be found after the break, as well as a list of all the nominees and winners.

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