Whenever a major awards show draws near, there’s a predictable chorus calling for new categories — a desire to honor overlooked work and to delight niche communities. Sometimes those appeals succeed: the Academy will present Best Casting at the Oscars for the first time, and a Stunt Design prize is set to appear in 2028. In that spirit, forgive us if we make a similar plea to The Game Awards — though we acknowledge these campaigns can take years to reach fruition; the stunt community lobbied the Academy for decades before winning recognition.
A colleague, Claire Lewis, has argued convincingly for a horror-game category, and Austin Manchester has championed board games. Both are worthy additions. Still, I’ll take my place in line to press for what I believe is even more urgent: a dedicated category for puzzle games.
Genre labels aren’t precise — they’re contested and often encourage debate — and that’s part of why film awards rarely rely on them. Yet videogames encompass such a broad range of forms that genre distinctions become a practical necessity if awards are to reflect the medium’s variety. Without genre categories, whole types of achievement can slip through the cracks.
Image: EnhanceThe Game Awards already maintain genre categories for Action, Action/Adventure, Role-Playing, Fighting, Sim/Strategy, and Sports/Racing. Those six buckets cover significant ground and, combined with broader trophies like Multiplayer and Ongoing Game, they accommodate many releases. Horror titles, for example, usually land within Action or Action/Adventure and thus have a pathway — albeit a competitive one — to recognition.
Puzzle games, however, lack any obvious home. Consider three standout titles from 2025: the contemplative architecture of Blue Prince, the kinetic block-matching of Lumines Arise, and the gently observant logic of Is This Seat Taken? Where would each of those fit among the current categories? Blue Prince found a place among Best Independent Game and Best Debut Indie nominees; the other two had no obvious slot and consequently missed out.
Year after year there are dozens of ingeniously crafted puzzle games that receive little to no attention at The Game Awards, unless they happen to qualify under Mobile, VR/AR, or the crowded Indie categories. Classics and acclaimed puzzle titles have too often been overlooked: The Talos Principle received no nominations in 2014, Wilmot’s Warehouse was passed over in 2019, and Unpacking didn’t place in 2021. Others like Baba Is You, Grindstone, Threes!, and Tetris Effect found representation only when they fit into another category’s remit.
Unpacking — first room
Size is no measure of importance. Puzzle design underpins some of the medium’s most-played and enduring experiences: Candy Crush Saga remains ubiquitous, and Tetris vies with Minecraft for status among the best-selling and most influential games ever made. Puzzle mechanics inform countless genres, and their designers often distill gameplay down to its purest, most instructive elements.
Unlike some specialized genres that struggle to produce a competitive slate each year, puzzle games could easily populate a rich field of nominees — and the tough part would be choosing which deserving titles to leave out. Many puzzle creators work at the forefront of design, tackling problems of interaction, cognition, and elegance that push the medium forward. They deserve a clear, consistent stage at The Game Awards. Let’s not make them wait decades for recognition.
Source: Polygon
