The 2025 Adventure Game Hotshot Awards

• Features by Adventure Game Hotspot staff
• Published:
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Best Story – Old Skies 

Well, here’s a shock: Dave Gilbert knows how to write! Wadjet Eye's Old Skies wonderfully weaves big sci-fi ideas through an anthology of personal short stories showcasing Gilbert's talent for evoking real places and believable characters. When ChronoZen time agent Fia is sent back to uncover the fate of a nineteenth-century boxer, we're drawn into both his family's struggle to cope with losing their farm to New York's expansion and the ugly world of match fixing and gang violence. This contrasts with a tussle for corporate control in the 2040s, a Gilded Age crime spree, and even a fateful visit to the Twin Towers that's more concerned with a single murder than the global catastrophe unfolding nearby. Individually, these vignettes are affecting enough, but together they combine to tell an overarching tale of regret, missed opportunities, and ultimately the power of love. Simply building a cohesive world from these disparate period settings, ranging from muddy Victorian streets to the clean glass towers of the future, is an achievement in its own right, let alone balancing them with questions about the ethics and impact of time travel in a way that will leave you both invested in and conflicted about Fia's fate. For such superb storytelling prowess, Old Skies makes history of its own as the first ever Hotshot!

Runners-up: 

The Drifter
Kathy Rain 2: Soothsayer
Foolish Mortals
Dispatch 

Best Setting – Foolish Mortals 

Foolish Mortals fittingly bills itself as “merry & macabre,” two traits that seep into every inch of its varied haunted locales. Set entirely on the spooky yet undeniably inviting island of Devil's Rock off the coast of Louisiana, Inklingwood Studios’ 1930s bayou-themed adventure balances whimsy and dark humor with an abundance of beautifully hand-drawn style. Every screen is charming in its own way, all but guaranteeing a near-constant stream of enjoyment, with plenty of chuckles and awe along the way. The vibes are never horror, just warmly spooky fun that presents just enough darkness and menace to balance out the lighthearted tone. Each destination excels at luring in players, stuffing both playfulness and historical richness into every crevice, whether it’s eerie caverns, an old coastal fortress, the obligatory graveyard, or its grand centerpiece, the haunted Bellmore Manor. Populated by the living and dead alike, all of this adds up to a grim yet buoyant, wonderfully atmospheric locale that took us on quite a thrilling ride – hardly surprising, as it was conceived by a former theme part creator – making it one of the genre's most pleasing-to-explore settings in memory.

Runners-up:

Keeper
Daymare Town
Neyyah
Gloomy Eyes

Best Graphics – Keeper 

There are two types of people in the world: Those who agree that Double Fine’s Keeper is jaw-droppingly gorgeous, and those who were unfortunately born with no eyes. It. Is. Stunning. Which is what happens when you put one of gaming’s most talented and imaginative artists in charge. That would be Lee Petty, who led a team of fellow artists in creating a fantastical world of wondrous landscapes, vivid hues and rich imagination. Every scene is like a living postcard as you wander through astoundingly creative, ever-changing biomes, from dusty deserts to wind-swept mountains to fields of gravity-defying pink pollen – all of them simultaneously familiar yet eerily alien. The many striking colors are magnificent, like the meticulously designed explosion of an artist’s palette. And as good as it looks in passing on the wobbly legs of a sentient lighthouse (you read that right), it looks even better up close when you draw near enough to see the virtual canvas’s more painterly effect at play, with visible brush strokes and a subtle bit of ink hatching. This beauty has brains, too, but when it comes to the Best Graphics of 2025, Keeper sure is a hottie.

Runners-up:

Bye Sweet Carole
The Drifter
Foolish Mortals
Brassheart

Best Music – Foolish Mortals 

Moments after Foolish Mortals begins, it transports players to a haute and haunted opening credits sequence featuring a sweeping, theatrical instrumental. It sets high expectations for the rest of the score, but they are soundly met. There’s more music than people on the island of Devil’s Rock (living ones, anyway). Adventurous, stirring interludes announce new chapters. Curious melodies accent important events or item pickups. Mischievous puzzle solutions are paired with playful stings, and a hopeful piano track accompanies a hint-giving diary like sunlight poking through dense trees. If you’re in the mood for a more sinister piano piece, then stop by the local witch doctor’s place in the bayou. Woodwinds and jazzy brass pay tribute to the 1933 Louisiana setting, while string instruments bring the spooky. And not to bury the lede, but there’s also a ghost wedding band that gives a swingin’ pop quiz in the form of an interactive song called “The Bellemore Boogie” that’ll make you want to do just that.

Runners-up:

The Drifter
Kathy Rain 2: Soothsayer
Old Skies
The Midnight Walk

Best Acting (voice or live-action) – Lost Records: Bloom & Rage 

It takes good voice acting to portray a character in a believable, relatable way that makes you empathize with their joys and sorrows, their dreams and disappointments, all without the actor ever appearing directly on-screen. It takes great acting to achieve the same feat TWICE at two significantly different stages of life. This is the secret sauce of Lost Records: Bloom & Rage, by Don’t Nod Entertainment, a developer who knows a thing or two about incredible voice-over direction. The game focuses on a group of sixteen-year-old girls who encounter a mysterious anomaly in 1995 that causes them to split apart and stay silent about it for nearly thirty years. Finally, a forced reunion brings them back together as the game flips back and forth between eras, and each of the main actors provides the voice-overs for both roles. It’s very difficult to de-age an older voice convincingly, but the actors here – led by Olivia Lepore as the lead character Swann Holloway – are completely convincing as both awkward teenagers and their older, more mature yet life-weary forty-something counterparts. Character interaction is the crux of the talk-heavy Lost Records experience, and it owes much of its success to the ability of its brilliant voice cast, who can now shout for joy at a narrow Best Acting win over some fierce competition.

Runners-up:

Old Skies
Rosewater
Foolish Mortals
The Drifter 

Best New Character – Mick Carter, The Drifter

Adventure game protagonists tend to be what might be called goofball savants – loveable losers who respond to the world with almost effortless ingenuity, a blissful ignorance toward potential consequences, and a nigh-superhuman ability to roll with the punches. Mick Carter, uber-reluctant hero of Powerhoof’s The Drifter, has none of these things. He starts the game at what he thinks is rock bottom, and finds the world waiting for him with a smile, a gun, and a pickaxe. After a series of mistakes, personal tragedies, and flagrant errors in judgment, Mick has adopted the life of a railyard hobo, with nothing to tie him down except regrets and painful memories as he tries to numb his aching soul. Still, when circumstances place him in the crosshairs of a far-ranging conspiracy that threatens not only his few remaining friends but all the homeless population of his native Australia – if not beyond – Mick forces himself to rise to the occasion, drawing on reserves of strength he’d thought long since evaporated to confront his failures, repair what he’s broken, and become, if he can, a man others can depend on. Coupled with his intensely human tendency to freak the hell out in the face of the otherworldly, and yet find a way to persevere in spite of it, Mick is a relatable, recognizable, and – dare we say – even aspirational figure destined for the annals of adventure game history. (And Adrian Vaughan’s brilliant, gravel-throated voice performance certainly doesn’t hurt!)

Runners-up:

Fia Quinn, Old Skies
Ace Hardway, SpaceVenture
Daniel, Wildwood Down
Chase, Dispatch

Best Concept – Blue Prince 

How do you find the 46th room in a house whose floorplan only shows 45? That’s the first question Blue Prince asks you to answer in Dogubomb’s genre-defying debut. As you investigate the expansive and eerily empty Mount Holly estate in order to secure your bequest left by your late great-uncle, the means through which you’ll accomplish your architecturally impossible task quickly become clear. With every turn of a doorknob, you decide what room is on the other side (out of three RNG’d options), and the layout of the house resets every morning, forcing you to begin exploring anew with nothing but yesterday’s knowledge. The length of each day is determined not by any clock, but by a step counter that ticks down with each threshold you cross until you’re too “exhausted” to continue. Basically, you’re drafting a massive maze as you navigate it against time, and early on you’ll often find no exit. But by slowly learning the floorplan’s unique rules, your ability to acquire upgrades, overcome challenges, piece together the plot, and trek deeper into the estate increases with each passing (in-game) day. With each passing real-life day, your desire to conquer Mount Holly will grow, too, even after you’ve “finished” the game, because that is far from the end.… Part mystery adventure, part complex narrative, part puzzle roguelike, when it comes to intrigue and innovation, Blue Prince is king.

Runners-up:

to a T
The Roottrees Are Dead
Dispatch
CARIMARA: Beneath the forlorn limbs

Best Gameplay – The Drifter 

The Drifter may look like a traditional 2D retro-styled adventure, but when you take control it immediately becomes clear that it’s something different, something more. This is what can only be described as a white-knuckle adventure. Protagonist Mick Carter can and will meet his untimely (and often gruesome) demise, but dying is less a punishment and more a means of progression. Mick’s superpower is his involuntary ability to revive with newfound foreknowledge of what’s to come, so death is baked into not only the narrative but the gameplay as well. While some complex puzzles can span multiple locations and involve acquired inventory and mental notes for dialogue, The Drifter really shines in its more claustrophobic set sequences. These are often time-sensitive, with Mick engaged in high-stakes activities like scaling the side of a building, escaping a watery grave, and outsmarting murderous captors. Rest assured, you won’t be platforming or shooting your way through hordes of enemies. This is still a highly intuitive single-click adventure, but it embraces a lively cinematic choreography as you deduce how to escape situations unharmed with the tension ramped up to “panic.” The Drifter will sell you the whole seat, but its pulse-pounding gameplay ensures you’ll only need the edge.

Runners-up:

Blue Prince
Foolish Mortals
The Séance of Blake Manor
Kathy Rain 2: Soothsayer
The Roottrees Are Dead 

Next up: Best Comedy, Fantasy, Horror, Mystery, Sci-fi. The Hotshots are...

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