ANNOUNCING: Consume Me is Video Games are Good's 2025 Game of the Year

Video transcript below.

If we had to define 2025 in just one word, tough might be it. It was a tough one to get through. Tough to play all the amazing games that released this year. And maybe toughest of all to come to a final decision when it came time to pick our Game of the Year winner.

This year’s releases were so good that we effectively had a second list of 10 nominees that would have been just as worthy. We spent hours talking back and forth about our nominees and even floated the idea of awarding multiple winners or rethinking our GOTY format entirely.

But when it comes to it, we still find value in the process of selecting a winner and celebrating that game extensively — not just now, but in the years to come. It gives us space to sit with and try to articulate the impact of the games we played this year, and we hope that our reflection extends beyond us, both to the developers we’re honoring and to the players we’re reaching.

In 2025, we both agreed that there was one game in our hearts standing head and shoulders above the rest. This game joins the ranks of our previous Game of the Year winners and finds a home amidst a catalog of games that are, more than anything, about what it means to exist in this world. Games that embrace humanity and all the mess that comes with it.

But before we introduce our 2025 Game of the Year, we’ve got to grab a bite to eat real quick... [In the video, a silly skit ensues to reveal the winner.]

Consume Me - 2025 Game of the Year

Jenny Jiao Hsia, AP Thomson, Jie En Lee, Violet W-P, Ken “coda” Snyder

We couldn’t keep this game’s name out of our mouths this year. It was one of only two games we called a 10 out of 10. It featured prominently in our annual 24-hour anniversary stream. And we’ve sort of evangelized for it since we played its demo in June.

So, some of you may have seen this coming, but what can we say? Consume Me is unlike any other game we played this year.

It’s a wholly unique experience that’s fueled by a deeply personal foundation, with a balance of humor and heart that few other games can match. We adore games so injected with personality that you can practically see the people who made it on the other side of the screen while you play. Because it draws directly from lived experience, Consume Me has a leg up in that regard. But still. You step away knowing that this game could have only been made by these people, and it’s all the better for it.

Consume Me is a semi-autobiographical narrative housed within a self-described interactive comic book full of minigames and meter management gameplay. You play as Jenny: a messy, overly ambitious teenager sinking beneath the weight of expectations levied on her by her family, her friends, and, more than anyone, herself.

She falls into toxic diet culture, gamifies her life to meet unrealistic self-imposed standards, and crams for school exams in some truly god-awful all-nighters.

And she does it all in the cutest outfits you’ve ever seen.

What struck us most about Consume Me, a game that opens with a content warning about themes of restrictive eating, was how uplifting and hopeful its story ultimately becomes. It depicts the messiness of youth with deep relatability and charming humor, and takes you on a journey of finding the path your life might take — unexpected, undefined, and unfocused as that path might be when you’re on the cusp of adulthood like Jenny.

It goes far beyond exploring body image and dieting to encapsulate so many of the pressures of youth: the expectation to map out your future in high school, the folly of constant comparison, relationship struggles. Through all this, Consume Me puts you into the shoes of a girl picking up, trying on, and oftentimes eventually discarding the various coping mechanisms she picks up,   in a search for control over a chaotic period in her life.

The game consistently reminds you that Jenny’s behaviors are not to be rooted for, even as it makes Jenny so dang likeable that you want to see her succeed. That’s what makes Consume Me so punchy. It doesn’t just show you Jenny’s patterns — it recruits you into them.

Video BTS: Phyllis is unsure about the highly effective "feed the dog the cookie" strategy.

Whether you’re finding the perfect arrangement for your Tetris-block food pieces or min-maxing the hours in Jenny’s day, Consume Me proves to be just as compelling of a game as it is a coming-of-age story.

Its dopamine-fueled gameplay loop is a buffet of minigames, stat perks, and items that let you push past all corporeal limits to accomplish dozens of activities in two hours. It makes it uncomfortably satisfying and fun to participate.

Then, it pulls you out of the gamified mind loop to interact with someone other than Jenny’s own reflection, and you see that the impact of her self-destructive behaviors has a wider radius than expected, and it makes you cringe.

This complicated juxtaposition aligns perfectly with the narrative’s focus on how futile it is to optimize your life no matter the consequences — and how we keep trying it anyway. In doing so, it asks you to give Jenny, and your own misguided younger self by proxy, some grace.

In consecutive playthroughs, it stood out to us how each narrative sequence, each new minigame and interstitial scene, had something to surprise us and make us smile. Whether it’s one of those adorable outfits or a fun reframing of something previously established as the norm, the Consume Me team keeps shaking up your expectations.

Consume Me’s final hours are what really elevate it into the stratosphere of greatness that earned it our top prize this year, and that’s because it does things no other game would dare to. This game’s credits, for example, never fail to make us sob.

And no other game would have you and your friends all chanting “egg, egg, egg” as you hope to pull the fated fried egg corner piece that’ll seal the perfect lunch.

Whether it’s making you cry, laugh, or shake your head, Consume Me resonates not by trying to be universal, but by committing to something personal. It’s a reminder that we’re more alike than we are different, and that games as a medium can provide the space to explore that by journeying through each other’s stories.

Congratulations to our 2025 Game of the Year, Consume Me: the best meal in a year full of gourmet dishes. We hope you take the time to check it out.

Thank you to the team that brought it to life — Jenny, AP, Jie En, Violet, and coda — for opening your hearts to make this game and for letting us be forever changed in playing it. Games like Consume Me are what will inspire future generations and lay the foundation for a version of the industry we can be proud of. 

With the year just days from wrapping up, the industry, and even VGG, are heading into a time of change. What awaits us on the other side of it all is still uncertain, but what I do know is this: video games are good. Personally, they’re a big reason we made it through a year like this, and I’m sure will help us get through more tough years to come.

If you need that reminder, play Consume Me. Play any of the games on our nominee list. Find your next favorite game and feel your passion for this medium reignite.

In the meantime, check out VideoGamesGood.com to catch up on all our written and video coverage of the best games, and we’ll see you in the new year.

Thanks for watching, and thank you to our Patreon supporters for helping make this video possible.

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Take a look at our previous Game of the Year winners:

1000xRESIST (2024)

Alan Wake 2 (2023)

Immortality (2022)

Chicory: A Colorful Tale (2021)