/v/GA Spotlight — Best Game That Nobody Played
The “Best Game Nobody Played” category, also known as “Niche Award”, is a category we have featured in the Vidya Gaem Awards since 2014.
Names we used for the Best Game Nobody Played category:
- Niche Award
- Stealth Mission Award
- Secret Dungeon Award
- The Little Game That Could Award
- Diamond In The Rough Award
Some interesting things about the category:
The “Best Game Nobody Played” category has enjoyed a special criteria for selection that is unlike most of other categories in our awards show. We aimed to surface games under-represented in other awards programs to our voters, without putting our thumb on the scale to any particular one. To achieve this, we’ve had two different approaches.
- Selection Criteria for this category in 2014–2015: Nominees for the Niche Award are determined by calculating the least nominated games (i.e. games that received the lowest number of nominations across all awards) and then picking games at random.
- Selection Criteria for this category for 2016 and afterwards: Nominees for the Niche Award are determined by calculating the games that have received the most nominations in other awards but are not already official nominees for any award.
Because the award serves a special purpose, we’ve also included Best Game Nobody Played in our visual presentation every year except for 2016 (where it was site-only).
Best Game Nobody Played Winners, by year:
- 2014: Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse
- 2015: Transformers Devastation
- 2016: Rabi-Ribi (no video)
- 2017: Puyo Puyo Tetris
- 2018: Taiko no Tatsujin: Drum ‘n’Fun!
- 2019: Etrian Oddysey Nexus
- 2020: Carrion
- 2021: Ghosts n’ Goblin’s Resurrection
- 2022: Frogun
- 2023: Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon
Analysis:
Despite indie games making a large chunk of the category’s nominees, Best Game Nobody Played does not necessarily preclude games made by larger developers from a nomination. Indeed, games from AA and AAA publishers like “Transformers: Devastation”, “Puyo Puyo Tetris”, “Ghosts n’ Goblins: Resurrection”, and “Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon” have still won our voters hearts by being great games with either a specific focus, or a niche audience.
Speaking of which, here’s a video of “Niche Award” from the 2017 Vidya Gaem Awards (with winner speech below):
The six of us who bought this game must be pretty pumped right about now, I’d imagine.
Yes, it’s the best of both worlds, bringing together a titanic series and Puyo Puyo (long forgotten by both East and West) to some unholy communion dedicated to nervous laughter and ripping out hair.
The game’s fun story mode will give you some laughs, and ease you into the mechanics, but may God have mercy on your soul when it comes to the two games swapping out or fusing together like some kind of inbred Voltron.
Puyo Puyo Tetris slipped under everyone’s radar as a result of Sega focusing on Sonic and Miku this year, but it seems to have found its place among the fans.
It’s merciless, it’s balls-to-the-wall, it’s got cute girls, even cuter blocks, and it’s so god damned fun that it fit this award like an I-block in the corner of your grid.
The Vidya Gaem Awards are an award show for video games from 4chan’s “/v/ — Video Games” board. It is an award show that features both positive and negative award categories, has been held each year online since 2011, and is made possible by a group of volunteers who work on the project for free. Learn more about “What are the Vidya Gaem Awards?” here.
Disclosure: I am the current Head of Outreach and the former Executive Producer of the Vidya Gaem Awards (2013–2015, 2017).
