The Iconic Puzzle Game Didn't Triumph at The Game Awards — A New Category Could Fix That

Each time a major awards ceremony nears, there’s always a demand for introducing fresh award types to acknowledge unsung work and delight the hearts of enthusiasts who have specialized interests.

My colleague previously argued advocating for terror-themed awards. That would be fantastic. Equally deserving are strategy board titles, which is someone's personal cause. Yet I need to apologize in advance if I try to elbow in front since similar to dedicated enthusiasts, I possess a compelling case for why my demand stands as crucial and significant. This is the request: We need an award type for logic-based games.

Organizing Gaming Categories

Classifying creative works is not a science; opinions vary greatly, and it will always spark debates resulting in unclear classifications. It's understandable that movie academies don’t do it. However, it represents an essential concession for the industry of gaming, showing incredible range they hardly constitute one unified medium.

For the full spectrum of gaming accomplishments to gain proper attention, and to ensure all game types to receive proper recognition, genre categories are essential.

Current Gaming Award Categories

Prominent interactive entertainment events offer these award types recognizing Action-oriented games, Adventure-action titles, RPG experiences, Combat games, Simulation and strategy titles, and Sports/Racing games. Collectively, these award types actually cover many game types, making space possible accommodating various experiences.

Not so for puzzle games. No suitable classification appears to accommodate them. Examine these examples from outstanding current releases, showing diverse approaches: building puzzles from a specific release, fast-paced pattern recognition from another release, thought-provoking social scenarios from additional release. What category would fit them between these six categories? Unfortunately, nowhere.

Recognition Challenges

There are dozens excellent brain-teasers published annually lacking appropriate categories during gaming ceremonies, except when they manage to fit for categories like Mobile Game, VR/AR Game, and the highly challenging Indie races.

  • An iconic brain-teaser received no recognition in any category during that awards season
  • Another imaginative release missed out that year
  • Well-received sorting experience received no acknowledgment recently
  • Just some puzzle games barely qualified for independent or mobile categories

Significance of Puzzle Games

Commonly they're small games, but the art of the puzzle game is of massive significance. Famous handheld logic titles count as most engaged experiences in the world and have been for many years.

The iconic tile-matching title competes with well-known building titles for the title of best-selling game of all time; it’s also in the running for best game of all time. Brain-teasers form essential building blocks to the art of video games, and they are in conversation with almost every other genre.

Recommendation and Reasoning

Puzzle games wouldn’t have this problem. It would be easy to populate a field of five with fascinating, diverse, deserving games each ceremony simply — actually, with challenge, given the need to exclude many worthy titles.

Restating the point, these are games that otherwise have no home at major gaming awards. Brain-teaser creators function at the challenging frontier game development, creating some of essential manifestations of the video game form. Just like movie stunt professionals, they merit acknowledgment. We shouldn't delay 35 years.

Amy Romero
Amy Romero

A passionate gaming journalist with over a decade of experience covering industry trends and game development.