Best Adventure Game of 2025 - Article
by Lee Mehr , posted on 16 January 2026 / 3,054 Views
While not carrying the same heft it enjoyed long ago, last year was one of the adventure genre's most commercially-successful years in this century. A Telltale-esque adventure eclipsing 3 million sales in three months would be the talk of the town were it not for another adventure game hurdling over 10 million sales in two. Though not all finalists reached those heights, each did share a greater amount of spotlight compared to similar titles within their respective sub-genres.
Past any sales thresholds and popularity contests, 2025 also deserves credit for its creativity; the last time our entire shortlist consisted exclusively of new IPs was for Best Adventure Game of 2020. An impressive year for the genre, with even greater potential ahead.
The Shortlist:
Despelote
PEAK
Dispatch
The Alters
The Runner-up:
PEAK
Merriam-Webster's Dictionary crowned "slop" as 2025's word of the year. One initially-derisive subset of that word was "friendslop", as a means of describing the oncoming onslaught of low-fi, low-barrier cooperative titles that've bubbled up since the COVID pandemic. The thing is, co-developer Aggro Crab earnestly embraces that label. Regardless of how the term is interpreted, it fits so well in describing those gameplay opportunities of such polar extremes: hilariously destructive or constructive cooperation as your squad scales to reach the top of the mountain. Call it friendslop if you want, but it's peak friendslop in our eyes.
The Winner:
Dispatch
For the fourth year in a row, VGChartz's Best Adventure Game is from a freshman developer. Alright, granted Adhoc Studio was founded by key Telltale veterans, but it's nevertheless an impressive feat. The team's cache, alongside an impressive voice acting roster, can only go so far, though. The rest relies on quality character writing, world-building, and so on to keep players hooked. Even how the dispatch center premise pairs with dialogue choices felt like an inspired gameplay wrinkle to an otherwise familiar formula. It's in the details where Dispatch's superhero story soars above its contemporaries.
