The four winners of the 2025 German Games Award have been announced: the board game Seti took home the gold cup. Endeavor: The Deep Sea and Bomb Busters followed in second place. The Little Alchemists won the children's games category.
The German Games Award is one of the traditional awards of the German board game scene – the public votes, the award takes place once a year as part of the GAME in Essen This year is no exception. The top 10 in the Family and Adult Games category and the top 3 in the Children's Games category had long been determined. The final step, shortly before the official start of the fair, was to rank the three selected top titles in order of success.
In the children's games category, "The Little Alchemists" by Matúš Kotry, published by CGE / HeidelBär Games, won. This was quite a surprising choice, given that the game wasn't the current winner of the 2025 Children's Game of the Year award (TOPP DIE TORTE! by Wolfgang Warsch), nor was it a title that had made the nomination or recommendation list.
In the adult and family games category, SETI: In Search of Extraterrestrial Life by Tomáš Holek, published by CGE / HeidelBär Games, won. It was followed by "Endeavor: The Deep Sea“ by the authors Circus by Carl de Visser and Jarratt Gray, published by Frosted Games / Board Game Circus, in second place and Bomb Busters by Hisashi Hayashi (Pegasus Spiele) in bronze.
There's a small trend this year among games that use scientific approaches as their thematic background. This is the case with both Endeavor and SETI. It's not always easy for the creators, as Petr Murmak, Chief Executive Officer of CGE Games, explained using an example. In the case of the board game SETI, the publisher conducted extensive research to be able to represent the current state of astronomical research. However, between printing and publication, scientists discovered that Saturn has more natural satellites than previously thought. This resulted in tips from players to the publisher about an error on one of the game cards. This will be relevant for a potential reprint, jokes Petr Murmak.
The other games in the top 10
The other winners of the German Games Award 2025 this year were:
- Place: Castle Combo (Cosmos by Grégory Grard and Mathieu Roussel)
- Place: Faraway (Cosmos by Johannes Goupy and Corentin Lebrat)
- Place: Civolution (Deep Print / Pegasus Games by Stefan Feld)
- Place: Blood on the Clocktower (Funtails by Steven Medway)
- Place: Slay the Spire: The Board Game (Nice Game by Gary Dworetsky, Anthony Giovannetti and Casey Yano)
- Place: Astrobees (Tierra del Fuego by Connie Vogelmann)
- Place: Dune: Empire Uprising (Dire Wolf Digital / Asmodee by Paul Dennen)
as well as with the children
- Cascadia Junior (AEG / Kosmos by Fertessa Allyse and Randy Flynn)
- The Sandcastles of Burgundy (Ravensburger by Susanne Feld and Stefan Feld)
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