Golden Joystick Voting Closes October 23, and Order of the Sinking Star Is Fighting for PC Game of the Year

Every category at the Golden Joysticks is decided by public vote alone — no jury weighting behind the scenes. Voting opened on September 25 alongside the nominations and runs at goldenjoysticks.com, open to players worldwide. When the 21 main categories close on Friday, the awards are not done: the separate Ultimate Game of the Year shortlist is revealed on October 26, and that single category gets its own vote, closing October

30. Winners across everything are announced at the ceremony in London on November 11.

The overall nominations are led by 007 First Light and Big Walk. But the category worth watching is PC Game of the Year, where the ballot’s shape — small games shoulder to shoulder with major productions — is exactly what a pure public vote produces.

For scale, the Console Game of the Year ballot shows what the PC list is up against in attention: 007 First Light, Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave, Forza Horizon 6, LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, Nioh 3, Onimusha: Way of the Sword, Pokémon Pokopia, PRAGMATA, Resident Evil Requiem and SAROS — ten major releases, almost all from big studios. The PC ten could hardly look more different, which is precisely why Friday’s result will be interesting.

The full shortlist: Big Walk, Crimson Desert, Escape from Tarkov, Esoteric Ebb, MECCHA CHAMELEON, Mewgenics, Order of the Sinking Star, STAR WARS Zero Company, The Blood of Dawnwalker and Valheim. Three are large productions — Crimson Desert (also nominated for Best Soundtrack), Rebel Wolves’ The Blood of Dawnwalker (three nominations in total) and the tactics game STAR WARS Zero Company. The rest are independents and slow-burn successes, including a cat-breeding roguelike in Mewgenics and MECCHA CHAMELEON, a game about a chameleon hiding in plain sight.

The eligibility window explains two of the older names: games qualified by reaching their full release between November 1, 2025 and September 25, 2026, which is how Valheim’s 1.0 launch this September and Escape from Tarkov’s 1.0 both made the list. Sinking Star took the other route in — it launched on October 8, after the cutoff, and reached the ballot because judges had access to pre-release builds. In other words, the puzzle game had convinced the awards’ judges before it had sold a single copy.

On paper it is the smallest game on the list: $29.99, one interconnected puzzle world, no combat and no live-service hooks. Its credentials are the reception. Steam players rate it 97% positive across 2,980 reviews — an Overwhelmingly Positive label — and it sits at a Metascore of

83. It also has pedigree: this is Jonathan Blow’s first new game since The Witness in 2016, from the studio that made Braid. In a vote where organized, motivated communities beat raw marketing budgets, a fiercely loved puzzle game is not a token nomination — and it doubles its chances with the Best Indie Game nomination, where it faces Big Walk, Esoteric Ebb, Valheim and six others.

Readers of our Witcher 3 coverage have a second reason to open the ballot: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Remastered, the free 5.0 remaster that arrived on September 29, is nominated for Best Remake / Remaster, against Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter, Gothic 1 Remake, Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced, Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 2 and Star Fox. The franchise’s future is on the ballot too — The Witcher 4 appears on the Most Wanted list. Voting for all 21 categories closes at the same Friday deadline.