The 2025 BAFTA Game Awards winners have been announced. It will come as little surprise that Astro Bot from Sony's Team Asobi had a great night. It scooped five awards, including Best Game and Best Animation and Best Game Design. But many people are intrigued by the success of a lesser-known title.
Nomada Studio's graceful side-scrolling platformer Neva won the Best Artistic Achievement award, seeing off Astro Bot, Black Myth Wukong, Still Wakes the Deep and Senua's Saga: Hellblade II. It was a well-deserved accolade for one of the most beautiful indie games we've seen (also see our pick of the best game consoles).
Published by Devolver Digital, Neva made our selection of the best indie games of 2024. It follows a young woman named Alba who must travel with her wolf companion Neva across four seasons in a world corrupted by darkness
The game is very much about the bond between Alba and Neva, who must fight battles and solve puzzles through four seasons. The gorgeous painterly art style surpasses even the same developer's 2018 game Gris, displaying a clear Miyazaki influence, which also comes across in the game's themes.
Meanwhile, Senua's Saga: Hellblade II may have missed out on Artistic Achievement at the BAFTA Game Awards 2025 but it picked up the award for Technical Achievement. We saw in our interview with Ninja Theory's VFX director how it used Unreal Engine 5 to bring to life striking landscape design, photo real character models and evocative lighting to set a new visual standard for historical fantasy.
Still Wakes the Deep, the beautifully atmospheric horror from Secret Mode won Best New Intellectual Property. Helldivers 2 won two awards for Multiplayer and Music.
The wonderfully quirky Thank Goodness You're Here was named Best British Game, and LocalThunk's Balatro won best debut game.
The BAFTA Game Awards winners are chosen by BAFTA members and people highly regarded in the gaming industry who vote for their top choices in each category. Some categories are decided by a specialised jury. What do you think of the results? Have you played Neva and do you think it deserved its win? Let us know in the comments below.
You can see full details at the BAFTA website. Inspired? See our pick of the best game development software, if you're looking to start work on your own game.
