Entries are closed! You can monitor our progress at Fumarole’s google sheet. You can view all the calendar entries at the Advent Calendar RPS Tag.
It’s that time again! On December 1st, Horace will emerge from his den and reveal to us one of the greatest PC games of 2017. He will do this for 24 days, on the final day revealing the Bestest Best game of the year.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to predict which twenty-four games will be selected. The winner will receive $20 towards the purchase of games (on Steam, GOG, or Humble Store) and be enshrined in our hall of fame.
Here are the rules:
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List the 24 games you think will appear on the Advent Calendar. You don’t need to worry about the order or any categories they may be in (with one exception, see below).
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You can edit your post to change your picks any time before December. All edits after the first pick is revealed are invalid.
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You get a point for every pick that appears on the calendar. At the end of the competition, the person with the most points wins. In the event of a tie, the person who correctly picked the 24th game on the calendar (aka Bestest Best Game, aka Game of the Year) wins. If both/neither players correctly guessed the GOTY, it will be a shared victory. In the event of a tie, each player gets the full prize, but the pot is capped at $40, so if there is some massive multi-way tie you gotta split it.
A tracking sheet will be linked to this post in the coming days. Once the Advent Calendar goes live, you can use it to keep track of the competition.
FAQ below:
Who picks the games?
All full-time staff, as of the voting. As of now that’s Graham, Adam, Alec, John, Alice, Brendan, Katherine and Matt (much to our dismay, Pip don’t work here no more).
What is the selection process?
We don’t know exactly, but we do know each active staff member makes a list, and those lists somehow get combined into the top 24.
What games are eligible to receive awards?
Whatever the Hivemind wants. Given that RPS starts handing out awards on December 1st, the “last year” comprises December 1st, 2016-November 30th, 2017. However, the restrictions are not so technical. Founder-in-Exile Jim Rossignol once noted: “Basically any game that we’ve said “this is the year of this game”. So if a game came out last year, but we didn’t get excited about it until this year, then it’s eligible. We’re nothing if not consistently inconsistent in our logic.” Of course, Jim isn’t here anymore, but the logic seems to still apply.
Can Early Access Games receive awards?
Yes: a number of early access games have received awards. Additionally, two previous GOTY winners - Minecraft and Kentucky Route Zero - were not yet complete when the award was given.
What about games released in December 2016? Or December 2017?
In theory, the former can win awards, though off the top of my head I can’t recall any previous-year December games ever winning. In the latter case, Just Cause 3 was released on December 1, 2015 and was in that year’s calendar (the sneaky bastards). So it’s possible, if unlikely if the game is released any later.
