With 2020 now done and over with (thankfully!), eShopperReviews is celebrating some of the year’s highlights in a week of awards, starting on Monday, January 11, 2021! This is the second year this subreddit has had a yearly awards feature, and this year it’s going to be bigger and better with more categories being awarded!

Okay, let’s get a few things out of the way here first – this list is only going to include Nintendo Switch games that I have reviewed. That means no Paper Mario: The Origami King, no Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition, no Doom Eternal… so yeah, a few of the year’s biggest titles won’t be found on this list, but in their place you may find some more obscure games you perhaps hadn’t heard of. Also, this list will only include games released in 2020, regardless of other games I reviewed in 2020.

Oh, and then there’s re-releases and ports of games released to other platforms, which is kinda’ unavoidable on the Switch. So, I’m going to place this restriction on the games listed here: with the exception of the nominations for Specialty Awards (Day 1) and Dubious Awards (Day 3), a game will not qualify for an award if it released on another platform prior to 2018 unless the Nintendo Switch version has significant changes or improvements. Otherwise, this list would be loaded with ports, I imagine.

One more restriction I’m giving myself here: In listing my runners-up, I am only going to list at most five games in each category. I absolutely want to give credit to as many games as I can here, but I also recognize that credit starts to lose meaning when it’s a game that’s just one in a long laundry list. Five runners-up plus one winner in each category (and for Game of the Year, it’ll be five runners-up, plus one bronze, silver, and gold) hopefully means that you know if I mentioned a game, it is one of the absolute best examples in that category this year.

What this will hopefully be is a collection of some of the best new releases on the Nintendo Switch, many of which have not gotten the same exposure and publicity as Nintendo’s first-party releases. With any luck, you’ll find some titles you hadn’t heard of or considered previously. Anyway, here are the categories you can expect to see next week:

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Day 1: Specialty Awards

2019 Second Chance Awards

Top 10 Games I Wish I could Have Played Before Writing This, But Didn’t Get Around to Doing In Time

Best Port/Remake

Best Compilation/Collection

Best Game for Kids and Casual Players

Best Multiplayer

Best Value

Funniest Game

Most Underrated

Most Overlooked

Most Original

The “Wow, this game was way better than I expected!” Award

Best Third-Party Publisher

My Top 5 Most-Played Games of 2020

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Day 2: Technical Awards

Best Music

Best Song

Best Sound Design

Best Voice Acting

Best Graphical Style

Best Graphics

Best Story

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Day 3: Dubious Honors

Worst Microtransactions

Most Overrated

Laziest Copycat

Worst Port/Remake

The “Why is this taking so much space on my memory card!?” Award

Most Disappointing

Worst Game

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Day 4: Genre Awards

Best Platformer

Best Action Game

Best RPG/Action-RPG

Best Strategy Game

Best Graphic Adventure Game

Best Puzzle Game

Best Simulation Game

Best Driving/Racing Game

Best Sports Game

Best Music/Rhythm Game

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Day 5: Highest Honors

Game of the Year: Bronze Award (Third place)

Game of the Year: Silver Award (Second place)

Game of the Year: Runners-Up

Game of the Year

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And that’s a wrap! The eShopperReviews 2020 Game Awards are done! I hope you found some good games among all of the recommendations!

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