Each month, the TSG staff recognizes a video game released the month prior. At Top Shelf Gaming, we are just as fascinated with the culture surrounding games as the video games themselves. That is why we select our Game of the Month primarily based on the cultural impact the work makes. We love it when a game does something to push the industry forward by introducing a new way of approaching game design like Breath of the Wild‘s climbing mechanic. It’s also great when a game can break out into the mainstream and get the whole world playing together like Pokemon Go.

While we still consider the game’s quality, we are intentional about highlighting how the game affects the industry and larger society as a whole. This means that a poorly designed game like Mighty No. 9 can clinch a victory for TSG’s Game of the Month despite its poor reception. It also means that critically acclaimed titles like Super Mario Odyssey might not ultimately make the cut if it doesn’t do much other than be a fun video game.

In January, the team chooses the twelve Game of the Month winners from the previous calendar year and chooses one standout to receive the coveted Game of the Year award. We only want to bestow the best games with this particular honor. In the discourse for Game of the Year, the game’s overall quality is weighted much more heavily than the typical Game of the Month selection.

It is our mission to celebrate video games’ influence on future games and our lives. We hope our Game of the Month series can highlight some of the ways these games are changing the world we live in.

Please look through our Game of the Month selections below from over the years and see which games we think deserve to be on the top shelf.

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