Light waves, rising tides, and drifting ships: Game Off 2025 winners

This year’s Game Off winners weren’t just inspired by the WAVES theme. They surfed it. From sound-bending platformers and tide-controlled puzzles to glow-slug exploration, naval drift madness, and typing so intense it collapses stadium morale, these top ten games prove that “waves” are not only in the ocean. They can mean physics, emotion, memory, or even pure chaos.

Game Off is GitHub’s annual game jam, now in its 13th year, inviting developers from around the world to build games around a single theme and share the source code. It’s part experiment, part playground, and part community showcase where beginners and veterans ship games, learn in public, and play, rate, and review each other’s work.

The top ten highest rated games overall are all shown below – all rated and reviewers by the Game Off participants themselves. Congratulations, builders! So grab a controller. Or a keyboard. Or a frog. Then, get ready to surf these games! 🏄🏻

1 Evaw

Evaw is a moody platformer where light waves, sound waves, and poetic radio transmissions guide you through the ruins of a fallen nation. Bend physics, unlock paths, ignore useless feathers, and slowly realize this world is listening back. This game includes adjustable difficulty, hidden secrets, and a speedrun timer for when “cozy” turns competitive. Hydration encouraged.

2 Where the Water Flows

A calm, clever isometric puzzle adventure where water levels are the level design. Raise or lower the sea level, reveal paths, and think before you move. This game’s serene visuals, smart pacing, and puzzles reward observation over reflexes. Clean, chill, and dangerously close to being meditative.

3 BEACON

You are a slug. You glow. You are lost. BEACON drops you into a dark, abandoned world where light waves reveal paths, secrets, and missing friends. Short, atmospheric puzzles reward curiosity and patience, not button mashing. Cozy, quiet, and proof that illumination solves most problems, including loneliness.

4 A Kingdom Slightly Out Of Tune

A puzzle-strategy mashup where sound waves are weapons, and matching colors triggers musical shockwaves. Slide tiles, chain colors, remix upgrades, and blast enemies back into harmony. Experience cute art, punchy audio, and combos that clear the screen in one perfectly tuned hit.

5 Wave Drifter

Peaceful sailing is canceled. Wave Drifter throws you into high-speed naval chases where drifting is mandatory and ramming is encouraged. Boost, blast, collect purple orbs, stack upgrades, and turn your ship into a floating mistake for the royal navy. Enjoy simple controls, busted builds, and “one more run” energy until sunrise.

6 Tidal Town

City planning meets divine disaster. Slide buildings into color groups to score points and calm Poseidon, who is absolutely not calm. This game is easy to learn, surprisingly tactical, and constantly evolving as waves reshape the board. Bright visuals, smooth play, and a playful take on managing chaos one house at a time.

7 Froggy Love

A cozy ripple-physics puzzle about guiding a lovestruck frog across a pond using carefully placed splashes. Three handcrafted levels turn wave timing into romance logistics. Snakes are bad. Vibes are good. Proof that even small ripples can lead to big feelings.

8 Ooqo

A slick arcade score-chaser where movement becomes rhythm. Glide across fish to survive, chain combos to build momentum, and never step where you shouldn’t. Simple rules, deep flow state, plus a hypnotic soundtrack and leaderboard that will steal your time.

9 La Ola

Tired of running endlessly? Try typing endlessly! La Ola turns “the wave” you’ll see at big soccer games into a high-stakes typing gauntlet where your WPM (words per minute) holds the stadium vibe together. Miss letters, the crowd naps. Miss a space, the wave collapses. Procedurally generated text is powered by Markov Chains, because science. Brutal, addictive, and extremely honest about your keyboard skills.

10 The Last Wave

A haunting mystery where waves carry memory, grief, and identity. Work alongside Saja, Korea’s grim reaper, to reconstruct lives lost in a fatal fire by matching names, locations, and overlapping wave signals. Inspired by Return of the Obra Dinn, this game is deeply thoughtful, culturally grounded, and quietly devastating. Short, meticulous, unforgettable.

These ten games are the top-ranked entries overall from more than 700 submissions to Game Off 2025. They’re not the whole story. The quality across this year’s jam was consistently high, with hundreds more games worth exploring. Play more on itch.io.

Thanks <3

Thanks for building—and for playing. Seriously.

Game Off only works because people show up. Builders, players, raters, reviewers. Every comment, every score, every “hey this is cool” helped turn this jam into a real community moment. Thanks for making waves with us. We’ll see you in the next one.

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