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The use of Generative AI (or GenAI for short) is on the rise, with many examples in some of the biggest games of the year using art, voice recordings, and narratives, just to name a few, now coming to light. For many players, a studio’s use of AI as a shortcut, instead of commissioning an artist, hiring a voice actor, or paying a writer to create assets for the final product, is something they actively don’t want to buy.
So this curated list that’s human-approved with only a spellchecker to assist in its creation will highlight the best games in 2025 where AI is, as far as we know, not involved in the development process. They all come from a whole bunch of developers, big and small, spanning a wide range of genres. The one thing they have in common is that a dedicated team of people worked on it without any assistance from GenAI tools.
It’s important to clarify that any procedural generation of maps, or randomized abilities or enemies, uses AI to determine what appears, and is not the same as GenAI. We’re specifically excluding games that use AI to generate any assets, whether it’s disclosed at the point of sale or found out after publishing. If it’s ethically problematic for any of these reasons, a game won’t be included on the list, no matter how much of a Game of the Year contender it is. With that, here are the best games without AI involvement in their development.
