2021 may not have seen as many releases of generation-defining games as several previous years have done, but it's hard to look back at the last 12 months and not be satisfied with their output. In terms of pure quantity of releases, and the quality of so many of those, this has been a great year for games, and with a number of excellent games spread out across genres and platforms, from big developers and small, there's been a little something for everyone to dive into and fall in love with.

Soon, it'll be time to look ahead at what 2022 has in store for us, but before that, here, we're going to take a look back at the last 12 months and talk about what we felt were the 25 best games of that period, before crowning one of them as GamingBolt's 2021 Game of the Year.