About this app
About Best Things In Life
The submission form will close on 1 October, at which time nominations will be put to our esteemed panel of judges for final review.
More information on judges, submissions and deadlines can be found here. You can also access interviews with last year’s winners and the final list for 2025, as well as for every year prior.
We look forward to working with our judges, and once again shining a light on some of the gaming industry’s best talents!
How to play Best Things In Life
While thousands of new casino games reach the market every year – with research suggesting the number of releases is growing by around 10% each quarter – volume does not necessarily equate to variety. Developing something genuinely different means taking a risk, while the industry’s familiar practice of reskinning existing games, or adapting mechanics and concepts that have already proved successful, offers a much safer commercial proposition.
For James Curwen, chief executive at Yggdrasil, the tension between the industry’s need for fresh content and the commercial realities of producing it goes to the heart of the challenge.
“The industry has a content problem,” he says. “There are thousands of games being released and too many of them are variations of something that already exists.
What is Best Things In Life?
This is the marquee upgrade. In 2025, it was enough for physical monkeys to appear to fly off the screen and over your head. But more than 3.6 million people have already seen that stupid pet trick. The first-gen monkeys were 16-foot helium inflatables steered by drone operators. Their only motion, besides drifting forward, was wing-flapping. They floated more than they performed.
The new monkeys are animatronic. As shown in the video, they’re capable of moving their faces and bodies in menacing ways as they pass overhead during the witch’s attack. They also seem to be hanging from an overhead line, though the Sphere has not officially described the new flight system.
Smell is the quietest upgrade but may be the most powerful. (Scent anchors memories more strongly than any other sense.) The new Oz adds more scents timed to scene changes. Expect the room to smell different when Kansas gives way to Oz, when the orchard turns hostile, and when the poppy field knocks everyone out.
