2015 is going to go down as a great year for video games, and especially for open-world video games. We spent countless hours this year traveling around massive maps, tracking down that very last collectible or side-quest, but that's not all this year had to offer. There are incredible indie games, a few instant classic horror titles, and even a title that lets you make your very own Mario levels in contention.

Here Screen Rant's list of the 20 Best Video Games of 2015 (So Far). They might not all make it to our final end-of-year list, but they're all great in their own right. In order of release date, let's begin!

Dying Light

Dead Island may have had an amazing trailer, but the game didn’t hold up to its promises. So developer Techland sought to prove that they know the zombie genre early this year with Dying Light, which is still one of the surprise hits of the year.

Just traversing the ruined, post-apocalyptic landscape is enjoyable, mostly thanks to the free-running your character can perform. Jumping and climbing lets you stick to the safety of the roofs during the day, but at night things get crazy as faster, stronger zombies appear, forcing you to run for your life to safety.

Well-implemented multiplayer lets you play as a zombie and invade other people’s games, and the best part of Dead Island, co-op, returns and allows you to bring some friends for the ride. You’re going to want to - the game is much less lonely and scary with friends to watch your back.

Cities: Skylines

A city-building simulator in the style of - you guessed it - SimCity, Cities: Skylines allows you to build the city of your dreams. Most people agree that this was the game the recent SimCity 4 should have been, as it allows you to create a much bigger city than ever before. You can also choose to play with the tiniest bits of minutia - from energy and water budgets to police forces and traffic congestion. You can create districts with specific rules and policies down to the absurd or fantastical. Do you want to legalize drugs? Or perhaps you hate the idea of dogs sullying the neighborhood and want them banned? In Cities: Skylines, you can do whatever you please.

Mods are not only allowed but encouraged, and a thriving community has sprung up for the game.

Best of all? It features offline play. Sorry, SimCity, the torch has been ed.

Pillars of Eternity

As you might tell from the name, the cRPG (computer role-playing game) is a uniquely PC genre. As the successor to classic cRPGs such as Baldur's Gate and Planetscape: Torment, Obsidian Entertainment's crowdfunded Pillars of Eternity is the best kind of throwback. It’s a game that old-school fans will appreciate that includes enough new gameplay elements for newcomers to the style to jump right in. Even though it features an isometric perspective, it's an utterly gorgeous game, one full of wonderful music and voice acting. The story is compelling as well, set in a fantasy world where infants are born without souls. You, naturally, are the only person who can find out what's going on and save the world.

An expansion pack, The White March, is on the way, promising a higher level cap and new characters to add to your party.

Ori and the Blind Forest

An action-platformer from indie developer Moon Studios, Ori and the Blind Forest looks like an animated painting. In a world of 3D games, its 2D art stands out and shows there's some life to the style yet. It plays like yet another Metroidvania-style title that sees Ori, a guardian spirit, leaping over platforms and solving puzzles.

Ori is an orphan who is tasked with restoring the titular forest, which is not only blind, but dying as well. Little by little, as you’ll learn how to play, jumping and wall-jumping with the best of them. Things change when Ori is ed by a sprite named Sein who floats around and attacks evil creatures at your command, but also has a secret behind it.

The story is a touching one you won’t soon forget. A PC and Xbox One exclusive, an Xbox 360 version is still on the way later this year.

Bloodborne

Game developer FromSoftware takes what they learned from their iconic Souls series (Demon’s and Dark) and brings it to next-gen, bringing things into more of a Lovecraftian horror universe. It’s still got all the trademarks of a Souls game- the punishing difficulty, the giant bosses, the incredible character design, the way the cryptic story is gradually revealed to you… there’s just lot more tentacles here.

You play as a customizable Hunter who's fighting through a Gothic city whose inhabitants have been infected with some sort of (wait for it) blood-borne disease. The real pull of the game is the combat, which is faster than a Souls game but no less satisfying.

This is one of the few PS4 exclusives owners really have to brag about, and an expansion is on the way titled The Old Hunters, which promises to continue the remarkable experience.

Axiom Verge

Everyone loves a good Metroidvania game, but Axiom Verge is more of a faithful Metroid game. You play a scientist who gets whisked away to some other dimension (as they do) and has to fight his way through hordes of aliens, as well as strange game glitches. In this game, static-y graphical glitches are features, not bugs, and you soon get a gun that can both eliminate them from the world and turn your enemies into them.

As with any Metroid game, you’ll get a number of new weapons and features that allow you to fully explore every inch of the map, little by little. The sole work of a designer who spent the last five years of his life working on this game, Axiom Verge is as great an homage to classic games of this style as you’re ever likely to see.

Affordable Space Adventures

The number of Wii U games that fully utilize the Wii U GamePad are few and far between, which is why it was so impressive to see Knapnok Games release a game that literally could not be done on another platform. Affordable Space Adventures lets you control a (cheap) space ship on an alien world. Every feature of your budget craft has to be adjusted using the touchscreen. Tap the engine button to turn it on, and adjust the boost to make your ship slower or faster. You’ll get upgrades to your system that give it more features as you travel through the game, which sees you tiltingn the GamePad to maneuver around the cavern-like environment. It becomes an action puzzler as you try to avoid mines and other obstacles, searching everywhere for a distress beacon for help returning home.

It all culminates in a nice surprise ending that makes you aware of the bigger world out there. Those of you starving for good games for your Wii U, look no further.

Mortal Kombat X

It’s amusing that the Mortal Kombat series was able to ride so long on the coattails of the (then) astoundingly lifelike violence, which was done so well that everyone was able to ignore the stilted combat. The ninth installment of Mortal Kombat changed everything by focusing on the gameplay, offering fluid controls while still giving us all the bonebreaking fatalities we could ever need.

This tenth installment is easily the best and most gruesomely violent one yet. The story mode is surprisingly great and it’s got familiar features like the Tower system and Krypt to ensure maximum replayability, as well of the return of brutalities to give you more opportunities to groan out loud at all the completely over-the-top violence. That's on top of great combat, which makes for one of the best fighting games in years.

Plus, it’s got both the Predator and Jason from Friday the 13th as able characters. Who doesn’t love that?

Crypt of the Necrodancer

Roguelikes are all the rage nowadays, but a roguelike mashed up with a dancing game is something new. Crypt of the Necrodancer pulses to the beat, and we mean that literally. Every level features a new song and everything moves in time with it. Think of it as a world dancing with itself, where even your movement has to play to the music. Enemies all have unique attack patterns and you’ll have to figure them out and kill them off, nabbing dozens of different weapons, items and spells hidden around the world. But the most important thing is to never, ever stop moving.

It’s a tough game but a satisfying one, and the utterly amazing soundtrack certainly helps things along. You will not be able to get this one out of your head.

Hardcore players can hook up a dance pad and even import custom music to really make the game a battle.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Geralt of Rivia, the protagonist of the Witcher series, moves into an open world with literally hundreds of hours of quests to complete - and that’s not even mentioning the 16 free DLC packs that CD Projekt Red has bestowed upon us, or the two paid expansions on the way that will add another 30 hours of gameplay. The game sold six million copies in the first six weeks after release, and for good reason. If, for some reason, you can only buy one game a year, this is the one to get.

A massive, fully-realized fantasy world full of amazing combat and fleshed-out characters is one thing, but the game really makes you feel as if your input matters. On your playthrough you likely won’t see a good chunk of what can happen, because each decision that you make can have major consequences for the rest of the story. This means that your epic story is yours, there’s no right or wrong decisions to make, just ones that change the world.