From fast-paced farming races to intricate fighting games featuring a beloved movie franchise, here are the actual best esports titles in the world.
Esports is a billion-dollar industry, with thousands of professional players under the banners of countless organisations all across the world competing for millions of dollars in prize money and championship glory in titles like Dota 2, League of Legends, Counter-Strike 2, VALORANT, and more – all witnessed and enjoyed by millions of dedicated fans and enthusiasts.
But just because an esports title is popular or has a well-financed infrastructure doesn't automatically make it the best one. In truth, it's the most unlikely and absurd video games that can somehow fuel the competitive drive of players and demand the attention of fans that make for the actual peak esports experience.
So, if you want to become a true esports degenerate, read on as we list the five actual best esports titles in the world.
Stardew Valley
By Timothy Raj Augustin
Known for its fast-paced competitive gameplay, developer ConcernedApe’s mining simulator Stardew Valley hosted its first-ever official Stardew Valley Cup all the way back in 2021. Rather than speedrun the game’s many achievements – such as finding the mayor’s purple shorts and romancing Krobus – the tournament had four teams of four players compete against one another on co-op maps. Each team would be awarded points for completing as many as 100 different challenges within a three-hour time window.
The Stardew Valley Cup was essentially one big scavenger hunt, but it was just as intense and exciting to watch as any other esports tournament from Dota 2, Counter-Strike 2, or any of those other clicky-clicky, shooty-shooty games. In the end, team Sandy’s Candies won the Stardew Valley Cup with a whopping 661 points. You can’t win 661 points in any other esports tournament, and that’s why Stardew Valley is one of the best esports titles in existence – until Haunted Chocolatier comes out, at least.
Farming Simulator
By Tommy Makmur
Blending reality and video games in a level never seen before, Farming Simulator is the perfect esports title established by GIANTS Software in 2019. Many expected that an esports involving farming would be slow-paced and strategic (and probably involved a lot of crops), just like chess, but it is the farthest from the truth. In fact, it is one of the most fast-paced and intense esports titles of all time, at least until the first point is scored. Up there with the likes of Unreal Tournament, Quake, or the Korean Starcraft scene.
A Farming Simulator match will feature a team of three facing one another in a… well, farm. You might expect a crop name to pop out after this. You guessed it right. Yes, a crop is involved in this, and it’s grains with their byproduct, hay. The teams must harvest hay, make it into a bale, and put it into the barn. The more hay you put, the more points you get.
We can delve even more profoundly into Farming Simulator esports, but I only have limited space to write, so to speed things up, there are also things like tractors' pick-and-ban, perks, multipliers, tricks, and a lot more exciting stuff happening. Their last tournament is the Farming Simulator League (FSL) Season 5, before the launch of Farming Simulator 25. The sixth season hasn’t been announced yet, but we can expect it to come again this year.
Excel Esports
By: Anna Bernardo
If someone had told me that mastering VLOOKUPs and automation could count() toward an esports career, I might have reconsidered how I approached spreadsheets. Because who would have thought that a workplace staple like Microsoft Excel could evolve into a competitive esport?
It may sound like a joke, but Excel Esports is a real global competition where participants put their spreadsheet skills to the test. Forget the financial reports and headcount reports; this is pure problem-solving, logic, and mastery of Excel formulas at its core().
At its cell-ular level, Excel Esports transforms the everyday office tool into an intense battleground, where competitors tackle unique scenarios using functions, formulas, data manipulation techniques. There are no picks and bans here, only the application and the player’s knowledge of the best formulas and reporting techniques.
Some events even borrow elements from esports like an APM (actions per minute) counter—used in other esports titles like StarCraft to track how quickly contestants execute their solutions. VODs often include keystroke displays, revealing the exact inputs used to crack each challenge. And it’s become so popular that the biggest ones get broadcasted on ESPN, and even have their own theme song.
One of the most prestigious tournaments in the scene is the Microsoft Excel World Championship, hosted by the Financial Modelling World Cup (FMWC) since 2021. This global competition attracts Excel power users from all walks of life, proving that spreadsheets are more than just a tool for crunching numbers—they’re a proving ground for elite problem solvers who know how to pivot() under pressure.
With the prize pool constantly increasing every year, it looks like there's going to be more than one path to an esports career—no need for youth and fast reflexes when you can index() your way to victory.
Shrek SuperSlam
By Kurt Lozano
Shrek is love, Shrek is life, Shrek is… one of the most intricate and technical fighting game esports titles of all time?
Released in 2005 for the Xbox, PlayStation 2, GameCube, Nintendo DS and Game Boy Advance, Shrek SuperSlam is a fighting game featuring characters from the beloved Shrek movie franchise. At the surface, it’s a janky mess of a game typical of movie-based video game adaptations rushed out by some overworked studio to profit from the success of the film it’s based on.
But just like onions and ogres, Shrek SuperSlam has layers. It’s a top-down perspective 3D arena fighter with a stock system similar to that of the Smash Bros. franchise. Instead of depleting an opponents’ HP bar or knocking them out of the arena, players must land attacks in order to fill up a Slam meter to activate a special attack that deletes one stock from the enemy it hits. It’s an interesting twist on the typical fighting game formula, but that’s just the first layer you’ll have to peel away before you understand how peak this game is.
In the years since it was released, Shrek SuperSlam players have discovered various techniques, or techs, that unlock its potential as a gem of a fighting game. There’s shield canceling, crumpet dashing, and infinites. That last one is important, as it refers to combos available to certain characters that opponents have little to no chance of escaping and essentially guarantees a deleted stock. It turns Shrek SuperSlam into a wacky game of chess where both players maneuver to get their infinite combo out first before their opponent does.
It may look like a mediocre cash-grab game to untrained eyes, but the devoted fans of Shrek SuperSlam (who often gathered and organised online tournaments in its official subreddit) see it for what it truly is: an intricate and technical fighting game that takes a few minutes to learn and a lifetime to master, truly one of the esports titles of all time.
And if you’re doubting the existence of the Shrek SuperSlam esports scene, know that it made frequent appearances in its own local events or accompanying bigger Smash Bros. tournaments in the United States and Europe in the last decade. It also has its own page on esportsearnings.com. If you’re still chasing that dream of becoming an esport champion, then why not give Shrek SuperSlam a try?
Tetris
By: Jay Chan
Heads up: competitive Tetris is a thing. While the game has evolved since it was first introduced in 1985, the core gameplay of Tetris still remains the same: players have to arrange dropping tetromino blocks into a rectangular field, and points are scored for every horizontal line of blocks cleared.
The game speeds up as more horizontal lines of blocks are cleared, and it becomes increasingly difficult to arrange the dropping tetromino blocks. The game is over when the accumulated blocks prevent new blocks from entering the field, and that… is the rush you can get to experience for yourself when you witness players battle one another to prevent that from happening.
I would know; I attended the Singapore (somewhat non-official) qualifiers to Classic Tetris World Championship (CTWC), one of the (if not the) biggest Tetris esports tournaments in the world a while back.
It was hard to believe at first, but having a crowd (albeit small) so passionate about Tetris, cheering for the players’ incredible reflexes as the game speeds up to level 19 and beyond, watching players achieve feats they never thought possible in this small qualifier, and even having shoutcasters yelling into a livestream… This is what esports is all about!
Besides, competing and getting good in this Tetris competition takes a lot of commitment: players would need to invest in a working Nintendo Entertainment System (NTSC version no less since 30fps beats 25fps, and CWTC runs on the NTSC version), an original controller or a third party controller that is faithful to the original, and in return, a cathode-ray tube (CRT) television.
These are investments that are almost liabilities because unless you are really into the authentic vintage game experience, these instruments for your professional glory are getting harder to fix or replace as time goes on. And these are just the financial commitments. What about the time required to dedicate yourself to the game, and improve your gameplay by watching countless videos or perhaps the hardest thing in this age: finding a worthy opponent (outside of a tournament) who wants to play Tetris with you?
So, the verdict? Competitive Tetris is a top tier esports, if not one of the best. Forget about playing a modern esports title on a 1080p screen with 240fps, or having a mobile MOBA run at 60fps on a phone. You have to go back to basics, train in a game as though you were in the 1990s, find other peers in an extremely small community, and then stand up strong in the huge test that is CWTC.
This is the true unadulterated experience of what an esports ought to be. And if you cannot get good at a relatively simple game that is 40 years old this year with an ancient gaming system… It is really just a skill issue.
