The last three years have made me love gaming more than ever before, which I certainly didn’t think was possible. There have literally never been as many good video games coming out as there have been since 2023, at least if you are tracking critic scores.
AAA Studios seem to be more consistent than ever, and new indie studios keep popping up and making bangers. The more I research, the more confident I am that 2026 will continue this trend. There is a lot to be excited about this year.
Today, I’m sharing some of that excitement with you. These are my 25 most anticipated games of the year. I think I have a nice variety of big names and hidden gems mixed together here.
And even with 25 games I’m excited for, I’m sure many more not on this list will pop up and surprise me as the year goes on.
God damn, gaming is good. Let’s get to it.
The title of each game contains a link to a trailer if you want to see more.
Replaced looks like it could be the most cinematic 2D indie game that I have ever played. The art direction, music, and cinematography all seem amazing. Everything about this makes it look like it will be a total thrill ride from start to finish. I don’t know much about how this one will be to play, but I have a feeling it will pull me in fast and not let go.
24. Dragon Quest VII Reimagined
I might be a fool for getting excited about this game, to be honest. I’ve put plenty of hours into Dragon Quest games over the years, but the only one I’ve ever completed was DQ6. My most recent attempt was the DQ3 Remake, and that was an epic failure. However, DQ3 was remade from an NES game. DQ7 has a much more modern base to be rebuilt from, so I’m moderately hopeful that this is the one that will break my Dragon Quest cold streak.
The music, art, and general nostalgia should at the very least have me hooked on this one for 10-15 hours. I have no doubt about that. From there, it’s just a question of whether the story and battle system will be enough to keep me engaged. For some reason, I feel like this one will have the juice for me. Almost everyone I’ve seen who has played the demo has come away really happy with it. Let’s hope I feel the same.
The funny thing about puzzle games is that many of them are built around one particular mechanic, and afterward, no one ever wants to steal that mechanic. You would think we’d have a million different Portal games by now, but we don’t. I’m not sure if it’s respect, patents, or if it just seems more blatant to steal from a puzzle game over some random action game, but that’s how it is.
It has now been 18 years since the release of Braid, so I guess that is long enough for someone to use the same concept. In Recur, time moves forward when you go forward, and it goes backward when you walk backward. You use this mechanic to mess around with the environment and solve various puzzles. The early trailers have already shown off some fun scenarios, and I think this will be an entertaining one to mess around with.
But also, seriously, eff Half-Life 3, where the heck is Portal 3???
I had this post mostly ready to go, but then I watched the Xbox Developer Direct and suddenly absolutely had to add one more game. While Fable looks promising, I wasn’t fully sold on it yet. The game that really won me over was Beast of Reincarnation, which shocked me because I had not cared about this game in the slightest.
Frankly, I’m a bit of a Game Freak hater these days. The Pokémon series has slowly lost me over the years, and Game Freak’s occasional forays outside of Pokémon have never been much more than “fine” in my view. But man, Beast of Reincarnation might be showing off just how badly Game Freak has been held back by the Pokémon Company for all of these years.
The setting, art, and music all look wonderful. The RPG mechanics look surprisingly deep, and the combat looks pretty damn good as well. This is an action RPG, but it also has some slight turn based elements (think FF7: Rebirth), and that really appeals to me. There’s a lot to like here, and I’m shockingly very hopeful for it now.
I love the convergence of elements here. This is a band management sim, mixed with a rhythm game, and it seems to have a great sense of humor to boot (maybe some BoJack Horseman vibes?). The last trailer for the game actually made me chuckle a few times, which is a rarity.
At the very least, the trailers make the sim elements of the game look pretty damn fun and addicting. Taking a band from the bottom to the top is always going to be satisfying, and it seems like there are a lot of mechanics around that to keep things interesting. I’m less sold on the rhythm game portion, but if it’s serviceable, that should be enough for this to be a really fun package.
I really enjoyed 2023’s Jusant, but there was always something inherently odd to me about a very arduous and exhausting task like rock climbing being created as a more chill and relaxing experience. The game’s mechanics were great, and it made my honorable mentions in 2023, but I really wanted to experience something like that but with some real gameplay challenge. A few years later, we have Cairn, which I think can scratch that itch.
Cairn has rock climbing, but adds several challenging survival elements that make it look really intense. I’ve also seen people compare this to a puzzle game, and I really like that. The trailers have shown bits of a story, which seemed pretty interesting as well. And with any rock climbing game, I’m hopeful that there will be some strong art direction and excellent sights at the top of different mountains. This one will be out roughly one week from this article, so we won’t have to wait long to find out if it’s any good.
I call this game “Jeep Stranding.” The entire game is built around off-roading in desolate and beautiful terrains. Much like every step in Death Stranding has some effort behind it, it seems like every inch in Over the Hill is equally a challenge. There are no simple or easy pathways here. I love the concept, and it looks beautiful, which is vital in a game like this.
The only part that has me nervous is that the game is really hyping up its co-op elements. Those could be neat, but I feel like I’d enjoy the game best in a more desolate kind of way. I see no discussion about this one, and I think more people need to have it on their radar.
18. There are No Ghosts at the Grand
There aren’t many trailers in recent years that have introduced themselves as well as There Are No Ghosts at the Grand did this past summer. The trailer starts out with some insane musical interludes and what appears to be a Powerwash Simulator-esque gameplay loop, except with restoring a hotel to its former glory.
Then the trailer has a twist, and there ends up being a dark and intriguing underbelly to the hotel. So it looks like There Are No Ghosts at the Grand will have a lot of different elements to it, and I’m really intrigued to see how it comes together.
With the success of It Takes Two and now Split Fiction, it seemed inevitable that more games would finally step into the almost completely untapped market of co-op required games. Of all the games like this that I have seen trailers for in the past few years, I don’t think anything has grabbed me quite like the one minute Orbitals trailer did.
The visual style is trying to capture early 90s anime, and I am very into it. It is so striking, and the small blips of gameplay make it seem like they understand what makes those Hazelight co-op games so great. I really hope this one comes together well. It might be a big factor in why I finally bite the bullet and get a Switch 2.
I don’t think I needed to see one second of trailer footage to buy this game. You could have just said, “The Shovel Knight developers are making a Zelda game,” and that would be enough for me.
But luckily, the trailers for this game are pretty great. This really does look like an 8-bit Zelda game, but with way more complex looking combat and platforming than you’d normally expect from this genre. There seemed to be set-piece moments and a really wide array of upgrades too. I’d say this is the current odds on favorite to win “Independent Game of the Year” at the Game Awards.
This game looks insane. It advertises over 1000 puzzles, and they connect in interesting ways. There is also an entire narrative attached that already had me intrigued from the short trailer. This seems unbelievably ambitious. I honestly haven’t been as big on Jonathan Blow’s games as many critics, but this concept has still won me over. I really want to see how this comes together.
Of course, Blow’s shitty political views are going to make this one that plenty of people avoid. I certainly don’t blame anyone for standing up for their beliefs and for refusing to give him money. However, my views on video game boycotts for moral reasons are pretty clear if you read my piece on it a few months ago. I fully respect anyone taking the other side of that debate, but this is where I come down on it.
So yeah, anyway, hopefully it’s good! But if it’s bad, well, I guess it won’t be the worst thing ever.
Harry Potter is such an oddly dominant force in our society. I think more than anything, its success boils down to people loving the world and easily being able to imagine living in it.
Despite this fantasy, no Harry Potter game has really captured that feeling to date. Hogwarts Legacy had massive sales numbers, but I’d say that was not really because of the open world or the combat, but because of the ability to explore the Hogwarts campus and feel like a student. Witchbrook feels like the first game that might truly get at the heart of much of the appeal of that series, just without actually being a Harry Potter game.
This is a cozy game where you attend a magic school, go to classes, interact with other students, and, you know, do magic stuff. Basically, you get to live in a world that many people wish were real. If they land all of the mechanics, this is going to be a sensation. My only concern is that there really isn’t much footage out there to this point, but a lot of my cozy game friends have faith, so I’m going to as well.
It’s rare for a new Soulslike IP trailer to really wow me these days. So many of them look too similar to other properties in aesthetic and gameplay. That doesn’t mean the games are bad, but I think it’s hard for the trailers to stand out.
Valor Mortis did not have that problem at all. This is a first-person Soulslike with a Napoleonic style. The structure of the gameplay looks similar to your average Soulslike, but guns are prominent, as well as melee weapons. It looks different and a lot of fun. The game is also made by the same developers who made Ghostrunner, which is a phenomenal game.
There was also an alpha test of the game already, and I saw almost all good comments after that. I feel like everything is coming together for this one to be a must play Soulslike, and I think it is off too many people’s radars. This one could take the indie and Soulslike scenes by storm if it comes out this year.
My two favorite Resident Evil games of all time are Resident Evil 7: Biohazard and the Resident Evil 4 Remake. This is funny because these games that are trying to accomplish very different things. I only really got into the series in 2019 when the Resident Evil 2 Remake came out, but one thing I really enjoy about this series is how they have managed to have strong outings with both more horror and action focused outings. Requiem seems like the game that is trying to give players the best of both worlds.
There will be sections with Grace Ashcroft, who is not as able to defend herself, and then the other parts of the game will be with Leon Kennedy and are being advertised as the action segments where you can let off some steam after the Grace segments. It’ll be interesting to see how these sections flow into each other, but if they make it work, this easily has the potential to be the best game in series history for me. I still have some doubts, but I am definitely excited to check it out.
I enjoy a cozy sim game, but it can they can quickly become monotonous after a while if they aren’t really well made or if they don’t at least have some ways of mixing things up.
Beastro appears to know what I am talking about, as they are mixing things up on a level I’m not sure I have ever seen before. Beastro looks like a cozy restaurant sim for the most part. You grow and gather ingredients to make food for customers. But then things get really interesting. First off, there are minigames related to cooking the dishes up that actually look pretty fun. From there, you need to make food that will fuel warriors who come to town so that they can defend the area. This turns into a whole deckbuilder game that has an amazing art style.
Basically, the game has multiple systems, and they all seem to feed into each other. I love cohesion like that. If the team is able to execute these somewhat disparate concepts, I think this one could be very special. I’m very excited to see more from it, and I’ve heard good things from those who have played the demo.
You know a trailer is awesome when it makes you want to go back and play a past game that you missed before. This is exactly what happened for me with Ontos. After seeing the trailer at “The Game Awards,” I immediately knew that I wanted to go back and play SOMA, which I had never played. Sure enough, I beat it a few weeks ago.
Playing SOMA officially got me even more hyped for Ontos. The atmosphere in SOMA is incredible, and it came out in 2014. I can’t wait to see how amazing Ontos looks after all of these years and new technology. I didn’t think the storytelling in SOMA was perfect, but it was very good, and had one of my favorite video game endings ever.
I also had a lot of frustrations with gameplay elements of SOMA, but after all these years, I think the odds are that Frictional Games will have learned and gotten much better by now. There is a massive amount of potential here.
I’m a simple man. If Kyle Thompson is making a game, I’m excited about it.
Kyle is a solo developer, and both of his last two games (Islets and Crypt Custodian) have made my top 10 games list in their respective years. This obviously means there’s a pretty solid chance that Well Dweller will also end up in my top 10.
I think Kyle is a true master of Metroidvania design. His maps are huge and have tons of secrets that create very rewarding exploration. I also think his difficulty balancing is excellent, as well as his fast travel placement. I play so many Metroidvanias where I feel like they just made it a Metroidvania to hook people into their 2D action game, but they actually have no idea what makes the genre great. That is not the case with Kyle.
From a gameplay perspective, I enjoyed Islets a lot, but Crypt Custodian was a solid step up in the gameplay department for me. Well Dweller seems like it has a good chance of having a similar improvement. The short clip of gameplay that has been released looks pretty damn smooth and promising.
If this makes another top 10 list for me, Kyle Thompson will officially be the solo developer GOAT for me. His mix of quality and quantity is truly insane.
The developer of Fields of Mistria, NPC Studios, has no real past track record that I can find. They are also making yet another cozy farming sim, of which there are hundreds out there. Despite that, this game has over 18,000 reviews in early access on Steam, and it sits at “overwhelmingly positive.” That is an incredible success story. But that success only seems possible because by all accounts, this might be the best attempt at the genre we’ve had since Stardew Valley.
Everything I’ve seen from this game looks so polished. There are tons of different things you can do and people you can romance. The art style and music are both excellent. It feels like this could be the first cozy farming sim in a decade to capture me the way Stardew Valley did all those years ago. It seems like when people want to enter the genre, this might finally be the game that gets some recommendations instead of Stardew. I hope it reaches those high highs, and based on everything I’ve heard, I really think it could.
I have a weird relationship with the GTA series. I have played every game since GTA 3, but I’ve only completed San Andreas. The series was incredibly innovative, but I’m a much more focused and goal-oriented gamer, and I feel like the main appeal of these games for many is the “dicking around” aspect. Of course, it’s Rockstar, so there are good stories here, but the gameplay and mission design rarely had me as invested as I’d like. So I am not necessarily chomping at the bit for this one like many.
But also, I have to respect that a new GTA game is a monumental thing in this industry. It’s one of the only single player games around that will garner mass media attention. Many people who don’t ever play single player games will be playing this one. The production values and story should also hopefully be top notch, and the world will likely be incredibly immersive. So despite my slight skepticism, I think once we are a week out on this one, I’m going to feel the excitement around me, and that will build up my own anticipation. But I’m not fully there yet. This is a preemptively high rank because I know how things will go for me!
6. The Eternal Life of Goldman
There have been multiple trailers for The Eternal Life of Goldman, and every single one has blown me away in some regard. The art style is incredible, and the platforming in the game looks challenging in the best possible way. The game is also trying to tell a deep story about mortality, which looks like a nice way to round things out. Despite how good this looks, I have seen next to nothing on this one from people listing their most anticipated games of the year. I really hope that changes as we get closer, as I think this one could be special.
With the past two games from Remedy, they have quickly re-established a reputation as one of the best developers in the industry. They are on another level with their storytelling, their characters, their voice acting, their graphics, and after Alan Wake 2, their music.
But I wouldn’t say that Remedy is fully known for its gameplay at this point. I think the combat in both Control and Alan Wake 2 was solid, but it certainly isn’t upper echelon. It works well within the 12-15 hours that these games usually run, and not much more. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s the one element of Remedy games that doesn’t really stand out.
I feel like Remedy wants to make Control Resonant the game where they level up as a developer. This game easily could have been Control 2 and had a similar formula to the first game. Instead, Resonant looks completely different. This time, Remedy is trying to make a beefier RPG instead of an action or action/adventure game. It’s a fascinating risk, and I love them for it. Also, as much as I enjoyed what they did with the FBC building in the first game, I’m excited to leave those crowded confines and see what Remedy is able to do with a bigger and more open world this time around.
We haven’t seen much from Resonant yet, but from the little we have seen, I’m excited and mostly confident that Remedy will be able to take that next step up in 2026.
IO Interactive feels like a dream studio for this game. The more “intel gathering” portions of James Bond fit perfectly within the Hitman formula that IO is known for. I have no doubt that those sections will be awesome.
From there, you also expect big action segments and set pieces from a Bond experience. That’s the stuff I’m not as confident in, but I remain cautiously optimistic. I didn’t think the bigger action segments in Hitman 3 were incredible, but the early trailers do have some cool moments.
Despite all the Bond films over the years, this also appears to be the first “true” origin story ever for the franchise. It seems incredible that a video game gets the honor of doing this. Despite a few things that make me nervous, this has an insane amount of potential, and I really think it has a shot at living up to it.
I’ve never watched any X-Men or Wolverine content in my life. I have no particular interest in this franchise, but Insomniac is impossible to doubt at this point. There’s almost no way that this game won’t be excellent, and that’s all I need to be excited about it.
I would buy this without even looking at a trailer for it, thanks to Insomniac’s track record, but the two minute trailer they put out last year did a great job of winning me over. The raw violence in that trailer was shocking and kind of awesome. I also enjoyed some other glimpses I saw, like what appears to be some really cool setpiece moments and some fun traversal techniques. As awesome as Spider-Man web swinging is, I feel like not having that means Insomniac can get more creative in a lot of ways, and I am very excited to see what they do here.
I’ve never been so confident that I’m going to absolutely love a game when I didn’t even fully love the last game from the same developer. I thought Returnal was awesome, but it wore me down before I could fully complete it. As great as the combat feels in that game, the long run lengths and lack of real progression systems made it a bit of a chore for me after a while.
Based on everything I’ve seen, Saros is going to fix pretty much every issue I had with that game. It is advertising itself as having permanent upgrades this time around. It also feels like there will be a bit more storytelling as well, and I’m sure there will be small tweaks around the edges to the combat. It always hurts to not have Returnal higher on my 2021 “Game of the Year” list, and I expect Saros to rectify that wrong. It has a real shot of being my “Game of the Year”.
My instincts don’t usually let me down when I’m watching a game trailer for the first time. Every game on this list was something that interested me in one way or another, but occasionally there’s a trailer that really sticks with me and that I can’t get out of my head. Heading into last year, this was how I felt about Expedition 33. It was clear from that first trailer how special that game was going to be.
This year, I have a gut feeling about Clockwork Revolution. It doesn’t have a release year listed, but I suspect it will make it out this year.
At the Xbox showcase this past summer, they showed about five minutes of Clockwork Revolution, and I couldn’t be more in. This basically looks like a classic Western RPG mixed with Bioshock. The gameplay looked appropriately crunchy and creative, but we also have an involved character creator and tons of RPG choices to make to round it off. I never got into the Wasteland series, but given their track record, I think it’s safe to say that inXile knows how to incorporate RPG elements into a game. My big question going into this game would be everything else, but this trailer felt like it answered every question. This looks so good, and I think it’s going to sneak up on people as a “Game of the Year” contender.
The lack of a release year puts this one into question a little bit, but I feel like you don’t drop a 5 minute trailer for a game at a big showcase unless it is relatively close. I am very confident that this one will blow me away when it finally drops.
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