Terrible news! Santa ignored all my letters asking for 2025 to be a year when no new videogames came out so I could catch up on everything I missed from the past several years. In fact, it seems like maybe someone else might have sent him a letter asking for there to be more big games coming than ever.
The early months of 2025 in particular already looked packed with epics. Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth? Monster Hunter Wilds? Civilization VII? Assassin’s Creed: Shadows. If it was your job to play games, you still couldn’t make your way through all of these. Trust us.
After March, specific release dates become a rarity, but there are still several exciting blockbusters to come with summer release windows or 2025 targets. As always, the list is also stuffed with games of the non-blockbuster variety that we’re looking forward to. Games that leave those blocks entirely unbusted, whether sequels like Citizen Sleeper 2 or games so obscure I still haven’t heard of them after writing and editing this article.
“Hey, waitaminute – if 2025 seems like a grander year than 2024, then why is this list shorter than last year’s 75 anticipated games?” Mainly because we’re a smaller team than we were at the start of 2024, and each person’s hype glands can only blast so much anticipataline around their body. We therefore do not strive to be exhaustive, instead favouring those games that truly get our heart racing. We have also been slightly more ruthless in omitting games that we can’t be certain are coming in 2025, which means we’ve again not written about Hollow Knight: Silksong. Don’t worry, Edwin is still setting himself up for disappointment by including Fable.
Excited for something and don’t see it on the list? Let us know why you’re looking forward to it in the comments. Happy New Year.
Dynasty Warrior: Origins
Release date: January 17th
From: Steam
Graham: Dynasty Warriors has always struck me as kitsch. Where similarly silly series like Yakuza have managed to claim a level of a mainstream prestige, Dynasty Warriors has remained a little PlayStation 2, a little Earth Defense Force, a little cheap and cheerful, no matter how spectacular it is to hack-and-slash through thousands-strong armies. Dynasty Warriors: Origins looks like it might change that. It’s the first mainline entry in seven years and it’s shinier than the series has ever been before, and it comes after Persona, Fire Emblem and Zelda licensed spin-offs have broadened its audience. Here’s hoping Origins is where Dynasty Warriors finally gets its due – and gloriously, it’s launching simultaneously on PC for a change. What a start to the year.
Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth
Release date: January 23rd
From: Steam, Epic
Edwin: I reviewed the original Final Fantasy 7 Remake for PS4, but have held off sampling Rebirth out of scorn for Square Enix’s belated PC porting strategy and also, because the Remake’s ending was, to frame it scientifically, pure Kingdom Hearts bullshit. I write those words with all respect. Square Enix’s FF7 reboots are the perfect reboots in being at once reverential and irreverent. They channel the sorcerous cultural power of the original PS1 game, while gleefully rewriting the details and lobbing in all sorts of glorious nonsense with zero apparent regard for budget. Rebirth looks to up the ante still further, with much talk of alternative timelines, though it hinges on the same, gratifying real-time reinvention of the 1997 game’s turn-based combat. Now that I’ve recovered from the Remake ending, I’m keen to get stuck in.
The Stone Of Madness
Release date: January 28th
From: Steam, Epic
Edwin: I’m not sure you can fairly describe “occult 18th century Spanish Catholic tactical escape puzzler” as a “type”, but if you can, The Stone Of Madness is definitely my type. It’s the work of The Game Kitchen, and seemingly applies everything they know about religious horror from the Blasphemous games to an Umberto Eco-style isometric labyrinth experience in which five, differently skilled characters battle guards, ghosts and their own wobbly psyches as they try to break out of a mountain monastery. It looks thoughtful, eldritch and harrowing. And I’ve just realised there’s a demo on Steam, at the time of writing.
Citizen Sleeper 2
Release date: 31st January
From: Steam, Epic, GOG, Humble, Xbox
Ollie: The first Citizen Sleeper was a wonderful surprise, a heartfelt journey with stellar writing, and just the right scope for my needs at the time. But having gone through that journey from start to finish, I’m now ready for that scope to expand. Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector gives you more breadth to travel than its predecessor, and a number of its systems have seen some focused changes and reinventions. It still seems to have the same warm metal heart, though, and I can’t wait to get lost in more of Jump Over The Age’s small, powerful stories.
Sid Meier’s Civilization VII
Release date: 11th February
From: Steam, Epic, Xbox
Ollie: I’ve never been very good at Civ. I’m one of those who just likes to play the first 100 turns before leaving it for slightly too long, forgetting the details of my past plans, and starting a new game. And I have my doubts that Civ 7 will change me, but it looks very pretty, and it has some very intriguing ideas (navigable rivers and commander units), and also Gwendoline Christie.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows
Release date: 14th February
From: Steam, Epic, Ubisoft
Brendan: After years of wolfish fans howling at Ubisoft’s moon about setting an Assassin’s Creed game in feudal Japan, the bright round orb finally turned and said: “Fine, now shut up.” Assassin’s Creed Shadows will split the player’s time between two characters – night-lovin’ ninja Naoe and swole samurai Yasuke as they tear about 16th century Kyoto or Osaka in the dying years of a brutal civil war. They’ll be using some stealth tricks new to the series (smoke bombs, shadow skulking, and lying on their bellies) and performing some of those efficient double assassinations we’ve seen in Creed’s gone by. We’re also told it’ll reboot the modern-day frame story that almost always accompanies the games. This usually involves a bunch of sci-fi DNA-memory nonsense, but Ubifolks have said this time it’ll “enhance, rather than overshadow, the historical journey”. I haven’t actually completed an Assassin’s Creed game since Ezio’s Brotherhood – I get bored and give up about halfway through. Do they still end with a bunch of Chariots Of The Gods nonsense? I guess fans will find out in spring next year. Me? I’ll probably play for ten hours to look at the nice buildings and leave satisfied with that.
Avowed
Release date: 18th February
From: Steam, Xbox
Ollie: I do miss seeing my hands held out in front of me like a zombie while I role-play my way through a big ol’ fantasy world. Avowed is Obsidian’s hefty swing at the Skyrim formula, and it takes place inside the Pillars Of Eternity universe, which I love, lore-wise. High fantasy settings can often feel very samey in games, but Pillars hit a bit different for me, and I’m excited to see Eora from a smaller perspective. I’ve heard differing opinions on the feel of the combat, so I’ll just have to do the sensible thing and try it for myself.
Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza In Hawaii
Release date: February 21st
From: Steam
Nic: Majima And The Good Ship Maximum Flanderisation looks like a blast, I can’t deny. While I’ve been a little wary recently about Yakuza flying too close to the surreal hijinks sun and abandoning the more grounded, heartfelt crime drama that balances the goof out so well, I will say this: if you’re going to go pants-on-head, go full pants-on-head. Pirates are cool. Majima is cool. Boarding ships is cool. I’m very much looking forward to what a series with such legendary minigames can do with the pirate theme, and I’m also very much looking forward to Majima spin-kicking someone off the side of a ship into the ocean.
Hollywood Animal
Release date: February 27th
From: Steam
Edwin: I really like the looks of this tycoon game partly for the villainous aspect – you can, amongst other things, hire gangsters to gather dirt on a disagreeable cinematographer, to stop them whining about their wages – but mostly, because it’s actually about making movies. You’ll pick a genre and tone, crew and cast the production, make edits, decide how to market the movie, court the critics, etcetera. It reminds me dimly of Kairosoft’s 2012 mobile favourite Game Dev Story, but it’s a lot denser, with an isometric Roaring Twenties visual direction that is appropriately balanced somewhere between golden and piss-coloured. I wonder if I can inaugurate the zombie horror movie genre a few decades in advance.
Monster Hunter Wilds
Release date: February 28th
From: Steam
Jeremy: Monster Hunter has long been a series I’ve respected, and I can still fondly recall the days when my university roommate and I dabbled with Monster Hunter Freedom 2 on the PSP and got the stuffing stomped out of us by big T-Rex wannabes in the snow. 2018’s Monster Hunter World was the first entry in the series to really hook me on a deeper level though, as I’m generally the sort of person who needs more of a backstory and incentive to chuck fossilised projectiles at big behemoths instead of just being told, “You’re a hunter, now fulfill your destiny!” Monster Hunter Wilds looks to amplify the impetus behind carving beasts into hunks of meat even more, to the point where they recently got Daisy Ridley to do the voiceover for a lore video. Needless to say, I’m excited to dive back into the world of propelling myself onto the backs of massive beasts via my Insect Glaive – always the most underrated weapon in the hunter’s repertoire.
Suikoden 1 and 2 HD remaster
Release date: March 6th
From: Steam
Nic: You’ll often hear Suikoden 2 mentioned alongside Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 7 as one of the best JRPGs of its era, although it hasn’t quite made the same cultural impact as some of its more lauded peers. Part of that might be down to how comparatively difficult its been to actually play outside of owning the original hardware. So it’s very exciting to know that both Suikoden II and its simpler but still utterly charming predecessor are going to be more accessible, and hopefully a lot of people who missed out the first time will finally get a chance see what all the (tempered) fuss was about. Why is it so good? Simply put, it tells a fantastic, heartfelt story – the most important thing an RPG can do, say I.
Wanderstop
Release date: March 11th
From: Steam
Brendan: The number of games described as “cosy” and “wholesome” increases every passing day, and will not stop until we are all enveloped by a pillowy cloud of oppressive and suffocating cuteness. I joke. I broadly feel it’s great to have this type of game available to all seeking some relaxation at the effortless bash of a “buy now”. But I also yearn for something that interrogates the genre a little. Wanderstop is about an arena fighter who retires into a tea making career and is unused to the slower-paced work, and still visibly rattled by her own inner fighter. It’s written by Davey Wreden, of The Beginner’s Guide and Stanley Parable, so I’m hopeful the characters and dialogue will be a little deeper than your average cosy game, which often steer so far from conflict and drama as to become charming but ultimately toothless. I suspect Wanderstop is already not that type of cosy game, and I’m keen to see what it does differently.
Bionic Bay
Release date: March 13th
From: Steam, Epic
Edwin: This physics-driven 2D platformer has starred in no less than six of Alice0’s (RPS in peace) old Screenshot Saturday Mondays, and also had Nic enthusing about eggs, so you already know it’s a GOAT. Briefly and very reductively, it’s a Playdead game but you have superpowers. Specifically, you can teleport-swap with an object, switch the direction of gravity, and slow time, all of which lends itself to some fancy traversing. It’s a game of miraculously neat solutions but there’s a touch of Noita to the chain reactions. I wonder if the star of the show will prove to be the ancient biomechanical world.
Atomfall
Release date: March 27th
From: Steam
James: Atomfall was one of my personal Gamescom 2024 highlights, a charming yet intense survival FPS set in the aftermath of the Windscale fire – the UK’s very own Chornobyl disaster. The S.T.A.L.K.E.R. vibes are strong, with its lawless, free-roaming maps, resource scarcity, and tense shootouts, and while there are dashes of ironic British humour, developers Rebellion appear to be largely resisting the urge to water down the desolate feel with excessive comedy. This seems like the right move to me, considering how S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 itself has only recently reminded us how being alone in a hostile, radiation-ravaged hellhole can make for a very good time.
Inzoi
Release date: March 28th
From: Steam
Graham: Inzoi (officially styled “inZOI”) promises a next-generation take on The Sims. The character creator is frightfully detailed, your charges can travel around open urban environments, and there seem to be all the tools you’d need for playing out soap operas and constructing dream homes. Will it be good or fun? I have no idea. I’m old enough to remember the first wave of games which tried to knock The Sims off its perch, and they all failed because the concept is simple but the execution – which requires simulating human beings, their emotions, and countless types of interaction – is a huge challenge. However it turns out, I’m excited to watch someone new try.
Judas
Release date: March 2025
From: Steam
James: I enjoyed all three Bioshocks, even the one in the sky that everybody hates, so I’m keeping an eye on Judas even as its creators insist it’s not just Bioshock in space. Yeah, sure, Ken. A failed utopia? Power-assisted shooting? Animalistic machines that seem to be the only ones still doing their jobs? That’s Bioshock as balls, friends. Even if this apparently goes for a more unusual mix of non-linear progression and roguelite repeatability.
Football Manager 2025
Release date: March 2025
From: Steam, Epic
Graham: Football Manager 2025 was delayed from last year, meaning it’s arriving much later than normal in the real world football season. There’s a good reason for the delay: Sports Interactive are shifting their long-running series to a new engine, with the promise that doing so will unlock faster and more ambitious changes in the years to come. They’ve described FM25 as the first “true” sequel the series has had in decades, and for that reason I’m excited to get back into the dugout for the first time in a long time.
Killing Floor 3
Release date: March 2025
From: Steam
James: I never really played much of Killing Floor 2, despite pumping dozens of hours into the grottier, less ambitious original. Maybe because for all its visual improvements and fancy gore tech, KF2’s rattly weapons just lacked the booming pneumatic punch that KF1’s armoury had. Still, I’d be happy for Killing Floor 3 to win me over again. It’s already making the right moves, showing off some appropriately heavy weaponry as well as some slick new melee finishers that, fingers crossed, could help scratch that tactile itch. There’s also a new zipline tool straight of Deep Rock Galactic, and if you’re going to borrow traversal tricks from other co-op horde shooters, you may as well borrow from the best.
Split Fiction
Release date: March 2025
From: Steam, Epic
Graham: It Takes Two was clumsy in many ways, including its awkward cutscenes and its conceptually muddled level design. It was also a feast: a huge co-op bonanza that made up for its lack of elegance with variety. So I’m looking forward to Split Fiction, Hazelight Studios’ next co-op adventure, which looks similarly ambitious by dropping players into separate science fiction and fantasy worlds conceived by its protagonists, two aspiring fiction authors. I’m not expecting it to be smart, but I suspect it’ll be fun.
Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound
Release date: July 2025
From: Steam
Jeremy: When I was a kid, I religiously pored over the Nintendo Power Ninja Gaiden II strategy guide, still a constant source of inspiration to me as a guides writer. That was the OG Ninja Gaiden II for the NES, one part of a trilogy of excellent, hard as hell 8-bit platformers. The more widely-known 3D Ninja Gaidens for the Xbox and Xbox 360 (now available on Steam) saw the franchise go in a different direction, focusing on tough-as-nails swordplay instead of running and jumping. And now after a long hiatus, we have Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound, which looks like it’s going to unite both trilogies into one whole. We’ve got a pixel-perfect sidescroller developed by The Game Kitchen, who clearly know their stuff thanks to Blasphemous, but it seems to feature more of the swordplay found in the Xbox games. Wonderfully, it also takes place during the NES games when series protagonist Ryu Hayabusa went to America, and stars another ninja who’s defending Ryu’s village. This means that it’s actually a Gaiden (which means “side story” in Japanese) on top of everything else. Colour me highly excited to wall jump and Izuna Drop my way through this one once summer hits.
Rematch
Release date: Summer 2025
From: Steam, Xbox
Ollie: The thing that intrigues me by far the most about Rematch is who’s making it. This 5v5 on-the-ground-perspective football game is being developed by Sloclap, the team behind Sifu and Absolver. The combat in those games felt amazing and quite unlike anything else, and I’m pretty interested to see how they can translate that to the world of ball-wellying. We’ve just got the one trailer so far, but I’m very much digging the vibrant future style as well. It would be very cool to have a game like this bite even a little bit into the football gaming landscape, but that might be too much to ask. Still, looking forward to giving Rematch a try.
Mafia: The Old Country
Release date: Summer 2025
From: Steam
Ed: I’m excited for this one because I don’t really have the time or the motivation to go back and play the first three Mafias. With this being more of a linear prequel set in 1900s Sicily, I’m excited to dive in as a newbie and be thrust into a third-person action adventure where I’ll be double-crossed as I canter on my horse, sip some vino, and stick a knife in the back of some guy as I ride a turn-of-the-century automobile with no suspension. Once I’m done, maybe I’ll go back to the first three and see what’s what.
Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines 2
Release date: 2025
From: Steam, Epic
Brendan: Bloodlines 2 has had a rocky development with many delays, departures, and developer hot potato-ing. It has featured in these “most anticipated games” lists since, uh, 2020. The release date on Steam promises it’ll release next year, as Dear Esther developers The Chinese Room have picked up work on the game where other previous studios under Paradox have left off. Bigwigs at the game’s publisher have somewhat downplayed the RPG elements that were originally planned, and the combat in trailers continues to look a little janky. All this means it’s hard to be confident about a high-profile sequel to a beloved game when it has been so publicly troubled, but we won’t know until it’s in our hands, and I liked what The Chinese Room did with their Scottish oil rig horror in Still Wakes The Deep. So I can indulge a little cautious optimism.
Doom: The Dark Ages
Release date: 2025
From: Steam
Nic: I feel words are mostly superfluous when it comes explaining my excitement for the next Doom game. I mean, you’ve seen that trailer, right? While an overreliance on the rule of cool can often be a game’s downfall, two incredible shooters in a row means I trust id unquestioningly to deliver on every ounce of promise evoked by a chainsaw shield, or a gun that shoots ground up bits of skull. The recent Doom games remind me why so much ‘games as art’ criticism rubs me up the wong way, because while you’d never see these games mentioned in such conversation, the absurdly skilful artistry in the way id design combat flow is a perfect example of why games are so exciting.
Pathologic 3
Release date: 2025
From: Steam
Edwin: With Brendy being a long-standing detractor, it falls to me to revive the ancient RPS tradition of Pathologic Is Great Actually. The spirit of Quinns (RPS in peace) is strong in me! Also, I’m a deeply depressing person who loves unforgiving town-wide simulations of disease, coupled with arcane methods of fighting said disease and a bunch of meaty steppes mysticism. The long-awaited next helping of Pathologic lets you play as the methodical Bachelor, a man of science, whose story unfolds in parallel with that of the previous game’s Haruspex. It’s a little aggravating that the developers have split the original game and sequel-remake’s three protagonists into standalone releases (Pathologic 2’s Kickstarter backers get free keys for Pathologic 3), but I trust the developers’ reasoning that it’s simply too costly and laborious to do all three in one game while upgrading other aspects of the experience.
The Eternal Life Of Goldman
Release date:2025
From: Steam
Ed: I remember when I first saw this unveiled at some THQ Nordic showcase and it took me a little while to realise what I was seeing – a 2D platformer with a stunning art style and, seemingly, a bucketful of adventure. You play as Goldman, an old fella with an upgradeable cane who must seek out the Deity, a mysterious god of folk legend, but one that no-one has seen. And so, you dive into the hidden corners of the archipelago and do lots of hopping and a bit of fighting. And my word, it looks like the sort of sprawling adventure where you’re just wrapped up in the joys of travel and the excitement of stepping into unchartered territory. I’m also heartened by the devs saying they want it to be a challenging game but one that “never devolves into a grueling exercise”. I am desperate to see more.
Subnautica 2
Release date: 2025
From: Steam, Epic
Edwin: The original Subnautica is probably my favourite open world survival game other than Minecraft. It’s an astonishing underwater world of kelp forests, cave systems hung with luminous coral and volcanic ruins. Its rhythms of exploring, scrounging and building are constrained and energised by the entangled problems of vehicle diving depth and limited oxygen. It is alternately wondrous and terrifying, depending not least on the time of day. It has the best submarines: seriously, I would live in a Cyclops if I could. I can’t imagine the sequel will best it, and I’m concerned that the new co-op elements might dilute the fundamentals, but I’m very keen to play nonetheless.
Reanimal
Release date: 2025
From: Steam
Nic: I played both Little Nightmares games back to back, and they were a revelation to me. Chilling fairytale horror expressed through the cinematic platformer tradition, as beautiful as they were frightening. I think Little Nightmares 3 looks cool, but it’s now very clear that what made those games special is something inextricable from Tarsier Studios themselves. And so, Reaminal looks to carry on the legacy, with the added bonus of being fully co-op, which means I can introduce someone else to their games. Also, the giant angry animals remind me somewhat of the Simpsons episode where the cows get addicted to Tamacco.
Skate
Release date: 2025
From: It’s not been added to any stores yet, but you can sign up for playtesting on EA’s site.
Brendan: As a fan of the ragdolling rollboarding of Session and Skater XL, I have been eyeing EA’s return to the extreme sport with eager giggles. After a hefty leak of an early build, the studio behind Skate embraced showing their early prototyping. Turns out work-in-progress footage isn’t something to treat with corporate wariness, it just looks cool. There’s something undeniably playful about the basic building blocks and rough hewn multiplayer chaos that’s shown in these devlog videos. The game is going to be free-to-play, which gives me a minor case of the willies. But I nonetheless look forward to faceplanting the concrete after attempting a fifteen storey quintuple burpflip with online randomers who collide into me in mid-air. I think I might love bailing more than I enjoy actually landing a trick.
Slay The Spire 2
Release date: 2025
From: Steam
Nic: I might be alone in this, but I’ve always considered the real brilliance of Slay The Spire to have less to do with its deckbuilding or strategy, and more down to how incredibly tactile it is for a card shuffler. It feels like an action game, almost, the act of dragging a card on a slime every bit as thumpy and rewarding as letting a fist fly in Sifu, or booting a man off a cliff in Deathloop. And yet, every time I want to play it, I feel intimidated by returning to something I feel has been solved, updated, solved again, and then updated some more. I can’t wait to start fresh and experience it with everyone else again with the sequel.
Death Stranding 2: On The Beach
Release date: 2025
From: N/A
Nic: “As soon as you finish a film, people want you to talk about it. The film is the talking” is my second favourite David Lynch quote, after “COOPER, YOU REMIND ME TODAY OF A SMALL MEXICAN CHIHUAHUA”. I bring this up because I think maybe Kojima, given the choice, would not be treated by the culture the way he is: he’d just let the games be the talking. I loved Death Stranding. It is the game that gives you the most body. It made me want to go outside and shovel piles of freshly-tilled earth up my nose. I am picking up whatever he’s putting down.
Nivalis
Release date: 2025
From: Steam, Epic
Brendan: Cyberpunk 2077 had a great atmosphere of glittering ugliness, often viewed through the windshield of a car. With Nivalis, I’m hoping for a more laid-back cityscape. Specifically, I am excited that the developer is making a fully walkable cyberpunk metropolis, where everything is designed around dandering from place to place. In this same footful way, I got a lot of traction out of Shadows Of Doubt this year, the immersive detective sim that sees you wandering around a proc-gen city with murder and mystery on the mind. But that city’s design, while hugely complex in terms of simulation, was confined to a grid. Nivalis looks to be twistier, turner, and trains-ier. There is a railway system to bring you around, districts to hop between, and walkways suspended high above the pollution-mist below. It’s also a life sim in the sense that you’ll be running a noodle stand and fishing in the questionably grey waters at the bottom of the city. But if all I get from this game is an atmospheric Bernband-like walkabout, I’ll be content.
Mushroom Musume
Release date:2025
From: Steam, Itch
Edwin: In this delightfully grotesque balance of life sim, storybook RPG and creature-collector, you grow a princess from fungus in the woods and send her out on various sinister adventures. How you act toward and behave around your sporing daughter will determine her traits and stats such as “dampness”, which I’m still struggling to translate into the language of RPG moral alignments. Quest outcomes include the possibility of your daughter getting eaten by hungry villagers, and then there’s the problem of paying back your debts to a noxious witch (this, at least, describes the opening events of the game, which you can explore in the Itch.io demo). The mix of grainy forest photograph and pixelart character design is gorgeous, and the process of filling out a “mushipedia” of various princess types seems horribly more-ish. The label “creepy-cute” is well-earned.
Dispatch
Release date: 2025
From: Steam
Ollie: As a die-hard fan of The Incredibles, I can’t help but feel some excitement at the prospect of Dispatch – a Telltale-esque story about a frustrated former superhero in an office setting, dispatching heroes to combat crimes. The fact that it’s Telltale-esque in appearance should surprise no one, seeing as it’s made by former Telltale devs. Time will tell whether the story and its humour land, but it’s a premise filled with promise, and the voice acting talent is clearly there. I’m also quite interested to see how management-y or strategy-y the dispatching of superheroes turns out to be. I can see it being a pretty cool little puzzle, figuring out who to send where, and dealing with the consequences.
Fable
Release date:2025
From: Steam, Microsoft Store
Edwin: I thought Fable 3 was pretty good, sincerely enjoyed horse-drawn Kinect outing Fable: The Journey, and was quite looking forward to the cancelled free-to-play multiplayer RPG Fable Legends. As such, my enthusiasm for any Fable game should be regarded with profound suspicion. But come on, it looks like they’re doing all the right things for the 2025 reboot: it’s a single-player third-person action-RPG again, and developers Playground have already made a Very British open world in Forza Horizon 4. I’m eager to discover how they’ve applied that vehicular understanding of Blighty to Fable’s fairytale Albion. Perhaps they’ll even let you grow trees from an acorn in this one.
Dinolords
Release date: 2025
From: Steam
James: I am not a strategy guy, even when lured in by the promise of riding a T-rex into battle against Vikings. But I could be tempted by Dinolords, which adopts a MOBA-ish, single-hero character perspective to give both your township-building and your dino-battling a more direct, up-close-and-personal feel. The hope is that this isn’t just a genre blend for its own sake, but adds more immediacy to a style of game that’s often just about watching NPC peasants go about their business. Me, I’d rather muck in myself, and if Dinolords wants to let me – again, while mounted atop prehistoric monsters – then I certainly won’t complain.
Baby Steps
Release date:2025
From: Steam
Edwin: What kind of fearful wanker would apply the thinking behind absurdist failure simulators QWOP and Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy to a fully-fledged 3D landscape, feat. “mountain-sized mountains”? The answer, of course, is Bennett Foddy, with a little help from the creators of Ape Out. In Baby Steps you play a depressed, basement-dwelling 35-year-old who is transported into something like the world of Death Stranding. Your job is to walk across it. The primary obstacle is that, thanks to purposefully obtuse controls and physics, you can barely lift a foot without falling over. I wouldn’t say I’m looking forward to playing this, but I am looking forward to the interesting thoughts I think when I recoil from it in hatred.
The King Is Watching
Release date: 2025
From: Steam, Itch
Nic: Hunting for interesting demos to share with the world is one of the best parts of the job, and I didn’t play many last year that stuck with me more strongly than The King Is Watching, despite the demo showcasing an earlier build. It’s effectively a tiny city manager with a wave defense element, with the twist that your various resource buildings only work when your gaze is upon them, turning the thing into a plate-spinning game of feudal surveillance. I wrote about it here. Do scroll down and read valued RPS community member 1694’s comment too – it’s very illuminating.
Big Walk
Release date: 2025
From: Steam
Graham: Big Walk is the next game from the makers of Untitled Goose Game, and it seems to have a similarly playful spirit. It’s a co-op game in which friends “hang out and get lost” in mountainous, tree-covered terrain and explore strange, colourful structures. Developers House House are calling it a “walker-talker”. I am calling it: what if Keita Takahashi tried to make Journey?
Grand Theft Auto 6
Release date:2025, although perhaps on PC later
From: NA
Ed: I know, I know. It’s probably not going to land on PC until a year or so later, and it’s like, the most boring pick imaginable. But how can I not be excited? It’s the next Big Thing from Rockstar, which means it’s a cultural event whether we like it or not. I’m excited to see whether it really will set the open world standard and if it borrows anything from Red Dead Redemption 2. I’m excited to see if it turns out a bit of a dud or a buggy mess or if it’s simply too ambitious. I want to see how the news covers it. And whether my badminton pals buy it on day one and ask me if I’ve played it and I’ll be like, “no sorry it’s not on PC”, and they’ll be like, “oh”.
Promise Mascot Agency
Release date: 2025
From: Steam, Epic
Nic: This is new one from Kaizen, them behind the excellent Paradise Killer. Promise Mascot Agency looks nothing like Paradise Killer, but it does look like it contains literally every other good thing that anyone could imagine being in a videogame. Bits of Ghostwire: Tokyo, Jalopy, Yakuza and, uh, Palworld jostle for space in a big joyful game jelly, alongside a companion that’s actually just a giant severed thumb. Mmmm. Yes. Videogames. Mmm.
Kathy Rain 2: Soothsayer
Release date: TBA
From: Steam
Jeremy: The first Kathy Rain, which came out in 2016 and went down pretty well over here at RPS, was a lovely detective story in the same vein as Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, but with a dash of Twin Peaks and a surprise helping of Silent Hill at the end. It had some flaws in terms of pacing and plot, but a 2021 Director’s Cut ironed out these issues and delivered a well-rounded experience that saw its chain smoking, motorcycle-piloting titular punk chick really become the sort of protagonist who deserves to star in at least a trilogy of adventure games. Kathy Rain 2: Soothsayer looks to deliver on that potential, with gorgeously updated visuals and a plot that sees Kathy a few years older, running her own investigation agency, and chasing down a serial killer. The demo that dropped on Steam a few weeks back promised good tidings; here’s hoping the final game delivers and doesn’t let up on the weird, out-of-left-field supernatural twists that made the first Kathy Rain so memorable.
Elden Ring: Nightreign
Release date: TBA
From: Steam
Ollie: One of the most unexpected reveals of The Game Awards 2024 was Nightreign, the PvE-focused, arena-based Elden Ring spinoff which inexplicably features characters and bosses from the Dark Souls series, presumably just for funsies. It’s probably the FromSoft game that has the greatest potential to fail since, hell, Demon’s Souls? But I also think this game could absolutely suck my free time out of the year. Elden Ring’s probably my favourite game ever, and I’m also a sucker for all those self-contained drop-in-and-fight genres (battle royales, roguelites, extraction shooters) that Nightreign seems to be borrowing from. It’s a bizarre mix, but the ingredients are all there for a damn good time.
Marathon
Release date: TBA
From: Steam
Ollie: My most anticipated game continues to be Marathon, because I adore extraction shooters, and despite the continued dominance of Tarkov and Hunt, Bungie has the potential to create the genre’s new frontrunner. That reveal trailer has such a clear aesthetic vision, and after diving a little into the lore of Bungie’s old Marathon games from the 90s, there’s a lot of potential here. An enormous amount of potential. I really, really hope they don’t squander it, because this could be the most exciting shooter in years.
Control 2
Release date: TBA
From: TBA
James: More Control? I could go for more Control. While I admire Alan Wake 2 enormously, its survival horror is less my speed than New Weird surrealism and levitating, desk-hurling action, so I’m very keen indeed to return to the funkier side of Remedy’s shared gameverse. Teasers thus far suggest we’ll be escaping out of the Oldest House and into the streets of New York City, which surely brings plenty of fresh opportunities for inventive reality mashups – though I’m also curious to see what Control 2 looks like without the original’s distinctively singular focus on Brutalist play spaces. Hopefully it’s just as fun to telekinetically rip out chunks of Art Deco architecture as well.
Marvel’s Blade
Release date: TBA
From: TBA
Ed: So, I didn’t really get on with Deathloop or, ahem, Redfall. I will have you know, though, that I’m a massive Dishonored fan and I’m essentially hoping Arkane Lyon take Marvel’s Blade and sculpt a spiritual successor to Dishonored out of it. I’m talking a first-person stealther, where you stalk vampires and you make them feel the steel, either with a quiet plunge of sword to spine, or going ‘loud’ and mincing everyone in the room with a few choice cuts. Having had a quick glance of his powers on the interweb, it seems like he’s ripe for a radial wheel with vampire powers, transformations, and super duper agility boosts, too. Come on Lyon, I believe.
Paper Sky
Release date: TBA
From: Steam
James: I’ve been keeping an eye on Paper Sky, a momentum-based paper plane sim, since its first demo back in April. A successful Kickstarter campaign secured its future, so now it’s just a case of sitting back and waiting for this chilled-out A4 adventure – in which you crumple up into a ball to pick up speed, before folding into a plane for gliding – to land gracefully on our PCs. If you’ve played Exo One, it’s a little like that, except you’re office stationary instead of a physics-defying spaceship orb.
Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater
Release date: TBA
From: Steam
James: Yeah, it’s a remake, but of a really bloody good game that never officially made it to PC. MGS3: Snake Eater remains a high point in the Hideo K’s Wordy Adventures series, its cover-light jungle setting and modular camo system making for some mighty tense sneaking, while its boss fights are among the most creative and memorable 1v1s ever committed to a stealth game. I’m hoping a modern version will smooth out some of the control jank, but otherwise, this could be a quality sneak-‘em-up with just a fresh coat of paint.
Gears Of War: E-Day
Release date: TBA
From: Steam, Microsoft Store
Edwin: I probably shouldn’t be Most-Anticipating the latest Gears Of War, given that the last couple of instalments were middling reinventions awash with non-transformative gimmicks, and E-Day is sort of just The Coalition throwing up its hands and saying “fine, let’s do Marcus vs the Locust again”. It’s a prequel, beginning shortly before the pustulating Imulsion goblins emerged from their caves to swarm humanity’s cities and tee up all that Destroyed Beauty (TM). It’s got youthful and comparatively non-gravelly incarnations of Fenix and old pal Dom, and will apparently show us the origins of Gears of War’s trademark chainsaw rifle. What gets my brainsaw revving is that it’s described as more of a horror experience. I’m hoping they’ll really draw out the titular Emergence – let us fight some other, less monstrous faction, like the Union of Independent Republics, while reckoning with tales of strange invaders below.
Wolfhound
Release date: TBA
From: Steam
Jeremy: Wolfhound is one of those quasi-retro games that instantly speaks to me, with visuals and sounds that look a little more advanced than what the NES and Sega Master System were capable of, but not quite on 16-bit SNES and Sega Mega Drive level. Perhaps if the Virtual Boy featured fully coloured visuals instead of black and red, we’d have this. Anyway, Wolfhound is described as a “Sci-fi World War II Metroidvania,” and from the getgo of the announcement trailer you can tell that it’s probably going to be a good time. You play a dude working for the Allies named Capt. Chuck “WOLFHOUND” Rossetti who gets stuck on an island where the Nazis are working on nasty occult stuff. Cue an excuse to run and gun your way through what looks to be a big map full of everything from zombies to powered-by-Axis-evil drill machines. I’m very much looking forward to Wolfhound even though Bit Kid’s previous effort – Chasm – seems to have gotten mixed reviews. Here’s hoping they’ve learned from the past and developed the right mixture of Wolfenstein + Metroid that we all deserve in this day and age.