Another year begins and that means it’s time to start our Game of the Year watch. Every year we round up the games that have resonated with us as we keep an eye out for this year’s best. 2026 has already had some certified bangers just in the first five months. We’ll be updating this list periodically as we head toward December, so watch this space.
Big Walk
I have never in my life played anything quite like Big Walk. Part puzzle game, part social experience, and part exploratory adventure, Big Walk sees you and between one and 11 of your friends (you must have at least one) wander an island covered in Fischer-Price-looking structures containing strange mechanisms and puzzles. To solve these puzzles, collect their rewards, and see more of the island, you must communicate. Sound, motion, hand signals, lights, walkie-talkies, flare guns—you’ll use all of these and more to overcome the different barriers put in front of you by both puzzles and distance and win the island’s weird, gourd-shaped rewards. Big Walk is a meticulously designed playground created explicitly to prompt you and your friends to be silly with one another, struggle together, and ultimately succeed together, allowing you to bask in all the companionable joy that comes with it. Smart as hell, weird, funny, and with an ending that repeatedly brought me to tears, Big Walk will stick with me for many, many years to come. — Rebekah Valentine
Deltarune 5
Not nearly enough people have been paying attention to Deltarune, which received its fifth chapter (of, probably, seven? Or more?) this year. It’s easy to overlook, sure. It feels tailor-made for Undertale fans, and it does largely demand some experience with its cult-hit predecessor. And at its most basic, it’s a simple, turn-based RPG with bullet-hell battles about two kids thrown into an alternate world and charged with fighting to save it from being consumed in darkness. But over the course of five chapters now, developer Toby Fox has created one of the most lovable casts of weirdos I’ve seen in an RPG. The game’s excellent, believable writing and confident humor are incredibly effective at getting me invested in even the most trivial NPCs, and make the narrative all the more impactful as the game explores its deeper themes of family, young love, grief, loss, growing up, and letting go. Chapter 5 has some of the best character moments yet, coupled with a fantastic soundtrack that continues to outdo itself in each new chapter. If you haven’t started Deltarune yet, it’s well-worth it to catch up now and be ready and waiting as the story soars closer to what’s sure to be a heartbreaking conclusion. — Rebekah Valentine
Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag Resynced
Is it cheating to take an already good video game and remake it? Maybe, but that’s what Ubisoft did with its new Assassin’s Creed entry, Black Flag Resynced. Yes, this is basically Black Flag, but with better visuals, new missions, and modern controls. That’s not a bad thing; in fact, it’s quite good, as Ubisoft mostly makes only smart, reasonable changes to the original Black Flag to deliver a pirate-themed Assassin’s Creed game that, while not necessarily new, is a great time. — Zack Zwiezen
Denshattack!
Do you like to go fast? Do you yearn for the edgy, anime-inspired aesthetic of Jet Set Radio? Do you like trains? You might be autistic, but you might also like Denshattack! Undercoders’ Tony Hawk-like train game is a blast. It’s also surprisingly challenging as you do cool train stunts, grinding on rails and chasing high scores. Its frenetic joyrides require you to lock in to accomplish goals and pull off moves that quickly become second nature. Denshattack! is for the score chasers who want to get off the skateboard and onto a whole-ass train car, and it commits to the absurdity with style. — Kenneth Shepard
Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls
Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls pulls off something a lot of fighting games mess up, being a complex tag-team fighter with a lot of mechanics to learn and juggle while also remaining approachable, giving Marvel heads decent tools to get their feet wet in a genre that is often challenging to get into for a casual player. Its 4v4 battles are a thrill to both watch and play. High-level players have been pulling off some incredible feats on big stages, but the game’s simple control scheme also gives newbies a way to onramp with relative ease. Tōkon‘s PC port may have started off in rough shape, but as Arc System Works has put in the effort to get it in shape, it’s laid an excellent foundation for a game that could be a staple of the fighting game scene for years to come. — Kenneth Shepard
Star Wars Zero Company
It can sometimes be difficult to sell people on a new video game they haven’t played. Then there are games, like Zero Company, that make it really easy: What if an XCOM game, but Star Wars? It’s a great concept for a game, and thankfully, Zero Company delivers on that promise, offering up tense turn-based battles interspersed with fantastic moments hanging out at home base with your ragtag group of mercs and misfits. Some technical flaws get in the way, but when Zero Company is working, it’s one of the best Star Wars games I’ve played in a long time. — Zack Zwiezen
Fields of Mistria
I don’t want to be reductive and say that Fields of Mistria is Stardew Valley but better, but in so many ways it really is. And I say this as a compliment to both games: Stardew Valley has long been among the best of its genre, and Fields of Mistria looked at that greatness and found all the right spots to tweak and improve ten years later. It plays all the hits effectively: You’ve got an overgrown farm, you clean it up, plant all sorts of different crops, raise animals, make friends with the townsfolk, fall in love, get married, explore a dangerous cave system, fish, and so forth. But it seems like just about every one of these things in Fields of Mistria has either a small or substantial upgrade from its Stardew counterpart: there’s far more story and dialogue, with deeper, more fleshed-out characters. The caves are more interesting, and the fishing is easier (okay, that may not be a plus for some). There are more crops that I can wrap my head around, and you can breed animals to get cool, rare colors, and even put accessories on them. Character customization is easy and detailed, there are tons of decorations for your house and farm, I could go on. Fields of Mistria is the follow-up to Stardew Valley I’ve been wanting for years, and I’m so happy it’s here. — Rebekah Valentine
Mortal Shell 2
The first Mortal Shell felt like someone doing an admirable if somewhat hollow job of copying someone else’s homework. Mortal Shell 2, on the other hand, has a much stronger creative direction and a clearer identity. It feels like a Soulslike that’s earned its stripes rather than just being another adequately executed also-ran. The shell system encourages experimenting with wild swings in combat styles, and the removal of the stamina bar makes fights feel faster and more free-flowing. It’s brutal, haunting, and surprisingly beautiful to look at in some places. Some rough edges and a questionable back half can’t hold back one of the best non-FromSoftware takes on the FromSoftware formula this year. — Ethan Gach
007 First Light
GoldenEye’s release on N64 sort of doomed the next few decades of 007 games. Most of the Bond games we got in GoldenEye’s wake were shooters, showcasing only one aspect of what makes Bond such an enduring and iconic character. IOI’s third-person, stealth-focused James Bond game was a welcome reprieve from the usual 007 shooters, and even better, First Light plays a lot like a modern Hitman game, letting players sneak, shoot, and talk through missions as they see fit, with the digital world and its denizens reacting to everything. IOI always seemed like a perfect fit for a Bond game, and First Light confirms that to be the case while also introducing one of the best versions of Bond in many, many years. — Zack Zwiezen
Blood Dungeon
Blood Dungeon is like someone turned Pac-Man mazes into platforming haunted houses and injected them with the dopamine-spiking thrill of a roulette table. It’s a Vampire Survivors-style roguelite that’s also a tough-as-nails arcade game that wants to bleed your pockets dry. I initially overlooked it, thinking it was just another cash-in on a contemporary genre fad, only to quickly fall under its eerie spell and find myself toiling away in its macabre mines hunting for every one of its seemingly endless hidden secrets and challenges. — Ethan Gach
The Sinking City 2
It would be rude to describe The Sinking City 2 as a lower-budget clone of the Resident Evil 4 remake. But it’s also a testament to the ingenuity and resolve of the devs, working through the war in Ukraine, that they were able to make a third-person survival horror shooter that’s so good, I can’t help but compare it to Capcom’s recent Resident Evil remakes. (Naturally, Sinking City 2 ditches evil corps and mutated monsters in favor of Lovecraftian nightmares and lots of gross worms.) It isn’t quite as polished as some of the other games on this list, but it has a lot of heart and delivers one damn fine and creepy adventure. — Zack Zwiezen
The Blood of Dawnwalker
The Blood of Dawnwalker is the best time-management simulator masquerading as a vampire action RPG that you’ll ever play. Yes, there’s currently only one of its kind that I know of, but still, it’s the best. And it works best when you learn to stop worrying about completing everything and love the friction introduced by its time limit. The game’s unique system of assigning time values to activities will mean you can’t do everything the game throws at you (and there is a lot), requiring a deliberateness to your choices that a lot of games dispense with for sake of conformity or player comfort. This adds real, consequence-driven weight to your decisions and makes Dawnwalker a standout game in which, for realsies, your choices matter. — Ash Parrish
Pragmata
Capcom’s “happy dad” puzzle shooter game Pragmata feels truly refreshing despite also feeling old. Diana and Hugh’s daddy/daughter day in space takes simple shooting and puzzle mechanics and slaps them together into something that is far more complex and challenging than its individual parts would be on their own. The multitasking demands of hacking an enemy’s defenses before you can reasonably put a dent in it with your pistol make its often slow-paced action frantic, and it all helps illustrate the connection between its two leads as they synergize their skills to take down every obstacle in their path. Pragmata feels like a PS360-era game, but it’s also a sign that maybe we’ve moved beyond the era’s “sad dad” subgenre and onto brighter, more optimistic stories of dads who like their kids from the start, rather than only after enduring a grueling test of the challenges of companionship. — Kenneth Shepard
Saros
Housemarque’s second swing at a cinematic roguelike shooter feels like the studio ironing out some wrinkles and creating something that can be either a Returnal-level gauntlet for those who relish such a thing, or a more calibrated challenge for those who want to, you know, actually finish it. Saros feels incredible to play, and its thorny challenges don’t stop when the colored bullets stop firing, as its psychological horror story is just as daunting to face as its powerful bosses. It’s remarkable that Housemarque has been able to maintain its identity as it’s been absorbed into PlayStation’s first-party studios, perfectly marrying its tough-as-nails combat with a cinematic, introspective story. — Kenneth Shepard
Mixtape
As someone who almost always has music playing in his ears, I can say that Mixtape captures what it feels like to tie every moment of your life to a song. Its smarmy coming-of-age exterior conceals an earnest look at what it’s like to have small-town blues and big-city dreams, with music being one of the only things that connects you to the world beyond your miserable podunk. The game’s mix of music is complimented by a mix of mechanics, with different minigames correlating to different songs and moments in its three young leads’ lives. It’s short, sweet, and also pretty damn funny. — Kenneth Shepard
Dead as Disco
On the other end of the musical spectrum, Dead as Disco hardwires music into its stylish beat-em-up levels, with each punch, kick, and dodge mapped to the beat of a banger soundtrack. The game also allows you to create custom levels with other music, fine-tuning the beats of your beatdowns so you’re executing choreographed combat as your fingers dance across your controller. The Early Access build is still missing some levels, but custom tracks already give you more than enough to dominate the dancefloor until the 1.0 update is released next year. — Kenneth Shepard
Titanium Court
Titanium Court is a weirdo game for weirdos, like me, who love metatextual dives into what a video game actually is, and why we play them in the ways that we do. If you’re my kind of weirdo, or desperately want to become one by playing more games where the line between creator, game, and player gets real blurry, Titanium Court is one of the best to do it. It takes the form of a hybrid match-3/tower defense game framed by a narrative adventure populated by the cast of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and wacky as that sounds, every piece of it is incredibly interesting and flows naturally into the other parts. The writing is what shines especially bright in Titanium Court: its cast is memorable, its jokes are screenshot-able, and its biggest twists had me in tears by the end. — Rebekah Valentine
Zero Parades: For Dead Spies
One of Zero Parades‘ conditioning thoughts, a mechanic that grants the player aides during skill checks, is the pursuit of “it.” Cascade, the player character and disastrous spy at the heart of this ambitious RPG from ZA/UM, can have numerous conversations about what “it” means. What qualities make up something or someone that possesses “it”? You quickly find that this is an impossible question to answer, because the perspective dictates whatever “it” really is. “It” is amorphous, capable of taking any shape imaginable, be it ugly or beautiful, messy or organized, healing or destructive. All that matters is that the possessor of “it” projects strength in the knowledge that “it” is theirs.
Zero Parades has “it.” If there was any concern that the follow-up to Disco Elysium couldn’t possibly follow in its bold footsteps, Zero Parades dismantles that notion with its total command of “it.” — Moises Taveras
Forza Horizon 6
Playground Games has done it again. Forza Horizon 6 is another banger entry in the open-world racing franchise. It’s a game that scares me because I have other things to do and games to play and yet…I just want to cruise around digital Japan and complete challenges. I just want to speed around Tokyo in some badass sports car or hop over hills in some big, dumb truck. I just want to play more Horizon 6, which is not just one of Xbox’s best games, but one of the best games released this year. It looks great, feels amazing, and will likely be on a lot of people’s game of the year lists come this December. — Zack Zwiezen
Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight
It’s not entirely accurate, but it’s close enough to say that Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight is just an Arkham game, but with bricks and minifigs. And it turns out that’s a great idea for a game. Legacy of the Dark Knight has one of the best-looking and most detailed open-world cities I’ve explored in some time. Doing so as a Lego version of Batman, complete with all the grapple-gliding antics you’d expect, is one of the best experiences I’ve had in a game this year. I mean, the game contains “Partyman” by Prince and lets you summon cats to fight baddies as Catwoman. How could it be bad? —- Zack Zwiezen
Mina the Hollower
Just weeks ago, it seemed to me unbelievable that Yacht Club Games could deliver something as exceptional as Shovel Knight twice, but somehow they’ve managed it with their second-ever brand new release, Mina the Hollower. Mina the Hollower is an entirely different game to Shovel Knight, riffing on top-down Zeldas, Game Boy RPGs, Soulslikes, and Castlevania all in kind as players guide Mina on a quest to reactivate six Spark Generators hidden around a Victorian gothic fantasy world. It’s got everything: satisfying weapons for hitting crunchy enemies, stacks of hidden things to discover, a cast of weird little dudes, and a story that had me surprisingly emotional by the end. I’ve beaten Mina but am still somehow only at 53-percent completion, and I’ll be revisiting the Tenebrous Isle for hours upon hours to come. — Rebekah Valentine
Pokémon Pokopia
Pokémon Pokopia is a cozy game for people who are usually not big on life sims. It has a melancholy mystery at its center that will motivate those who want something with more forward momentum than your typical open-ended life sim to carry on, and collecting all 300 monsters in its Pokédex will give even those who aren’t great at building towns something to aspire to. And if you’re someone who loves the thought of working on town infrastructure, Pokopia is a dense, rewarding builder that even a non-Pokémon fan can get a lot out of. It’s easy to look at some people’s creations and get overwhelmed and discouraged, but if you give yourself over to the goal of making little guys happy with what they’ve got rather than worrying about building the most elaborate town possible, Pokopia is one of the most gratifying games in the series. — Kenneth Shepard
Marathon
I stayed up until 2 a.m. one night playing Marathon. I had work the next day. It was such a dumb thing to do. I did it again later that week. And I’ll likely do it again in the near future because I can’t stop playing and loving Bungie’s sci-fi extraction shooter. It is a difficult, annoying, incredible, gorgeous, painful, evil, splendid video game. You’ll have nights where you’re flying high, nailing runs, and loading up on gear in your vault. You’ll have nights where nothing works, you lose it all and wonder why you even play. And then you’ll join a run, kill a whole team, and leave with more gear than you can carry and think to yourself, “Oh, right, this game rules.” Accurate. Marathon fucking rules. – Zack Zwiezen
Nioh 3
Team Ninja’s Nioh games have been admirable fusions of Soulslike mechanics and Ninja Gaiden‘s arcade action, wrapped in less interesting loot grinds. With Nioh 3, the meticulously honed formula branches out into sprawling maps and more open-ended exploration. The Destiny-like mission repetition and gear score fanaticism of earlier entries have been replaced with a more coherent and satisfying constellation of RPG systems that make Nioh 3 feel like a bigger, better game that never lets its broader ambitions dilute its excellent combat. It’s brutal and thrilling, with core gameplay so good that not even the exceedingly “meh” story can hold it back. – Ethan Gach
Perfect Tides: Station to Station
It’s impossible to sum up the greatness of Perfect Tides: Station to Station within the confines of a list like this. In the simplest terms, it’s a point-and-click adventure game, though not the sort that will routinely have you stuck on puzzles. It’s about inhabiting a year in the life of college student Mara Whitefish, who’s living in post-9/11 NYC (it’s not called that in the game, but that’s what it is) and experiencing all the stuff of life: terrible breakups, dizzying new romances, incredible nights out at karaoke, aging grandparents, mindblowing books, crushing insecurity, intense desire, the awe and mystery and anguish and jubilation of being alive. Like life itself, the game can be hilarious one moment and devastating the next; like so many great books and other artistic works that make us feel connected to the larger fabric of humanity, it’s all rooted in the specificity of Mara’s life, her experiences at a particular place and time, which are, by definition, fundamentally different from our own. And yet it’s that very specificity that makes it so absorbing, so insightful, and yes, so relatable. This is, quite simply, one of the all-time greats. – Carolyn Petit
TR-49
Inkle’s response to underground hit Type Help is an extraordinarily interesting and deeply thoughtful work of magical realism and entwining meta-concepts about the nature of narrative reality, the grotesque consumption of culture and creativity by genAI, and the ways in which our language defines our philosophy. And it’s not nearly as difficult to play as that highfalutin’ sentence implies. Set in an apocalyptic alt-history, TR-49 has you searching the archives of a giant book-eating machine, within which you must find historical documentation and catalog it appropriately, all while a dystopian regime gets closer to finding your hidden church basement. It’s bizarrely thrilling, given the methodical nature of its organizational systems, and aside from some irritating interruptions from its (superbly voiced and written) characters when you’re trying to focus, this game demonstrates yet again what masters of unique narratives Inkle truly are. – John Walker
Demon Tides
If you’re jonesing for a classic PS2-era platformer, Demon Tides is one of the best homages to the genre you can play right now. It’s slick, weighty, and full of satisfying platforming and attitude that evokes memories of early 2000s mascot platformers without feeling dated or rote in its efforts to appeal to people who are nostalgic for those games. Demon Tides is proof the genre isn’t out of gas; it just needs developers who will put in the effort to make it modern. — Kenneth Shepard
Resident Evil Requiem
The ninth Resident Evil has some of the best thrills and scares of the series’ 30 years, and deftly uses its two lovable heroes to showcase everything fans love about Capcom’s long-running franchise. It’s terrifying when you’re moving through Grace’s levels with minimal resources, and cathartic when Leon takes over and uses his giant arsenal of boomsticks to take down zombies that once kept you from safely walking through a hallway. Your mileage may vary on some of the game’s navel gazing as it contends with aspects of the series’ legacy, but it’s a damn fine Resident Evil game that will likely touch on why you fell in love with the series in the first place. — Kenneth Shepard
Cairn
Cairn is beautiful, engrossing, frustrating, and unexpectedly rewarding. With shades of influence from GIRP and Death Stranding, the atmospheric climbing-sim adventure carefully gamifies the stress, pressure, and snap decision-making of scaling seemingly insurmountable obstacles to propel you toward stunning vistas and ever more challenging heights. The game’s heart pierces through its occasionally grinding survival mechanics and fiddly controls, delivering a narrative journey underpinned as much by philosophical introspection as emotional growth. – Ethan Gach
Big Hops
3D platformers never went away completely, but they are rarer than they used to be. So when we get one, I’m always happy. And when one of these new platformers turns out to be incredible, I’m very, very happy. That’s the case with Big Hops, a colorful 3D platformer that features some of the best movement and jumping to be found in a game not published by Nintendo. Mario doesn’t need to watch out; he’s too popular to ever be dethroned, but he could learn a few things from Big Hops and its wild power-ups and exploration. – Zack Zwiezen
Scott Pilgrim EX
Retro indie comfort food at its most colorful, crunchy, and unaffected, Scott Pilgrim EX is catnip for a certain type of millennial (me). It throws together classic game influences, a fun chiptune soundtrack, and a beloved slacker comic book IP and lights the fuse on the dynamite. The resulting explosion will echo through your dreams until you’re back in 2010 remembering playing River City Ransom on the NES back in 1990. It’s suffused with nostalgia but never deploys it cynically. Scott Pilgrim EX is a time machine that will leave you reinvigorated about the future instead of feeling trapped in the past. – Ethan Gach
Slay the Spire 2
Welp, they did it. Slay the Spire 2 feels exactly like playing more Slay the Spire (complimentary). The crude graphics have been further refined and there are new builds to play around with and new events to encounter. The sequel does everything the original did just as well, often even better, and adds more meat to the bone. It’s an unimpressive-sounding trick but one that most sequels fail to pull off. Early Access development has only just gotten started and Slay the Spire 2 already feels like a major achievement that I will sink another 100 hours into. -Ethan Gach
Mewgenics
Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glailel’s team-up project Mewgenics takes the concept of the roguelite and deftly flips it on its head. Here, what feels at first like it’s going to be a deckbuilding turn-based RPG about a squad of fighting kittens turns out to be less about building decks and more about using decks once and then setting them on fire. Each run through its enormous gauntlets of challenges and encounters is a new experience, with an all-new team of cats with their own bespoke set of skills, abilities and special attacks. Once you’ve succeeded or failed with that gang, they go straight into a breeding program (hence the game’s dubious name) to create the next generation of kitties. It’s as packed with gross-out humor and dead baby jokes as you’d expect from a McMillen venture, but it’s also one of the smartest and most inventive takes on the roguelite deckbuilder format. – John Walker
Esoteric Ebb
Amidst every former (and current) ZA/UM dev announcing their own spiritual successors to Disco Elysium, one man has been hard at work creating a “Disco-like” of his own since 2018. As most solo dev projects tend to be, Christoffer Bodegård’s work on his game was a laborious process, but slow and steady finally won the race in 2026.
Esoteric Ebb is a pure translation of Disco Elysium’s identity-crisis-fueled, politically driven narrative, wrapped in a D&D skin. But for all the ways in which we can compare the game to Disco Elysium, there’s one area in which it outclasses its inspiration: it’s somehow even funnier.
I could wax poetic about the beautiful art and the incredible voice acting all day, but all you really need to know is that I haven’t laughed this hard at a game…ever. Every quest and every conversation had something that set me off. Bodegård should be writing prime-time HBO comedies, but we’re lucky he’s making silly little CRPGs instead. – Lewis Parker
