A recap: of the seven hopefuls I slipped into our bulk 2025 list of “Oh, that looks alright” games, only three actually released in 2025, and one of them wasn’t very good. If it’s the hope that kills you, I am therefore dead four, arguably five times over. Real Necron shit, honestly.
For 2026, then, I’m playing it safe, only declaring for games whose developers/publishers have outright said they’re due next year. That means no Resistor, no Clockwork Revolution, and probably no Space Marine 3 – but, fingers crossed, yes to more Control and more rad train flips. I’d have the Steam Machine here as well, if it were a game and not a box for playing them.
Control Resonant
Freshly Geoffed and confirmed for 2026, Control Resonant looks like big, bold chance-taker of a sequel. It’s a melee brawler instead of another shooter, you play as former brainwashed villain Dylan Faden instead of his sister and original Control lead Jesse, and the brutalist megastructure that is The Oldest House opens up into the sunny streets of New York City. Still, the reveal trailer is dripping in the logic-breaking weirdness that gave Control its distinct flavour, and it’s not like the lack of guns is some painful loss – the best parts of fighting as Jesse were flying around and psychically punting desks at monsters, not plinking them with a pistol. In that regard, Dylan seems just as gifted.
Denshattack
I’ve played Denshattack’s demo and it’s a joy: face-rearrangingly fast, outrageously colourful arcade train driving game with Tony Hawk flips ‘n’ grinds, all presented with a gleeful disregard for how little sense that makes. Sometimes I wonder how it might sustain the sense of breakneck absurdity across the length of a full game, but then I see giant baseballs smashing into tracks, mechanical sandworms knocking over skyscrapers, and laser battles against hot pink robots, then recall that I myself rode a dislodged Ferris wheel into an erupting volcano. I’m sure it’ll be fine.
Deep Rock Galactic: Rogue Core
While it’s unlikely to replace vanilla DRG as my dwarven co-op shooter of choice, Deep Rock Galactic: Rogue Core is enough of a substantial reconfiguring that I’ll be keeping an eye on as it tunnels its way into early access. Besides being all roguelikey, the new dwarf classes look impressively diverse – a recent beta added one who incorporates short time rewinds into her kit – and there’s just something eerily appealing about exploring Rogue Core’s abandoned mining networks, in contrast to the purely natural and untouched subterranean biomes of the original game. Look on my works, ye fictional resource extraction company, and despair.
Planet of Lana II
Planet of Lana II – or Planet of Lana II: Children of the Leaf, it’s inconsistent on which – is claimed to be twice the size of the lovely puzzle-platformer that came before it. I’m not too enthusiastic about that, given one of Planet of Lana’s strengths was its nimble pacing, but I’m absolutely up for more tag-team puzzlesolving with alien BFF Mui and a few dozen more screens of gawp-worthy science fiction scenery in the background. This is another one I played, in demo form, earlier this year, and I suspect that the sequel’s increased breadth is the result of the puzzles themselves being embiggened: a single sequence involved diving down to a seabed, dragging Mui across the surface using a retrieved, shapeshifting plant, anxiously swimming past sharks, having Mui mind-control a fish, then blowing out ink clouds to aid in more anti-shark stealth. That’s a lot of brainpower for one girl and her catchimp.
Good Boy
Observer Interactive call Good Boy a “Petroidvania”, on the grounds that the sentient space rovers you meet while exploring its forgotten planet – as a wheely robot yourself – are all based on the developers’ own dogs. Groan at the pun if you must but you have a heart of stone, and a mind of plasterboard, if you don’t find that concept a charming one. Rolling from region to region is a relaxed, nonviolent affair: you capture alien insects to unlock new regions with their powers, but can release them afterwards, and making permanent chassis upgrades involves returning to the base of a friendly human spaceman who kindly lets you use his crafting machines. You are a good boy, after all.
Highguard, maybe
Fair bit of umming and ahhing here, folks. Highguard could be brilliant: it’s a competitive FPS from a studio, Wildlight Entertainment, that’s largely comprised of ex-senior devs for Titanfall, Titanfall 2, and Apex Legends, three of the best competitive FPS games in the past decade. It’s also yet another hero shooter with such a bland aesthetic, despite blending modern guns with ye olde fantasy, that you could lose track of it in a bowl of porridge. My current plan is to try it out – it’ll be free to play – and let the gunplay do the talking. Maybe the horseriding, as well.