Viewfinder
Combining elements of popular world-manipulating puzzlers such as Monument Valley and Chicory, Viewfinder has you exploring a lush, possibly post-apocalyptic environment, where you’re able take photos, paintings and sketches and superimpose them on to the world to change the layout, reach fresh areas or open new explorable domains. It’s an intriguing premise with a cool, minimal visual style.
• PC, PlayStation; 18 July
Starfield
You may have heard of this one. Bethesda’s staggeringly ambitious sci-fi role-playing adventure promises more than 1,000 explorable planets, customisable spacecraft, weapons and outposts, myriad side-quests and an epic story about mysterious alien artefacts. To say this game is important to Xbox would be an understatement of galactic proportions.
• Xbox, PC; 6 September
Assassin’s Creed Mirage
Set entirely within the walls of ninth-century Baghdad, Mirage has been designed as a condensed Assassin’s Creed adventure, following street thief Basim on his quest to become a master hitman. The scenic detail is astonishing, the parkour looks fun and accessible and a new “focus” ability allows you to string kills together in one graceful move. Add in lots of new skills and tools, as well as the ability to pickpocket and bribe civilians and ride a camel, and Mirage has a lot going on.
• PC, PlayStation, Xbox; 13 October
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora
Ubisoft appears to be have been shopping its well-honed sprawling action-game template around; this Avatar tie-in looks like Far Cry in blue. Appropriately, it looks stunning. You play a na’vi soldier trained by the evil human military, exploring the films’ famous planet after humanity abruptly abandoned it; when they come back, inevitably, you must help defend it.
• PlayStation, Xbox, PC; 7 December
Jusant
Sounding a bit like a vertical version of thatgamecompany’s classic adventure Journey, Jusant has you climbing a mysterious towering edifice while trying to work out its history and what tragedy has happened here. Designed to be contemplative and slow-paced, and with no spoken dialogue, it’s the latest thoughtful project from Don’t Nod, creator of Life is Strange.
• PC, PlayStation, Xbox; autumn 2023
Sonic Superstars
We had a 10-minute hands-on session with Sega’s latest attempt to rediscover the appeal of this iconic series – and it’s already our favourite in years. Scorch through a series of typically vibrant 2D multilayered zones, facing old school enemies and familiar environmental hazards. You can play as Sonic, Tails, Knuckles or Amy, and there’s four-player co-op. Created by Arzest, the studio formed by Sonic co-creator Naoto Ohshima, it has a real sense of authenticity. And it’s fast as hell.
• PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch; late 2023
Last Train Home
Sometimes a developer comes up with a truly interesting way to merge two genres into something new. Part real-time strategy game, part transport sim, you’re in charge of a group of Czechoslovakian soldiers attempting to escape revolutionary Russia on a heavily armoured train. Your job is to manage the workings of the engine and carriages while also directing soldiers to fight enemy troops – and it’s all inspired by real events.
• PC; late 2023
A Highland Song
A game about exploring the Scottish highlands that looks and sounds reassuringly correct, with its brownish palette and folk-music soundtrack and dramatic weather. Moira McKinnon has never seen the sea, so she must hike across the country and over the hills to get there and meet her uncle Hamish. You get to choose her route, following deer or scrambling down hillside scree.
• PC, Nintendo Switch; late 2023
Cocoon
Anyone who has played either Limbo or Inside will remember the ingenuity of their puzzles, with their elegant, unexpected and sometimes unpleasantly surprising solutions. Cocoon comes from a team led by Jeppe Carlsen, lead puzzle designer on those games. It is less bleak-looking and more colourful, but no less mysterious: you are a moth-person using flowing orbs to hop between dimensions.
• PlayStation, Xbox, PC, Nintendo Switch; 2023
Stampede: Racing Royale
Publisher Secret Mode describes this game as a cross between Fall Guys and Mario Kart, which might have been my fave pitch of the show. Up to 60 players compete to make the winner’s podium on a series of wacky, cartoon races, with only the fastest half of the drivers making it through to the next round. Naturally, there are power-ups to collect and shoot, plus players can unlock new vehicles and upgrades. It looks like an absolute riot.
• PC; 2023
Still Wakes the Deep
Brighton-based studio The Chinese Room (Dear Esther, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture) makes highly immersive narrative adventures which pay close attention to place and era, so this 1970s horror game set on a remote oil rig is a scintillating prospect. There’s a storm raging and all communications have gone down, and now something ungodly has come aboard.
• Xbox, PlayStation, PC; early 2024
Simpler Times
Conceived during the depths of lockdown by Transylvanian indie studio stoneskip, this is a quiet, cosy little life sim in which lead character Taina is preparing to move out of her childhood home, and while packing up her things, she relives memories of her younger years. Interacting with her things spark moments of nostalgia, and there’s a record player to add an aural element. It’s lovely to look at, and extremely calming.
• PC; 2024
33 Immortals
OK, the co-op roguelike dungeon crawler is hardly an underexplored genre, but when the creators of the beautiful Spiritfarer make one, you have to take notice. The set up is familiar, you’re part of a violent rebellion against God by damned souls, and you have to hack and slash your way through monsters and giant boss creatures to duke it out with him in person. The fun part is, the game supports squads of up to 33 players, all battling it out together, using bows, swords and super-powered co-op attacks. It is hilarious, confusing and engrossing all at once.
• Xbox, PC; 2024
Star Wars Outlaws
Are we entering a golden era for Star Wars games? In combination with this year’s standout Jedi: Survivor from EA, Ubisoft’s Star Wars Outlaws certainly suggests so. This open-world game introduces us to ethically flexible protagonist Kay Vess and her adorable pet Nix, which looks like a land axolotl, as they shoot, steal, cheat and pilot their way around the Star Wars universe, planetside and in space.
• PlayStation, Xbox, PC; 2024
Baby Steps
A game about literally putting one foot in front of the other. You are a 35-year-old waster living in your parents’ basement, when you are suddenly teleported into the wilderness and, for once, have to get yourself together and make your way outta there. Bennett Foddy of Getting Over It is involved with this, and that shows in the Australian humour and the game’s shonky movement – walking itself is the challenge here, as you independently control the player character’s legs. Just watch the trailer, you’ll get it.
• PC, PlayStation; 2024
Beastieball
From the developer of Chicory: A Colorful Tale, a superb and heartfelt adventure that won a Bafta a couple of years ago, this unexpected crossover between Pokémon and volleyball has you collecting creatures that evolved to play sports. Anyone who’s harboured decades’ worth of guilt about capturing critters and making them battle to the almost-death will be reassured to learn that in the game’s fiction, the sport of Beastieball came from nature, so you don’t have to feel bad about making your creatures play it. You can try this gentle, strange game right now – there’s a short demo on Steam.
• PC; 2024
Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess
Capcom has a history of crafting beautiful games around Japanese folkloric themes and imagery and here is the latest example. In Kunitsu-Gami, a sacred mountain has been defiled causing a blight of demons to spread across the land – a lone samurai must accompany the Spirit Stone Maiden to the mountain so that it can be re-purified. Little else is currently known, but after Okami, Shinsekai: Into the Depths and Onimusha, we’re definitely on board.
• PC, PlayStation, Xbox; TBC
Revenant Hill
Very little is known about this game, but that’s one of the reasons it’s intriguing – that, and the fact that it shares a development team with 2013’s anthropomorphic coming-of-age drama Night in the Woods. It is 1919, and you are a cat on a mission to become a witch’s familiar, learning spells and conversing with ghosts in the graveyard on the edge of town. A marriage of playfully surreal looks and big themes.
• PlayStation, PC; TBC
Sand Land
Dragon Ball manga artist Akira Toriyama wrote Sand Land as a short manga series in the early 00s, and now it is a game by Bandai Namco. You are the devil’s son, in a desert world where humans and demons coexist. The art style, as you’d expect, is particularly interesting here – the trailer shows sand-tank battles, lizard-demon chases and closeup punch-and-kick combat.
• PlayStation, Xbox, PC; TBC
Fable
This fairytale-inspired, good-humoured British fantasy role-playing series became somewhat emblematic of Microsoft’s failings in the games world when its developer, Lionhead, was shuttered in 2016. But the house of Xbox may go some way to redeeming itself if this reboot, from fellow British developer Playground Games, turns out well. The trailer shown at Xbox’s showcase went a long way towards reassuring us that the series’ very English sense of humour will be retained, featuring a giant Richard Ayoade going on about his precious immense vegetables and some brief gameplay footage showing the player character trying to escape him.
• Xbox, PC; TBC
