Did you ever wonder what went into maintaining our national and state parks? Did you ever want to be a park ranger, thinking you’d spend your days sipping coffee in a fire tower somewhere? Ranger’s Path: National Park Simulator actually approximates the day to day activities of a National Park Ranger.

I can’t wait to see more of Whirlight – No Time to Trip when the full game is released. The developers obviously understand the heart and humor that made those old games timeless.

There is a solution to this, and ironically, Blizzard has had it in place in the Diablo series for years. Just make a main, non-seasonal "Eternal Realm" progression mode alongside the seasonal characters. I have a feeling Chief Rebel might make this concession in the future, but it might not be before my friends and I are long gone.

At this point, I’ve played more roguelike deckbuilders than I can remember. That’s not a bad thing, because when they’re good they can offer some of the most satisfying gameplay. And if they’re great, they can even dominate video game discourse. That margin between good and great is probably slimmer than I, as an outsider, can really understand. The Spirit Lift doesn’t manage to bridge the gap, but it brings some unique vibes and solid but formulaic execution.

This probably won’t be the last I write about Witchfire this year. It’s just so damn good. If you told me a game was able to blend Dark Souls with first-person gunplay, I’d be horribly skeptical. But Witchfire not only pulls it off, I think saying it’s "Dark Souls with guns" undercuts just what developer The Astronauts has accomplished here.

Screenshot: Cairn We are, seemingly, in the middle of a climbing game renaissance. Following the meditative flow of Jusant in 2023 and the high-stakes co-op of 2025’s Peak , Cairn arrives to offer yet another distinct perspective on the ascent. These games aren’t just copying each other; instead, they focus on vastly different aspects of the vertical journey. Developer The Game Bakers describes Cairn as a “realistic simulation.” It’s not a simulation in a funny Goat Simula

MIO comes agonizingly close to being an early Game of the Year contender for me. If not for a few hostile design decisions, it would likely make my "Best of 2026" list. If you are a die-hard fan of Metroidvanias with patience to spare, definitely check out MIO: Memories in Orbit. For everyone else, be warned: this beautiful machine has sharp edges.

Despite the main gameplay loop being reminiscent of a Milgram experiment, it justifies its ickiness through “but zombies!” as so many more violent and exploitative games did in the past. Maybe I’m just getting too old for this shit. I’ll just go back to chunking people into giblets with my boltgun in Darktide like a respectable person. But Quarantine Zone: The Last Check is ultimately a janky, buggy mess of a game that happened to nail down the feeling of a zombie apocalypse

When Metroid Prime 4: Beyond finally did hit store shelves, its negative buzz kept me away. Did I really want to ruin my mental image of Samus and the Metroid series with annoying Federation NPC allies and a useless open world? I mean, look at the damage Other M did to the Metroid series. The early buzz practically made it sound like Metroid Prime 4: Beyond will be the last Metroid game we’ll see in a while–and probably the last Prime game ever.

It started with an email that asked (as many have before it): Will we be seeing you at CES? Why, no. I don’t go to CES. Travel is expensive. But I always wanted to do CES, and a little voice in my head wouldn’t let it go. So I boarded a plane to Vegas, and despite its popular tourism slogan what happens in CES is written about by every major publication that covers technology or anything tech adjacent.

It’s been a crazy rollercoaster for Hytale. This Minecraft-meets-RPG style game was declared dead in June 2025, when Riot Games dissolved the studio. Despite its trailer on YouTube getting 60+ million views, Hytale has been mired by changes in focus during development, and eventually stalled out altogether. Then, in November of last year, original founder Simon Collins-Laflamme bought the rights back from Riot Games to save the project he started.

StarRupture takes the automation base building concept and throws it into a world that’s fun to explore. The extra layer of lore has made me really invested. That being said, the Early Access roadmap promises more wildlife, new buildings, new locations and points of interest and much more, including new exploration mechanics.

Listen, we've been through the Game Awards, we've seen the announcements, and we've perhaps even finally gotten some new gear for Christmas to work with in the New Year. It's cold (maybe? Sometimes?) and, if you're anything like us, you're out of money to go out. What's that mean? Well, it's a great time to go back and play some of the best games of 2025 you just didn't have time to. We're choosing our favorites while we gear up for what's to come in 2026

Fractured Utopias fleshes out the sandbox and adds some fantastic faction mechanics, but it double-downs on the macro-scale detachment. It’s a warm spot in an icy game, but don’t expect it to melt the barrier between you and your subjects.

We recently got to play a preview build of DarkSwitch that shows off a little bit more than the Steam demo does—and few colony sims have grabbed me quite like this. I probably haven’t been this invested in the genre since the original Frostpunk thrust me into a “what if” frozen world and tasked me with keeping its residents alive. But instead of a frozen wasteland, DarkSwitch drops you into a lush fantasy world where being on the ground means being subjected to a creeping fog

Stop me if you've heard this one: You've got very specific health, academic, and social goals. There are 24 hours in a day You need money, but you also need to exercise, eat right, and do chores By Wednesday, you're hopped up on caffeine and feeling good. You’re motivated, and you're gonna do the things. On Friday, you find out you're short 12 dollars for your college application fees, have no energy at all, no laundry done, and can't go to the party. I'm sorry, is th

Nostalgia isn’t new, and neither is blatant nostalgia bait. I’m actually okay with it though, especially since I’m the target of this one. Terminator 2: Judgment Day was seminal to my childhood cultural appreciation. I saw Terminator 2: Judgment Day in the theater as many times as I could convince my parents to let me go, and later rented Terminator on VHS to see where it all started.

Okay, I know Hive Scum released way earlier this month, but I’ve been busy! Seriously, though: Warhammer 40,000: Darktide is still the best Left 4 Dead style 4-player co-op game on the market. Easily the best. And it’s a shame that it doesn’t get more attention. Maybe it’s overshadowed by its equally great Warhammer: Vermintide 2 spiritual prequel, or maybe people have been burnt by too many bad 40k video games to really feel the draw to it. Still, The Hive Scum is a dece

here I am getting bogged down in genre discussions when I should be talking about The Berlin Apartment specifically. You can see I’m avoiding it. I feel like I’m going to beat up a cute little puppy that really doesn’t deserve it. I won’t be that harsh, but there’s a part of me that really wants to be.

Another Game Awards has come and gone–and with it an amount of cringe and commercialization that wouldn’t fly with other award shows. But it's also the best place to see all of the cool upcoming games in one place. Here’s a list of games that were announced or featured at The Game Awards that we’re most excited about: