Robin Bea

With the start of a new year comes a whole crop of new games to look forward to. We’ve already covered some of the biggest games launching in 2026, and now we’re focusing in on the indie games that will define the first part of the year. While there’s plenty of room for surprises in indie games, with releases often following not long after they’re even announced, these are the biggest games we can already expect to launch some time this year.

For video games, a 25-year lifespan is an almost impossibly long time. With so many new games coming out every week, a title staying in the conversation and attracting new players for even a few years is a massive achievement, and remaining relevant for a quarter-century is almost unheard of. Only a handful of massively multiplayer online RPGs have been able to maintain their popularity for nearly that long, and one game that just turned 25 years old did so by embracing its roots even as it continually changed.

There are plenty of base-building survival games worth checking out, but sometimes the freedom to explore they offer can make it feel a little too hard to even decide what to do next. This month, one of the best survival games of recent years comes to PlayStation Plus, with a unique underground ground that adds some much-needed structure to its open-world exploration.

To the chagrin of pretty much everyone, generative AI has wormed its way into all levels of game development. Not content to just let it infect the way games are made, some companies are now pushing to hand over the controller to generative AI and let it play the games, too.

Style alone can’t make a game good, but it certainly helps. Any game can benefit from a unique art style, and in racing games, a nice coat of paint goes an especially long way. This month on PlayStation Plus, one of the most stylish racing games ever is up for grabs, backing up its distinct looks with some great systems under the hood to sell the drama of its street racing fantasy.

Stealth games haven’t exactly disappeared, but they’re not quite what they used to be. The genre has changed a lot since its inception, with recent hits like Hitman: World of Assassination and Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew taking a very different form from the stealth games of the 1990s and early 2000s. But a few more recent titles still call back to the good old days of stealth action in the vein of Tenchu, and one is now free to play with Amazon Prime.

The most-played games of 2025 are as predictable as possible, but they point to trends game developers can't ignore.

Competitive shooters still make up the majority of the most popular multiplayer games, but in 2025, co-op games as varied as Peak and Elden Ring: Nightreign also found huge audiences. 2026 already has its share of co-op games on the way, and the year starts with an inventive multiplayer game I’m hooked on. In DuneCrawl, you work with up to three other players to command a mobile battle station together, one that happens to be built on the back of a giant, armored crab.

'Scramble Knights Royale' blends RPGs with battle royale games later this year, with a first look coming in a Steam playtest very soon.

There’s no time limit on releasing expansions for games, but after a certain point, you just stop expecting new DLC. One would think that 11 years is more than enough time for a studio to stop working on new content for a game, but recent rumors point to an expansion on the way for one of the biggest RPGs of the previous decade, and they’re looking more believable as they pile up.