<\/p>\n
Another year begins and that means it\u2019s 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\u2019s best. 2026 has already had some certified bangers just in the first three months. We\u2019ll be updating this list periodically as we head toward December, so watch this space.<\/span><\/p>\n Pok\u00e9mon Pokopia<\/span> 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 Pok\u00e9dex will give even those who aren\u2019t great at building towns something to aspire to. And if you\u2019re someone who loves the thought of working on town infrastructure, <\/span>Pokopia<\/span> is a dense, rewarding builder that even a non-<\/span>Pok\u00e9mon<\/span> fan can get a lot out of. It\u2019s easy to look at some people\u2019s creations and get overwhelmed and discouraged, but if you give yourself over to the goal of making little guys happy with what they\u2019ve got rather than worrying about building the most elaborate town possible, <\/span>Pokopia<\/span> is one of the most gratifying games in the series. \u2014 Kenneth Shepard<\/span><\/p>\n I stayed up until 2 a.m. one night playing <\/span>Marathon<\/span>. I had work the next day. It was such a dumb thing to do. I did it again later that week. And I\u2019ll likely do it again in the near future because I can\u2019t stop playing and loving Bungie\u2019s sci-fi extraction shooter. It is a difficult, annoying, incredible, gorgeous, painful, evil, splendid video game. You\u2019ll have nights where you\u2019re flying high, nailing runs, and loading up on gear in your vault. You\u2019ll have nights where nothing works, you lose it all and wonder why you even play. And then you\u2019ll join a run, kill a whole team, and leave with more gear than you can carry and think to yourself, \u201cOh, right, this game rules.\u201d Accurate. <\/span>Marathon <\/span>fucking rules. \u2013 Zack Zwiezen<\/span><\/p>\n Team Ninja\u2019s <\/span>Nioh<\/span> games have been admirable fusions of Soulslike mechanics and <\/span>Ninja Gaiden<\/span>\u2018s arcade action, wrapped in less interesting loot grinds. With <\/span>Nioh 3<\/span>, the meticulously honed formula branches out into sprawling maps and more open-ended exploration. The <\/span>Destiny<\/span>-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 <\/span>Nioh <\/span>3 feel like a bigger, better game that never lets its broader ambitions dilute its excellent combat. It\u2019s brutal and thrilling, with core gameplay so good that not even the exceedingly \u201cmeh\u201d story can hold it back. \u2013 Ethan Gach<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s impossible to sum up the greatness of <\/span>Perfect Tides: Station to Station <\/span>within the confines of a list like this. In the simplest terms, it\u2019s a point-and-click adventure game, though not the sort that will routinely have you stuck on puzzles. It\u2019s about inhabiting a year in the life of college student Mara Whitefish, who\u2019s living in post-9\/11 NYC (it\u2019s not called that in the game, but that\u2019s 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\u2019s all rooted in the specificity of Mara\u2019s life, her experiences at a particular place and time, which are, by definition, fundamentally different from our own. And yet it\u2019s that very specificity that makes it so absorbing, so insightful, and yes, so relatable. This is, quite simply, one of the all-time greats. \u2013 Carolyn Petit\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Inkle\u2019s response to underground hit <\/span>Type Help<\/span> 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\u2019s not nearly as difficult to play as that highfalutin\u2019 sentence implies. Set in an apocalyptic alt-history, <\/span>TR-49 <\/span>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\u2019s 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\u2019re trying to focus, this game demonstrates yet again what masters of unique narratives Inkle truly are. \u2013 John Walker<\/span><\/p>\n If you\u2019re jonesing for a classic PS2-era platformer, <\/span>Demon Tides <\/span>is one of the best homages to the genre you can play right now. It\u2019s 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. <\/span>Demon Tides <\/span>is proof the genre isn\u2019t out of gas; it just needs developers who will put in the effort to make it modern. \u2014 Kenneth Shepard<\/span><\/p>\n The ninth <\/span>Resident Evil <\/span>has some of the best thrills and scares of the series\u2019 30 years, and deftly uses its two lovable heroes to<\/span> showcase everything fans love about Capcom\u2019s long-running franchise. It\u2019s terrifying when you\u2019re moving through Grace\u2019s 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\u2019s navel gazing as it <\/span>contends with aspects of the series\u2019 legacy<\/span>, but it\u2019s a damn fine <\/span>Resident Evil <\/span>game that will likely touch on why you fell in love with the series in the first place. \u2014 Kenneth Shepard\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Cairn<\/span> is beautiful, engrossing, frustrating, and unexpectedly rewarding. With shades of influence from <\/span>GIRP<\/span> and <\/span>Death Stranding<\/span>, 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\u2019s heart pierces through its occasionally grinding survival mechanics and fiddly controls, delivering a narrative journey underpinned as much by philosophical introspection as emotional growth. <\/span>\u2013 Ethan Gach<\/span><\/p>\n 3D platformers never went away completely, but they are rarer than they used to be. So when we get one, I\u2019m always happy. And when one of these new platformers turns out to be incredible, I\u2019m very, very happy. That\u2019s the case with <\/span>Big Hops<\/span>, 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\u2019t need to watch out; he\u2019s too popular to ever be dethroned, but he could learn a few things from <\/span>Big Hops<\/span> and its wild power-ups and exploration. \u2013 Zack Zwiezen<\/span><\/p>\n Retro indie comfort food at its most colorful, crunchy, and unaffected, <\/span>Scott Pilgrim EX<\/span> 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\u2019re back in 2010 remembering playing<\/span> River City Ransom<\/span> on the NES back in 1990. It\u2019s suffused with nostalgia but never deploys it cynically. <\/span>Scott Pilgrim EX<\/span> is a time machine that will leave you reinvigorated about the future instead of feeling trapped in the past. \u2013 Ethan Gach<\/span><\/p>\n Welp, they did it. <\/span>Slay the Spire 2 <\/span>feels exactly like playing more<\/span> Slay the Spire <\/span>(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\u2019s an unimpressive-sounding trick but one that most sequels fail to pull off. Early Access development has only just gotten started and<\/span> Slay the Spire 2<\/span> already feels like a major achievement that I will sink another 100 hours into. -Ethan Gach<\/span><\/p>\n Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glailel\u2019s team-up project <\/span>Mewgenics<\/span> takes the concept of the roguelite and deftly flips it on its head. Here, what feels at first like it\u2019s 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\u2019ve succeeded <\/span>or<\/span> failed with that gang, they go straight into a breeding program (hence the game\u2019s dubious name) to create the next generation of kitties. It\u2019s as packed with gross-out humor and dead baby jokes as you\u2019d expect from a McMillen venture, but it\u2019s also one of the smartest and most inventive takes on the roguelite deckbuilder format. \u2013 John Walker<\/span><\/p>\n Amidst every former (and current) ZA\/UM dev announcing their own spiritual successors to <\/span>Disco Elysium<\/span>, one man has been hard at work creating a \u201c<\/span>Disco<\/span>-like\u201d of his own since 2018. As most solo dev projects tend to be, Christoffer Bodeg\u00e5rd\u2019s work on his game was a laborious process, but slow and steady finally won the race in 2026.<\/span><\/p>\n Esoteric Ebb<\/span> is a pure translation of <\/span>Disco Elysium\u2019s<\/span> identity-crisis-fueled, politically driven narrative, wrapped in a <\/span>D&D<\/span> skin. But for all the ways in which we can compare the game to <\/span>Disco Elysium<\/span>, there\u2019s one area in which it outclasses its inspiration: it\u2019s somehow even funnier.<\/span><\/p>\n 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\u2019t laughed this hard at a game\u2026ever. Every quest and every conversation had something that set me off. Bodeg\u00e5rd should be writing prime-time HBO comedies, but we\u2019re lucky he\u2019s making silly little CRPGs instead. \u2013 Lewis Parker<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Another year begins and that means it\u2019s 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\u2019s best. 2026 has already had some certified bangers just in the first three months. We\u2019ll be updating this<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5831,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[77,205],"class_list":{"0":"post-5830","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-releases","8":"tag-games","9":"tag-video"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5830\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Pok\u00e9mon Pokopia<\/em><\/h2>\n
Marathon<\/em><\/h2>\n
Nioh 3<\/em><\/h2>\n
Perfect Tides: Station to Station<\/em><\/h2>\n
TR-49<\/em><\/h2>\n
Demon Tides<\/em><\/h2>\n
Resident Evil Requiem<\/em><\/h2>\n
Cairn<\/em><\/h2>\n
Big Hops<\/em><\/h2>\n
Scott Pilgrim EX<\/em><\/h2>\n
Slay the Spire 2<\/em><\/h2>\n
Mewgenics<\/em><\/h2>\n
Esoteric Ebb<\/em><\/h2>\n