My Favourite Games of 2026 Thus Far | 22/07/26
Plus my backlog, and my most anticipated games of Q3 and Q4!
Hey everyone, welcome to AI and Games! Greetings from Montreal! I’m currently in Canada for a client visit. This has been a rather exhausting few days having only just returned home from Develop Conference in Brighton but 5 days ago, so I figured why not use this edition to do something fun: a round-up of some of my favourite games I’ve played this year, plus what’s in the backlog and on my radar for the rest of 2026.
It’ll be interesting to see how this all holds up when I get to my end of year list in six months time. But first, lots of cool content stuff to announce!
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Announcements and Updates
A round-up of all the important things you need to know about this week!
Montreal Meetup This Week!
One final reminder that we’re hosting a wee get together this Thursday while I’m in Montreal. Open to everyone in the AI and Games community to come and hang out and enjoy some banter!
Where: Brasserie Artisanale L’Amère à Boire
We’ve reserved space on the upstairs terrace.
When: Thursday July 23rd 6-9pm
For anyone feeling horribly business-like and formal, there is an event page for our meet-up over on LinkedIn, where you can see who else is planning to attend!
AI Tracks @ Gamescom Dev
After we announced three talks last week, we figured we should maintain that cadence going forward! So here’s three more presentations to get excited about.
Build, Buy, Co-Dev or AI: 30 Years of Backend Evolution Through a Veteran’s Eyes
We exist in a time where a lot of the narrative around Generative AI is the way it can support existing infrastructure within game development pipelines. But often this is delivered without much substance. So to help present some meaningful insight, we welcome Phil Rogers - a 20-year veteran of Sony PlayStation and how Head of Technology at The Multiplayer Group - to give his perspectives on the impact of these tools within backend services for multiplayer games and online ecosystems.
Variety in Autonomous Playtesting: A Case Study on Reinforcement Learning for NHL26
Attendees of AI and Games Conference 2025 will recognise this presentation by Florian Fuchs as one of the highlights of our programme. A deep-dive into how ML-based bots were used to support playtesting and validating the behaviour of in-game opponents in NHL26’s increasingly complex sports simulations. I’m excited that Florian will be joining us to deliver this talk to a whole new audience.
Tool Design: Designing the Future Workflows of Game Development [Panel]
Much has been said in recent years about the efficacy of AI in the context of building tools for game designers. But funnily enough we rarely hear from the folks who build or use these tools as to what they perceive as the future of creative workflows. We’re very excited to welcome an expert panel that will dig into the challenges of tool design and how failure to grasp the challenges in making practical tools can impact a project’s success. Our panellists include:
Nikoline Høgh: Founder and art director at Brunch Club Games
Robin-Yann Storm: Freelance product & UX designer
Anna Nojek: UX/UI senior designer at CD PROJEKT RED
Theo Wong: Senior product design manager at Unity
I’m very much looking forward to all three of these. Some great additions to the line-up. Don’t forget to grab your tickets now for when it all kicks off on August 24th.
AI and Games Conference
Plus of course we have our very own event coming your way in November. Things are heating up for us behind-the-scenes as more and more submissions continue to come in. As a reminder, we have two deadlines in the next fortnight:
Early bird ticket sales close on July 31st.
Call for submissions closes on August 2nd.
Not to mention we’re still rolling out the videos from our 2025 event, including:
How to Build a Friend: AI Companionship and Its Game Design Potential
Olga Titova / Wargaming
In an age where we’re seeing people often develop more human relationships with AI systems in ways that can prove rather unhealthy, it’s important to recognise the responsibility game developers have in this space. But also that there are opportunities in building more meaningful gameplay experiences when done right. To dig into this issue we welcome Olga Titova, an AI product manager from Wargaming who leans on their background in cognitive science and experience in building AI companion systems on how to approach these issues in a thoughtful and responsible manner.
Navigating Legal Frontiers: How the Law Applies to AI in 2025
Rupam Dave / Lewis Silkin LLP
We welcome back games lawyer Lewis Silkin - who presented at the AI and Games Conference in 2024 - to present on where things stand in 2025. As we’ve reported a lot on this newsletter in the past year or two, the legal standing of AI systems is an ever-shifting landscape, and it’s important that developers are aware of this going forward. We’re grateful that Rupam pops back to visit us and help set the record straight, for now at least.
My Favourite Games of 2026 Thus Far
Given I’m stretched for time to focus on news headlines and such this week (I had literally two hours to write this), I figured why not round-up some of the games I’ve really enjoyed playing this year. A good mid-year marker to look back on as the GOTY list shapes up in a few months time.
It’s worth reminding everyone that my gaming is like many others this mishmash of trying to play games currently in the conversation, alongside clearing out my backlog. But in addition to this I also play a lot of games for work: we stream games on Twitch and YouTube where we’ve been sent press copies, I play games either released or in development by studios we’re working with, and of course all the games that will appear in my case study series both here on the website but notably on the YouTube channel. However, I like to refrain from mentioning these games for the most part, given I don’t like to share my personal feelings on games we are involved in through this lens - though that said one of them does appear in this list.
Outhold [2025 / Tellus Games]
A minimalist tower-defence game with meta-progression. The game keeps it’s concept very simple, but iterates into something larger and far more complex as it continues. But it does all from a very simple fundamental core. After a bit of messing around with Steam Deck setting it played fantastic, and there’s still a lot of endgame content I need to try and revisit when time permits.
Resident Evil: Requiem [2026 / Capcom]
In the past couple years Resident Evil has really cemented itself as one of the strongest IP’s in the industry. Not just with remakes and remasters that have brought earlier entries to modern audiences to great acclaim, but also with a new angle as they deliver a return to survival-horror roots via the first-person perspective in Biohazard and Village. Requiem does a fantastic job of blending action-heavy third-person sequences as Leon Kennedy with first-person survival as Grace Ashcroft. Creating this loop of catharsis that is equally relieving as it is reinforcing the stress of future encounters. While not perfect, it does so with such confidence that it’s highly impressive. I have written an episode of Design Dive about this and I just need time to go and finish it.
Also, Leon shooting giant devil dogs while on a motorcycle is peak trash and I love it. If you’ve played the game you know exactly what I mean!
Forza Horizon 6 [2026 / Playground Games]
The Forza Horizon games have become such behemoths nowadays that they’re largely too big to fail. That said, I find that I don’t always vibe with each entry, and sometimes a perfectly good game has an onboarding or progression system that robs me of enjoyment of it. While I’ve never had a bad experience playing Forza Horizon, the last couple of entries did not really resonate with me - even #4, which takes place in the UK - as it just didn’t click in a way that felt satisfying. However I’m finding the latest release much more to my liking. Sure, the Drivatars are completely fake now and there are a whole bunch of weird balance issues, but the races, the landscapes, and the overall progression has hooked me in and kept me popping back in to grab another race.
Pragmata [2026 / Capcom]
Y’know despite being rather disappointed by Monster Hunter Wilds last year - a game I was very excited for - Capcom is on an amazing streak right now. With Requiem out only two months prior, Pragmata comes along and proves to be one of the most satisfying new IP launches in quite some time. Building on the pillars of third-person combat established in the modern Resident Evil games - and recently reinforced in Requiem - Pragamata adds an additional layer of puzzle solving, where enemy robots need hacked in order to expose their weakpoints. With systems engineer Hugh stranded on ‘The Cradle’, a research facility situated on Earth’s moon, the game’s hacking mechanics and broader narrative is achieved with assistance from ‘Diana’, an android that looks and acts like a young girl.
The game plays like another of Capcom’s experimental 3rd-person combat games of the Xbox 360 era, where traditional gameplay was merged with more experimental concepts (think Lost Planet or Dark Void), and I say that with praise - after all Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess made it onto my 2024 GOTY list for the same reason. Pragmata takes a simple idea of puzzles and shooting and then builds on it in a very satisfying way. More often than not I have reached a point in the game where the designer in me has thought ‘wouldn’t it be cool if there was an upgrade that does X’ only for the next new mechanic to riff on the same idea in a more satisfying way than I had conceived it.
What helps sell this all the more is the really strong narrative design and the bond built between Hugh and Diana. What could easily be another cliched scenario of ‘bitter and cynical middle-aged white male protagonist stuck in situation with annoying child’, they take a different approach. Hugh carries an emotional intelligence where he doesn’t mistreat Diana or dismiss the emotions she exhibits, nor does he project his anxieties about the situation onto her. Rather, he simply treats her as a young girl whose power warrants respect, and helps her learn about the world given her naivety from living inside The Cradle. The resulting relationship is rather endearing, and has really helped maintain my interest.
Vampire Crawlers [2026 / Poncle, Nosebleed Interactive]
So what if we took Vampire Survivors and turned it into a deck-building roguelike? That’s more of less the premise of Vampire Crawlers: The Turbo Wildcard from Vampire Survivors (yes, that is the games full name) where the top-down auto-battle approach has been replaced with a game evocative of old-school dungeon crawlers of the 1980s where players utilise many of the same items in a turn-based format.
For me certainly one of the most engaging aspects of this is how strategy is more heavily laced throughout. Sure Vampire Survivors has a strategic bent to it, and you need to think heavily about your starting loadout and plan of attack, but I enjoy how much the early phase of a Crawlers run relies on your crafting a deck that you can later build-upon and really begin to exploit - and the game is even prepared for learning how to break its systems and reacts in kind. It makes the latter stages far more engaging as you seek to minmax every opportunity to maximise damage dealt and minimise that received, while also stacking up more cards, enhancing abilities and then finding that sweet combination that will prove vital in the closing rounds.
I exhausted much of the launch content after losing around 25 hours to the game, but will perhaps revisit it later in the year as they continue to push new features and QoL updates.
Dark Souls III [2016]
Well, here’s a game that’s very current! As those who follow me on YouTube will know I have a history with FromSoftware’s games, to a point I make video essays about each one I play through. With over 70 hours clocked and much of the main game and DLC’s exhausted (I have about 3 bosses left to kill in total), I have really enjoyed this culmination of this first ‘era’ of Miyazaki’s Soulsborne games. I’ll be writing a video about this sometime later this year for sure.
Also, I’m playing on the Xbox One version on a Series X, because the Steam version does not have cloud saves, and the fact I couldn’t play it on my Steam Deck natively annoyed me quite a bit. Thankfully it’s the last game in the series that suffers from this headache, but having loved playing Dark Souls Remastered on my Deck, this felt like a step backwards.
Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor [2025]
First release in early-access in 2024, Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor jumps on the Vampire Survivors bandwagon to create another “survivor-like auto-shooter” - their words not mine - but building on the underground interplanetary mining antics of Deep Rock Galactic (a great co-op game in its own right). While its Vampire Survivors are highly evident, have to say having now spent over 40 hours in the game over the past 2 months, it’s to my money the best game of its kind.
First and foremost, it’s tough, very tough. Thankfully there’s also a huge amount of depth that encourages repeat attempts and playing against specific objectives. This combined with a massive amount of stuff to discover, be it weapons, items, artifacts and more, helps keep you engaged as you jump in for one more run. I have since put down cash on the ‘Heavy Duty’ expansion during the Steam summer sale which introduces a new character class, a new game mode, and new items and unlocks. A great 20 minute game on lunch breaks and on the Steam Deck. Though I do feel bad about how it has ruined my productivity at times…
Don’t Worry, They’re in the Backlog
Hang on, there’s also a bunch of games I just haven’t played enough yet to warrant any opinions strong enough to write down. Some of them I’ve played for a wee bit, others not so much.
LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight: What if the Lego game devs TT Games made Batman: Arkham Knight, in Lego, with help from Rocksteady Games? So far I’m really enjoying it. Lots of cute easter eggs for fans of the movies and very deep cuts for the comic book fans.
Subnautica 2: What I’ve played thus far of this hugely successful early-access game has left me wanting more. Need to find the time to crack into it once Pragmata is finished.
007 First Light: I had the pleasure of chatting with devs involved in this earlier in the year and they showed me some amazing work in the underlying tech. Really looking forward to cracking it open some more.
Starfox: I mean yeah, they just remade Lylat Wars, sign me up!
Sektori: Well, Roper bought me a copy of this as a ‘gift’ and I am now forced to play it.
On the Radar
As we wrap, what else am I looking forward to for the rest of the year? Let’s run through them quickly, and laugh at the idea that I’ll be able to play even half of these before the year is out!
What’s On My Radar
Star Wars: Galactic Racer [October]
Podracing from a team of former Burnout devs? Yes please.
Fogpiercer [July / Out Now]
Really cool looking deck-builder roguelite, where your deck is a train! Trains!
Halo: Campaign Evolved [July]
I mean it’s the first Halo remade in Unreal Engine. So no surprises but it looks very pretty.
Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls [August]
I’m not a particularly big fan of Arc Systems Works fighting games, but this looks like a serious contender to Capcom’s stagnant Marvel vs series - of which I am a big fan.
Star Wars Zero Company [August]
What if X-COM devs worked with Respawn on a Star Wars game? Okay!
Control Resonant [September]
Very different from the last Control, but I am more that willing to give it a punt on account of how much I enjoyed the first one.
Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse [October]
What if (some of) the Dead Cells developers made an actual Castlevania game? Sold.
Gears of War: E-Day [October]
I am a sucker for Gears and really enjoyed the more recent entries. While I’m disappointed they’re going back to a prequel rather than Gears 6 - tell that story you cowards - I am looking forward to something more aligned with the original game. We’re in peak mid-2000’s nostalgia now ain’t we?
Onimusha: Way of the Sword [September]
What you mean Capcom made another 3rd-person combat game that might prove to be much better than it has any right to be?
Rogue Eclipse [Aug]
I shared this in the newsletter last week. Space pew-pew. It’s looking great and it’s out next month.
Wolverine [Sep]
The demo video they showcased didn’t quite blow me away (also did anyone else spot the awkward Game AI bug?). But Insomniac have delivered with the Spider-Man games, and we’re all big X-Men fans in this household.
Last but not least, there’s a handful of games that don’t have confirmed launch dates this year, and while it’s likely some of them will come out, I wanted to just take a moment to acknowledge
Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 [TBC 2026]
Fireteam Elite was a solid 7/10 with friends, and I’m keen to see what has been done to build on that original foundation.
Tanuki: Pon’s Summer [TBC 2026]
I can do BMX stunts as a racoon. Sold.
Warhammer Survivors [TBC 2026]
Vampire Survivors but in both Warhammer and Warhammer 40k skins. The demo was fantastic - and tough!
Poly Fighter [TBC 2026]
A fighting game as a roguelike sounds very appealing to me.
SPRAWL zero [TBC]
Inspired by early-2000’s first-person shooter, this is the era I’ve been waiting for. Sod boomer shooters, give me millennial shooters.
Kingmakers [TBC]
This game was delayed in 2025 as the team worked on Unreal Engine optimisation, and I know my friends are waiting very impatiently to try it.
ReVamp [TBC]
Sort of the inverse of Castlevania: play as Dracula and setup your castle to defend against invaders as a tower-defence roguelite.
The Duskbloods [TBC 2026]
Something something, FromSoftware on Switch 2 something something
He-Man: Dragon Pearl of Destruction [TBC 2026]
Developed by Bitmap Bureau, the team behind Terminator 2: No Fate - one of my top 10 games of 2025. Looks gorgeous with a chunky old-school art style.
Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time [TBC 2026]
Cautiously optimistic about this remake of one of my favourite games of all time.
You might notice that the big 2026 game every other game is scared of does not appear in this list. I’ll be honest: I really don’t care, and at this point I’m sick of hearing about it. Of course that might change after it launches, but thus far we know nothing about it other than that it exists and flashy promotional art (trailers and such of this ilk have very little impact on me). I’m also not someone who is particularly enamoured with the studios previous games either, so none of this is a strong selling point for me. I might be pleasantly surprised when it drops, but right now the best thing for everyone involved is for it to launch so we can get on with things around here.
Wrapping Up
We haven’t had a proper deep-dive into the news in recent weeks because I have been stretched rather thin! So we’ll come back next week and dive into everything that’s been going down in recent weeks and give you some of our own flavour commentary.
In the meantime, thanks for reading. We have a new episode of the AI and Games Podcast out later this week as well while I’m here in Canada - with our very first guest joining us on the show! I look forward to being back here with you next week.