The State of Games Today

The 2nd week of June this year were marked by the Summer Games Fest, taking the place of the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) that died during the pandemic. Announcements came from publishers organizing into a few different platform presentations, the titular Summer Games Fest hosted by Geoff Keighley, along with the Sony State of Play and the Xbox Showcase marking the largest presentations of the week. I watched all 3 of the large ones keeping an eye out for what might pique my interest in upcoming titles for the next year and figured this would make a good blog post topic.

To begin with, by way of an overview, it felt like a lot of games were given an ambiguous release of “2026”, which tells the viewer very little as they look at trailers. Other release dates were less ambiguous with a good amount coming in August and October. I mention the release dates now so I can focus on some of my highlights and thoughts later on, especially since release dates have been a sticking point for games lately with the release date of Grand Theft Auto 6 (Rockstar) getting pushed back from summer 2025 to May 26th, 2026. I don’t love the ambiguous year-date releases since they feel like an empty promise and something that could easily be pushed back rather than a carefully considered timeline of what has to happen still in the development process.

To jump into my standouts from the week, I was super excited to see a definitive release date for Silent Hill f: September 25th! It’s been a long time since there’s been a new silent hill story instead of a remake (Silent Hill 2’s remake releasing last year to minimal fanfare). The trailer pushes the psychological horror element with the main character Shimizu Hinako facing off against monsters when her hometown is suddenly overtaken by the series’ iconic fog. I don’t have a large library of horror games, but I love the culture that they create on the internet. with streamers and videos getting made about the successful ones. A September 25th release is perfect for October attention.

A bit later release, February 27th, 2026, comes Resident Evil Requiem, with the q being the stylized 9 in the same way that Village made VIII with its subtitle’s first four letters. Sadly, there were little more than vibes in this trailer, but what vibes we were given were incredibly choice. We see a new character returning to the decimated Raccoon City where the events of the first few Resident Evil games took place before the place was nuked to prevent the spread of the zombie infection. After the success of Village I’m looking forward to what direction the series takes to build off of the success of the Ethan Winters story.

From Yacht Club Games comes the Halloween 2025 release of Mina the Hollower, a top down RPG with a demo out now on steam that’s waiting for me to play when I get the chance. I have a lot of praise for some of the smaller games announced for their innovations in visual design. Mina is beautifully retro but with an updated-looking UI and a dark aesthetic that I absolutely love each time that I see it! I’m hoping for the engaging story of Undertale with an interesting take on RPG combat encounters.

As a surprise announcement, Lies of P: Overture, the prequel-like DLC was announced as available now! While I had hoped to get an update on the progress of the DLC’s progress and a release date, a full release is huge! I never got to finish Lies of P personally, but I am a huge fan of it’s aesthetic and I absolutely adore Souls-like games. From the trailer, Overture looks expansive, with several bosses getting highlighted. I’m hoping to get to visit the past when protagonist Carlo and his companion Romeo were fighting together as hinted at by the in-game lore.

Speaking of Souls-like, Mortal Shell 2 is looking better and has a seemingly higher budget than its predecessor. While I wasn’t enthused by what I saw when checking out Mortal Shell 1, the sequel looks a lot quicker and more responsive. Graphically it looks beautiful too, giving plenty of details to the monsters and wet-textured surfaces. My fingers are crossed that it’s 2026 launch doesn’t get pushed back or delayed towards the end of the year.

Tragically without a release date of any kind, Clockwork Revolution shows promise as a steampunk take on the more dieselpunk Dishonored franchise. A big explorable city, gun crafting, time rewind powers all on display in a 5-minute trailer (much longer than I had expected). I must confess to being a steampunk fan back when it was a more relevant subgenre in the early 2010s and seeing it come back in Clockwork Revolution along with the unrelated but thematically similar Cloudward, Ho! D&D actual-play series out now on Dropout TV.

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds looks legitimately fantastic as SEGA openly challenges Nintento’s Mario Kart World, a Switch 2 exclusive. Unfortunately for me and many others, the Switch 2 didn’t look like a significant enough upgrade to the Switch 1 to shell out for, with a ballsy $450 price tag. With that out of my reach for the time being, Sonic Racing coming out on Sept. 25th for PC really fills the gap for a couch-play kart racer my friends and I can enjoy. The licensing of other characters on top of that makes me feel like this game is a kart-racer version of Super Smash Bros. Wins all around!

Felt That Boxing is one of my biggest standouts from this season. It’s Punch Out, but with the Muppets! I love the way the characters have been rendered, the story seems silly and serious at the same time, like The Muppet Christmas Carol (Henson, 1992), and the return to a game style like Punch Out can only mean good times and funny memes to come from this title. Like I said earlier, the visual stylistic innovations are probably some of my favorite features of games announced this year. Sadly, there is no release date, but it can be Wishlist-ed on Steam.

My final notable game release is There Are No Ghosts at The Grand, which looks to blend ghost hunting and hotel renovation into a single game, along with a talking cat reminiscent of the Cheshire Cat from Alice: Madness Returns. The trailer just had good style dripping all out of it from the art style to the music to the way every next clip seems like a left turn from the one before it. Coming out in 2026 it can’t get here soon enough for me!

Overall, I really enjoyed seeing the variety that was on display this year, it inspired confidence in a way that was much needed after the disastrous AAA releases we’ve seen more recently, along with the studio closings and layoffs. I know that these games, even the ones that I’ve singled out here for my own interest, are all susceptible to a half-baked launch but at the moment things are looking up!

There are so many games I didn’t cover, with three 2-hour-long presentations it’s hard to cover everything. I really just picked my standouts since they’re the ones I am most likely to be playing and writing about in the coming year.