28 Video Games We Can’t Wait to Play in 2025
2024 was not flush with consensus classics. Sure, everyone seemed to love poker roguelike Balatro (including us), but there were unusually few universally agreed-upon standouts in the way that The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and Baldur’s Gate 3 defined 2023. But 2025 arrives with two major aces up its sleeve: Grand Theft Auto VI, the latest entry in Rockstar’s crime opus, and the Switch 2, Nintendo’s follow-up to its beloved 2017 console. Beyond these two gargantuan events — and event really is the word — the year is set to deliver new entries in the Doom and Fable franchises, and perhaps even the long-awaited follow-up to Hideo Kojima’s bonkers and brilliant Death Stranding. Elsewhere, players might enjoy body-replicating madness, brutal climbing simulators, and freewheeling adventure through a magical realist take on the Deep South. We can only hope that with the tentpole releases of GTA VI and the Switch 2, the wider industry begins to stabilize for those working in it. The past few years have been torrid for game-makers. It’s high time they caught a break.
January
The Stone of Madness (PC, Playstation 5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series S|X)
The year begins in earnest with The Stone of Madness, an isometric stealth-’em-up that doubles as a meditation on religion and insanity. You control a cast of characters, from strong, silent types to loquacious, stone-cold killers, trying to escape an 18th-century monastery (which is also a prison and asylum. There are interesting wrinkles to the group’s interactions with one another, like a dwindling “sanity” meter when some characters become estranged. The game’s allure lies in poking around the opulent monastery rendered in a ravishing illustrated style. In this way, The Stone of Madness evokes Umberto Eco’s classic novel, The Name of the Rose — except it is not Eco’s scheming clergyman antagonists plotting their next kill in the shadows, but the omnipotent player.
January 28
Citizen Sleeper 2 (PC, Playstation 5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series S|X)
Writer and game-maker Gareth Damian Martin returns with the sequel to their acclaimed melancholic sci-fi tale, 2022’s Citizen Sleeper. The follow-up’s action should be familiar to anyone that played the first: you navigate around a space station almost like a table-top board game. For each action, like talking with the locals or hacking security terminals, you roll a dice, thus introducing an element of chance to the proceedings. These actions are limited — you can only do so much in any given day on the lonely, cosmic outpost of Hexport. What transpires is likely a heart-wrenching, multi-branching story of precarious life in the capitalist ruins of outer space, told with the kind of literary flair that Damian Martin has made their calling card in recent years.
January 31
February
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II (PC, Playstation 5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series S|X)
Kingdom Come Deliverance II is the year’s first big video game, a sweeping medieval RPG with a strikingly committed approach to authenticity. Look down in first-person at your feet squelching in muddy, rutted paths; look up at the black smoke rising from the chimney of a nearby manor house. Henry returns as the protagonist, having transformed from a peasant boy to a fully fledged hero in the first game, and so does the same bloodily realistic swordplay. Pay attention to the armor your opponents are wearing. One cannot simply slice through a plated opponent as you might the Thanksgiving Turkey. Like The Witcher 3 and recently released S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl, Deliverance II promises a world teeming with such detail and reactivity that it will be easy to lose yourself entirely to it. With the game stretching to more than 100 hours, you may still be knee-deep in medieval muck come the end of the year.
February 4
Civilization VII (PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series S|X)
Explore, expand, exploit, exterminate. For over three decades, the 4X genre of grand strategy games has followed a familiar pattern of gameplay even as the simulations rendered have grown increasingly complex. Civilization VII shakes up the formula with the introduction of Ages: no longer do you oversee a single epoch-defining civilization from inception to wherever the hell you decide to take it. Now there are distinct historical periods whose transitions are crisis-laden moments in which you must decide what elements to carry into a new Age, often in negotiation with an invading foe. This seems like a smart, more nuanced take on history than the Civilization series has typically offered — less deterministic and one that emphasizes the cross-pollination of societies rather than raw totalitarian might. Still, there will be no shortage of Machiavellian maneuvers, with every political play narrated by Game of Thrones star Gwendoline Christie. We can think of few more fitting overseers for such a sweeping historical epic.
February 11
Assassin’s Creed Shadows (PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S|X)
The discourse around Assassin’s Creed Shadows has been boneheaded to say the least. Cutting a long story short, a vocal minority of reactionary gamers is perturbed that a sci-fi video game features a Black samurai protagonist, despite the game’s hokey premise centering on the genetic recording of memories written to computer software. Beyond this thinly veiled racism, the mood music around Shadows is promising. Fans have long clamored for a Japan-set Assassin’s Creed game because, let’s be honest, it has always played like a ninja game. The big question is whether Ubisoft evolves the gameplay alongside the representation of its protagonists. If it does, this could be an Assassin’s Creed for the ages.
February 14
Avowed (PC, Xbox Series S|X)
From the brutal hyperrealism of Kingdom Come: Deliverance II to the comforting magical silliness of Avowed, RPG fans of different tastes are well served in the early portion of the year. This is familiar fantasy fare in many ways — Skyrim by way of Lord of the Rings. But a few quirks might set the first-person Avowed apart from the pack. Chief among them is the art direction: There’s a vibrancy and punch to the vivid color palette that borders on psychedelic and studio Obsidian seems to be leaning into weird flora and fauna à la James Cameron’s Avatar franchise and even Jeff VanderMeer’s Ambergris and Southern Reach novels.
February 18
Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii (PC, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox Series One/Series S|X)
Oh no, what have Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio done now! Far from opting to rein in its zanier impulses, the creators of the Like a Dragon franchise are yet again pursuing cartoon silliness with the introduction of pirates into its irreverent take on yakuza fiction. Recurring character Goro Majima swashes his buckles as the sole protagonist, taking to the seas having suffered from an almighty case of pirate amnesia. Could this be one postmodern flourish too far for the Like A Dragon series? Is naval combat actually just what the comedy-crime series has been missing? We’ll find out soon enough.
February 21
Monster Hunter Wilds (PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S|X)
Vegans and vegetarians should perhaps approach the Monster Hunter series with caution. Japanese publisher Capcom goes out of its way to create believable ecosystems populated with strange, wondrous beasts, only to give the player a gigantic sword to carve through it all. Even ickier, you must use the hides and guts of the game’s once-lustrous animals to perpetually upgrade your gear. Wilds lives up to this side of the series, though Capcom seems to be reckoning somewhat with its meat-eating bloodlust. You’re accompanied by Nata, a young, non-hunter human who might point towards a human-nature relationship of coexistence rather than domination.
February 28
March
Wanderstop (PC, PlayStation 5)
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few years, you’ll have noticed the cultural turn toward cozy aesthetics: Just have a quick browse of the games that featured in any given Wholesome Games showcase or our own cozy games list to see how receptive video games have been to such trends. Wanderstop, the latest title from postmodern prankster, Davey Wreden (2013’s The Stanley Parable and 2015’s The Beginner’s Guide) interrogates these comfy aesthetics by asking, what if your whole world was a cozy idyll? What if you hated it, and what if it ended up feeling like a prison? You play as Alta — once a fighter, now a tea-maker in a magical forest who must grow and harvest ingredients before mixing them together in a pot. We wonder how many cups of tea Alta has to make before rediscovering her violent streak.
March 11
TBD 2025
Despelote (PC, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S)
Featured in the 2023 edition of Tribeca’s on-point games showcase, Despelote is described by its makers as a “slice-of-life adventure about childhood and soccer in Quito, Ecuador 2001.” As you might imagine, the story is semi-autobiographical, a retelling of co-creator Julián Cordero’s childhood. You view the action from a first-person perspective, kicking, dribbling, and passing a ball around town, all while interacting with the locals who are swept up in the excitement of Ecuador’s first qualifying run for the World Cup. Adding to the authentic feel, Despelote is fully voiced in Spanish and features field recordings of Quito itself. The result could be one of 2025’s most charming games.
Early 2025
Mafia: The Old Country (PC, PlayStation 5,Xbox Series X/S)
Out of no fault of its own, open-world crime series Mafia has always existed in the shadow of Grand Theft Auto. Really, the two mob sagas are quite different propositions: Mafia tends toward a more authored experience; GTA is a sillier, more chaotic sandbox affair. The Old Country sees the Mafia franchise return to the roots of U.S. organized crime: Sicily. It stars Enzo, a wannabe mafioso trying to ingratiate himself with the island’s power brokers. The shift in setting, from the States to Sicily, should yield evocative and, at least for a video game, new sights: The story itself begins in the Sicilian sulfur mines before whisking players through a rural landscape of pretty villages and aromatic lemon groves. A sense of place has always been Mafia’s strong suit: In this regard, The Old Country already looks stellar.
Summer 2025
Grand Theft Auto VI (PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S|X)
Some 12 years on from the previous entry in the entertainment-conquering GTA franchise comes Grand Theft Auto 6, and it looks like the series might be maturing. The previous entry’s breathtaking take on California was soured by a chauvinistic story and frat humor that, far from offering trademark GTA satire, felt plain nasty. One of the directives from Rockstar’s higher-ups for the sixth title was to be less crude toward transgender people and other minorities. This ethos is perhaps also driving the decision to let us play as a woman for the first time. Lucia is just out of jail in Leonida, a fictional stand-in for Florida, and is hell-bent on enjoying her newfound freedom. The pivot in perspective feels crucial: In letting us indulge our destructive, hedonistic fantasies as a woman — robbing banks, high-speed joyrides, lounging at pool parties — the series may yet rekindle the transgressive streak which originally made it such a cultural force in the 2000s.
Fall 2025
InZoi (PC and consoles)
After the unfortunate implosion of The Sims challenger Life by You last year, an opportunity arises for InZoi to assert itself in the life simulator space. You play as an intern at a company whose job it is to manage neighborhoods of virtual people, the titular “Zois.” Like The Sims, you’re aiming to help your subjects lead happy, fulfilled lives, but you can do more than just tell individual Zois what to do; you can alter the architecture and layout of the city where they live, and even go for a drive. Throw in what is perhaps the most robust character customization tool we’ve ever seen, and the level of choice the game presents is mind-boggling. The question is whether it adds up to a satisfying life simulator: Will we come to think of Zois with the same affection as our beloved, Simlish-talking Sims?
2025
Cairn (PC and consoles)
Just you and the mountain, promises upcoming climbing game, Cairn, which arrives with a survival twist. French studio The Game Bakers wants you to feel the physical intensity of actual mountaineering by making you pay close attention to the trembling limbs of protagonist Aava and listening to her increasingly shallow breaths as her stress level rises. Per the demo, the game feels great, making the most of a procedural animation system that, while simple, is constantly making calculations about the duress Aava is under at any given moment. The key is in maintaining her balance. The consequences, certainly in “free solo” mode, without the safety of ropes, can be fatal.
2025
South of Midnight (PC, Xbox Series S|X)
Like movies, gaming has been suffering from an acute case of sequelitis for the past few years. That makes an original, open-world blockbuster like South of Midnight all the more precious. Judging by the swampy, supernatural trailers, the Deep South–set South of Midnight has the heightened fairytale energy of Beasts of the Southern Wild. The game stars a young Black woman called Hazel — a track runner capable of wielding strange, lacy magic which either heals the world around her or fends off enemies. Its world is filled with moss-draped live oaks, bottle trees, and gigantic takes on classic Deep South wildlife — think alligators and catfish — rendered in a gorgeously textured, stop motion-style animation. Even if the gameplay is somewhat standard, simply existing in this place should be a pleasure in itself.
2025
Herdling (PC, Playstation 5, Xbox Series S|X)
Of the many agrarian pastimes video-game players enjoy, herding remains underrepresented. The new title from Far series developers Okomotive aims to change that by putting you in charge of a group of mysterious, yak-like creatures who must be guided through a painterly world of grassy plains, mountain passes, and creepy, darkened forests. Visually, the game possesses the style of an arthouse European animation, and it seems to occupy that emotional register, too. Judging by these beasts’ big, beautiful, mournful eyes, we just know we’re going to fall for them — and hard. That seems to be the crux of Herdling: These aren’t just animals to be controlled but companions you come to form a deep bond with on the trek to pastures new.
2025
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (PC, Playstation 5, Xbox Series S|X)
Good Lord, is the Eiffel Tower melting? It certainly looks that way in the trailer for new dark fantasy RPG Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Forget elves, goblins, and other played-out fantasy tropes, this new gaming world is inspired by Belle Époque France, the period running approximately from 1871 to 1914 when, among other things, the extravagant art-nouveau style came into being. The game also draws heavily from the turn-based battles of the Final Fantasy and Persona franchises, albeit with a novel, real-time twist — the ability to interrupt an enemy attack with a well-executed parry. There’s a lot riding on these battles: so goes the lore on the Steam page, once a year the so-called Paintress “paints her cursed number” causing everyone of that age to turn to smoke and fade away. As per the game’s title, it’s the 33-year-olds up next. Will Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 be a stirring fantasy adventure or quarter-life crisis in video-game form? Perhaps both!
2025
Doom: The Dark Ages (PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S|X)
How do you make demonic first-person shooter Doom feel even more metal? By turning Doomguy into a knight wielding a gigantic, spiked shield a huge sword primed for brutal melee takedowns. According to game director Hugo Martin, this will be a less jumpy, athletic outing for the famously mute protagonist than 2020’s Doom: Eternal. “This time around we wanted you to feel like an Abrams tank,” he said. Just because the demon-slaying action happens less in the air doesn’t mean the new entry will be any less bombastic. In one trailer, we spy a machine gun that fires bullets made from crushed skulls. Forget about 11, Doom: The Dark Ages is cranking the action up way past that.
2025
Ghost of Yōtei (PlayStation 5)
An ocean of swaying pampas fields, leaves eddying in the wind, moss hanging from trees. 2020’s Ghost of Tsushima was a pretty good open-world samurai epic elevated by awe-inspiring natural beauty. Its follow-up, Ghost of Yōtei, looks set to deliver more of the same, albeit hundreds of years later in 1603 and considerably farther north. As such, the landscape will change from the relatively lush terrain of Tsushima (an island located between Japan and South Korea) to the sprawling grasslands and snowy tundras surrounding Mount Yōtei. The Ghost franchise is first and foremost about being immersed in the “romance and beauty of feudal Japan,” said creative director Nate Fax. On these terms, Ghost of Yōtei looks set to deliver.
2025
The Alters (PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S|X)
The Alters boasts one of 2025’s best premises. With his crew killed, Jan Dolsk is the sole survivor stuck aboard a gigantic, circular mining vessel. He has neither the skills nor hands to operate it by himself, but thankfully, his corpo bosses have developed a replication machine capable of creating an exact copy of any human that enters it. So that’s what Jan does, replicating himself with carefree abandon. The resulting game is a modular, management experience in which each replica tends to a particular part of the mining vessel. Survival hinges on finding the right blend of Jans, from botanists and doctors to engineers and dentists. Some venture outside to procure resources, at which point the game snaps into more traditional third-person action territory. At other times, they’ll talk among themselves and even with other characters, like Jan’s ex-wife. It’s a genuinely heady mix — the kind of big, off-the-wall, systems-heavy swing we tend to associate with Hideo Kojima.
2025
Crimson Desert (PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S|X)
Crimson Desert looks like a mash-up of every big open-world fantasy RPG from the past ten years (including, but not limited to, Breath of the Wild, Elden Ring, The Witcher 3, and Dragon’s Dogma 2). You play a gruff, dark-haired warrior who swings a big sword in a photorealistic land of magic and monsters. Yet, through its sheer commitment to over-the-top silliness, Crimson Desert may yet transcend these outstanding influences. As you slice and dice your way through mythical creatures with swaggering abandon, the screen frequently erupts into a shower of glittering particle effects. At other points, you glide through the air like Link in Tears of the Kingdom. Oh, and there are drifting horses, as in horses that drift across the battlefield like the tiny cartoon carts in Mario Kart. It’s derivative and absurd in a very video game sort of way. Maybe also brilliant.
Late 2025
Big Walk (PC)
If you’re Australian studio House House, how do you follow up 2019’s viral, mischief-making sensation, Untitled Goose Game? By making a bizarre co-operative walking simulator set in what looks like the Australian wilderness. The pseudo-photorealism of the environment itself is offset by bright, primary color buildings and odd, Pingu-like characters that roam about it. They have an array of tools and toys to aid them in their ambulatory adventure — binoculars, flares, and whatever else they can get their hands on. The mood looks both delightful and a little melancholic — tiny, abstract people making their way in the biggest, loneliest of places.
2025
Wuchang: Fallen Feathers (PC, Xbox Series S|X)
Hot on the heels of last year’s breakout hit, Black Myth: Wukong, comes Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, another big-budget Soulslike made by a Chinese studio. You play as the titular Wuchang, a one-woman battalion rocking such weapons as swords, spear guns, a flamethrower who must battle a deluge of nightmarish foes (including, from the looks of the trailer, some kind of oyster abomination). Wuchang: Fallen Feathers has its work cut out for it in standing apart from the Soulslike crowd, but its a horror-tinged take on late Ming Dynasty, a place of eerie woods and unnerving deserted villages, should certainly help.
2025
darkwebSTREAMER (PC)
The wonderful thing about video games is they let us step into the shoes of characters far beyond ourselves. In the case of this strange and unnerving RPG, that’s an occult streamer on the 1990s dark internet. Melding the perils of modern video streaming and the grungy, lo-fi internet of yesteryear, the game’s core loop involves hosting live streams of increasingly risqué supernatural content. Death, almost needless to say, is a distinct possibility, but thankfully your subscriber count carries over from each run. So says one of the game’s creators, Chantal Ryan, no single run will ever be the same. That’s because there’s some seriously dark AI magic powering this version of the dark web. “I’ve always been fascinated by AI. I’ve always been really enamored with things that talk back.” Sounds brilliantly creepy.
2025
Skate Story (PC)
Can you hear that? It’s the telltale rumbling of skateboard wheels on concrete. This is but one of the many details that solo developer Sam Eng has sought to get just right in his upcoming vaporwave skateboarding game, Skate Story. But an indie Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, or even Skate, this is not: Eng is whisking us off to the nine hellish layers of the underworld to complete a series of fiendish skateboarding trials. The game melds singularly fractal, glitchy visuals with beautifully fluid, lifelike animations whose overall effect is something beautiful and more than a little fragile. It’s as if the whole world, and especially the skater, might smash apart at any moment.
2025
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach (PlayStation 5)
Gaming’s most celebrated director makes his long-awaited return with Death Stranding 2: On the Beach. Judging by the nearly 45 minutes of trailers and assorted promotional material that have been released to date, Kojima is doubling down on everything that made the original such a brilliant, odd classic. There will be more hiking through desolate, wide-open spaces, more ghosts, and, of course, more unhinged metamodern storytelling. Norman Reedus and Léa Seydoux return, albeit with gray-blue skin in some scenes; a creepy talking puppet called Dollman debuts; George Miller hangs out with a winged cat. No one — be that in video games, movies, or TV — is doing it like Kojima right now.
2025
Nintendo Switch 2
Nintendo, known for keeping its cards very close to its chest, has said very little about the follow-up to the Switch. What scant information is available suggests a similar form factor and feature set to the first Switch released back in 2017. This in itself is interesting because, of all the major gaming-hardware manufacturers, Nintendo has proven itself most open to experimentation. Still, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, and why would you mess with the fundamental design of the third-best-selling console of all time? (Behind only the PlayStation 2 and Nintendo’s own DS handheld.) Reports also suggest the Switch 2 will be a significant graphical step up from its aging 2017 predecessor, perhaps even getting close to the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. Of course, the most important thing is the games, and Nintendo has some big guns to roll out. A follow-up to 2017’s Super Mario Odyssey is widely expected early in the console’s life cycle. Ditto Mario Kart, which has not seen a new mainline entry in over nine years. But the pick of the bunch might be Metroid Prime 4, the latest (and long-awaited) entry in one of the oddest and eeriest first-person shooter franchises of all time.
2025
Hollow Knight: Silksong (PC, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox Series X/S Nintendo Switch)
Another anticipated games list, another mention for Hollow Knight: Silksong (following its inclusion on last year’s rundown). This remains the hotly anticipated, long-in-the-works follow-up to the acclaimed 2-D platformer released way back in 2017. The original was beautiful and challenging, and based on the smattering of trailers released to date, the sequel, which sees you playing as recurring character Hornet, looks to be more of the same — unique, perfectly balanced, masterfully polished. We’re confident this one should be worth the wait, be that in 2025 or whatever year developer Team Cherry finally releases this thing.
TBC 2025