Cairn
Live your mountaineering fantasies and brave the elements in a wonderfully illustrated climbing game. You must carefully place climber Aava’s hands and feet to make your way up a forbidding mountain, camping on ledges and bandaging her fingers as you go. Like real climbing, it is challenging and somewhat brutal.
PC, PlayStation 5; 29 January
Reanimal
A two-player animated horror game in the Tim Burton mode, minus all the whimsy. In a setup reminiscent of the famously discomfiting games Limbo and Inside, a brother and sister must escape a twisted mockery of their home town, finding their friends as they go. They are stalked by horrible spike-limbed monsters and grotesquely reanimated creatures. Genuinely frightening and artistically impressive.
Nintendo Switch 2, PC, PlayStation5, Xbox; 13 February
Resident Evil Requiem
Capcom’s horror series is very old, but it still comes up with new ways to make your skin crawl. In Requiem we play as bookish Grace, whom the game’s director calls “the biggest scaredy-cat in Resident Evil history”, and the confidently combat-proficient cop Leon S Kennedy, pursued by monsters through the iconic Raccoon City.
Nintendo Switch 2, PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox; 27 February
Pokémon Pokopia
Imagine dropping Pokémon into the world of Animal Crossing, with a hint of Minecraft’s blocky aesthetic. This family-friendly Nintendo game has you building and tending habitats for Nintendo’s beloved creatures. You play as a Ditto, the shape-shifting pink blob, which can helpfully transform into other Pokémon, using those other critters’ abilities to bring a barren landscape back to life and build a vibrant town.
Nintendo Switch 2, 5 March
007 First Light
The most anticipated James Bond game since the Nintendo 64’s GoldenEye 007. Made by IO Interactive, famous for Hitman, it stars a younger, twentysomething Bond who has not yet earned his 007 status, and hopes to blend the expected car chases, shootouts and gadgets with some genuine spycraft, as Bond infiltrates parties and digs for information.
Nintendo Switch 2, PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox; 27 May
Saros
From the Finnish developer behind Returnal, the exceptional, intelligent time-loop sci-fi shooter, this mysterious action game stars another stranded astronaut on a different hostile planet, one where a dying sun is sending its creatures and colonists mad. Long-time gamers will recognise the lineage of arcade bullet-hell shooters in this very modern action game.
PlayStation 5; 30 April
Grand Theft Auto VI
It has been in development for more than a decade and, despite several delays (GTA VI was on this very list last year), expectations have never been higher for the biggest game in the world. It’s a crime story and a love story, featuring the series’ first female protagonist, Lucia, and her boyfriend, Jason, and set in Rockstar’s fictional Floridian state of Leonida. There has been so much to satirise about contemporary America since 2013’s GTA V that Rockstar’s writers will surely have been spoilt for choice.
PlayStation 5, Xbox; 19 November