Introduction
It might seem that all that ever gets announced anymore are remakes and sequels. Original games aren't dead in the video game world; you just have to know where to look for them, and that's where we come in. There have actually been a lot of exciting announcements recently from new and upcoming studios with games that aren't remakes, adaptations of something else, based on a comic book, or nostalgia reboots.
They're just new games, and there are a lot of them that we're very hyped about, and it's not just because they're new. These are legitimately interesting and exciting-looking games.Keep in mind, as a disclaimer, these aren't wholesale endorsements yet; we're just going on pre-announcement stuff. We're not sponsored by any of these games or anything like that; we're not reviewing them but just games we're keeping an eye on that look cool because, contrary to what the internet might sometimes lead you to believe, it's okay to be excited about video games.
So you get the idea; we're talking about upcoming games here. But the rule when we made this list was no remakes or sequels, just new IPs or intellectual properties, so don't get mad at us for leaving out Grand Theft Auto 6 or anything. We're excited about that too, but today it's all about new stuff. Anyway, that was a long-winded thing; let's just get started with number 10.
Phantom Blade Zero
This upcoming martial arts-inspired action game is looking real sharp if the trailers are anything to go by. The emphasis here is on fast, brutal action, and it looks spectacular in motion. It's good to see that fast-paced action games are finally seeing a revival between games like this and honestly a bunch of other stuff on this list. Now is a good time to just be a crazy all-out action game fan. There's not a whole lot we actually know about this game other than that it's a Wuxia-inspired setting and intense-looking combat. Even the developers are mostly unknown, having made a few smaller indie games before this one.
But with Sony supporting the studio, we're hoping that things are going to work out well. You can tell they're pretty confident about it with the most recent gameplay trailer that just runs for 6 minutes straight and doesn't try to hide anything about the game. It's just pure gameplay and some boss battles, and it all looks very slick. Thankfully, I got my hands on an early preview version of the game last year at Summer Game Fest, and I can confirm it's a lot of fun to play. It's pretty over the top; it can be challenging, but you as the player have a lot of options, a lot of power at your fingertips. There's a pretty big variety of different weapons to use, ranged attacks, and also these really over-the-top, sometimes screen-filling special attacks.
One interesting tidbit of info we found online is that the game is set in a large, interconnected world. It's not going to be an open world, but each area will be connected, and as you advance through the story, apparently additional paths open up for exploration, which sounds like the ideal setup for a game like this. You get some exploration, but it doesn't bog the game down, or at least in theory. Honestly, everything we've seen about this game so far just seems pretty damn exciting. Like we said, some of those trailers, the boss fights, that puppet boss in the trailer looks absolutely nuts. The way the music cues change and different music kicks in just seems like a cool thing that we're going to be playing hopefully sometime in 2025.
Steel Hunters
Mech games are back, and it feels real good. The humble mech has been woefully underrepresented in recent video game years, but with the success of games like Armored Core, the industry seems to finally recognize something that everyone who plays these games already knows: man, mechs are cool. The ones in Steel Hunters look particularly badass here, like a cross between a Gundam and a Titanfall mech. What really matters is that the game just looks fun to play. Steel Hunters is an upcoming free-to-play extraction shooter where you play in teams of two.
You enter this big, gigantic map, search for resources, fight NPC enemies who are around in the map, and compete with five other teams who are trying to do the same thing. Look, free-to-play and even sometimes extraction shooters don't always work with us; sometimes we hear that and we go, oh boy, another one of these. But just looking at this trailer, it looks cool. It's the mechs, the map design looks really interesting, the combat looks pretty powerful, and like we said, it just looks like a ton of fun. It's a really exciting idea, like a cross between Tarkov and Titanfall, that looks like it's just going to be a blast. There's even a PVE mode apparently for folks out there that just want to stomp around these awesome-looking maps as a mech.
As of right now, we know the game is currently in Alpha and there's no hard release date given, just a blanket coming soon. But with the developers of this being the guys behind all the World of Games like World of Tanks, World of Warships, stuff like that, we expect this one to come out and probably do pretty well. But just watch out for the monetization; if their previous games are anything to go by, then Steel Hunters will be monetized up the ass to hell and back. Look, we can overlook some of that stuff, but we're just going to have to wait and see when it releases. But again, the idea is awesome here.
Hell Is Us
You got our attention here because Souls-likes so rarely try to color outside that established dark fantasy setting. I mean, what was the last one we had, like The Surge? So anytime anything comes along that looks like it's actually different, we sit up and take notice. We're not entirely even sure this is technically a Souls-like, but whatever it is, it does look really interesting. It appears modern but with supernatural, almost kind of Death Stranding-like elements and sci-fi elements. There's a semi-open world to explore that is giving us also some Control vibes in some of it, like the mix of the alien and then the normal stuff.
They haven't shown too much combat, but there is a gameplay video out there, and from what we've seen, it looks like it fits into a Souls-style mold with your guy wielding swords and spears and axes against these supernatural foes. The trailer was intriguing enough, but the way the developers emphasize the exploration aspects actually has us really interested. It's not usually something that gets brought up first, but the thing that separates a good technical Souls-like and an excellent one is often the world design. Exploration is a key component in those games, and some of the most memorable moments in these kinds of games is when you just wander into someplace where it feels like you really shouldn't be there or you discover something cool.
You know that feeling where you go into an area and stop and reconsider, "Maybe I should go back here later," or "If I push a little further, I might find something cool." I hope this game is able to give us those feelings because looking at the world design and the trailers and the gameplay trailers and stuff like that, it looks like it might. As of right now, this is coming out September 4th, 2025, and it's coming from developer Rogue Factor. Like any game on this list, it could release and crash and burn, but the pre-release information we're looking at here makes us pretty optimistic.
Tides of Annihilation
This extremely ambitious looking action game kind of reminds us of a cross between Nioh and bizarrely enough, Shadow of the Colossus. It's an action game set in this destroyed London that looks to mix cinematic action and semi-open world elements. But then there are also these gigantic knights roaming the city that you have to climb up and systematically dismantle in what looks to be big epic set-piece battles. We see some RPG elements, platforming that wouldn't look out of place in kind of an Uncharted game, and a really interesting combat system where you actually command 10 different knights in order to fight enemies.
Does anybody remember Folklore for PS3? Anyone? It kind of reminds me of that. From the reveal, this game appears to be highly polished and very cool looking. This whole Arthurian Legends but in modern-day visual style gives this game some unique identity, but the gameplay is what really has our attention right off the bat. They're claiming there's going to be 30 boss fights, and from what we've seen from the trailers, they do look like they're going to be pretty cool. This one got revealed at a PlayStation event, but it's actually coming out for everything. While this is coming from yet another mostly untested studio who have done a lot of support work in the past, this game looks like it's going to be really impressive when it comes out, whenever it comes out, just because there's no release date yet.
Storo Parkour Pro
This upcoming Q1 2025 indie looks really intriguing. Just don't go into it expecting a horror game; that's just the name. What's actually interesting about this is the parkour, which does look really, really nice. It's set in this open world London with a story mode as well as multiplayer components, but this game looks like it's about one thing and one thing only, and that's satisfying parkour gameplay. It apparently uses its own animation system that combines motion capture with physics-based movement, and it does look really awesome. It's kind of like if Mirror's Edge had a love child with Human Fall Flat, which is just a really good idea. You get precision platforming and then also noodle people and flopping around.
Everybody loves a good ragdoll, and from the trailers, this game definitely has it. There's a lot of scrappy indie energy to this one; it's a very ambitious project, but the trailers don't exactly have that AAA polish. But who cares as long as it's fun? There are a lot of interesting ideas in this one. I like how it seems to be both more sport-oriented, with more complex movement than you usually get in these kinds of games, while also kind of being arcadey and fun. This game doesn't have the most realistic parkour from everything we've seen; it's more about just being fun than strictly completely accurate like a parkour simulator. Still, I think the jury's out on how this actually plays. It looks very cool; those animations are gorgeous, but how does it actually feel when you have a controller in your hand? We're just going to have to wait and find out.
Kronos: The New Dawn
There have been a lot of solid survival horror games recently, but what we usually get are either games in long-running franchises like Resident Evil or Silent Hill, or low-budget indie games that can be very good. But I think what a lot of us do want is a high-fidelity horror game that actually does something kind of new. From what we've seen of Kronos: The New Dawn, this new game from Bloober Team is the horror game we've been kind of waiting for. It's got a bizarre time-bending premise where you play as a freaky bobblehead roaming the nightmare future in order to find time portals that allow you to retrieve people from the past and then bring them into the future for some reason.
It's a weird-looking game with weird concepts that seem to combine alien abstraction with Eastern Block brutalism in a way that just feels really unique, even while the actual gameplay looks pretty recognizable but in a good way. It's not a tedious walking simulator or a horror game with not a lot of real gameplay; this looks like a full-on Resident Evil 4/Dead Space style third-person shooter where you're kind of slowly clunking around in your suit, shooting at all these weird malformed alien freaks and managing resources. It's a survival horror game technically, and it embraces that. We're excited to see how it'll actually feel, how it will actually play when it comes out sometime in 2025. Look, you can go back a year or so, and a lot of people would care a little less about seeing a new Bloober Team game, but after the Silent Hill 2 remake they did, we're hoping for the best with this one.
Laima
It's pretty rare to see an old-fashioned story-driven first-person shooter game these days, but that's exactly what we're looking at here, and that alone is enough to get us excited. But there's actually a lot about this game that looks really promising. The shooting, for one thing, looks pretty solid with futuristic guns that have some real pop to them and some exciting-looking special abilities. If you're doing an FPS, you know getting the shooting right, the feedback, the feel is essential, and this game looks like it's got the sauce for it. I'd expect as much as the people making it are the developers Reborn, otherwise known as the newly independent 4A Games Ukraine, the guys who worked on the Metro series.
Now, the main 4A Games branch was in Malta, and they're still around, so the situation might be confusing to some. But all that really matters is that these guys aren't up-and-comers; they're veterans, and it seems like they've got some serious shooter credentials. Another interesting thing about this game is the setting. Rather than your standard dystopian setting, this one is set in a futuristic Latin America, which really gives the game its own unique vibe. We've never seen a South American cyberpunk setting, and that gives this game a unique flavor that's usually missing from games like this. It can be played solo or with up to two friends, so hopefully, this one ends up being the fun roller coaster ride that the trailer really promises. Of course, trailers are one thing, the actual game is another, but this was a good trailer, man.
Clockwork Revolution
Remember this one? It got announced a while back, but from the premise alone, it just looks really intriguing. For one thing, this is coming from InXile, the guys behind Wasteland 3, among other things. They've got the world-building credentials to do something interesting here, and what they've shown of Clockwork Revolution, as much as it wasn't a lot, does seem ambitious and interesting. It's essentially a Bioshock-style first-person shooter with everything you'd expect, like wacky steampunk guns, a fantastical setting, and some kind of weird special abilities that you can control with your other arm. Making a Bioshock-like is exciting enough just because it's been so long since we've gotten a proper sequel.
But that's not the real draw here. The thing that really makes Clockwork Revolution unique is its time travel mechanic. In this game, you travel through time, apparently going back to key moments, and depending on your choices, they will actually affect what the city becomes. Is it a paradise with a dark side or a full-blown dystopia? The possibilities for reactive storytelling are endless if they really nail it. The big question is how much can you actually change? How time travel works is still very vague right now. We have no idea how the system really works or how reactive it even is, or if it's just a linear gimmick. We don't know yet, but this is InXile we're talking about here.
Their entire bread and butter lately has been highly reactive RPGs, so this game could turn out to be something really unique where you're constantly traveling back and forth in time trying to figure things out in order to thread the needle and somehow create an actually good outcome to whatever conflict is driving this story. Look, nobody knows much, but the premise is just rife with possibility, and even though we're probably expecting more than the game can possibly deliver, we can't help but get excited just from the visuals, the world, all that stuff alone.
Rean Animal
This is coming from Studio Tarsier, the guys behind the original Little Nightmares games. This game is essentially the real Little Nightmares 3. A different studio is working on that; these guys branched off to do this. They're essentially just kind of continuing what they were doing before with a new name and some different spins, and honestly, that's all anyone really needs to get hyped about this one. While it does all look pretty familiar to fans of their games, it does look even crazier and more intense. Like their other games, Rean Animal is going to be a narratively driven, highly scripted, and probably fairly short horror game where you're mostly sneaking around avoiding weird gigantic freaks, solving puzzles, and exploring this bizarre, twisted, and beautifully designed world.
Again, no offense to Little Nightmares 3, which is being developed by Supermassive Games this time around; that game looks pretty good. But there's just something uniquely twisted about the original developer's vision, their takes that you can really see in Rean Animal here, and they're doubling down on it. The leash is off, and they're making what looks like their darkest, most disturbing game yet. I mean, just look at some of these freaks they've shown in the trailer. The game is somehow even more mysterious and grotesque looking than their previous games. We're just really excited for the music, the art design, the visuals, and that stuff alone. We're looking forward to playing this one with a friend because it's actually going to be fully playable co-op whenever it comes out. The game's release date right now is just a vague "coming soon."
Project Century
This is a game we know very little about, not even the official name, but this one already has us chomping at the bit for more. A completely new IP from the Yakuza studio that looks unlike anything else they've ever done. It's hard not to get excited about this thing. As of right now, it's called Project Century. Look how cool it is. It's set in some kind of alternate universe Japan in 1915, and you play as—well, I don't know who you're playing as, who they are, or what's going on, but it looks awesome. Mostly, all we got from the Game Awards announcement trailer was a lot of really intriguing shots of this unnamed city and some particularly brutal combat that looks like an evolution of the standard Yakuza beat 'em up combat to make the game more visceral than anything the studio has made previously.
The way combat seems to transition seamlessly, the way you go into and out of buildings, and move around the environment just looks so much more fluid and immersive here. I have no idea what it's about or even what the setting is outside of it being 1915 and somewhere in Japan, but everything else is a total mystery. With the studio, RGG, it doesn't matter what they make, we'll always be there day one or at least be curious. But this one looks especially intriguing, right? Because it doesn't look like something completely new for the studio.
I mean, the trailer focuses on a lot of beating up dudes in the street of a Japanese city, which makes up the average 60% of your typical Yakuza game's playtime. But everything else around that, everything about this one, is a big and cool question mark, and we find that very exciting. Who knows when this one's coming out? I mean, it's still called Project Something; it doesn't even really have an official name right now.
Bonus Indie Games
We have some bonus ones we want to throw in. These might not be as flashy or high-profile, but we still wanted to talk about them.
Absolum
This recently announced beat 'em up is coming from Dotemu, the guys behind the really good Streets of Rage 4. This looks like a successor to their excellent work on that game. What makes Absolum different is that it's going to be a rogue-like beat 'em up with branching paths, random enemy layouts, and upgrades and stuff you find along the way. It sounds a lot like Hades but as a beat 'em up, which is just a really, really good creative idea—something that I would like to play.
Abyss X0
This crazy-looking Mega Man Legends-inspired anime action game comes from the developers behind Unsighted, which was good, and this looks even better. The art design is pitch perfect, the action looks crazy, and you know we love to see a door getting unlocked—that's always a good sign in a game like this. Just getting something, anything with that clean Legends art style and energy, is exciting. Thankfully, this doesn't just look like a tired ripoff or a desperate attempt to revive a dead IP; it looks unique and inspired in its own right.
Animal Use Protocol
This game looks very intriguing and we've heard almost nobody talk about it. Made by the developers behind the Status games, this is their first fully 3D game, and it looks disturbing as hell. Animal lovers are probably going to have a hard time with this one. It looks like you play as this intelligent chimp with a little mouse buddy who has to escape from a horrific animal testing lab.
These guys know how to put creepy cute characters in nightmare situations. If you played Status or Status Bone Totem, you know what I'm talking about. This game is all about that. Their games tend to be a little rough around the edges, but their ideas are always fascinating with solid pacing and puzzle design. This looks like their most ambitious game and it looks stressful as hell. We really hope it turns out just as good, or even better, than their previous games.
Conclusion
But like we said, those are 10 or so games that we're pretty hyped about. We hope they're good; fingers crossed. All you can do is hope for the best, and we're just happy to talk about some random new games today. So let us know in the comments if any of these games intrigued you, or if you have any other kind of weird different games on your personal list that you just haven't seen a lot of places talk about. Hit us up. But either way, thanks for reading. We'll see you guys next time.
0 Comments