My Most Anticipated Games of 2025

Another year, another list of exciting games to come. This is a comprehensive list of those games that are slated to release this year. If they don’t release this year, you can contact me via my roommates who will have to come drag me out of the corner I’ll be bawling in.

Avowed - February 13, 2025

The prospect of an Obsidian-made, Elder Scrolls-like adventure game is promising. However, I’m actually hoping it’s not that similar to Elder Scrolls. I take issue with a lot of Bethesda games for their grand promises and ideals being squandered on lack-luster gameplay and narratives. I’m not a Bethesda expert, but based on the games I have played from them, I’m hoping Avowed can deliver above and beyond.

A lot of people are excited to see such a game from the creators of Fallout: New Vegas. I’ve never played it. What I’m excited for is for it to come from the creators of The Outer Worlds. I found Outer Worlds to be a detailed, quirky, cheeky, and well-tuned experience. To get that kind of experience in a world of magic and fantasy instead of sci-fi would make my day. Hopefully the day it makes is February 13.

The Outer Worlds 2 - 2025

A natural next entry here would be The Outer Worlds 2, also coming this year (hopefully). A common comment on the original game was how it was fairly short. According to HowLongToBeat.com, The Outer Worlds typically takes around 25 hours to complete. For an open-world RPG, some would consider that pitiful. I’m anticipating this one being longer with more complex narrative branching. I’m also hoping for a heavy change in the enemy types. The original game didn’t have much in the way of memorable enemy variety, and I think there’s a lot of opportunity there for the second game. If they meet or exceed these expectations, The Outer Worlds 2 will be a great experience to remember. Please come in 2025.

The Alters - Q1 2025

I played the demo for this game when it released in early December 2024. I surmised that although the idea was unique, it lacked in some of its execution. A resource and worker management game where the workers are alternate versions of the same character, Jan, is a pretty neat idea. Unfortunately, the actor cast for the role doesn’t seem up to the task based on the demo. Jan feels a bit over the top yet subdued. It feels as disingenuous as playfully whisper yelling.

The writing itself feels ridiculous at times as well. Narratively, the demo has a whole set of tasks/quests centered around making pierogis. Somehow, making these pierogis from childhood is enough to get these two versions of Jan who don’t get along to become good pals. Very forced and unnatural. Nonetheless, it kept my interest with its survival mechanics and unique premise. I likely won’t be getting this one day 1, but a good sale sometime later this year would probably hook me.

Nivalis - Spring 2025

A business sim game set in an explorable cyberpunk city? Just shut up and take my money! I was very bummed when this was delayed to 2025. Hopefully it doesn’t get delayed much further. It’s already been excruciating waiting for this one to come out. I just love simulation games, and this one seems to have the style and polish that a lot of the Unreal Engine-made, 3D, free-asset-using simulations just fail to provide.

Yes, Your Grace: Snowfall - Q1 2025

I saw the reveal of Yes, Your Grace: Snowfall back in summer of 2023. It intrigued me, so I went to wishlist it on Steam. That’s when I realized it was a sequel, and there was a Yes, Your Grace game I could play right then and there to see if I liked it. After all, like I said with Nivalis and The Alters, I’m all for simulation, resource management games. What I love is when those genres come with compelling narratives. Yes, Your Grace was no master class in narrative design, but it had consistently written characters, the right amount of world building, the right level of humor, and sound plot points.

With this next entry, I’m excited to see how the story progresses.

Fable - 2025

I’ve never played a Fable game. I own the original for Xbox… now I just need to buy an original Xbox… I like the overarching concept, so I’ve been following the updates from a distance since the new Fable was announced. Part of me has a strong, almost primal gut feeling that this is not coming this year. It’s just so hard to trust large games by large publishers that enter a year without a at least a quarter to release in for that year.

South of Midnight - April 8, 2025

When it comes to art, I’m extremely dense. I can explain why I like something or don’t like something visually, but I can’t speak to anything objective about it, and I often miss a lot of details that others would often notice. For this reason, visuals aren’t something I usually make a ton of comments about. South of Midnight, though, looks absolutely gorgeous, and I may be playing the game just based on that.

Again, I can’t say much about what works and doesn’t work about an artistic style, but I know I’ve never quite seen a game like this before. I’m excited to get my hands on it and experience it for myself.

I’m also intrigued by the telling of a southern tale. I watched the documentary covering the development of the game on YouTube, and there was a focus on telling a story of the south that hasn’t quite been told in games before. The team is aiming to reframe the south in the eyes of gamers, and I’d like to see how they do that.

Tavern Keeper - 2025

There are a lot of tavern management/simulation games out there already. In fact, during a Steam sale last year, I identified about four or five that I was interested in, as well as a few that I wasn’t interested in. However, none of them were made by the team behind Game Dev Tycoon, one of the few simulation games that I keep going back to every couple of years.

Game Dev Tycoon felt like a relatively small simulation game with limited complexity, so I’m anxious to see how the team has evolved over the past decade plus. I played the Steam Next Fest demo, and it’s about what you would expect from a simulation game. I believe where it differentiates itself is its style. There’s a strong, comedic tone to the whole experience. In particular, I like the heroes that find their ways into the tavern. They have fun stories with comical motivations. I’ll definitely be around later this year to see the whole thing come together.

Grand Theft Auto VI - Fall 2025

Okay. This is the obvious one that everyone’s excited about. I don’t care, though. I need to play this game. I haven’t been a Rockstar fan for very long compared to many people. The only GTA game I’ve played is GTA V. I tried to play Bully on PC, but it wasn’t for me. I only played Red Dead Redemption because Red Dead Redemption 2 was coming out. I liked the former and loved the latter. The bottom line is that Rockstar games have become synonymous with quality in their open worlds, narratives, characters, AI behaviors, and attention to detail. To see the strides and leaps that will be taken with GTA VI will be truly incredible. Hopefully it lives up to the hype. Not many things do.

Lost Records: Bloom & Rage - February 18, 2025

Dontnod has a sporadic reputation for me. I first knew them as the team behind Life Is Strange, one of my favorite games from my younger years as a gamer. It was cheesy and weird, but the time travel mechanics were novel enough while the characters carried the story. Life Is Strange 2 then took an extra step in the direction of character writing.

On the other hand, I’ve also played Tell Me Why and Vampyr, both of which left me wanting so much more. Tell Me Why felt generic and redundant as far as LGBTQ+ narratives go, and I found the combat and open world of Vampyr to be dull at best and infuriating at worst. I also played a bit of Twin Mirror, and it didn’t strike me as fun or entertaining enough to go past an hour or two of gameplay.

Twin Mirror was the last Dontnod game I played, and that released over four years ago. ALL of the studio’s more recent titles are on my wishlist: Harmony: The Fall of Reverie, Jusant, and Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden. Even through several sales, though, I’ve never brought myself to purchase any of them.

Lost Records: Bloom & Rage feels like a return to the studio’s roots, though. At least for me. The studio used to be the Life Is Strange series, and this new game has the potential to return the studio to that coming-of-age sector. I imagine this will be the first Dontnod game I’ve bought in a while. I’m looking forward to it.

InZOI - March 28, 2025

It’s time for The Sims to die. The Sims 4 is wrought with issues, and despite the game needing an update every single time I open EA Play, Maxis is not doing anything about it. They seem to specialize in overcharging for meaningless expansion packs now, and I worry that The Sims 5—whenever that finally comes out—is just going to be a shameless platform for EA to do more despicable things to the series to grab more money.

All of this is to say that I am absolutely begging for a solid competitor. I think InZOI could be that competitor. The team released a character creator in 2024 for people to try, and I think it was a great marketing strategy. Character customization is one of the pillars of the genre, and giving anticipators of the game a taste of that was brilliant.

The true tests are going to be two things: the game’s AI and the state of the game in early access. If the game comes out with unacceptable bugs, disappointing AI, and/or severe limitations to the experience, I don’t think players are going to stick around long enough. The game is competing with a monopoly on life sim as a genre. InZOI has to come out swinging and grab that audience that is so fed up with EA and Maxis with some defining features and sound gameplay. I’ll be there day one to check it out and see what the promise is.

Civilization VII - February 11, 2025

If I’m being frank, I don’t care much for the Civilization games. I’ve just never been captured by the feeling of endlessly expanding my empire with little to no end goal. 4X in general is just not my genre. However, it probably won’t stop me from getting Civilization VII on sale at some point so that I can give it a shot. I try a lot of 4X games like Civilization VI, Crusader Kings III, and Stellaris with the hopes of finding one that finally gets me. However, I just don’t think I’m compatible with the genre.

It’s just interesting to see what Civilization does next.

Wanderstop - March 11, 2025

I was interested in the Wanderstop premise before I even realized it was created by Davey Wreden. Wreden has a reputation for pushing the game design envelope. The Stanley Parable and The Beginner’s Guide found strong audiences and explored storytelling in ways that raised the question of what a game truly is. In these, he explored many metaphysical themes simply due to his tendency to break the fourth wall.

In Wanderstop’s release date trailer, Wreden talks about being burnt out by his two aforementioned games and feeling doubt at his future in writing narratives for games. In this attempt now to create a cozy game with his new studio, Ivy Road, he created one of the most interesting aspects of Wanderstop; making a cozy game where the main character was not cheerful about the work they were doing. I’m excited to see how Wreden’s personal life and feelings with burnout have influenced the narrative of this cozy game.

The Precinct - 2025

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. I love police games. L.A. Noir is great. I’ve had a lot of fun with Police Simulator: Patrol Officers. I really like the concept of This is the Police. The Precinct is slated to be my kind of game. I highly doubt it’s going to be a top 10, top 25, or even top 50 game I’ve played. I think it’s likely to be a game that I can just have some fun with, though. I played the demo, and it seems very over-the-top and fun.

Mixtape - 2025

Similar to Lost Records: Bloom & Rage, I’m highly anticipating a coming-of-age tale with Mixtape. Something Mixtape has that Bloom & Rage doesn’t as much is a fun artistic style. Not to mention its voice acting that from the trailers seems on par with just about anything in the games industry. Minus the creepy, thriller energy, Mixtape reminds me of Oxenfree, a game that I really love. I’m ready for that kind of experience again.

Borderlands 4 - 2025

This is a staple for me and one of my close friends. We’ve played through Borderlands 2 a number of times, we quickly played Borderlands 3 when it released, we backtracked and tried to play the first game in the series and the Pre-Sequel together (we didn’t finish them), and most recently, we really enjoyed Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands. The humorous, looter shooter franchise has just the right pacing for us, and we’re going to be all over this one like white on rice.

Subnautica 2 - 2025

The key here is co-op. I’m not the biggest fan of survival games, but I love playing them with my girlfriend. She’s a huge fan of Minecraft, The Forest, 7 Days to Die, and other survival games. We were excited to play Subnautica together, but it didn’t even occur to me that the game wasn’t co-op. That left us sad and frustrated since the game seemed perfect for the two of us. Now, I’m beyond excited to try out Subnautica 2 with her, even though survival isn’t typically my cup of tea.

Split Fiction - March 6, 2025

Speaking of co-op, this is the next game out of Hazelight Studios, a company that’s gradually becoming one of my favorite developers. I just can’t stand that so many engrossing, riveting narrative games are for one person to experience at a time. The two-player philosophy of Hazelight has me excited for everything they create. A Way Out was a bit mediocre. It Takes Two was a masterpiece. Based on that trajectory, I’m ready to be blown away by Split Fiction. The narrative premise alone is unique and has a lot of potential.

Dispatch - 2025

Dispatch was a fun surprise to come out of The Game Awards 2024. It seems like a creative take on a simulation game. I’m a fan of 911, 112, and other types of games where the player manages units to deploy. This feels like it could be that with a goofy narrative, the likes of which this type of game hasn’t seen before. There’s not a bunch of info on it out there at the moment, but it’s definitely on my radar.

Ambulance Life: A Paramedic Simulator - February 6, 2025

I’m stupidly excited about this game. I just love simulation games. I have a wishlist on Steam of over 130 items, and simulation games are a hefty chunk of that. This is from the team behind Police Simulator: Patrol Officers. I’ve sunk nearly 30 hours of fun into that game, and I anticipate going back to it again throughout this year.

Now, I’m excited to see what the studio does on another side of emergency responders. It’s very unfortunate that Ambulance Life is going to be single-player exclusively. According to the devs, it’s not intended to be a multiplayer experience. One of Police Simulator’s biggest draws is that it’s multiplayer, allowing me to have fun with friends.

Coffee Talk Tokyo - 2025

I’ve enjoyed the other two entries in the Coffee Talk series so far. They haven’t been the best narrative or simulation experiences. However, they’re typically short and good for some relaxing gameplay. The gameplay can also get challenging as characters ask for orders that you don’t know the ingredients to. With only a few free attempts for each day, at some point you have to make due with whatever you’ve made and hope the customers enjoy it.

Coffee Talk Tokyo appears to have some new races of its fantasy characters and a whole new aesthetic. This makes sense given the shift to a new culture and environment. The most exciting part is that after the second game, I was starting to tire of the characters. A whole new set of them will keep this one feeling fresh.

Cuffbust - 2025 maybe

This one just looks like dumb fun with friends. Now I have to find some friends.