While the old saying goes, “A game in the cart is worth two on a Steam wishlist,” as we head into the new year, it's useful to highlight a couple of games that come our way. Especially when there are quite a lot of them, including large stomping robots. Some of them are the size of cities. My oil-starved heart beats and poundes in anticipation.
I tried to keep the list of games confirmed for release next year – tragically cutting down The Free Shepherd, which is scheduled for release in 2027 – but there is one exception.
So let's start with the release, which is likely to be delayed until 2027.
Total War: Warhammer 40,000
While I'm a fan of Warhammer 40,000, this is really just the end of what I'm looking forward to from the new Total War. It is this combination of ground and orbital warfare that would seriously disrupt the formula.
Traditionally, in Total War games – or rather, most strategy games that feature real-time combat – there is a clear separation between combat and the world map. You prepare your army at a strategic level, choose a battle location, do everything possible to make the upcoming battle in your favor, but then, in real time battle, the world around the conflict collapses. You fight the enemy with what you have available at the moment.
Orbital units that thin the wall between the battlefield and the world map can break this separation, allowing you to significantly change the dynamics on the battlefield once combat begins. I have no idea how true this will be in practice or if it will be a good change for Total War, we only have a short trailer to look at, but I want to find out.
Although from the games on my list, Total War: Warhammer 40,000 is the lowest probability of release in 2026.
Ace Boy 8
I never had the determination to learn how to play real flight simulators. I get excited at the prospect, put off Saturday afternoon, and then become increasingly frustrated as I struggle to get the plane off the runway. Too many times I've simply retracted the landing gear, forcing my plane to land on the tarmac as a final act of defiance against my virtual flight instructor. But I like games that look like serious simulators and allow you to play on a gamepad.
The Ace Combat series is at the forefront of twin simulators. Each plane is rendered with incredible detail, looks the part, yet operates with an ease I can handle. The series' roots go back to the arcades of 1993, so the series' focus has always been on aerial action rather than realism. The missions have you shooting down dozens of planes, with the thrill being the large number of enemies rather than the challenge of piloting a complex aircraft against a single enemy.
Where Ace Combat 8 ​​looks like it might differ from previous games is in the expansion of your actions outside the cockpit, with more emphasis on your role as a commander. I hope this materializes into a social metagame similar to Persona, where you can play pool with your teammates. In reality, this probably just means a lot of cutscenes.
Castle Combe and Vanderburgh
Ever since I read Philip Reeve's Mortal Engines books, I've been fascinated by the idea of ​​cities moving across a landscape. There have been plenty of games in recent years that have some of this charm – Monster Are Coming is the one I talked about just recently – but none of them have yet captured my attention in the way I'd hoped.
In 2026, at least two more games will compete for my affection for the city.
The first is Castle Come, a game where you control a drone that can resurrect dead robots and Frankenstein along with them. Starting with a small gun robot, you build and build your way up to a settlement-sized walker populated by a human crew that controls its weapons and engines in turn-based battles. Every enemy you overthrow can be broken into pieces and added to yours. It's a wonderful thing.
The second is Wanderburg, which is the most Mortal Engines-like game I've ever seen. You control a small suburb that lays waste to the world, devouring sheep, trees, and municipalities that stand in its way. As you enjoy the bounty of the landscape, your small suburb transforms into a fortress bristling with cannons, magical towers and battering rams. All the better to knock down the teeth of other locks.
Both games are roguelikes and may lack the depth to give them the appeal I'm hoping for, but sometimes all I want is to be a gun-wielding NIMBY.
Land of Garbage
There's a tantalizing tension in the heart of Garbage Land. You split your time between driving cross-country in a beat-up old SUV and watching the action overhead like an old Micromachines games and participation in tower defense battles against robots that have taken over the earth.
Thomas van den Bergh, creator Kingdom: New Landsspearheading the development of Garbage Country and bringing the same unexpected calm to a genre that's traditionally far from tranquil.
PVKK: planetary defense cannon commander
While I'm reluctant to learn the basics of a flight simulator, a skill that may very well (but hopefully never) be useful in real life, I'm ready and waiting to master the ins and outs of controlling not one, but two fictional artillery turrets.
In the previous game Bippinbits Guardian of the Domeyou divide your time between mining resources underneath your base and manning the gun turret above to fend off waves of advancing monsters. For PVKK: planetary defense cannon commanderthey seem to have given up on the whole resource gathering business and instead are completely focused on stimulating the life of the orbital cannon operator. The trailer hints that there's more going on than just gunfire, and suggests that your (shocking) authoritarian superiors may not be entirely working in your favor, but I wouldn't want to suggest that there will be a call for civil disobedience. If so, I'll figure out what the equivalent of retracting the landing gear is for a massive turret. Probably pointing the trunk into the ground as a sad greeting.
I will also briefly say hello Iron Nest: Heavy Turret Simulatora game inspired by the PVKK trailer. I'm not one to stick my colors to one turret simulator flag, I have enough room in my heart for two mega guns.
