A new year, a new slate of games to look forward to.

Shall we do this all over again?

There’s range, oddness, and some pleasant returning faces, then.

Montage of images from four games: Animal Well, Star Wars Dark Forces remaster, Harold Halibut, and FF7, behind the number 2024

And the best thing, as ever, is all the games we don’t even know about yet.

We hope you have a wonderful 2024, whatever you play, and whatever you get up to.

No Return strings together random encounters offering players a sort of survival roguelike.

Ellie and Dina in The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered. They are riding on horseback through the snow

Fascinating at least to seeNaughty Doggiving up just a tiny bit of control.

This one is a very easy sell.

Tomb Raider 1-2-3 Remastered

Hooray!

Like A Dragon Infinite Wealth’s sunny Hawaiian location showing a beachfront bordered by skyscrapers.

The question is: has it all been treated with care?

Rise through the ranks of piratedom as you explore beautiful ocean vistas.

These games are ingenious and morish, and we doubt that’s changed much here.

Tekken 8 screenshot showing two combatants going at it in Arcade Quest mode

Pacific Drive

This is an interesting mix of the familiar and the sort of unexpected.

You’re exploring a cursed Stalker-style Zone where odd experiments have muddled with reality in dangerous ways.

It’s Roadside Picnic meets My Summer Car and we’re here for it.

A screenshot from Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden showing its two protagonist - a corporeal man and ghostly woman - stood face-to-face and tenderly clasping each other’s raised hands against their chests.

Dark Forces is a first-person shooter set within the Rebel Alliance’s covert division.

Expect plenty of surprises along with all the familiar Final Fantasy trappings.

We’ve only had scraps of information to go on.

Lara Croft in Tomb Raider 1, 2, and 3 Remastered

The date is not concrete either but based ona retailer leak.

But then it got held up in development and missed 2023.

Still, good things come to those who wait, and now the wait is nearly over.

A promotional image for Skull and Bones showing a large wooden ship with crimson sails racing across the ocean beneath bright blue skies.

Pick a hero, ready your weapons and fight your way through horrible haunted environments.

Fingers crossed for this one.

Dragon’s Dogma 2

Capcom’s party-based action RPG series is back.

The side-on Mario vs. Donkey Kong game. Here, Mario climbs on a series of ropes on a jungle level, while underneath, Donkey Kong cowers, for some reason. Perhaps Mario is throwing things, which isn’t very nice of him.

But also: as entertaining as ever too.

It’s just the kind of cheerful oddity you’d expect as the Switch bows out itself.

You’ll need to scan plantlife and adapt as you look to protect your citizens on a hostile planet.

Pacific Drive preview - in the driver’s seat, a somewhat high-tech dashboard with a green outline of the car on display, looking out at a hazy forest

It’s worth giving Bertie’s wonderful feature a read onthe American originally sent to save Stalker.

Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley

You had us at Moomins, frankly.

Here’swhat we thought of a recent Snufkin demo.

A Star Wars: Dark Forces Remaster screenshot showing an illustrated in-game cut-scene of Darth Vadar in conversation with one of his officers.

Or maybe Banished, or really a few of these all mashed together.

Still Wakes the Deep

Still Wakes the Deep is the perfect TikTok game in many ways.

Even without a story or set-pieces this would be a wonderful place to poke around in.

The full party of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth facing away from us looking out over mountains

Harold Halibut

Using genuine, Aardman-style stop-motion sculptures for animation, Harold Halibut looks utterly extraordinary.

“, so there you have it.

Tactile, intimate, sumptuously lit.

Moody promotional art for Elden Ring’s Shadow of the Erdtree expansion seemingly showing Miquella riding through fields of wheat on the back of Torrent.

We can’t wait to play it.

Farthest Frontier

Bertie was impressed with Farthest Frontierwhen he played it in 2022.

What makes it different is that it’s very zoomed in.

A gorgeous image of light breaking over the top of some massive space structure - a wreckage of some kind - and four craft are flying from the top of the image towards it, leaving blue trails in their wake.

It’s about individuals and slow progression.

And after a year-and-a-half in Early Access, it’s nearly ready to emerge in full.

Animal Well

2024’s Spelunky?

Life by You

Dustborn

A road trip across a near-future America is the setting for this story-driven action-adventure.

Be sure to readVictoria’s wonderful interview with Flock’s Richard Hogghimself.

What Grinding Gear Games has shown so far looks detailed and challenging and deep.

Emily Hartwood and Edward Carnby (played by Jodie Comer and David Harbour respectively) in a car as Carnby drives in the opening of Alone in the Dark

This is a studio that knows what it does best, doing what it does best.

Frostpunk 2

Frostpunk 1 remains one of the most thrilling city-building experiences we’ve ever had.

It was a race to bolster your city against apocalyptic cold while also not starving and not facing mutiny.

Screenshot from Dragon’s Dogma 2 showing an anthropomorphic lion character in armour. He has a sword over his back

How horrible would you have to be?

How far would you go?

Now,Frostpunk is back, with a new game engine, and bigger and broader in every sense.

Peach and two Toads from Princess Peach Showtime

This time, though, simple survival isn’t the only goal.

This time you have societal growth and dissenting factions within it to control.

Can you keep everyone under control?

A diagonal-down view of a cartoon-like city builder, except the buildings here are low-tech and somewhat alien, almost as if they were pulled from Nikolodeon children’s TV show.

We can’t wait to find out.

This could well be one.

Hauntii

There should be more games where you get to play as a ghost!

A masculine character stands facing the viewer, on top of a tall building overlooking what appears to be the Chernobyl power plant.

Naiad

It’s hard to see Naiad in motion and not want to leap in.

Oh, and there are ducks.

That’s a pretty good solution TBH.

A splash-screen (no pun intended) image from Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley, in which Snufkin sits on the end of a jetty, looking out onto a flat lake that’s glittering with sunlight, and he begins to fish.

Physics and animation combine in this gloriously unsettling game.

Lots to do and, by the looks of it, some lovely sunsets too.

Will this mix of gods and guns still feel fresh in 2024?

An anthropomorphic cat-person boss of some kind stands in the centre of the image, roaring up to the sky, giant flaming sword in hand. Two characters, just out of the picture on the left and right of the screen, look on. They have a showdown at hand.

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2

Gah, get us this one right now.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2

Will it, won’t it?

How much has changed since we last saw it?

A boy stands in the snow, looking up at a flying creature of some kind, made up of three large circular blobs. It could be a machine. The whole scene is drawn in the same way a Studio Ghibli animation would be - in bright but softened colours, as if almost water coloured.

We can’t wait to find out.

(Well mostly it’s just Chris, but he’s excited enough for everyone).

2D and 3D elements blend ingeniously and it all looks beautiful too.

A cluster of thatched and daubed medieval houses stand in a countryside of deep green grass and blue but cloudy skies.

This could be a proper smash.

Prepare to fall out with people and swear a lot.

And that all sounds kind of great, really.

Still Wakes The Deep screenshot showing a dark and dingy oil rig cafeteria.

The Mermaid’s Tongue

Another adventure game, and one that sees the return of Detective Grimoire.

Explore the scene, investigate, and piece together your own idea of what happened.

This should be fantastic.

Two stop-motion models of men stand behind the window of a post office counter. It’s all dinky and handmade, with squiggled writing and many letters giving the place character.

And now, there’s a sequel.

Games don’t get more wholesome than this.

We’ve seen Grounded and Pentiment, but both were small-team projects.

A tiny village in a much larger forest. A panel shows the details of a child living there.

Avowed is a big-team project.

Whose work could it feature next after the legendary Jordan Mechner (and father)?

Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles

The Falconeer still burns bright in our memory.

Two creepy, pixelated illusions, almost, of cats form in the background of a 2D platforming level. They’re smiling but it’s unsettling for sure.

For this follow-up, creator Tomas Sala is reusing the setting, but the gameplay has completely changed.

Now, it’s a freeform city-builder with an emphasis on expression.

Build what you want out there and shape it as you will, and then see what happens.

A group of characters as seen through the windows of a car. They are a ragtag bunch, as the game tells us. One is dark, one is pale, one has bright coloured hair, another lots of bling. The drive is, for some reason, mimicking choking themselves.

One of the quirkier releases of the year.

Will it make much of a difference?

We’ll have to wait and see.

Flock screenshot showing player atop a bird surrounded by cute sheep

More importantly, it chooses perhaps the richest lens to view that galaxy: you’re a scoundrel!

33 Immortals

33 Immortals almost stole the show at Xbox’s big summer showcase last year.

Dungeons of Hinterberg

Oh,swoon.

A screenshot from Destiny 2’s The Final Shape expansion showing a Hunter wielding a knife as part of the new Storm’s Edge Super.

Horses

Horses is a deeply surreal-looking black-and-white horror from solo developer Andrea Lucco Borlera.

Very much in pole position for Nicest Vibe award at the end of the year.

The artwork is glorious as you’d expect - prepare for the full breadth of the rainbow.

A diagonal-down screenshot showing the Mercenary character fighting in Path of Exile 2. They use a crossbow that functions a bit like guns in shooter games. Here, they fight amidst a dark, cobbled, crumbling town.

It seems clever, elegant, richly colourful and wonderfully simple all at once.

1000X Resist

A far-future sci-fi about a group of androids (replicants?

living alongside the last surviving human, called the All Mother.

An image from Skald: The Black Priory, but it looks like an image that could have been pulled from an early 90s computer game, or earlier - from an Ultima, perhaps. It’s heavily pixelated and 2D, showing the interior of a castle hall, maybe, or a pirate cavern. It’s very colourful.

Helps that it comes from Citizen Sleeper publisher Fellow Traveller, too.

Games which probably won’t come out in 2024 but you never know

What else?

But it’d be a minor surprise if they landed this year.

A diagonal-down view of the black and white world of Hauntii. The world is curvy and curled, a bit like Tim Burton’s style, but with a cuter, less deranged look. We see a white path curving off in two directions and on it, our ghost character.

An even bigger surprise would beThe Sims 5, which sounds like it’sstill a little way off.

The impressionistic Naiad. A top-down view of a mermaid-like character swimming on their back up a stream, with trees and shrubs on either side, and a bird interfering in our view from above. Warm, pastel colours make the image very pleasing on the eye.

Hades 2. A glowing character stands in a clearing in a forest… of some kind. There’s an otherworldly feel to it.

A curvy masculine character lifts a leg and looks down at it, as if it’s moving for the very first time. A character nearby looks on.

Alisae in Dawntrail trailer

A scared-looking Luigi shines a torch at the viewer.

Article image

A blue-coloured Space Marine walks towards a huge, towering - and crumbling - building ahead of them.

POV: You’re a vampire up in the dark rafters of a building, looking down on a lone human standing in the light below. Prey.

Official FM24 screenshot of the in-match engine showing a team scoring a goal in front of a blue-and-white coloured crowd.

An open picture book resting on a desk, the visible two-page illustration showing a figure hunting strange creatures with their bow.

Looking down on a bright, colourful, blocky world where we’re trying very hard to keep our little train on its track. But the level is littered with obstacles, including but not limited to a gigantic spider in the swamp nearby.

Foolish Mortals screenshot

The bright green-haired character Sally tells us they can keep staring at the environment they’re standing in front of in the screenshot, but they’re not going to find anything. We see an illustrated cut-out of Sally and a text box next to them.

We see the shadowed back of Senua as she faces off against a huge, bald, humanoid of nightmares before her.

An illustration-style screenshot from The Rise of the Golden Idol showing a magazine and coffee cup in front of a 70s TV screen.

A street scene in Kind Words 2. It’s cute and dinky like Animal Crossing. Characters stop and talk to each other. A big chat box pops up and in it, it says, “Hi! How are you?"

Avowed lead character with magical tome

A screenshot from the history game of Jeff Minter’s Llamasoft work. It shows a photo of a young Jeff next to a sliding timeline. He’s got shades on, his trademark long hair, and he looks cool.

Bulwark - supply lines visible over a city

Thank Goodness You’re Here salesman in town

A Little Nightmares 3 screenshot showing one of its two protagonists walking along the sandy streets of a ruined ancient city, collapsed market stalls on either side.

Kay in Star Wars Outlaws

Weird purple space worm thing from Thrasher

Two tiny pixelated camel riders make their way across a sun bleached desert that’s flanked by huge, towering bones.

A top down-ish image of dozens of players with swords on their back running into a structure. They are chased by fire. There’s a sandy, desert aesthetic to the whole image.

A colourful image showing a red-haired character with a backpack on and holding a sword, while next to them, a cable car moves away from a pylon supporting the wire. Fantasy meets the real world? It’s a strange juxtaposition.

A grainy, black and white image of what appears to be a wooden church interior, where rows of small pews are sat on by people wearing… horse heads.

A pixel art postcard of a picture, showing a small, colourful house café with tall trees side, with a lake out front and towering mountains in the back. You can practically breathe the clean mountain air from here.

The first person perspective of a child holding a spoon in some kind of bowl or dish with small disc-shaped things in. A dog sits nearby watching. The characters are plane white line drawings, almost, while the area around is a heavily filtered photograph, rendered in purple and orange.

A side-on shot of a small caped character and a wolf facing each other in the clearing of a forest. It’s a heavily illustrative style, with shards of sunlight slicing through the middle of the image.

The puzzle adventure game paper trail. A doll-like character with rosy red cheeks stands on a wooden jetty reaching out into bright turquoise waters - or perhaps it’s a swamp. Two people sit in a rowing boat nearby.

A first-person view of a futuristic and brightly cel-shaded bar. The all-in-one suited and masked bartender is asking what drink they can get us.

Screenshot from Dragon Age: Dreadwolf teaser showing the port city of Treviso sits bathed in evening light.

Dreamsettler screenshot showing a beige desktop background and series of overlapping, retro PC windows with bright clashing colours.