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Heartopia, the new cosy life sim from XD Games, has officially arrived on mobile, right on schedule. If you’ve been keeping up with Heartopia news, you’re likely already aware that the game has pushed back its Steam release to an indeterminate point in 2026.
Heartopia developer XD Games has delivered the news anyone who tried out the life sim game had been waiting for. The Animal Crossing-like cozy multiplayer game will finally arrive on January 7 across Android, iOS, and PC - with one caveat.
Troy Baker, one of the most well known actors working in video games, believes generative AI could have a positive effect overall on performing arts. Baker thinks it'll cause a reaction whereby people will seek out "authentic" experiences more - live shows, live theatre - and turn away from "gruel that gets distilled to me through a black mirror".
43.8 million player votes later, the winners of the 2025 Steam Awards have been announced, with Hollow Knight: Silksong securing top prize, Game of the Year.
2025 has gone by in a flash, hasn't it? Well, apart from the days I've spent tabulating all your Game of the Year votes and presenting the results here - that has felt like an eternity and I think has given me permanent neck pain. But, let's not worry about that. I'm sure you'll agree it was worth the sacrifice.
As the Bob Dylan song goes, how many lush alien planets must a Man presumptuously land on and turn into poorly optimised Toyota plants before he finally decides he’s sick of being an extractivist piece of shit? Dylan was being rhetorical, but I studied at the school of Homer Simpson, and want you to give me an actual figure. I’m going to say: four and a half. If you’ve yet to hit your personal quota, well, here’s StarRupture out now in early access.
A nice, juicy nine-minute-long Styx: Blades of Greed gameplay trailer has been plucked from the tree of stealth games today. Juicy in the sense that nine minutes is plenty of time to help ascertain whether a game looks like it could be fun, yet if we're sticking with this metaphor this is one of those apples that's really good but has a nasty bruise on it you have to avoid.
Oodles of games are coming out in 2026, and many look impressive. There's the new Resident Evil, yet another reimagining of Tomb Raider 1, and a 007 game that reminds me of the often-forgotten cartoon series James Bond Jr. All will probably be decent, and some might even dictate my guide writing duties.
While the old saying goes 'A game in the basket is worth two in Steam Wishlist', as we teeter into a new year it's good to highlight a couple of the games shuffling our way. Especially when there are quite so many of them that include big stompy mechs. Some of them as big as cities. My engine oil-starved heart beats and thumps in anticipation.
I've tried to keep the list to games confirmed for release next year – tragically cutting The Free Shepherd, which is planned to release in 2027 – but there is one exception.
So let's begin with the outlier that's likely to wander tardily into 2027.
A recap: of the seven hopefuls I slipped into our bulk 2025 list of "Oh, that looks alright" games, only three actually released in 2025, and one of them wasn’t very good. If it’s the hope that kills you, I am therefore dead four, arguably five times over. Real Necron shit, honestly.
RPS Advent Calendar voting remains an esoteric and mercurial process, even to those of us who practice in it. If two games get the same amount of votes, which goes higher in the list? Did Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor technically release in 2025 or 2024? These are questions most of us dare not ask, and those that do often vanish mysteriously overnight. Until January 3rd or so, when they come back from holiday.
One thing’s for sure: I had a bunch of games that no-one else voted for. Don’t be sad, games. I still like you.
It is an incredibly difficult thing to sell someone on a game in just one sentence. What are you meant to focus on, genre, specific mechanics, an interesting element of the story? There's not a right answer! I'm not going to figure out a recipe for success right here and now, but what I can do is at least show you a single sentence that sold me on a game called Burden Street Station quite quickly: "A surreal, narrative adventure game where you shapeshift during conversations to uncover how God went missing."
"Where the hell did that goblin go?" asks a mean knight of some sort whose English accent is of questionable authenticity at the beginning of the latest trailer for Styx: Blades of Greed. This is a reasonable question! When the goblin stealth game was revealed earlier this year, it was slated for a 2025 release, except the rest of the year is in very short supply. So, this trailer acts as a double way: a confirmation of a delay, and the announcement of a proper release date.
I'm still a little burned-out on Carrollian adaptations after Nightingale, but I will not let that tarnish my enjoyment of Wonder of Blue, a fey 2D labyrinth roguelite based on fiction's most famous Alice after Alice Bee (RPS in peace). It features a lovely selection of pixelart colour palettes, and some pleasingly tricksy enemies. You play Liddell – yes, I too had forgotten Alice's second name isn’t “in Wonderland” – and you are trying to navigate a series of procedurally generated dungeons made up of single-screen rooms. At the end of the journey waits the Red Queen.
I understand why walking sims aren't really a thing any more. Some of the earliest big names like Gone Home, Dear Esther, and arguably The Stanley Parable all came at a time where indie games were growing in popularity, but were still predominantly 2D. Something simple like a walking sim is obviously quite resourceful compared to contemporary AAA games, but now the indie scene has blown up to the point where mechanics-first genres like roguelikes are dominating. Except I like walking sims! So when a game like nophenia, a walking sim where you're a wolfgirl with a flip phone exploring different dream worlds, shows up, I'm going to pay attention.
Animal Crossing… in space! That is what Young Suns, the latest game from Goodbye Volcano High, Depanneur Nocturne, and GNOG developer KO_OP Mode, appears to be when put reductively. But let's not put it reductively, because while this is one of those cozy life-sims, it does sound like it has something going on for it, particularly for the more revolutionary of you out there.
Styx: Blades of Greed - the next entry in Cyanide Studio's infiltration series, which plops players into the shoes of a caustic goblin - will now release next year.
Video games don't have mysteries any more. There are too many people and too much internet to allow for such a thing, anything without an answer can, must, and will be solved by someone, often in a timeframe faster than developers expect. So I appreciate when developers refuse to divulge details, or indulge individuals in their desire to know exactly how much they have on their checklist, one such developer being Tonda Ros of Blue Prince developer Dogubomb.
Celebrated indie gem Blue Prince won't be getting a localisation or a direct sequel, as its creator wants all his projects "to be able to stand up on their own and be unique things".
