Callum's most anticipated games for 2026

More than a dash of horror

As we cross out the final days of 2025 on our Treehouse calendar, we've allowed ourselves to look out at the encroaching mists of 2026. These are the games we hope will emerge from the fog.

If I were the foreman of an game refinery, I might be dabbing my forehead in anticipation right now because there is a lot coming down the pipeline in 2026. You may be looking at the telltale bulge of Grand Theft Auto, but I'm more focused on the amount of damn fine horror we've got in the plumbing.

I've had my ear to riveting and I can hear the screach and scuttle of otherworldly creatures, all of which are now catalogued on my wishlist for 2026. I'm ready to get my spook on next year, and here are four games I'm gonna devour, plus one non-horror game that will almost certainly not come out, but I'm crossing my fingers it will.

Resident Evil Requiem

Release date: February 27, 2026
From: Steam, Epic, Xbox

As a longtime fan of the series, Resident Evil Requiem is shaping up to be exactly what I want. We’ve got a new protagonist, Grace Ashcroft, quivering in her booties as she's hunted by a big, bug-eyed stalker that can crawl through walls, and Leon Kennedy returning to mutter corny one-liners and karate kick zombies in the face. In other words, Capcom is taking another crack at Resident Evil 6's split of slow-paced horror and fast-paced survival action. Admittedly, that game was a catastrophic mess of ideas, but it had promise: Offer the yin and yang of what makes Resident Evil special.

Capcom may have whiffed it in 2012, but they’ve spent the decade since executing both styles impeccably. If Grace Ashcroft’s stints of first-person corridor creeping are as tense as Resident Evil 7’s, and Leon’s zombie chainsawing action-fests are as frantic as Resident Evil 4 Remake’s, then Requiem has everything it needs to be a delectable all-you-can-eat buffet of Resi goodness.

Requiem looks to be a combo platter in another way. It also looks to combine the first-person spooks of new-age Resident Evil with the third-person action of its Resi 4 overhaul. I’m also getting a distinct vibe of the original game's Spencer Mansion from the Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Centre Grace explores in the trailers. It feels like Capcom signalling the end of an era, and I cannot wait for the gloriously violent jaunt down memory lane I really hope this ends up being.

Reanimal

Release date: February 13, 2026
From: Steam, Epic, Xbox

Playing Little Nightmares 3 earlier this year left me hollow. It was fine. It looked like Little Nightmares. Played like Little Nightmares. Was themed like Little Nightmares. But something was missing. Then I played the Steam Next Fest demo for Reanimal, the new game from Little Nightmares 1 and 2 developer Tarsier Studios, and I realised exactly what was missing: Tarsier.

Reanimal is Tarsier doing what they do best. I’m a little guy in a big world ripped from my nightmares, and this time, that world is full of slug men wearing empty human skin like fleshy mechs and decaying animal husks that reanimate to devour me whole.

But beneath all the grotesque environments that look like grim paintings and pulse-racing chases with towering abominations, there’s a mystery about kids in animal masks trapped on a farm where they're the livestock. I have no clue what they’re doing there, but I’m so excited to find out.

Mewgenics

Release date: February 10, 2026
From: Steam

Mewgenics has you raise a bunch of raggedy stray cats in a shack and, to keep them fed, send them out on short DND campaigns through local back alleys in search of grub. Each campaign is a randomised hodgepodge of skill-checking story events and turn-based fights against fellow strays, pests, and, of course, demons. And between both, you level up and gain magical abilities. Standard fare, such as being able to fart with such force that it sends your opponents flying into nearby objects.

When the campaign’s wrapped up, your crew return to their shack, loot in paw, and share a steamy night of post-adventure passion. A few birds and a couple of bees later, you have some kittens, and look at that, they’ve inherited their frisky dad’s magic farts. So, naturally, you strap armour to those flatulent little bastards and send them onto the frontlines. The entire thing looks disgusting. Definitely juvenile. And I’m in.

I remember playing Binding Of Isaac and adoring how McMillen layered his irreverent, albeit unnerving, animation style atop a crushing gameplay loop. His art finds such a thin line between humour and horror, and exploring the endlessly expanding depths of Isaac's basement veers between wildly unserious and deeply unsettling on a whim. But Binding Of Isaac’s twin stick shooting was never really my jam. Turn-based strategy? Now there’s something I can get behind, and I have a feeling I'll be sinking a revolting amount of hours into Mewgenics, creating my elite feline farting squadron.

Ontos

Release date: 2026
From: Steam, Epic, Xbox

I’ve always been somewhat lukewarm on Frictional Games’ Amnesia series. Its sanity mechanics left me cold, and its psychological stories never hit quite right. The studio’s second project, Soma, however, left a lasting impression. Dark, morally probing, and deliciously dystopian, ending on one of the most affecting final stingers I’ve experienced.

In Ontos, a spiritual successor to Soma, Frictional has found room to go back to sci-fi, and man, the second course looks appetising. The whole thing takes place in a space hotel filled with walls of talking rats, dissected human heads kept alive by wires, and mysterious dark vortexes to other worlds. And on top of that you’re guided by Stellan Skarsgard, who plays a scientist that all but admits he’s a megalomaniacal crackpot struggling with a god complex disguised behind the veil of “progress”. When do I check in?

It looks more BioShock-y than I would have imagined for a Fricitional game. The wider scope intrigues me, especially as it seems to be filled with creepy ideas that I can't wait to recoil from. I'm sure I'll some messed-up stuff when I inevitably let a twitching rat monster loose because it asked me very nicely in its croaky human voice.

Persona 4 Revival

Release date: TBA
From: Steam, Xbox

I’m a huge Persona fan, and the game that got me into the series was Persona 4. When Persona 4 Revival, a full, from-the-ground-up remake, was announced last year, I jumped out my seat, danced around my room and then immediately started planning the best way to ace my fictional exams.

I’m damn excited for Atlus to revisit this game with the same love and attention they did with last year’s Persona 3 remake, Persona 3 Reload. Persona 4 had a unique vibe that, with a little modern Atlus TLC, could really make it shine in 2026. It wasn’t set in the series's standard sprawling cityscape, but instead a rural town named Inaba. Plagued by a string of ritualistic murders that, of course, are connected to a world of shadowy dungeons and mystical gods, it falls to your team of plucky, charming high schoolers have to defeat.

It has some of the best characters in the entire series, and while easy to deduce, its whodunnit mystery is a unique hook that leads to a long and compelling story. However, its a story that desperately needs a cultural update. Several of its side plots are misogynistic and inexcusably homophobic. If Atlus bring me back with the punchy goodness of the modern control scheme, rewrite its insensitive character arcs and drench the whole thing in stylish sauce, I’ll fall head over heels for this anime dungeon-crawler cross Japanese high school simulator all over again.