Developer: Afil Games Publisher: Afil Games Release Date: January 13, 2026 Available for: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Switch (version reviewed) Beetle Shock could be described in a sentence written in crayon on a napkin, and you’d lose nothing in terms of detail or value prospect. That’s not entirely a criticism, either – it is exactly what it looks like on the tin, short and slight yet adequate enough as a game to make the question of whether it’s worth your time more subjective an inquiry than normal. What we have here is a mascot platformer that owes part of its design to A Boy and His Blob , minus the jellybean-infused powers of a shapeshifting companion. Like the Boy of that game, Beetle Shock’s titular protagonist is limited in their mobility options; they can only run forward and back, jump, and perform a mid-air ground pound that smashes through breakable bricks and increases the height of jumps when hopping on mushrooms (this game's version of bounce pads). The Beetle...
Yes, I'm doing this again, running down the games set to release in a given year that are (from my perspective) the most immediately compelling based on their marketing and thus have me convinced that they could turn out well. Yes, I recognize that some of the following games don't have firm release dates, just general windows for release like "Q1" or "Q3" or "sometime in 2020". Still, we're doing this because I have some thoughts, this has proven the best format for expressing said thoughts, and it's January March, what else have you got going on? So, without further ado... 9) Carrion , by Phobia Game Studio (??? 2020) An entire game whose premise seemed to have emerged from watching 1982's The Thing and thinking "This is cool... but what if we let you be the monster?" I'd already be onboard with the concept and its apparent embrace of lurid, pixelated brutality, but Devolver Digital's been on a tear thi...