By Nelson Schneider - 12/25/25 at 06:24 PM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! 2025 is on its way out the door, and we find ourselves looking into a brave new future without the looming forms of the Big Three threatening us with terrible “AAA” releases. Likewise, with old, worn-out samurai like Square-Enix, Konami, Capcom, Sega, and even Nintendo failing to produce the way they once did, it seems like the second half of the 2020’s will rest firmly on the shoulders of Indie developers, as they become an ever-larger-and-more-important facet of of Gaming’s ecosystem. Will 2026 mark the beginning of a Gaming Renaissance? Or will we all come to our senses and realize that the vast, overwhelming amount of new game releases are Indies already, and only a couple of good ones float to the surface each year? Let’s try to divine the entrails of January’s releases in an attempt to see the beginnings of a (new?) pattern!
Well... things might be starting off somewhat on the right foot, as there is no traditional shovelware coming out in January. Of course, there are still ports upon ports upon ports, a few of which are Noteworthy Ports, and thus belong in this category. Nintendo is porting “Animal Crossing: New Horizons” from the original Switch to the Switch 2 instead of releasing a new ‘Animal Crossing’ game, which is... an interesting choice. Square-Enix is also porting “Final Fantasy 7: Remake Intergrade” to the Switch 2. Last year’s Indie Darling, “Animal Well” is leaving Steam and Xbox to find new players on the PlayStation 5 and... original Switch. Lastly, there’s a compilation of so-called “Award Winning Indie Gems” hitting the original Switch... which is dubious considering I’ve never heard of any of them.
The start of a new year is usually light in heavy-hitting releases, and 2026 looks to be no different. There are only TWO new multi-platform releases and TWO exclusives. In multi-plats, there’s a sequel to the gay-vampire-themed Soulslike, “Code Vein 2,” as well as yet another sequel in the long-running ‘Legend of Heroes’ RPG series by Falcom and NIS, “Trails Beyond the Horizon.” I will not be playing either one (even if Epic gives them away for free), since Soulslikes are the worst thing to happen to gaming since the Atari (delenda est) crash, and I have never liked anything Falcom has developed or that NIS has published.
The only exclusives coming in January are both going straight to Nintendo... but are both third-party Adventure games for the original Switch. “The Excavation of Hob’s Burrow” is one of those Hidden Object Adventure games that could very well be a mobile game, while “Temirana: The Lucky Princess and the Tragic Knights” is a Visual Novel published by Idea Factory. Nobody, and I mean NO-BODY, should be interested in either of these.
*rasp-EFFing-berry* It looks like the other trash peddlers in the Industry are just keeping-on keeping-on, doing what they’ve done for over a decade already. The only thing anyone should get excited about in January would be True Console Peasants who don’t even have a potato Chromebook on which to play “Animal Well” finally having the opportunity to play it on consoles (LOL, Xbox).
Backlog Embiggened: +0
