By Nelson Schneider - 01/10/26 at 10:22 PM CT
Welcome back to MeltedJoystick’s mostly-annual feature where we take a look at the most exciting titles slated to be released over the course of the coming year. While these titles frequently don’t come out when expected thanks to delays, when they do, they either horribly disappoint OR find their way into the MeltedJoystick Games of the Year list. Let’s take a look at the most promising titles coming in 2026!
1. Solasta 2
While the glorious hype for “Baldur’s Gate 3” is well behind us, and the hype for Larian’s next ‘Divinity’ game should be saved until we see more than a cinematic trailer, there’s another classic-style RPG coming this year to keep us waiting with ‘bated breath. “Solasta 2” is the sequel to “Solasta: Crown of the Magister,” a not-officially-licensed cRPG based loosely on the Open Game License content from D&D 5th Edition – so don’t expect to see any copyrighted critters like beholders or illithids. The MJ Crew has the original “Solasta” in our coop backlog, with three other games in front of it, so we aren’t 100% sure that this series is actually all that great, from personal experience, but hype is usually based on assumptions and half-informed opinions, so it’s fine.
2. Crimson Desert
The non-MMO sequel to “Black Desert Online” was supposed to be released last year, but, *oopsies!* It wasn’t. So now we’re expecting it to drop this year, with the same (or nearly the same) levels of hype for the game based on the gorgeous visuals and massive open world of its predecessor, but without all the Korean MMORPG guff tacked on.
3. Bloodstained: The Scarlet Engagement
Iga is back with a sequel to the spiritual successor to ‘Castlevania.’ While I found “Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night” to be not particularly good and heavily over-designed, and I don’t care even the slightest about the 8-bit ‘Classicvania’ style side-games in the series, I would love it if the new ‘Bloodstained’ slated to drop in 2026 improves on the rough edges of the first one and feels less like an inexperienced studio’s first Unity Engine game but more like the true evolution of ‘Metroidvania’-style ‘Castlevania’ is was intended to be.
4. Grand Theft Auto 6
While I personally couldn’t give less of a sh!t about anything related to ‘Grand Theft Auto,’ or, indeed, any series wherein the player gets to experience life as a modern-day criminal (like ‘Yakuza,’ etc.), Chris does. And the levels of hype for the 6th ‘Grand Theft Auto’ game finally coming out of Development Hell at RockStar games has THEDisgruntledDwarf radiating enough hype that it even penetrated my personal dome of apathy. And with the list of hype-worthy games coming in 2026 being particularly anemic and dismal, there’s no harm in including it.
