The best new game releases coming in 2024

2023 was, you could say, an interesting year for video games. It unleashed a metric ton of genre-defining, record-breaking new classics, including The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and Baldur’s Gate 3, but was also one of the most devastating layoff periods for gaming companies in recent history. There’s no telling what precise delights or horrors lay waiting in lovely 2024, but we can, at least, prepare ourselves for a bunch of exciting video game releases.

It might feel difficult to get truly jazzed about 2024 games while still navigating the industry’s various chokepoints, from a contentious Game Awards ceremony to workers placing appropriate pressure on stony-hearted studios. But, remember, we turn to video games for release. And 2024 already seems packed with several major titles, like the bold Hyper Light Breaker and Princess Peach: Showtime!, which promise to take us to far and entertaining lands.

As was the case in 2023 (and the year before that, and the year before that, and…), you’ll recognize titles from Polygon’s most anticipated games lists from previous years reappear on this one, such as the perpetually delayed Skull and Bones and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. This reflects another truth about the current state of gaming: You never know what will happen, or when.

That said, there are plenty of 2024 games that already have release windows or exact dates. You’ll find many of them in our list of 50 games, all of which suggest another monumental year for gaming.

Another Code: Recollection

Image: Nintendo

Release date: Jan. 19
Platforms: Nintendo Switch

Nintendo is bringing developer Cing’s 2005 point-and-click adventure Trace Memory to a new audience, as well as its sequel, Another Code: R, which will become accessible in North America for the first time since its original Wii release. Like the original games, this collection has players assist 13-year-old Ashley in an seaside investigation of her presumably dead father, though it’s updated with redone visuals, explorable environments, and a brand-new hint system.

Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy

Image: Capcom

Release date: Jan. 25
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows PC, and Xbox One

Capcom first released Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney in 2007, as part of its theatrical courtroom visual novel series Ace Attorney. This “renovated,” as Capcom’s description says, trilogy includes the first Apollo Justice game, 2013 3DS game Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies, and 2017’s Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice.

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden

Image: Don’t Nod/Focus Entertainment

Release date: Feb. 13
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X

Life Is Strange developer Don’t Nod is once again flirting with the unknown in its 17th-century-set ghost romance Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden. The action role-playing game will task you, sort of a human sage stick, or “Banisher,” with lifting an evil curse and finding a way to reconnect with your true love’s spirit.

Skull and Bones

Image: Ubisoft

Release date: Feb. 16
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X

2024 will indeed be a big year if pirate extravaganza Skull and Bones manages to launch after five years of delays, like Ubisoft says it will. The action-adventure game, which lets you steer your 17th-century ship into fame and infamy, is currently slated for a Feb. 16 release.

Mario vs. Donkey Kong

Image: Nintendo

Release date: Feb. 16
Platforms: Nintendo Switch

On Feb. 16, Nintendo will soon update its beloved Game Boy Advance rivalry, Mario vs. Donkey Kong, for the Nintendo Switch. Like the original 2004 puzzle-platformer, this Mario vs. Donkey Kong remake will task you with navigating obstacles to recover Mini-Mario action figures, now with brand-new co-op play.

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons Remake

Release date: Feb. 28
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons enchanted critics with how seamlessly it blended camaraderie and puzzle-solving when it was released in 2013. Its remake retains the original adventure game’s storybook sentimentality while sharpening its graphics and adding a heart-plucking live orchestra to its soundtrack.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth

Image: Square Enix

Release date: Feb. 29
Platforms: PlayStation 5

The biggest addition to the Final Fantasy franchise this year might be Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. It’s the stand-alone second chunk of the three-game reimagining developer Square Enix has been plotting for its 1997 role-playing game since before FF7 Remake was released in 2020. Rebirth tracks spiky-haired dream boy Cloud as he pursues enemy Sephiroth and energizes it with updated combat and glittering graphics.

Alone in the Dark

Image: Pieces Interactive/THQ Nordic

Release date: March 20
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X

Publisher THQ Nordic plans to revive the campy 1992 survival horror game Alone in the Dark decades later, after a delay from the game’s original Oct. 25, 2023, release date. In any case, developer Pieces Interactive’s Southern Gothic drama — executed by Killing Eve actress Jodie Comer and Stranger Things’ David Harbour — looks like it’ll be delightfully spooky.

Dragon’s Dogma 2

Image: Capcom

Release date: March 22
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X

Action role-playing game Dragon’s Dogma 2 develops the barren open world developer Capcom first established in 2012, with its brooding role-playing hack-and-slash Dragon’s Dogma. The sequel should continue the first game’s rewarding combat loops.

Princess Peach: Showtime!

Image: Nintendo

Release date: March 22
Platforms: Nintendo Switch

Thrillingly, Princess Peach: Showtime! is the first Nintendo game in nearly 20 years where Princess Peach is the primary protagonist, not a disoriented damsel. The action-adventure game will push Peach through different outfits — sword fighter, pastry chef, kung fu contessa, etc. — and abilities in order to save her at-risk show at the Sparkle Theater.

Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes

Image: Xbox/Twitch

Release date: April 23
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X

As a spiritual successor to director Yoshitaka Murayama’s Suikoden series, role-playing game Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes will incorporate a huge crew of characters (or 100 heroes, if you haven’t already deduced that yourself) into its lush 2.5D world. The story of two boys, twisted together by fate, will arrive on most consoles, as well as on Game Pass.

Braid, Anniversary Edition

Image: Thekla/Number None/Hothead Games

Release date: April 30
Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and iOS or Android for Netflix subscribers

2008 puzzle-platformer Braid is getting an elegant update to its iconic watercolor-style forest. Braid, Anniversary Edition “[respects] the original game,” says developer Jonathan Blow on its website, while smoothing movement, adding more “sophisticated” animations, and making sure the indie title’s upgraded music sounds “very moody.”

Destiny 2: The Final Shape

Image: Bungie

Release date: June 4
Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X

The Final Shape adds, according to developer Bungie, a new campaign, an “impossible place” called The Pale Heart, and three new Super abilities for Destiny 2, the free-to-play online FPS going strong since 2017.

Black Myth: Wukong

Release date: Aug. 20
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X

The 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West has, as one of the world’s most popular Buddhist folktales, had its parts harvested for blockbuster movies, anime, and video games. Action-RPG Black Myth: Wukong is the latest game to try to harness Journey’s layered mythology, making you the chosen one in a grand, challenging landscape.

Anger Foot

Image: Free Lives/Devolver Digital

Release date: TBD
Platforms: Windows PC

First-person shooter Anger Foot knows that irritation is stored in the stomp, and so it lets you play as a gunslinger whose kick is as destructive as their guns. The Halloween-colored, fast-paced gangster blaster should rock your PC when it arrives sometime in 2024.

Animal Well

Image: Shared Memory/Bigmode

Release date: TBD
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, and Windows PC

Puzzle-laden Metroidvania Animal Well looks like a delicate game, like a spider web illuminated in perfect, round raindrops. It’ll be the first game from new indie publisher Bigmode, which video game shitposter and YouTuber Dunkey founded in 2022. Animal Well looks to be more serious than what Dunkey is known for — the pixelated nighttime adventure will encourage you to embrace powerlessness as you observe and explore its dense, mysterious forest.

Ara: History Untold

Image: Xbox/Twitch

Release date: TBD
Platforms: Windows PC

Ara: History Untold is an upcoming turn-based grand strategy video game for Windows, published by Xbox Game Studios. In it, you’ll lead civilizations through their ancient history, medieval period, and way past our modern iPhone bonanza into a “bright (or not so bright) future,” Oxide Games writes in its developer diary.

Ark 2

Image: Studio Wildcard

Release date: Expected by end of 2024
Platforms: Windows PC and Xbox Series X

Survival game Ark 2 will expand Studio Wildcard’s Ark universe, which introduced players to a desert island packed with dinosaurs in 2015, during its 2024 early access period. Fans found 2023’s glitchy remaster Ark: Survival Ascended disappointing, so they’re hoping Ark 2 lives up to expectations.

Avowed

Image: Xbox/Twitch

Release date: TBD
Platforms: Windows PC and Xbox Series X

The grimly fantastic Avowed will elaborate on the old world Eora, in which Obsidian Entertainment’s 2015 RPG Pillars of Eternity is set. Like that game, which dutifully takes cues from the first two Baldur’s Gate games, first-person RPG Avowed combines monsters and magic as you look into a perplexing, spreading plague.

Baby Steps

Image: Gabe Cuzzillo, Maxi Boch, Bennett Foddy/Devolver Digital

Release date: TBD
Platforms: PlayStation 5 and Windows PC

Baby Steps is a proud walking simulator from the developers behind sarcastic, sweet indie games Getting Over It and Ape Out. Baby Steps has those other titles’ energy, like it’s holding in a laugh, and only requires you nudge its “unemployed failson” protagonist through forests, across streams, and over precarious bridges during its physics-based gameplay.

Bandle Tale: A League of Legends Story

Image: Riot Games

Release date: TBD
Platforms: Nintendo Switch and Windows PC

League of Legends players will be glad to know that the mystical knotted woods of Bandle City are getting their very own cozy spinoff game. The richly colored role-playing game features characters, huts, and trees as pudgy and delectable-looking as chocolate in a fancy box, and it’ll appropriately feature “farm-to-table” cooking, its game description says.

Blade Chimera

Image: Team Ladybug/Playism

Release date: TBD
Platforms: Nintendo Switch and Windows PC

2D action game Blade Chimera will bring to Switch and PC what every morose hero needs: a sword, explosive battles, and a hot, missing wife. As the demon hunter Shin, you’ll attack growling, building-sized monsters to recover memories and lost skills, navigating a cyberpunk pixel world with steely confidence.

Blue Protocol

Release date: TBD
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X

Bandai Namco is teaming up with publisher Amazon Games to deliver the online action role-playing game Blue Protocol, your personal anime epic. The strikingly animated game seems to offer sensational, high-stakes battles and an intriguing fairy-tale world in which you must, per the game description, face “an inescapable destiny that will determine the fate of planet Regnas.”

The Casting of Frank Stone

Image: Supermassive Games/Behaviour Interactive

Release date: TBD
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X

Horror heads assemble — Dead by Daylight developer Behaviour Interactive and interactive horror experts Supermassive Games are teaming up on The Casting of Frank Stone. The single-player narrative adventure promises to burst apart Dead by Daylight’s heavy lore in an unpredictable origin story.

Cat Quest 3

Image: The Gentlebros/Kepler Interactive

Release date: TBD
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X

Like the Cat Quests before it, RPG Cat Quest 3 lets you explore the world as a shaggy kitty. But, this time, you’ll navigate a 2.5D open world on a teetering sailboat, searching dappled blue seawater for treasure, weapons, and spells alone or with a local co-op companion.

Concord

Release date: TBD
Platforms: PlayStation 5 and Windows PC

There are very few available details about Concord, a sci-fi multiplayer FPS. For now, we know that it’ll be the first release from PlayStation Studios’ Firewalk Studios, and that the triple-pickle cheeseburger in its obscure trailer looks remarkably juicy (though its lettuce is questionably purple).

Contra: Operation Galuga

Release date: TBD
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X

Operation Galuga will be the first main game added to Konami’s Contra series since 2019. Like its predecessors, Operation Galuga will involve detonating bad guys across a series of aggressive stages, though new enemies, bosses, and co-op combat (up to four players in Arcade Mode) should help reinvigorate the series.

Core Keeper

Image: Pugstorm/Fireshine Games

Release date: TBD
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X

Build-your-own dungeon crawler Core Keeper has already thrilled Terraria fans during its two-year early access period, so the survival sandbox sim could have a great 2024 if its full game release happens as planned. It offers Stardew Valley-style graphics, and it’ll ultimately bring its crafting, farming, and mining safe haven to most platforms.

Death Trick: Double Blind

Release date: TBD
Platforms: Nintendo Switch and Windows PC

Death Trick: Double Blind is a 2000s-style detective visual novel in which you, alternating between a mid-20th-century private investigator and a magician, analyze a traveling circus star’s disappearance. The game, which was celebrated alongside indie darlings Goodbye Volcano High and Citizen Sleeper at 2023’s LudoNarraCon, is due in early 2024.

Dustborn

Release date: TBD
Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X

The sunset-tinted action-adventure game Dustborn offers a unique road-trip adventure across an alternate-history U.S. As con artist, punk rocker, and now delivery driver Pax, you’ll beat up robots with a baseball bat while struggling to drive a package to Nova Scotia.

Earth Defense Force 6

Image: Sandlot Games/D3 Publisher

Release date: TBD
Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Windows PC

Earth Defense Force 6 continues the 2003 FPS series with another belligerent, guns-blazing title. You’ll need to protect Earth’s paltry group of surviving humans from the alien colonists that plague them with rockets and square armor when the game is released in spring.

Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree

Image: FromSoftware/Bandai Namco

Release date: TBD
Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X

The details about Elden Ring expansion Shadow of the Erdtree are sparse, but the vibes are high and bountiful. As it’s accomplished with its magisterial main game, FromSoftware seems to be planning another regal and melancholy narrative.

Final Fantasy 14 Online on Xbox

Image: Square Enix via Polygon

Release date: TBD
Platforms: Xbox Series X

After 14 years, the massively multiplayer online role-playing game Final Fantasy 14 Online, along with its A Realm Reborn rework and Heavensward and Stormblood expansions, is coming to Xbox. Microsoft writes in a news post that Xbox Series X owners can expect to “embark upon a quest to deliver the land from an eternity of Darkness” by spring 2024.

Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail

Image: Square Enix

Release date: TBD
Platforms: Mac, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X

Final Fantasy 14 is also getting a brand-new expansion pack in summer 2024, called Dawntrail. It’ll introduce a plethora of content — including areas like the Urqopacha mountain region and Yak T’el forest, as well as new allies, jobs, and enemies — and it’ll even increase your level cap from 90 to 100, as a treat.

Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn

Image: Xbox/Twitch

Release date: TBD
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X

Action role-playing game Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn wants you to fight ancient gods using guns, magic, and axes in its gold-tinted fantasy world. Publisher Kepler Interactive will make the game available on Xbox Game Pass from day one.

Foamstars

Image: Square Enix

Release date: TBD
Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5

The fizzy, frothy Splatoon-like Foamstars will make it to PS4 and PS5 in early 2024. Publisher Square Enix says on its website that the 4v4 third-person online shooter will equip its players with a “unique foam gun” in order “to build terrain, creating slippery surfaces to surf around the arena at high speed, [and] help defend from enemy attacks.” It’s also a good opportunity to reminisce on when you accidentally put liquid dish soap in the dishwasher.

Funko Fusion

Image: 10:10 Games Limited/Universal Games

Release date: TBD
Platforms: PC and TBA consoles

You can think of the multiplayer adventure game Funko Fusion as Night at the Museum for Funko Pop figures, those top-heavy, beady-eyed renditions of geek culture’s most famous characters. Just as a game like Lego Star Wars makes plastic come to vibrant life, Funko Fusion will see to it that players — up to four of them in online multiplayer — fight off enemies and solve puzzles as a few-inches-tall collectible.

Ghost Bike

Release date: TBD
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X

Annapurna Interactive releases Ghost Bike, a cycling sim to the afterlife from the creators of Nidhogg, it’ll be available day one on Game Pass. The cel-shaded game unfolds over dusty, winding roads and has players set out “to revive the last of the Ghost Bikes, the magical couriers who rode between the world of the living and the world of the dead.”

Hades 2

Release date: TBD
Platforms: Windows PC

The sequel to 2020 godlike roguelike Hades arrives in early access in summer 2024. Hades 2 will make you “battle beyond the Underworld using dark sorcery to take on the Titan of Time,” developer Supergiant Games writes on its website, continuing the original game’s breathless crusade against destiny.

Hyper Light Breaker

Image: Heart Machine

Release date: TBD
Platforms: Windows PC

The shiny open-world roguelite Hyper Light Breaker is expected to arrive in early access in 2024, delayed from developer Heart Machine’s original 2023 plan. The co-op action role-playing game — which swells the neon world Heart Machine established in 2016 with 2D RPG Hyper Light Drifter — will let you explore procedurally generated biomes in search of monsters and kingly loot.

John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando

Image: Saber Interactive/Focus Entertainment

Release date: TBD
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X

Horror movie phenomenon John Carpenter told Insider once that all he really wants to do is “play video games and watch basketball,” so it makes sense that he’s expanding past his Fear 3 voice-over work and launching his own FPS blood-fest. John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando is a zombie horde splatter competition currently preparing for closed beta tests. Eventually, it’ll bring its crass ’80s horror to you.

Killer Klowns from Outer Space: The Game

Release date: TBD
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X

Killer Klowns from Outer Space: The Game will take its best bloody stab at bizarre nostalgia with an asymmetrical multiplayer horror experience based on the 1988 B-movie of the same name. It comes from Illfonic Publishing, which previously released the now-defunct Friday the 13th: The Game.

Kingdom Hearts Missing-Link

Image: Square Enix

Release date: TBD
Platforms: iOS and Android

Kingdom Hearts Missing-Link supplements Square Enix’s Disney mashup series with an, at the moment, arcane mobile experience. We don’t know much about the gameplay yet, just that its developer plans to allow “players to embark on adventures from the realm of Scala ad Caelum into the real world,” as indicated by a 2022 press release.

Lightyear Frontier

Image: Frame Break/Amplifier

Release date: TBD
Platforms: Windows PC and Xbox Series X

Open-world farming game Lightyear Frontier looks like freeze-dried catnip for spacebound WALL-E enthusiasts. In it, you’ll control a mech suit to set up a cozy home on a distant planet and farm leafy alien crops with up to three friends.

Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story

Release date: TBD
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X

2024 won’t contain anything else like Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story, Digital Eclipse’s newest addition to its “interactive documentary” library. Llamasoft will introduce a feature documentary on British game design superstar Jeff Minter, as well as 42 ports of games Minter made from the early ’80s to ’90s.

Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD

Image: Nintendo

Release date: TBD
Platforms: Nintendo Switch

Nintendo is upgrading 2013 3DS game Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon, in which a quivering Luigi is forced to vacuum up ghost bullies while solving puzzles in dim, cobwebbed mansions. You and up to three other players, either locally or online, will get a chance at ghost-hunter glory in Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD.

Metaphor: ReFantazio

Image: Studio Zero/Atlus

Release date: TBD
Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X

Three of the minds behind Persona 3, 4, and 5 — director Katsura Hashino, character designer Shigenori Soejima, and composer Shoji Meguro — are back with this high fantasy RPG. Packed with colorful lands and contorted monsters, Metaphor: ReFantazio will “return to the roots of where the Japanese games industry began,” Atlus first said in 2016, by being a “traditional fantasy RPG with distinctively Atlus flavor.”

MultiVersus

Image: Player First Games/Warner Bros. Games

Release date: TBD
Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X

MultiVersus’ 11-month-long open beta concluded in spring 2023 because there was, developer Player First Games said, “still a lot of work to do.” When the free-to-play crossover fighting game returns in 2024, it’ll feature improved matchmaking and progression, and former players will get to carry over their unused battle pass or earned items.

Neva

Image: Nomada Studio/Devolver Digital

Release date: TBD
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X

Gris developer Nomada Studio is painting with quiet beauty again. Neva is a graceful game that comes in shades of ballet slippers, telling “the moving tale of a young woman and her lifelong bond with a magnificent wolf as they embark on a thrilling adventure through a rapidly dying world,” its game description says.

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door

Image: Nintendo

Release date: TBD
Platforms: Nintendo Switch

Another tender remake for nostalgic Nintendo fans, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door will bring the acclaimed 2004 RPG to Switch.