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15 Best Summer Video Games To Play In 2026

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Your summer lineup.

Nazarii Verbitskiy

Gaming - June 8th 2026, 19:00 GMT+2

Slay the Spire 2 — 15. Slay the Spire 2 (2026)
Slay the Spire 2 takes the card-based roguelike formula that hooked millions and adds just enough complexity to feel fresh without breaking what already worked. The new character classes introduce mechanics that change how you think about deck building, while environmental hazards and branching paths make each climbing attempt feel less predictable. It's the rare sequel that understands its predecessor's appeal well enough to expand thoughtfully rather than just pile on features. Four years of waiting paid off because MegaCrit clearly spent that time studying what made players return to the Spire hundreds of times. | © MegaCrit

Pragmata gameplay — 14. Pragmata (2026)
Pragmata finally arrives after years of cryptic trailers that showed a girl, a robot, and a ruined Earth without explaining much else. Capcom's sci-fi mystery turns out to be part survival horror, part philosophical puzzle game, where every answer about the world's collapse leads to three new questions. The atmosphere feels heavy and strange in ways that stick with you, especially when the robot companion starts glitching, and the girl begins remembering things that don't make sense. It's the kind of game that will have people arguing about the ending for months. | © Capcom

Subnautica 2 — 13. Subnautica 2 (2025)
Subnautica 2 takes the terror of deep ocean exploration and makes it worse by adding cooperative multiplayer, which means you can now panic about giant sea monsters with friends. The game doubles down on the original's formula of beautiful alien waters hiding absolutely nightmarish creatures, but sharing that experience somehow makes the jump scares hit harder instead of easier. Building underwater bases feels more urgent when you have teammates depending on your engineering skills to keep everyone alive. Nothing quite matches the specific dread of hearing something massive swimming just outside your shared habitat's walls. | © Unknown Worlds Entertainment

Resident Evil Requiem — 12. Resident Evil Requiem (2026)
Resident Evil Requiem brings the franchise back to its survival horror roots after years of action-heavy sequels, trapping players in a claustrophobic research facility where every bullet counts. The game ditches the over-the-top explosions for genuine dread, using sound design and lighting to make even empty hallways feel threatening. Capcom clearly studied what made the RE2 remake work so well, because this feels like classic Resident Evil without the clunky controls that made the originals frustrating. When the zombies finally show up, they hit harder because you have spent so much time dreading the moment. | © Capcom

Forza Horizon 6 — 11. Forza Horizon 6 (2026)
Forza Horizon 6 takes the festival racing formula to Japan and immediately becomes the most visually striking entry in the series. The neon-soaked Tokyo nights and winding mountain passes of Hakone create driving experiences that feel more like interactive tourism than traditional racing. Every car handles with the same obsessive attention to physics that made previous games work, but now you are drifting through cherry blossom tunnels and speeding past bullet trains. The seasonal weather system turns familiar routes into completely different challenges when summer storms flood the streets or winter snow transforms mountain climbs into white-knuckle survival runs. | © Microsoft

A Short Hike — 10. A Short Hike (2019)
A Short Hike gives you one simple goal and then lets you wander toward it however you want. The mountain peak calls, but the real joy comes from getting distracted by every side path, hidden treasure, and random conversation with woodland creatures along the way. Nothing here feels rushed or demanding, just a gentle world that rewards curiosity over efficiency. It proves that sometimes the best adventures are the ones where reaching the destination matters less than how you choose to get there. | © Adamgryu

Dead Island 2 — 9. Dead Island 2 (2023)
Dead Island 2 spent over a decade in development hell, switching studios and getting canceled so many times that it became a running joke about vaporware. When it finally arrived in 2023, the zombie slasher delivered exactly what the original promised but never quite nailed: visceral melee combat that makes every baseball bat swing feel like it has real weight behind it. The game turns Los Angeles into a neon-soaked zombie playground where the gore is so over-the-top it becomes genuinely funny rather than disturbing. All that waiting actually paid off, because this feels like the game the series was always trying to be. | © Deep Silver

Firewatch — 8. Firewatch (2016)
Firewatch drops you into the Wyoming wilderness as a fire lookout who only talks to his supervisor through a radio, and that limitation becomes the entire point. The game builds a relationship entirely through voice acting and dialogue choices while you hike through forests, investigate mysteries, and watch your isolation slowly turn into something more complicated. Nothing you expect to happen actually happens, because this is really about two people talking through their problems while pretending to do their jobs. The ending refuses to give you the thriller resolution the setup seems to promise, which frustrated some players but makes perfect sense for a game about real human messiness. | © Campo Santo

Just Cause 3 — 7. Just Cause 3 (2015)
Just Cause 3 turns destruction into the entire point, giving you a grappling hook, a wingsuit, and a small country's worth of military hardware to tear apart. The physics system lets you chain explosions across fuel depots and bridges in ways that feel like directing your own action movie, even when the plot makes no sense. Everything about the game exists to support one simple loop: see something big, blow it up spectacularly, then move on to the next target. Summer gaming doesn't get much more mindlessly satisfying than watching a dictator's statue topple in slow motion while you parachute away from the blast. | © Square Enix

Far Cry 3 — 6. Far Cry 3 (2012)
Far Cry 3 drops you on a tropical island that looks like paradise until the locals start shooting at you with homemade flamethrowers. The game turns a vacation gone wrong into an excuse for absolute chaos, letting you hunt tigers with a bow, burn down outposts with molotov cocktails, and gradually lose your mind alongside protagonist Jason Brody. Vaas Montenegro delivers some of the most unhinged villain monologues in gaming history, especially his famous rant about the definition of insanity. What started as a rescue mission becomes a power fantasy about how violence changes people, wrapped in the most beautiful murder sandbox ever created. | © Ubisoft

Dave the Diver — 5. Dave the Diver (2023)
Dave the Diver turns the simple premise of running a sushi restaurant into something unexpectedly addictive by making you catch every fish yourself. The diving segments feel like a completely different game, mixing resource management with underwater exploration that keeps revealing new mysteries and creatures. What starts as a straightforward loop of dive-catch-serve quickly branches into environmental puzzles, side quests, and a story that gets genuinely weird without losing its charm. The whole thing works because it never takes itself too seriously, even when giant sea monsters show up. | © Nexon

Cropped Assassins Creed IV Black Flag — 4. Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag (2013)
Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag figured out that the best part of being a pirate isn't the moral complexity or the historical accuracy. It's sailing around the Caribbean with your crew singing sea shanties while you hunt for treasure and pick fights with rival ships. The game lets you ignore most of the Assassin's Creed stuff that was already getting stale by 2013 and just be Edward Kenway, a charming bastard who wants to get rich and sail fast boats. When your biggest problem is deciding whether to attack that merchant vessel or go explore that mysterious island on the horizon, you know the game got something right. | © Ubisoft

Stardew Valley — 3. Stardew Valley (2016)
Stardew Valley turns the simple act of watering crops into something that feels like meditation, building a farming routine that somehow never gets boring even after hundreds of hours. The game lets you inherit a rundown farm and rebuild it at your own pace, but the real hook comes from how it weaves together farming, friendships, and small-town mysteries without ever making any of it feel like work. Most life sims push you toward efficiency and optimization. This one just wants you to find a rhythm that feels good. | © ConcernedApe

Animal Crossing New Horizons — 2. Animal Crossing: New Horizons (2020)
Animal Crossing: New Horizons arrived at the exact moment when millions of people needed a gentle escape from reality, turning a Nintendo life simulator into a global phenomenon. The game lets you build your perfect island paradise one tree and coffee shop at a time, but the real magic happens in how it makes daily routines feel like genuine accomplishments. Paying off your house loan to a raccoon becomes strangely satisfying when the alternative is checking the news. It proved that sometimes the most radical thing a video game can do is let you exist peacefully. | © Nintendo

Breath of the Wild — 1. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017)
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild throws out decades of Zelda formula and drops you into a world that actually rewards curiosity instead of punishing it. Every hill can be climbed, every interesting landmark can be reached, and the game trusts you to figure out your own path through Hyrule without constant tutorials or hand-holding. The physics system turns simple interactions into playground experiments where you can solve puzzles with fire, magnets, or just dropping heavy objects on enemies. It feels like the first open-world game that actually understands what "open" should mean. | © Nintendo

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Summer is the perfect time to work through a backlog or dive into something new, and 2026 has plenty worth playing. These 15 games are the ones worth clearing your schedule for, whether you're looking for something to sink a hundred hours into or just need a few good afternoons of entertainment.

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Summer is the perfect time to work through a backlog or dive into something new, and 2026 has plenty worth playing. These 15 games are the ones worth clearing your schedule for, whether you're looking for something to sink a hundred hours into or just need a few good afternoons of entertainment.