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The 15 Most Influential Video Games of the 2020s

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Ignacio Weil

Gaming - June 24th 2026, 23:30 GMT+2

15. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (2023)

Nintendo looked at players breaking *Breath of the Wild* with physics tricks and basically said, “Fine, build the whole airplane.” *Tears of the Kingdom* turned improvisation into the main attraction, letting players glue, launch, fuse, and over-engineer their way through Hyrule like sleep-deprived inventors with swords. Its real influence is not just open-world freedom, but how confidently it trusted players to solve problems in ways the designers could never fully predict. | © Nintendo

14. Animal Well (2024)

*Animal Well* arrived looking tiny, quiet, and harmless, then casually reminded the indie scene that mystery is still one of gaming’s strongest currencies. Billy Basso’s puzzle-box platformer turned secrets into architecture, hiding layers beneath layers until Discord servers and Reddit threads started feeling like part of the game itself. It made “community discovery” feel exciting again without screaming for attention, which is a much harder trick than it sounds. | © Shared Memory

Dragons Dogma 2 Dragonsplague — 13. Dragon’s Dogma 2 (2024)

Capcom’s fantasy RPG did not try to sand down its weird edges for modern comfort, and that stubbornness became the whole point. *Dragon’s Dogma 2* pushed back against frictionless open-world design with unpredictable pawns, dangerous travel, strange NPC behavior, and quests that refused to behave like checklist chores. Not every player loved that, but influence is not always about universal applause; sometimes it is about forcing the genre to argue with itself. | © Capcom

Cropped Kingdom Come Deliverance II — 12. Kingdom Come: Deliverance II (2025)

Medieval RPGs often use history as wallpaper, but *Kingdom Come: Deliverance II* treats it like a machine with mud in the gears. Warhorse Studios doubled down on grounded role-playing, messy consequences, social class, awkward fights, and a world where heroism still has to worry about clean clothes and bad decisions. Its impact comes from proving that “realism” in games does not have to mean dullness; it can be dramatic, funny, punishing, and oddly intimate. | © Warhorse Studios

11. Street Fighter 6 (2023)

Capcom did something rare with *Street Fighter 6*: it made a legendary fighting series feel welcoming without making it feel watered down. Modern controls, strong netcode, the Battle Hub, and World Tour gave newcomers more doors into the genre, while veterans still had all the muscle memory, mind games, and frame-data obsession they could possibly want. It became a blueprint for how legacy franchises can modernize without apologizing for being competitive. | © Capcom

Animal Crossing New Horizons — 10. Animal Crossing: New Horizons (2020)

*Animal Crossing: New Horizons* did not just become a hit; it became a shared digital living room at exactly the moment people needed one. Nintendo’s island life simulator turned decorating, turnip prices, museum donations, and tiny outfit choices into social rituals, while screenshots spread like postcards from calmer parallel universes. Its influence still shows up in cozy games chasing that same mix of self-expression, routine, and low-stakes emotional survival. | © Nintendo EPD

9. Hades (2020)

Supergiant Games cracked a problem that had frustrated plenty of roguelikes: how to make failure feel like story instead of punishment. Every doomed escape attempt in *Hades* brought new dialogue, relationship drama, jokes, upgrades, and small emotional rewards, turning repetition into forward motion. Its influence can be felt in how many games now treat runs, deaths, and retries as narrative fuel rather than mechanical housekeeping. | © Supergiant Games

8. Cyberpunk 2077 (2020)

*Cyberpunk 2077* became influential in two completely different ways, which is honestly very on-brand for Night City. Its disastrous launch turned it into the cautionary tale for overhyped AAA development, but its long road of updates, technical repairs, and expanded storytelling also became the industry’s most visible redemption arc. CD Projekt Red changed the conversation around broken launches, player trust, and whether a game’s legacy can be rebuilt after public collapse. | © CD Projekt Red

7. Helldivers 2 (2024)

*Helldivers 2* made live-service gaming feel less like homework and more like a galaxy-wide prank that everyone was somehow taking seriously. Arrowhead’s co-op shooter turned friendly fire, absurd propaganda, chaotic objectives, and community-wide military campaigns into a constantly evolving comedy of disasters. Its biggest lesson was simple but powerful: players will show up for ongoing content when the world feels reactive, ridiculous, and genuinely shaped by collective effort. | © Arrowhead Game Studios

6. Wordle (2021)

A five-letter browser puzzle with one daily answer should not have bullied the entire internet into posting colored squares, yet *Wordle* did exactly that. Josh Wardle’s minimalist design understood restraint better than most mobile games understand monetization: one puzzle, no clutter, no endless grind, just a tiny shared ritual. Its influence stretched far beyond word games, proving that scarcity, simplicity, and social sharing can still beat noise. | © Josh Wardle / The New York Times Games

Clair Obscur Expedition 33 — 5. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (2025)

*Clair Obscur: Expedition 33* hit like a studio with something to prove and a suspiciously sharp paintbrush. Sandfall Interactive blended turn-based combat, real-time inputs, surreal French fantasy, and lavish art direction into an RPG that felt both old-school and freshly unwell in the best possible way. Its influence comes from showing how smaller teams can challenge blockbuster expectations without copying blockbuster habits, especially in a genre many publishers had underestimated. | © Sandfall Interactive

4. Vampire Survivors (2022)

*Vampire Survivors* looked like a joke until everyone realized the joke had eaten their evening, their weekend, and possibly their sense of time. Poncle’s minimalist survival roguelike turned movement, upgrades, and screen-filling chaos into pure design sugar, launching an entire wave of “survivors-like” games almost overnight. Its impact is a reminder that influence does not always arrive with cinematic trailers; sometimes it costs a few dollars and melts your brain beautifully. | © poncle

ELDEN RING — 3. Elden Ring (2022)

FromSoftware took the language of Soulslike design and dropped it into a vast open world without turning it into a theme park. *Elden Ring* made exploration feel dangerous, lonely, majestic, and player-driven, trusting curiosity more than map icons or constant instructions. Its influence reshaped what players expect from open-world RPGs, especially the idea that mystery and difficulty can become mainstream selling points rather than niche obstacles. | © FromSoftware

2. Balatro (2024)

*Balatro* sounds like the kind of pitch someone says at midnight and regrets by breakfast: poker, roguelike, jokers, math gremlins, go. Then LocalThunk turned that strange little idea into one of the most addictive design machines of the decade, where every run feels like discovering a new way to cheat legally. Its influence is already visible in the indie scene, especially among games chasing elegant rules, explosive synergies, and “one more run” hypnosis. | © LocalThunk

Baldurs Gate 3 — 1. Baldur’s Gate 3 (2023)

*Baldur’s Gate 3* did not politely ask the industry to respect CRPGs again; it kicked the tavern door open with dice, romance, chaos, and consequences. Larian Studios proved that dense systems, turn-based combat, theatrical companions, and wildly reactive storytelling could become a mainstream obsession without being simplified into mush. Its influence is massive because it raised expectations for choice-driven RPGs, not through promises, but through an absurd amount of playable proof. | © Larian Studios

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The 2020s have already been a strange, chaotic, and wildly ambitious decade for video games. Blockbusters got bigger, indies got louder, live-service games rewired player habits, and a few unexpected hits forced the entire industry to pay attention. These are the games that did more than sell copies or dominate timelines; they changed design trends, player expectations, streaming culture, and the way the next generation of games is being built.

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The 2020s have already been a strange, chaotic, and wildly ambitious decade for video games. Blockbusters got bigger, indies got louder, live-service games rewired player habits, and a few unexpected hits forced the entire industry to pay attention. These are the games that did more than sell copies or dominate timelines; they changed design trends, player expectations, streaming culture, and the way the next generation of games is being built.