Paste’s Fall Games Preview: 10 Games We’re Excited for Through the End of 2024
It’s almost fall, which means it is once again almost time for a deluge of potentially great new videogames. The bulk of the year’s new releases always come out between the start of September and Thanksgiving, with a few notables slipping into early December. This year is no different; the next three months will bring us the latest in major series like Assassin’s Creed and Call of Duty, Indiana Jones’ latest adventure, the return of one of Life Is Strange’s earlier characters, and a whole flotilla of cool games by smaller studios that seem to have the personality and creativity so frequently missing from major corporate games. For Paste‘s fall games preview our games editors Garrett Martin and Elijah Gonzalez sifted through the avalanche of upcoming titles and found 10 that they really can’t wait to play. Here are their picks for the most interesting new games this fall.
I Am Your Beast
Release Date: 9/10
Platform: PC
Xalavier Nelson Jr. is a prolific and unpredictable designer who, along with a rotating crew of collaborators, has made some of the most interesting games of the last few years; his work is smart, challenging, and unconstrained by genre, and since the start of 2023 includes the animal poker / mob revenge thriller Sunshine Shuffle, the ruminative speed shooter El Paso Elsewhere, the horror puzzler Life Eater, and the existential examination of power dynamics / clicker game parody Clickolding. His latest, I Am Your Beast, arrives tomorrow via his usual Strange Scaffold label, and is another inspired tribute to and subversion of ‘00s-era shooters. Its fast-paced, superhuman exploits are built atop a foundation critical of the military-industrial complex, and with the stylish but naturalistic writing and dialogue Nelson’s become known for. A Steam demo has us thinking this could be one of the year’s best; we’ll find out when the full game hits our PC this week.—Garrett Martin
UFO 50
Release Date: 9/18
Platform: PC
What if one of those collections of games from the ‘80s—like the ones with Sega’s early hits, or Capcom’s arcade games, or the amazing Gold Master Series—was made up of entirely new games that were presented as forgotten classics? That’s the concept behind UFO 50, which purports to gather together the major works of the groundbreaking and entirely fictional UFOSoft. With 50 new, full games designed by the folks behind Spelunky, Downwell, and other old-fashioned hits from the last 15 years, UFO 50 seems like the coolest game jam in ages. Anybody who was playing games in the ‘80s should be intrigued by this new treasure trove of fake classics, and to anybody who wasn’t around at the time, it’ll probably feel just like picking up one of those comps of legit ‘80s games. It’ll only be on PC at first, but this new golden era of fake retro classics should hit consoles eventually.—Garrett Martin
Mouthwashing
Release Date: 9/26
Platform: PC
Coming off the weird, gross, and fascinating How Fish Is Made, Wrong Organ seems to be cooking up another nightmarish creation with their latest. Mouthwashing is an upcoming first-person narrative horror game about being trapped on a marooned spaceship with little chance of survival. Having played the demo, this lo-fi world is downright brutal, a purgatory where a bickering crew of interplanetary blue-collar workers await a seemingly grisly end as you explore rusted corridors and learn how they ended up in this dire situation. What I’ve seen so far makes great use of its polygonal graphics and delivers sordid turns via smash cuts that place us in the disorienting headspace of the protagonist as we partake in sharply written conversations with the crew. Beyond this stylish editing and writing, there is a specificity in this overwhelming bleak setting; as you creep through rusted corridors, you can’t help but wonder if there is something out to get you on this derelict freighter or if you should be more afraid of your increasingly desperate co-workers. Mouthwashing seems to be as thematically pitch black as the vacuum of space, but considering how smartly this gloom is presented, I’m quite excited for some truly terrible times.—Elijah Gonzalez
The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom
Release Date: 9/26
Platform: Switch
Despite her name being in the title of these dang videogames, The Legend of Zelda series has rarely let you play as the titular princess aside from spin-offs like the campy Zelda: The Wand Of Gamelon or the Hyrule Warriors games. That will finally change with The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, a top-down action game that looks built on top of the 2019’s wonderful Link’s Awakening remake. But while its art style is familiar, Echoes of Wisdom seems to mostly be going in its own direction, in large part because of Zelda’s unique toolset. Using the Tri Rod, she can create “echoes” of items and beings, which allows her to stack crates and furniture to traverse the world or summon minions to do her bidding. While she’ll occasionally be able to channel Link’s swordsmanship, most of the time, she’ll be using her own skills to save the day as she navigates the rifts that have consumed much of Hyrule. Compared to the well-established blade-swinging gameplay of other top-down entries in the series, there are a lot of unknowns about how it will feel to use these new powers, but the creativity this could allow has some magical potential.—Elijah Gonzalez
Neva
Release Date: 10/15
Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch, PC
Neva is Nomada Studio’s long-awaited follow-up to Gris, a similarly beautiful 2D platformer with a one-of-a-kind look. In their latest, we play as Alba, a young woman who bonds with a white wolf cub as they set off on a journey to fight some nefarious shadowy power. The first thing many will notice here is the stunning background art, as folkloric vistas are brought to life with blue, pink, and green pastels that contrast nicely against the figures in the foreground. And on top of being visually vibrant, it looks like the game will have more going on mechanically than the studio’s last outing; in addition to her swordplay, Alba can perform combos with her canine companion. Considering the melancholic score and contemplative atmosphere, it seems like Neva may be setting up some tearjerking moments, and I’m interested in finding out if they land as well as the art direction.—Elijah Gonzalez
Mario and Luigi: Brothership
Release Date: 11/7
Platform: Switch
While AlphaDream, the studio behind the excellent run of hand-held Mario RPGs, shut down a few years ago, it seems like Nintendo has scooped up some of its developers to bring back their old series with Mario and Luigi: Brothership. Despite the silly name, what we’ve seen of this one looks well in line with what came before, featuring collaborative platforming between the Mario Bros. and turn-based combat with action commands where you time inputs to improve your moves. I’ll admit that at first glance, the new 3D visual style had me pining for the gorgeous pixel art of past installments, but I quickly warmed up to how the shading here captures the vibe of the previous games’ concept art, and in the battles, the special attacks have bouncy animations that pack a punch. At the moment, the biggest unknown for me is if this new team will be able to deliver the same kind of witty dialogue and ridiculous characters that made Alphadream’s games so hilarious, but the fact that at least some of the original developers are involved has me hopeful.—Elijah Gonzalez
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
Release Date: 12/9
Platforms: Xbox Series X|S, PC
While there’ve been plenty of Indiana Jones games over the years, and even a few beloved ones like Indiana Jones and the Fate Of Atlantis, most of these came out in the era when licensed games were not given the time or budget to succeed. By contrast, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle looks expensive, like, “modern AAA game that can demolish a studio if it doesn’t hit” expensive. Taking place after the events of Raiders of the Lost Ark, we follow Indy as he travels the Himalayas, Egypt, Thailand, Rome, and more in search of the enigmatic “Great Circle.” Along the way, he can clobber fascists in hand-to-hand combat, use his trusty whip to disarm foes, and when all else fails, fire his trusty revolver.
From what we’ve seen, the game seems very focused on solving puzzles and exploring, which is done via a first-person perspective that immerses us in these meticulously crafted historical sights. If there’s one area I’m skeptical about, it’s that the cutscenes may come up short next to their source material—it’s a tall task to go up against Steven Spielberg—which is a problem because it seems like there’s a lot of them. However, maybe more than anything I’ve seen of the game itself, I’m quite interested in how this one turns out because it’s being developed by MachineGames, the studio behind the last few barn burner Wolfenstein games. While this is a big change of pace compared to those guns-blazing alt-history titles, their recent work has earned the benefit of the doubt for what they’re working on next, and what I’ve seen of Great Circle shows enough promise that I’d like to discover how this one turns out for myself.—Elijah Gonzalez
Clock Tower: Rewind
Release Date: TBD
Platform: PlayStation 5, Switch, PlayStation 4
This remake of groundbreaking horror classic Clock Tower will mark the first official international release of a game that came out on the Super Famicom in 1995. I’m not usually a big fan of survival horror, but given the stature and significance of the original, I’m excited to try out a legit localization of it. Essentially a tribute to Dario Argento’s giallo horror films, Clock Tower was a major influence on Japanese horror game developers, and although its reputation has varied somewhat over the years, its importance has never been in question. I don’t know if I’ll have the patience required to play this one through to the end, but it will be fantastic to at least have that opportunity without having to track down a fan translation. Clock Tower: Rewind just got an official release date in Asia—fittingly enough, it’s October 31—so hopefully confirmation of an American date won’t be far behind.—Garrett Martin
Ghost Bike
Release Date: TBD
Platform: Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, Switch, PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4
The last we heard Nidhogg designer Messhof’s stylish bicycle game Ghost Bike was still supposed to come out in 2024. Its reveal trailer, released in 2023, makes us assume it’ll be some kind of racing game, although it’s not clear on what players will actually do in it; between its warm, stylish art, and synth-pop from the on-point label Italians Do It Better, though, it definitely sells us on the game’s vibe. Annapurna’s promo text mentions something about saving the last “ghost bike,” some kind of vehicle that travels between the lands of the living and the dead; there’s a ghostly skull on the handlebar of the main character’s bike, so it stands to reason that is the so-called ghost bike itself. There’s no way to glean from that trailer if it has any connection to the real-life phenomenon of white-painted “ghost bikes” being left at the spot where a cyclist perished in an accident, and evoking that signal of mourning without paying tribute to it could be a sticky problem the game shouldn’t trip over. We’ll see when it comes out—which hopefully will still be this year.—Garrett Martin
Tetris Forever
Release Date: TBD
Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch, PC
With the Gold Master Series Digital Eclipse has hit on the best way yet to present classic games for modern audiences. Unofficially launching with the excellent Atari 50, which introduced the series’ intermingling of documentary footage and in-game action, and then being refined with the transcendent The Making of Karateka and Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story, the Gold Master Series preserves not just crucial classics of the earliest days of gaming but documents their creation in close detail. The next installment is the biggest videogame to get this treatment yet—because it’s basically the biggest videogame ever, Alexey Pajitnov’s Tetris. The ur-puzzler from Soviet Russia defined a genre, became the greatest pack-in title ever with the Game Boy, has been ported to basically every computer device known to man, and has a fascinating real-life history that has inspired books and comic books (go read Box Brown’s book immediately) and movies. Tetris Forever features over 15 versions of Tetris and other games by Pajitnov, and as is standard includes a new version of the classic original to this collection. It also has over 90 minutes of original interviews and other documentary footage about the game’s creation and one-of-a-kind path to unprecedented global domination. Atari 50 and the first two Gold Master games received worldwide acclaim within the industry and from critics, but with Tetris Forever Digital Eclipse’s patented approach might become the gaming phenomenon it deserves to be.—Garrett Martin
Senior editor Garrett Martin writes about videogames, comedy, travel, theme parks, wrestling, and more. He’s also on Twitter @grmartin.
Elijah Gonzalez is an assistant Games and TV Editor for Paste Magazine. In addition to playing and watching the latest on the small screen, he also loves film, creating large lists of media he’ll probably never actually get to, and dreaming of the day he finally gets through all the Like a Dragon games. You can follow him on Twitter @eli_gonzalez11.