As 2026 approaches, a wave of new releases is sharpening horror fans' calendars. Rock Paper Shotgun's Callum published a list of his most anticipated games for 2026, highlighting a quartet of horror-focused titles and one non-horror wildcard that may never release but is worth hoping for.
The four horror picks are Resident Evil Requiem, Reanimal, Mewgenics, and Ontos, with Persona 4 Revival rounded out as the non-horror entry that will almost certainly not come out but is being treated as a genuine contender.
Resident Evil Requiem is pitched as a hybrid of the series' horror DNA and action-forward pacing. The game follows Grace Ashcroft, a new protagonist who is hunted by a wall-crawling stalker, while Leon Kennedy returns to deliver his familiar one-liners as he cuts through the undead with frenetic energy. Capcom appears to be revisiting the series' split between slow-burn horror and rapid survival action, weaving the tension of newer first-person sequences with the kinetic momentum of the series' best remakes. The trailers hint at a modern take on the Spencer Mansion era, fueling anticipation for a tightly wound, violently atmospheric ride.
Reanimal marks a return for Tarsier Studios—the studio behind Little Nightmares—and it leans into the grotesque, the world a nightmare painted in stark, unsettling imagery. In this entry, a farm becomes a grim stage where children in animal masks are treated as livestock, and slug-like beings in emptied human skin stalk the world as hulking antagonists. The visual language—grim paintings coming to life with relentless chases—suggests a continuation of Tarsier's knack for turning dread into kinetic, claustrophobic pursuit. Beneath the grotesquerie, there's a mystery about the kids and what they're doing in this decaying farm setting.
Mewgenics, from Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel, fuses the author's signature irreverent art with a turn-based strategy framework. Players raise a cadre of ragged stray cats, send them on randomized back-alley campaigns, and choreograph turn-based battles against pests, demons, and rival cats. Between campaigns, cats level up, gain magical abilities, and even pass those traits to their offspring, including the signature "fart" effects that feel comic and revolting in equal measure. The design nods to Binding of Isaac's humor-dark aesthetic, but the core experience here is strategic rather than twin-stick shooting, inviting long hours of planning and execution in a distinctly offbeat fantasy world.
Ontos, Frictional Games' spiritual successor to Soma, leans into sci-fi horror on a larger stage. The action unfolds in a space hotel populated by talking rats, dissected human heads kept alive by wires, and dark vortexes opening to other worlds. Stellan Skarsgard voices a scientist who embraces a god complex in service of progress, lending the project a theatrical, unsettling mood. With a broader scope and sociopolitical undercurrents, Ontos evokes BioShock-like ambitions in its exploration of what happens when curiosity eclipses ethics, offering a spacefaring horror experience with a distinctly atmospheric edge.
Persona 4 Revival is a full remake of Atlus' rural Inaba mystery, rebuilt from the ground up after last year's Persona 3 Reload. The setting remains tied to a string of ritual murders and a world of shadows and gods, but the live-action potential hinges on modernized controls and refreshed storytelling that could realign the cast for contemporary sensibilities. The notes acknowledge that several side plots contain misogynistic and homophobic elements that would benefit from rewrite or recontextualization. If Atlus preserves the series' core charm while updating its control scheme and addressing problematic threads, Revival could reintroduce a beloved entry to new audiences.
Taken together, the lineup paints 2026 as a year with a pronounced horror tilt, anchored by four bold, unusual experiences and supplemented by a single non-horror title that could temper the pace. The reflections come from the Rock Paper Shotgun profile of Callum's most anticipated games for 2026, providing a snapshot of how developers are pushing horror-forward while expanding the medium's possibilities for storytelling and design.