Originally released as a tech demo that quickly went viral in 2023, Mouse: P.I. For Hire is now a fully-fledged game--one that oozes style and doesn't lack substance either. It's both familiar and incredibly niche at the same time; an endlessly charming game that I found a joy to simply behold, even before the cartoon bullets started flying.

Unsurprisingly for a game about furry rodents, Mouse: P.I. is all too fond of cheese-based puns and wordplay, so it makes sense that you should slip into the stylish trenchcoat of one Jack Pepper. The titular P.I. is a former war hero-turned-private dick working on a missing-persons case. As is par for the course, the investigation quickly spirals out of control, escalating into a complex web of intrigue and corruption that spreads to every sleazy corner of the city of Mouseburg.

Big-budget single-player shooters aren't as common as they once were, and even more rarely do they launch new franchises. They often come with trade-offs--a game might nail the fundamentals, or have some surprising new hook, or have a resonant story, but rarely do you get all of them at once. Pragmata is the total package, a blend of tense and satisfying combat elevated by deep underlying mechanics and strategic choices, all in service of telling an impactful tale that spends time nurturing the relationship between its memorable characters. It's one of my unexpected surprises of 2026 so far and an early shoo-in for one of my favorites of the year.

You play as Hugh Williams, an everyman astronaut dispatched to a corporate medical research colony on the moon. There's an eerie stillness to the base that suggests something isn't quite right, but before you and your crew have any time to investigate, a moonquake rocks the base and leaves you as the only survivor. Now stranded and beset by legions of hostile robots, you're befriended by a mysterious android girl who helps you to survive by hacking the otherwise near-invincible robots. When she tries to give her alphanumeric name, Hugh calls her Diana to make it easier, and the two are joined at the hip from that point forward.

Big-budget single-player shooters aren't as common as they once were, and even more rarely do they launch new franchises. They often come with trade-offs--a game might nail the fundamentals, or have some surprising new hook, or have a resonant story, but rarely do you get all of them at once. Pragmata is the total package, a blend of tense and satisfying combat elevated by deep underlying mechanics and strategic choices, all in service of telling an impactful tale that spends time nurturing the relationship between its memorable characters. It's one of my unexpected surprises of 2026 so far and an early shoo-in for one of my favorites of the year.

You play as Hugh Williams, an everyman astronaut dispatched to a corporate medical research colony on the moon. There's an eerie stillness to the base that suggests something isn't quite right, but before you and your crew have any time to investigate, a moonquake rocks the base and leaves you as the only survivor. Now stranded and beset by legions of hostile robots, you're befriended by a mysterious android girl who helps you to survive by hacking the otherwise near-invincible robots. When she tries to give her alphanumeric name, Hugh calls her Diana to make it easier, and the two are joined at the hip from that point forward.

For decades, Pokemon's competitive scene was just that: a near-impenetrable experience that requires hundreds of hours--and hundreds of dollars--to keep up with. Pokemon Champions is The Pokemon Company's attempt to bring white-knuckled, competitive battling to the masses. The financial barrier to entry, at least ostensibly, is low thanks to its free-to-play model, and the snappy stat-training mechanics reduce a lot of friction. However, Pokemon Champions lacks the necessary onboarding to captivate a new audience while also giving clear advantages to players who've invested in Pokemon Home. In its current state, Pokemon Champions falls just short of being the be-all and end-all of competitive play that I hoped for.

Despite Pokemon Champions' lackluster onboarding, there are a lot of tutorials. When you first start up the game, you're introduced to a cast of characters who teach you how to battle, obtain Pokemon, and build a team. Assuming you don't skip any dialogue, it takes roughly 30 minutes before you're set loose. From there, you can battle online, train Pokemon, build teams, or continue with supplementary tutorials. I opted to do the latter.

For decades, Pokemon's competitive scene was just that: a near-impenetrable experience that requires hundreds of hours--and hundreds of dollars--to keep up with. Pokemon Champions is The Pokemon Company's attempt to bring white-knuckled, competitive battling to the masses. The financial barrier to entry, at least ostensibly, is low thanks to its free-to-play model, and the snappy stat-training mechanics reduce a lot of friction. However, Pokemon Champions lacks the necessary onboarding to captivate a new audience while also giving clear advantages to players who've invested in Pokemon Home. In its current state, Pokemon Champions falls just short of being the be-all and end-all of competitive play that I hoped for.

Despite Pokemon Champions' lackluster onboarding, there are a lot of tutorials. When you first start up the game, you're introduced to a cast of characters who teach you how to battle, obtain Pokemon, and build a team. Assuming you don't skip any dialogue, it takes roughly 30 minutes before you're set loose. From there, you can battle online, train Pokemon, build teams, or continue with supplementary tutorials. I opted to do the latter.

People of Note sees would-be pop star Cadence striving to fulfill her dream of winning a singing competition and getting propelled into fame. Worried that the pop song she's prepared isn't strong enough to sway the judges, she sets out through the land of Note in search of people who can add to her song. Her journey takes her to a desert where everyone is all about different kinds of rock music, a futuristic metropolis blanketed in perpetual night and inhabited by EDM-obsessed disc jockeys, a block-shaped party city that's all about rap and hip hop, and so much more. And all the while, repeated references to an event known as the Harmonic Convergence steel you for what will eventually be a sharp tonal shift away from road-trip comedy to dramatic high fantasy.

Your enjoyment of this story is really going to come down to how much you like puns and pop culture references--People of Note's humor is not unlike Borderlands 2 or Saints Row IV. The game rides the line between funny and corny well enough for me, save for one moment in the third act that made me cringe so hard, I contemplated simply not playing any more of the game that day. But I also enjoy games like Borderlands and Saints Row. If you're not a fan of the idea of a story that takes every single conceivable musical term and crafts a whole high-fantasy society and plotline with said terms, People of Note is probably going to grate.

People of Note sees would-be pop star Cadence striving to fulfill her dream of winning a singing competition and getting propelled into fame. Worried that the pop song she's prepared isn't strong enough to sway the judges, she sets out through the land of Note in search of people who can add to her song. Her journey takes her to a desert where everyone is all about different kinds of rock music, a futuristic metropolis blanketed in perpetual night and inhabited by EDM-obsessed disc jockeys, a block-shaped party city that's all about rap and hip hop, and so much more. And all the while, repeated references to an event known as the Harmonic Convergence steel you for what will eventually be a sharp tonal shift away from road-trip comedy to dramatic high fantasy.

Your enjoyment of this story is really going to come down to how much you like puns and pop culture references--People of Note's humor is not unlike Borderlands 2 or Saints Row IV. The game rides the line between funny and corny well enough for me, save for one moment in the third act that made me cringe so hard, I contemplated simply not playing any more of the game that day. But I also enjoy games like Borderlands and Saints Row. If you're not a fan of the idea of a story that takes every single conceivable musical term and crafts a whole high-fantasy society and plotline with said terms, People of Note is probably going to grate.

There's a core comedic premise to Darwin's Paradox that begins subtly and then slowly becomes more obvious as time goes on. Your eponymous little octopus, Darwin, just wants to get back home to the ocean. But on his journey he haplessly bumbles his way through what is clearly a full-scale alien invasion of Earth. In most games, the hero would steel their resolve to take on the alien menace, but Darwin is just an octopus. For all he knows, this is normal among land-dwellers, and he doesn't really seem to care either way. So he's less of a hero and more of a Mr. Magoo, with his own perception limited to the threats around him as he gets flung around a hostile world and just tries his best to survive. We as the (human) viewers understand what's happening in a different context than he does, and that makes the story work on two levels at once.

Though he's not a hero, Darwin certainly has an expansive move set, which makes the game's platforming feel natural and fluid. They all trace back to the behaviors and adaptations of real-life octopi, like suckers to stick to walls, shooting ink to escape predators, and camouflage to blend in with their environment. And like a real octopus, he's most mobile underwater, where you have full 360-degree freedom of movement. Though traversing your way through land environments feels good, going underwater is immediately more natural. It really accentuates the feeling that you're a fish out of water the rest of the time.

There's a core comedic premise to Darwin's Paradox that begins subtly and then slowly becomes more obvious as time goes on. Your eponymous little octopus, Darwin, just wants to get back home to the ocean. But on his journey he haplessly bumbles his way through what is clearly a full-scale alien invasion of Earth. In most games, the hero would steel their resolve to take on the alien menace, but Darwin is just an octopus. For all he knows, this is normal among land-dwellers, and he doesn't really seem to care either way. So he's less of a hero and more of a Mr. Magoo, with his own perception limited to the threats around him as he gets flung around a hostile world and just tries his best to survive. We as the (human) viewers understand what's happening in a different context than he does, and that makes the story work on two levels at once.

Though he's not a hero, Darwin certainly has an expansive move set, which makes the game's platforming feel natural and fluid. They all trace back to the behaviors and adaptations of real-life octopi, like suckers to stick to walls, shooting ink to escape predators, and camouflage to blend in with their environment. And like a real octopus, he's most mobile underwater, where you have full 360-degree freedom of movement. Though traversing your way through land environments feels good, going underwater is immediately more natural. It really accentuates the feeling that you're a fish out of water the rest of the time.

Bellabel Park is almost entirely focused on its multiplayer component, which is admittedly a strange turn for a game and series so known for its single-player platforming prowess. That isn't to say that there's no regular single-player content whatsoever, though. The story of Bellabel Park, such as it is, involves a new area of the map: the eponymous park that houses special Bellabel flowers. The Koopalings show up to steal the flowers, so Captain Toad and the Poplins agree to scour the world map for them. You'll find a new brigade tent belonging to a Poplin scout in each world, which leads you to one of the Koopalings.

If you're making your way through Mario Wonder for the first time, this will be a neat little throughline that you encounter occasionally, but if you've already finished the game, you can easily just jump into the series of boss-fight stages. This time the Koopalings are enhanced by the Wonder Flower, so each one reimagines the Koopa kids with some fantastical effect. Wendy turns into a bulbous Cheep-Cheep-like fish, while Morton becomes a massive marionette puppet. You have to traverse a stage being terrorized by their special effects before confronting them as bosses, and it's fun how these classic baddies--who, let's be honest, haven't gotten much to do lately--are recontextualized with wild, stage-changing effects.