Xbox Game Studios recently revealed Playground Games’ upcoming Fable reboot properly, showcasing a bunch of gameplay that stays true to the classic series while throwing in a few intriguing evolutions for good measure.
Launching this Autumn on PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PS5, we honestly weren’t expecting to see this one on the Switch 2, but according to Windows Central’s Jez Corden, it’s actually currently “under consideration” for Nintendo’s console.
Welcome to Next Week on Xbox! In this weekly feature we cover all the games coming soon to Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Xbox on PC, and Game Pass! Get more details on these upcoming games below and click their profiles for further info (release dates subject to change). Let’s jump in!
Highguard, Wildlight Studio’s debut free-to-play competitive shooter, releases on January 26, when we will update with a store link.
Drop Duchy takes on the iconic geometric puzzle gameplay we all know and love with a fresh perspective: instead of simply clearing lines, you’ll be thoughtfully building a realm using pieces of various shapes and types to overcome enemy challenges. A mix of deckbuilding, puzzle and rogue-lite, the game offers a new gameplay designed to hone your appetite as a block-stacking tactician. Optimization is key to collecting precious resources, protecting your castle, and building your army. Defeat is not the end, though: use the experience gained in previous runs to unlock even more content!
In a future world where humans and Revenants coexist… Due to the sudden appearance of the Luna Rapacis, Revenants have transformed into mindless monsters called Horrors. As a Revenant hunter, the player shall halt the world’s inevitable collapse by traveling to the past with a girl called Lou who possesses the power to manipulate time. An epic adventure awaits, where you and your chosen partners explore a post-apocalyptic world, face fierce battles against powerful enemies, and uncover an epic story that transcends time.
Your friend, the former Guild Master of the declining Adventurer Guild, has died and named you his successor. Will you lead the Guild to fame and glory? Or will it finally disband under your leadership? Our Adventurer Guild is a game about managing an Adventurer Guild. Accept quests to raise the reputation of your Guild. Lead your adventurers in quests to explore and battle foes in turn-based tactical combat. Keep an eye on the mood and relationships of your adventurers. Raise and grow them and watch as they make a name for themselves.
Don’t be fooled by its cuteness. Rightfully, Beary Arms is a bullet hell, roguelite that will punish and reward you. Augment weapons to create unique weapon builds, pick rewards as you explore levels, alter mechanics to your benefit and peril, fight, die, become stronger, and do it all over again.
Speedball – January 27 Optimized for Xbox Series X|S / Xbox Play Anywhere / Handheld Optimized
Speedball is a no-holds-barred arena sport pitting two teams head-to-head in a pulse-racing match-up requiring speed, agility and aggression. Seamless top-down arena gameplay meets classic sports strategy – with added violence! A new entry into the iconic Bitmap Brothers’ original series: venture into the grim future of 2138 where mega-corporations use Speedball to distract the downtrodden masses from their miserable lives.
Fend off hordes of fiendish invaders in strategic tower defense combat! Battle through a robust story campaign or test your skills with Endless mode! Visit the barracks to train troops or acquire new unit types from the shop, thus expanding your tactical options as battles get bigger and more challenging. Can you restore peace to King Arthur’s domain?
Neon Vault Rush is a high-speed 3D parkour game set in a glowing cyberpunk world. Dash through dizzying circuits filled with deadly traps, floating platforms, and pulse-pounding synthwave beats. Master wall runs, double jumps, and acrobatic moves as you race against time and chase your best records. One wrong step — game over. If you crave speed, precision, and the thrill of a digital dreamscape, this is your playground.
Welcome to Stable Stories – Forest and Meadow Ride, the ultimate child-friendly riding and adventure game that sparks imagination and joy! Dive into a vibrant, cartoony open world where endless fun and exploration await. Rebuild your dream farm, race against friends, and uncover hidden secrets as you journey through lush forests and peaceful meadows. Collect and care for a variety of horses, and if you’re lucky, you might even unlock a magical unicorn to ride!
Rise above the clouds and follow a solitary traveler on a quest that blends graceful platforming with peaceful exploration. Each level is a dreamlike chapter of a larger tale about loss, resolve, and the hope of earning a second chance for humanity. Glide across floating islands, scale soaring structures, and navigate shifting gravity as friendly spirit guides share fragments of the story and teach you new abilities.
Have you ever dreamed of being the villain in a Tower Defense? Be the one who sends waves and waves of troops to break through the enemy defenses in this Reverse Tower Defense. Summon, conquer and upgrade your troops to dominate the whole world!
Are you ready to test your driving skills and your luck? Gas Ratio brings back the nostalgia of classic top-down arcade racers with a chaotic twist. In this game, speed isn’t the only thing that matters—survival does. Drift through pixel-art tracks, dodge obstacles, and make split-second decisions.
Enjoy your stay in the worst place on Earth. I Hate This Place is an isometric craft-based survival horror game set in a cursed land filled with reality-bending nightmares and terrifying creatures that thrive in the dark. You’ll need to scavenge, build, sneak, and fight if you want to make it out alive.
Lariat the witch will make your wish will come true if you win a game of trivia, but if you lose, something dark will happen instead. How many lives will your ignorance ruin? Majotori is a narratrivia, an original little game that combines an interactive narrative with a quiz game.
Sudoku is a simple and clear number-puzzle game. The goal is easy to understand: fill the grid so each row, column, and 3×3 box contains the numbers 1 to 9 with no repeats. No math required, just logic. Playing Sudoku helps improve focus, memory, and problem-solving skills in a calm and enjoyable way. It’s a quick mental exercise that keeps the brain active and sharp. This version includes a wide variety of color themes, allowing you to play in the style that feels most comfortable for your eyes.
It’s the 80s, so put on your nostalgia glasses (even if you weren’t there)! From the creators of Thief Simulator. Every house, bank, shop and museum can be robbed with the right tools, you just have to know how to do it. Earn your way up in a county full of corruption and crime while discovering what the residents are hiding.
Originally developed as a pest repellent the atomic sulfate can turn insects into giants. And now has been stolen! The world is in danger! Join our heroes in their quest to bring it back from the inside of a tyrant’s fortress. Infiltrate, find the spray and come back home with it in this point and click style game.
Step into the role of Kazuki and Ryogo as tensions rise across volatile military zones. With the fate of the region hanging in the balance, command towering Wanzers and lead your squad through intense, turn-based battles.
Heavy Duty isn’t just about driving. It’s about controlling the toughest machines on Earth and leading a crew through high-stakes missions. Pick your cargo carefully, balance every load, and be ready to drop, crack, break, and try again until the job gets done. From rocky mountain roads to stormy seas and towering construction sites, each challenge will test your driving skills and your ability to move your team forward. Will you be the one to deliver the cargo, and smash through any obstacle in your way?
Lara Returns to the Castle is a charming platformer where you control Princess Lara on her journey back to the castle. After getting lost while searching for flowers, she must overcome traps and collect magical flowers to open portals that lead to the next level. With charismatic visuals, increasing challenges, and a captivating protagonist, the game blends action and lightheartedness, appealing to players who enjoy adventures with beauty and purpose.
From the makers of Running Fable comes Petite Party, a wild and unpredictable spin-off that cranks up the chaos. Battle through 16 competitive mini-games and dominate the tabletop party board where anything goes. In Running Fable Petite Party, there’s no holding back — every round is a chance to taunt your friends, steal victory, and cause maximum mayhem.
Ark Nova, a long, complex and richly strategic game of zoo-building and conservation, took board gaming by storm after its release in 2021. When a game gets that popular, while having big barriers to new players, a simplified spin-off is almost guaranteed – and now we have Sanctuary from the same designer. It has the same widely appealing theme and keeps some of the innovative mechanisms of its parent, but how much of its strategic clout can it retain?
What’s in the Box
Sanctuary comes in a big box with considerable heft. When you slide the lid off the reason becomes clear: it contains sheet after sheet of large, punch out, cardboard hexes. Like Ark Nova, these are all illustrated with photos of animals, zoo staff, or pertinent buildings and landscapes. Photo-art in the obviously artificial medium of board gaming can look odd but here it works well, re-enforcing the feeling that you’re building something real and tangible.
Most of the hexes are peppered with confusing icons which initially appear very mysterious but, once you’ve internalized the game rules, you’ll appreciate having all the information on the game state front and center. The game thoughtfully includes a plastic rack for each player to hold their “hand” of hex tiles during play.
Aside from the hex tiles there’s a bunch of other cardboard to pop out, not only tokens but also action “cards” for each player, which are made of thick cardboard rather than playing-card stock. There are two central boards, one for tracking objectives and another for holding the market of tiles which requires a little assembly, as the edges fold in and stick down to keep the tiles in place. Finally, there’s a two-sided hex map for each player to build their zoo on. Unlike the parent game, everyone here uses the same map during play, one side of the board or the other.
Rules and How It Plays
You can get some sense of how much more simple Sanctuary is than Ark Nova simply by comparing rulebooks, which otherwise have similar layouts and fonts. Ark Nova weighs in at 20 pages: Sanctuary a modest eight, with plenty of examples. It jettisons the bigger game’s separation of animals and enclosures, making everything a single tile that you lay onto the hex board representing your zoo.
One thing it keeps, however, is the notion of action card strength. You have four different actions arranged beneath your zoo board in a ranking from weakest to strongest. When you use one, it operates at a “level” equal to its current position in the queue. Then it moves into the weakest slot and the other cards all slide up one rank. All the actions allow you to place tiles into your zoo: three of them are for animals of different habitats while the fourth is for “projects”, which include things like specialist researchers, conservation efforts and the like. All the matching tiles have a strength requirement and the action card you use to lay it must be at that level or higher.
Many tiles have additional requirements. The most common is for arrows on the tile edge to line up with empty spaces: you start with a couple in your zoo map but you can add more by playing tiles from your hand face-down. Others need to be adjacent to tiles already in your zoo that carry certain icons. All have at least one icon representing an animal type, a habitat or a continent. Most tiles improve the appeal of your zoo, which is essentially your victory point tally. For many that’s a fixed value, while others depend on how many of a particular icon you have adjacent to that tile or on your map as a whole.
You can get bonus appeal by satisfying conservation objectives. Five are drawn randomly for each game, matching particular animal type and continent icons. To claim one you must simply have the matching number of icons in your zoo; the more icons, the more points. You can also spend conservation markers, in place of a missing icon, making these tokens very powerful. They can be obtained by getting matching male and female animal tiles of the same species next to each other on your map, or from certain project tiles.
These are the parameters of the puzzle that Sanctuary lays before you, fiendishly pulling you in multiple directions at once.
These are the parameters of the puzzle that Sanctuary lays before you, fiendishly pulling you in multiple directions at once. Many tiles reward you for specializing in particular icons. Conservation bonuses, meanwhile, reward you for diversity. Your challenge is to try and decide how, given the limitation of what tiles you pick up and the actions at your disposal, you’re going to balance this problem to eke out the highest score.
To complicate matters, each level of conservation bonus can only be claimed once. So if you claim one with two bird icons, say, and then get more birds in your zoo later, you can’t then go back and claim the bigger-scoring four- or five-icon rewards via birds later on. You need to have four or five of a different animal type or make up the difference with those precious conservation tokens. The whole thing is a mess of competing priorities that can make the game surprisingly tense for what is essentially an un-interactive game where you’re focused on building out your own map.
Because you’re being asked to do so many different things at once, how you pick up and hold tiles is very important. At the start of your turn you have to take one tile from the six in the display. However, you can only take that tile from the queue position up to the current level of your projects action card, making this one particularly important. After that you take an “official” action which involves either using a card to play tiles or you can take more tiles. Animal actions used this way give you two random tiles, while the projects action lets you take one tile of your choice from the display.
Again, given that the game is essentially a race, this results in surprising tension. Play ends when someone either fills their map or collects all five conservation bonuses, both of which are reliant on playing tiles. So missing a turn to take more tiles feels like you’re falling behind. But it’s always so tempting! There are often hexes available that you desperately want because their icons fit with the conservation objectives, or others in your zoo, or even male-female animal pairs but the more you collect them in hope of making combos, the further you risk getting behind in the race for points. The fact you can only hold six tiles at once adds a delightfully frustrating element to these decisions.
Your action order is the final plank in the game’s puzzle. Often, you’ll want to play a given tile and you won’t have the requisite action at a high enough level. So you have to muddle through potentially laying and taking less interesting tiles to get where you want to be. Forward planning your action chains to get cards to the required levels becomes a hallmark of experience when you’re selecting tiles from the display, muddied by the desire to keep projects high to maximize your choices. Cards can also be levelled up to get higher action levels by fulfilling four different criteria, such as claiming your first spot on the conservation track. As is typical for the game’s circular approach to strategy, fulfilling these is yet another competing priority to juggle.
There are times when all the different things going on become an active problem for the game, however. The need for tiles to support each other, and particularly the reward for animal gender pairs, can be frustratingly hard to fulfill if the tiles you want are simply not in the display when it’s your turn. As such, it works better at lower player counts: with five, especially, it feels overlong. The mechanisms also feel very abstract, especially compared to Ark Nova which at least presents an illusion of running a real zoo.
Once the game is finished, everyone has to tally up their points, which is an annoyingly time-consuming process. With the score offered by many tiles being dependent on many other tiles it takes a while to tot them up, and it’s very easy to make errors in what is often quite a tight game. While everyone is raring to know who won, the time and effort it takes to chalk up the scores has the unfortunate effect of deflating whatever excitement has built up during play, leading to the final result arriving as a bit of an anticlimax.
BioWare is slowly beginning to build itself back up following the downsizing it experienced in the wake of Dragon Age: The Veilguard, with hiring now underway for a new senior role on Mass Effect 5.
Now, as work on Mass Effect 5 quietly continues, BioWare is hiring a Production Director for the game who will report directly into the project’s overall boss, BioWare and Mass Effect franchise veteran Mike Gamble.
“Hi, I’m hiring a very important senior leadership role,” Gamble wrote on social media. “They’ll report to me and it’s gonna be awesome.” A job description notes that the role will involve partnering with Mass Effect 5’s “creative leadership, studio teams, and internal and external partners to champion the game’s vision and ensure its execution at the highest quality bar.”
“Since 1995, BioWare has been dedicated to creating games defined by rich storytelling, unforgettable characters, and expansive worlds,” the job description continues. “Over the years, the studio has earned recognition for developing some of the industry’s most critically acclaimed titles. Today, BioWare is building on that legacy with the development of the next Mass Effect game, continuing one of the highest-rated and most celebrated series in video game history.”
BioWare first announced plans to make Mass Effect 5 back in 2020 — a date that now feels a lifetime ago — in part to simply reassure fans that it remained committed to the franchise. In reality, though, the company was still busy devoting most of its development efforts into getting Dragon Age: The Veilguard done and out the door.
During this time, BioWare is believed to have had only a small team working on its next Mass Effect game concept, while the bulk of the studio was busy elsewhere. With The Veilguard finally launched in late 2024, Mass Effect 5 became the sole focus of the studio — albeit in its newly-slimmed down form.
Gamble previously confirmed that Mass Effect 5 was being led by a team of fellow Mass Effect veterans who served key roles on the franchise’s original three games, including art director Derek Watts, creative director Parrish Ley, senior level designer and Normandy programmer Dusty Everman, and game director Preston Watmaniuk.
The leadership team behind Dragon Age: The Veilguard, including its lead writer, senior systems designer, various editors, producer and both its co-directors, Corinne Busche and John Epler, are all no longer at the company following the studio’s downsizing, meanwhile.
Consecutive years have seen BioWare release snippets of concept art and other brief teasers for the game, which is expected to be set hundreds of years after the end of the original Mass Effect trilogy and feature at least one returning character. At the same time, pre-production has also begun on Amazon Prime’s Mass Effect TV series that will also be set after the events of the trilogy.
“Let’s start by setting the record straight: the next Mass Effect game is in development, and EA and BioWare remain committed to telling more stories in this universe,” Gamble wrote in a blog post last November. “The truth is, the last few years have been an incredibly busy time at BioWare,” Gamble continued today. “But currently, the team is heads-down and focused exclusively on Mass Effect. We have a lot of universe to cover, lots of features to build, and lots of romances to figure out.”
BioWare has given no indication of when Mass Effect 5 will arrive, though here’s hoping 2026 brings a better sense of the company’s progress as development ramps up.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
Playground Games offered the first in-depth look at Forza Horizon 6 during last night’s Xbox Developer Direct, in addition to confirming its leaked release date of May 19th. As you’d expect, there were lots of cars sliding and speeding through a variety of Japanese biomes in a manner I can’t wait to experience for myself, but one new feature introduced left me wondering whether it’s something I’ll actually take time out of my driving around for.
Remember those mockumentary-style interview sections in the original reveal trailer for Fable? Well, those will actually be in the game, and they’re inspired by an unlikely source — The Office.
Fable is a distinctly British video game series, and one where comedy has always been allowed to thrive. Both deadpan and absurdist British humor were at the centre of Lionhead’s original trilogy, and it’s great to see that ethos carrying forward into Playground Games’ 2026 reboot, which we recently got an extended look at during January’s Xbox Developer Direct.
Speaking to Xbox Wire, Playground founder and general manager Ralph Fulton mentioned a handful of classic 21st-century British sitcoms as touchstones for Fable’s tone. “We were inspired by the incredibly rich variety of British comedies that have been around over the last 20 years, like Peep Show, The IT Crowd and so many others,” Fulton revealed. “We started with The Office, which again started out as quintessentially British, but also travels really, really well.”
“Not just that IP, but a lot of the techniques and the devices that it’s popularised, you know. It’s that really grounded, awkward style of humour which really appeals to us. And the actors who have been in a lot of these shows — and indeed some of whom are in our game — they’re known all over the world.”
It isn’t just the style of humor from these comedies that Playground is taking inspiration from, but filmmaking techniques, too. “The other cool thing about The Office is something we’ve kind of nicked,” Fulton revealed. “You’ve maybe seen in our trailers that we have a sort of mockumentary interview style. I think a lot of people assume we just did that for those trailers, but it’s actually a device we use throughout the game.”
“I’ve never seen it in games before,” Fulton continued. “But it allows you a way to really neatly tell a joke or drop a little bit of character detail in a way that would feel really clunky in a dialogue, but suddenly feels entirely natural when you do it to ‘camera’.”
This can be seen in the 2024 Xbox Games Showcase trailer for Fable, above, in which Peep Show’s Matt King speaks to us straight down the lens as Humphrey the Golden, Guildmaster of Albion. It’s a sitcom technique pioneered by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant in the original BBC version of The Office, before, obviously, making its way overseas for the likes of Pam and Jim to take full advantage of with their knowing looks to camera in its U.S. edition. This mockumentary-style has spawned dozens of similar TV shows since, but, as Fulton said, it’s something we’ve never really seen in a game before, which makes for an intriguing proposition.
Simon Cardy is a Senior Editor at IGN who can mainly be found skulking around open world games, indulging in Korean cinema, or despairing at the state of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Follow him on Bluesky at @cardy.bsky.social.
The surprise game reveal at last night’s Xbox Developer Direct was Kiln, a pottery-based multiplayer party brawler in the works at Double Fine. Combatants take the form of pots, vases, dishes, and urns, custom-sculpted and fired by players themselves, and will usually end up smashed into shards of tragic ceramic in the following online slapfights. Or maybe not, as there’s apparently nothing stopping you from simply playing Kiln as a nonviolent pottery sim by sticking to its clay-shaping component alone.
With Pokémon Legends: Z-A‘s Sceptile-focused season coming to an end, The Pokémon Company has shared some extra details on what’s next for the Ranked Battle scene, including the all-important start date and rewards.
Ranked Battle Season 6 kicks off on 29th January and will be sticking around until 19th February. In that time, those who reach Rank S will be rewarded with a Swampertite Mega Stone, which is capable of giving your Swampert a Mega Evolution makeover.
Magic: The Gathering has kicked off 2026 with a return to Lorwyn, and Lorwyn Eclipsed might be the most excited I’ve seen the community since, well, Edge of Eternities (the last Universes Within set).
It’s a trip back to a simpler time, without bagels (Spider-Man), bending (Avatar), or the Buster Sword (Final Fantasy) – just fantasy creatures throwing spells at each other all day long.
Not only is it the first set of a packed year, but it marks big changes to the product lineup. Theme decks are back for Standard play, while a new Draft Night boxed product encourages players to, well, draft cards to build their decks. Then there’s our first Commander decks since Edge of Eternities, and both look pretty great, actually.
Here’s everything on offer (including some brand new discounts to consider), and where you can find it now that the new set is regularly available. Just be warned that prices are still all over the place, and many products are running low on stock even on release day.
The preorder price guarantee means you may pay less, too, and each pack has a guaranteed foil. Since we published this article, though, they’ve been flying off shelves – you’ll need to move fast to secure one.
Bundle
As is the case with pretty much any Magic set, a Bundle is available, too. This one includes 9 Play Boosters, a deck box, 30 lands and a spindown life counter.
After no Commander Decks for Marvel’s Spider-Man or Avatar: The Last Airbender, they’re back with Lorwyn Eclipsed.
Blight Curse is a Jund (Black, Red, Green) deck which promises -1/-1 drain and creature combos, while Dance of the Elements is a rare five-color precon with a gameplan of summoning huge elementals and sacrifice.
They’re both up for $49.99 on Amazon, but there’s every chance one (or both) spike in the coming weeks.
Up next, Collector Boosters are where you’re likely to find the more sought-after variants of Lorwyn Eclipsed cards, with these packs full of foils, full-arts, and special treatments.
They’re not going to come cheap, however, and they’re sold out at Amazon already. With launch closing in, there’s every chance more stock arrives, though.
Draft Night Box
To my knowledge, this is a debut for the Lorwyn Eclipsed set, and this Draft Night box is still without a price on Amazon.
It contains 12 Play Boosters, 1 Collector Booster, and 90 basic lands so that players can draft a 40-card deck with friends and pit them against each other, and the winner gets the Collector Booster.
Theme Decks
Finally, Lorwyn Eclipsed is bringing back Theme Decks for Standard play, and I’m pretty excited to have an easy way to jump into the format since Commander can be overwhelming to newcomers.
They come in Pirates (Izzet) and Angels (Selesnya) forms, with both available right now. If you’re interested, they’re $23.99 each.
UK Preorders
Lloyd Coombes is an experienced freelancer in tech, gaming and fitness seen at Polygon, Eurogamer, Macworld, TechRadar and many more. He’s a big fan of Magic: The Gathering and other collectible card games, much to his wife’s dismay.
The Pokémon TCG: Pokémon Day 2026 Collection is back in stock at Amazon right now for $26.99, a steep drop from its $49.99 list price and easily the best price seen for this release so far (especially since market price is around $60 right now).
Timed to celebrate Pokémon’s 30th anniversary on February 27, the commemorative set officially releases on January 30 alongside Ascended Heroes, letting fans mark the milestone a little early. First announced in December 2025, this is a relatively small anniversary collection, but one that includes an exclusive card and a mix of bonus items.
Inside the box is a stamped foil Pikachu promo card, a metallic Pokémon Day coin featuring the anniversary logo, and three Pokémon TCG booster packs from different sets.
Available product images suggest the packs include one Phantasmal Flames booster and two Mega Evolution packs, although, as always with these collections, pack selection can vary between units, so keep that in mind when ordering as well.
At its current Amazon price, the collection undercuts the wider market by a significant margin. The same box is currently selling for around $60 on TCGplayer, making Amazon the clear value option while stock is available. Given this is a limited anniversary release, prices are unlikely to soften once retail stock dries up.
Amazon is on a real hot streak with Pokémon TCG deals in January, most recently on the Pokémon TCG: Pokémon Day 2026 Collection, and also on several Mega Evolution – Phantasmal Flames sets as well.
From aggressive Mega attackers to powerful evolution support, Phantasmal Flames brings a fiery mix of competitive threats and high-demand pulls.
Robert Anderson is Senior Commerce Editor and IGN’s resident deals expert on games, collectibles, trading card games, and more. You can follow him @robertliam21 on Twitter/X or Bluesky.
