Best new game previews of GDC 2026: At Fate's End, Mina t...

What’s Happening

Breaking it down: GDC 2026 was full of solid games.

At Fate’s End, Mina the Hollower, and more stole the show at this year’s GDC. Follow Followed Like Thread Link copied to clipboard Add us on By Giovanni Colantonio Published Mar 13, 2026, 8:00 AM EDT Previews No two games we played at GDC were quite the same The 11 best games we played at GDC 2026 Image: Brain Jar Games Sign in to your Polygon. (yes, really)

Com account This year’s Game Developers Conference has been a tense one.

The Details

International travel anxiety, panels full of AI tech talks, and an emphasis on people over creators have all cast a shadow over what’s supposed to be an important annual watering hole for developers to gather at. But even in that mess, the industry’s best qualities have still found a way to poke through.

This year’s conference came with countless demos for upcoming games that show just how much creativity real humans still have in the tank. I spent this week playing as many of those games as we could at GDC and the events orbiting it in San Francisco.

Why This Matters

Whether I was hunting undead CEOs or managing sibling rivalries, I walked away from the conference with plenty of reasons to believe that developers can find a path forward in a tumultuous time. These are some of the best games I played at GDC this year — and I promise that no two of them will look quite the same. (Note: these picks are in alphabetical order, and the numbers do not imply a ranking here.

This is the kind of news that gets gamers talking across social media.

The Bottom Line

A 40-minute demo toured me through a different kind of 2D action-adventure game centered around the inner politics of a fantasy succession story. There are tense duels against bosses and tons of exploration, but traditional 2D Metroidvania staples take a backseat to creative narrative components that get experimental with the genre.

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