At the opening events of Summer Game Fest 2026, things felt pretty slim when it came to RPGs, strategy games, or really any kind of title built around the mechanic we love most.
Sure, the opening showcase gave us a new trailer and release date for Star Wars, and the Xbox Games Showcase finally confirmed Persona 6, so maybe that should be enough to keep us satisfied. Still, what I always hope for at events like these is a surprise reveal, some unknown project that comes out of nowhere and gets strategy and RPG fans excited.
I was really counting on the PC Gaming Show 2026 to deliver something new, and thankfully, it did. Alongside a few fresh updates on some very promising titles I’ve been following, there were a handful of reveals worth paying attention to, and below, I’ll recap everything for you.
Vampire: The Masquerade – Eternal Whispers
One of the most interesting RPG reveals of the show was Vampire: The Masquerade – Eternal Whispers for sure, a new narrative-first CRPG from Flyos and Kwalee.
This one moves away from traditional combat encounters and leans hard into dialogue, investigation, consequence, and character-driven roleplaying. The story is set in a dark modern Montreal, where players awaken as Gabe, a vampire pulled from decades of torpor with broken memories and a past tied to the Sabbat.
Hidden power structures, rotten loyalties, personal horror, and an underground cathedral connected to a forbidden faith. What makes Eternal Whispers stand out is its fail-forward design. Failed negotiations, missed clues, reckless decisions, and broken promises don’t simply block progress.
They change the path forward. For a setting built around manipulation, guilt, hunger, and political pressure, that sounds like the right direction.
Happy Bastards
Happy Bastards returned with a new gameplay trailer and a combat demo, giving tactical RPG fans a better look at its dirty, funny, and systems-heavy fantasy sandbox.
The game puts players in charge of a band of mercenaries chasing fame, money, and whatever questionable opportunity comes next. Beneath the crude humor, there seems to be a serious tactical core.
Combat plays out on small battlefields where elevation affects movement, targeting, and advantage, while systems like Tag-Team Swap and a shared Command pool shape each round. Outside combat, the game leans into emergent roleplaying.
Towns, heroes, monsters, and factions can react to what the player does, while procedurally generated recruits come with their own attributes, quirks, and class paths. There are 20 classes with skill trees, injuries, dismemberment, permadeath, necromancy, and even the option to capture monsters or villagers. It looks messy in the best tactical RPG way.
Signet City
Signet City was one of the stranger and more promising reveals of the PC Gaming Show, mostly because it comes from Jump Over the Age, the studio behind Citizen Sleeper.
This is a first-person fungalpunk RPG set in a city shaped by ecological collapse, strange technology, political pressure, and growing unrest. Players take the role of a parasite that moves through hosts, sees the world through their eyes, and alters their lives one pivotal day at a time.
It’s still early, and gameplay has not been fully shown yet, but the premise already feels tied to the kind of tabletop-inspired roleplaying that made Citizen Sleeper so sharp. The Steam page mentions dice rolls, host emotions affecting chances of success, skill upgrades, resource management, and expanding city hubs.
That makes Signet City worth watching closely, especially for players who like RPGs built around systems, prose, and social pressure more than traditional combat loops.
Shroom and Gloom
Shroom and Gloom brought more good news for deckbuilder fans, with a new demo available now and a Q3 2026 release window on Steam.
Developed by Team Lazerbeam and published by Devolver Digital, this is a first-person roguelike double-deckbuilder set inside hand-drawn fungal dungeons. The key idea is simple, but smart. One deck handles exploration, while the other handles combat.
Explore cards help players navigate rooms, modify cards, unlock weapons, and interact with the dungeon. The combat deck is where the game lets loose, with cards used to stab, slash, roast, season, and eat mushroom enemies. Defeated foes can even become food, restoring health or feeding into soup-based effects.
The whole thing has a strange dungeon crawler rhythm, where movement, route choices, resource use, and deck growth all feed into the same run. It already looks like one of the more distinctive card-based roguelites on the 2026 calendar.
Ascenders: Beyond the Peak
Ascenders: Beyond the Peak debuted with a new trailer and a playable demo. I can’t wait to try. It takes turn-based strategy away from the battlefield and puts it on the side of a mountain.
Developed by Ludogram and published by Twin Sails Interactive, it’s a turn-based exploration roguelite about leading a team of alpinists across cursed peaks in search of ancient artifacts.
The important detail is the rope system. Your climbers are physically connected, so positioning matters in a very different way from a standard grid tactics game. You can anchor allies, pull someone to safety, or watch one bad move turn into disaster.
The game includes nine classes, with examples like the Highlander, Scout, and Sapper offering different ways to move, shove, reposition, or reshape terrain. Add permanent death, trauma, expedition planning, resource pressure, and Lovecraftian threats inside the mountain, and Ascenders starts to look like Darkest Dungeon for people afraid of heights.
2 Fights 2 Tight Spaces
2 Fights 2 Tight Spaces was both announced and released into Early Access during the PC Gaming Show.
Ground Shatter is back with a sequel to Fights in Tight Spaces, once again mixing turn-based tactics, deckbuilding, positioning, and stylish action-movie brawls in cramped arenas. The big change this time is online PvE co-op, a first for the series.
Players can coordinate during a shared player phase, plan attacks together, use multiplayer-enhanced cards, and work through criminal gangs as a team. Solo play is still part of the package, with a renewed focus on the Agent 11 experience, more flexible builds, dynamic card rewards, and varied objectives.
The sequel also adds a polymorphic card system, environmental weapons, disarms, stance changes, and more ways to turn the room itself into part of the combo. It’s Early Access, but the tactical foundation is already clear.
Another Door
Another Door was another world premiere, and it brings a different kind of turn-based tension to the list.
Developed by Mizar and Alcor Interactive and published by No More Robots, it’s a multiplayer turn-based roguelite built around bluffing, risk, hidden choices, and forced cooperation. Players move through strange doors, face monster encounters, choose cards, gather rewards, and decide whether to keep pushing for more gems or escape while they still can.
The twist is that friends are not always reliable. Choices can stay hidden, intentions can be guarded, and survival may depend on reading the people around you as much as reading the encounter itself.
It supports up to four players online or on the same screen, with boons, curses, celestial events, and nightmare environments adding pressure to every run.
Cassette Beasts 2002
The last one mentioned (hoping I didn’t miss anything) is Cassette Beasts 2002. Bytten Studio’s creature-collecting series is back with a new story set in London in 2002.
Raw Fury confirmed the sequel for PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch 2, though no release date has been announced yet. The core idea remains familiar. Players record beasts onto cassette tapes, transform into them during turn-based battles, and fuse forms with companions to create new combat options.
This time, the game includes more than 250 beasts, over 50,000 fusion combinations, and a story built around Nodnol, a strange mirror world sitting in the shadow of London.
There are 12 companions to befriend or romance, online multiplayer support, tape trading, co-op battles, and rogue monsters that can learn from the player’s tactics before returning with new challenges.
