Behold: We Just Got a Sneak Peek at 2024’s Biggest New Video Games (2024)

Rated T; PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC

Release date: August 30, 2024

Star Wars Outlaws ditches the Jedi and lightsabers for scoundrels and bounty hunters. Smuggler Kay Vess stars in an adventure that spans half a dozen planets and dozens of missions, and in a first for a Star Wars game, it’s all set in an open world that you can discover and explore. The game also takes plenty of cues from action-adventure series like Uncharted, with big, cinematic action scenes playing out in epic, visually stunning Star Wars settings. We spent an hour playing a few missions from Outlaws, and it looks promising, with heists, escapes, and plenty of action. We won’t have to wait long to learn more: Star Wars Outlaws is due out August 30.

Rated E; Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, PC, and mobile for Netflix subscribers

Release date: July 25, 2024

Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure will tax some mental muscles that most puzzle games leave untapped. Arranger stars a young girl named Jemma on her first real journey out into the world. You can’t navigate as Jemma directly—instead, you shift the entire row of tiles she’s standing on, along with everything else on the row. Venturing through the world is the puzzle, and you’ll have to move Jemma strategically to slide obstructions on the adjacent tiles out of her way or bump different items like swords into enemies to get past them. After playing about 30 minutes of Arranger, we ended our session stumped by one of its distinctive slide puzzles yet hungry to give it another shot. If you have a Netflix subscription, you’ll be able to play Arranger on day one for free on your smartphone or tablet.

Rated E; PlayStation 5

Release date: September 5, 2024

In case it wasn’t obvious from the screenshot, Astro Bot is absolutely adorable, but it’s also an early contender for the best all-ages game of 2024, if our half hour with it so far is any indication. If you own a PlayStation 5, you already own Astro’s Playroom, which is included with every PS5 in order to show off the console and its DualSense controller’s features. It also happens to be a great little platformer. Astro Bot takes the ideas from Playroom and runs with them, expanding them into a full game with more than 80 levels full of escalating gimmicks and ideas and plenty of Easter eggs for fans of PlayStation and its games. In just a few levels we rescued other bots themed after characters from games like Ratchet & Clank and God of War, but even if you don’t get the references, you’ll find plenty to love here. And this is one of the few big releases of the year that should be appropriate for the whole family. It arrives in September.

Rating pending; PC

Release date: late 2024

Aloft feels like a cozy, multiplayer survival game set in the sky islands from last year’s The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. In Aloft, you glide around a floating archipelago to clear an ominous corruption and uncover the secrets of the civilization that lived there before. To build paragliders, tools, and home items crucial to your character’s survival, you’ll have to gather crafting materials—but you’ll also have to keep the ecosystem in balance. Rather than flying from island to island to deplete the resources they offer, you’ll have to clear the corruption nodes that spawn diseased plants and enemies, maintain the diversity of the flora, and plant seeds to replace what you take. In your downtime, you’ll work on building a home island to sail around the sky with you, care for your own animals and garden, and cook meals to aid your character’s health. You can play Aloft alone or with up to eight friends, and there’s currently a demo out on Steam if you’d like to try the game right away. Aloft will launch in early access on PC later this year.

Rating pending; PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC

Release date: fall 2024

It’s been more than a decade since Dragon Age fans have had a new game full of mystery, adventure, and awkwardly forward romanceable companions, but based on what we saw at this year’s Summer Game Fest, it’ll be worth the wait. Dragon Age: The Veilguard features an ancient Elven god in a plot to unleash a magical hellscape full of demons and even older gods. Developer BioWare is promising a sweeping story in which you assemble a team of experts and misfits in a quest to stop that ancient Elven god, the Dread Wolf, by any means necessary (which is probably our favorite fictional-story setup). BioWare is best known for Dragon Age and the Mass Effect games, series known for their involved stories and engaging character work, and our hour with the new game was very, very promising. Dragon Age: The Veilguard should arrive this fall.

Rated M; PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC, macOS

Release date: November 15, 2024

After years of fan demand, Assassin’s Creed Shadows is the first game from the globe- and history-trotting Assassin’s Creed franchise set in Japan—and the first mainline game to feature a Black protagonist. Players will be able to choose either legendary samurai Yasuke, a servant of Oda Nobunaga, or ninja Naoe and her hidden blade, ninja sword, and kusarigama (a vicious hand-sickle attached to a long chain). You’ll be able to play as either character for most of the game’s 30 to 40 hours, and each one offers wildly different play experiences. Naoe is oriented around sneaking, hiding in shadows, foliage, and even underwater (complete with an air tube made of a reed), while Yasuke is a thundering force of nature, shattering every door or enemy that gets in his way. Assassin’s Creed Shadows also features a simulated season system, where rain and snow will blanket the landscape and change the ways you can tackle the missions you’ll find. What we’ve seen so far looks gorgeous and very, very bloody, and it appears to be taking the Assassin’s Creed series in some exciting new directions.

This article was edited by Arthur Gies and Caitlin McGarry.