What Counts as “Underrated” in 2026
Not every great game dominates headlines or tops sales charts. In fact, some of the most compelling experiences this year were quietly launched, quietly reviewed, and quickly buried beneath the weight of more hyped titles. But being underrated isn’t just about poor sales.
What Makes a Game “Underrated”?
Overlooked by the mainstream: These games received little to no attention from major outlets or influencers.
Drowned out by hype: Releases from big name publishers like Elden Ring dominated the conversation, leaving little room for smaller titles. (See: Is Elden Ring Worth the Hype? An In Depth Review)
Minimal marketing reach: Many of these games lacked the ad budget or promotional support to compete.
The Value of Hidden Gems
Underrated games often take creative risks that big studios shy away from. What they lack in polish or marketing spend, they make up for in originality and heart.
Common traits among underrated standouts:
Innovative gameplay loops that break genre norms
Storytelling that trades spectacle for substance
A distinct artistic voice, often coming from indie or solo developers
These are the titles pushing the medium in quiet, unexpected directions and they deserve your attention.
Hollow Drift: Echoes Between Stars
This one flew so far under the radar you’d think it was designed to. Hollow Drift is a tightly built sci fi roguelike that asks for patience, gives you silence, and then slowly unfolds into something borderline cosmic. Exploration is claustrophobic and deliberate every door feels like a decision, not an invitation.
Where it crushes expectations is in the way it uses AI to shape each run. The environments shift based on your choices in ways that don’t scream “randomized,” but instead feel eerily preordained. It’s unnerving and brilliant. And the sound design? Minimalist, cold, and perfect. Engine hums, radio static, and the occasional inexplicable audio event do more for the atmosphere than most orchestras.
It didn’t show up on most of the 2026 awards lists, likely overshadowed by bigger budget space epics. But Hollow Drift deserves more than a footnote it’s a quiet masterclass in mood and mechanics.
Grim Halls
Grim Halls doesn’t waste time trying to win the masses. It’s slow, methodical, and unapologetically bleak. That’s the point. Set in a crumbling cathedral city torn between rival cults and rotting empires, this gothic tactics RPG leans hard into atmosphere and consequence. You don’t just field units you guide broken people through grim destinies. Every battle feels like a funeral, and every decision hits like a confession.
Its fanbase? Loud, loyal, and mostly nestled in niche forums and late night stream recaps. The game wasn’t built for instant hits or trending charts. It flew under the radar commercially overshadowed by shinier tactics releases with flashier marketing but those who found it, stayed. The combat is clean but punishing. The writing? Dense, sharp, and oddly poetic.
Grim Halls is for people who miss the days when strategy games made you think more than once before moving a single unit. It doesn’t hold your hand. It doesn’t care to. That’s why it works.
Thermals
Thermals is what happens when a game slows down enough to let you breathe. Set in a world of geothermal springs, mossy rocks, and off grid homesteads, it’s a cozy life sim that didn’t try to compete with the big glossy farming sims and that’s exactly its strength. There’s no rushing to harvest or racing a market cycle. Instead, gameplay focuses on sustainable routines: tending heat loving flora, balancing energy flow, and unlocking peaceful rituals tied to the planet’s core.
The visuals lean into warm, earth toned pixel art that feels more lived in than cute. Audio is just wind, footsteps, water. It’s meditative, not addictive. A lot of players missed it, caught in the noise of better marketed releases. But for those who found it, Thermals offered a surprisingly grounded loop a digital exhale in a year full of overstimulation.
Iron Mirage
If you ever spent afternoons blasting neon corners in OutRun or hammering laps in Ridge Racer, Iron Mirage feels like coming home. It’s unapologetically arcade: zero fluff, no lifelike tire simulation just drift heavy sprints through stylized cityscapes at breakneck speed. The game wears its PS2 era inspiration on its sleeve but coats it in modern polish: 4K visuals, fluid frame rate, a synth fueled soundtrack, and cars that control like an extension of your reflexes.
No microtransactions, no battle pass. Just old school fun, beautifully executed. That alone should’ve made it a standout. But poor marketing buried Iron Mirage beneath a pile of early year blockbuster noise. It launched quietly, survived on word of mouth, and never got the campaign it deserved. Shame too this is the kind of game that reminds you why you fell in love with driving games in the first place.
Beat Ritual
Beat Ritual doesn’t just ask you to keep the rhythm it dares you to survive it. It’s a pulse driven horror game where each note could summon something far worse than a missed combo. Think Dance Dance Revolution, but you’re deep in a forest at midnight, surrounded by ritual circles and things that whisper back.
The fusion of rhythm mechanics with folk horror and occult imagery works shockingly well. It doesn’t hold your hand. You mess up a beat, you pay for it sometimes literally, in in game currency that binds the story to your actions like a cursed pact. Players who stuck with it past launch found that the lore goes surprisingly deep, wrapping the soundtrack and gameplay in layers you don’t expect from a music game.
Its modding community deserves credit, too. Multiplayer support didn’t exist when the game launched, but fan driven mods turned it into a shared ritual. Quiet online co op rituals on Discord have grown into a small but serious scene. It’s grassroots gaming at its best if you know where to look.
Oh, and that soundtrack? Easily one of the best of the year. Drums that crack like bones. Chants that linger. Tracks feel handcrafted, not looped. It’s the kind of audio that won’t leave your head or your nightmares for weeks.
Tetherline
Tetherline doesn’t care if you’re ready. It throws you into the chaos of asymmetrical co op puzzles and expects you to sort it out with a friend, ideally one you’ll still be speaking to by the end. It’s not intuitive, and that’s by design. The game leans into its complex physics engine and a brittle retro tech aesthetic that looks like a LAN party melted into a circuit diagram.
Each level is its own kind of logic problem, but solved with timing, communication, and blunt trial and error. One player runs cables and flips breakers while the other reroutes signal paths mid air, all under progress killing pressure and tight margins for error. It’s hard, often frustrating, but the payoffs are real. When everything clicks when teamwork and tension peak simultaneously Tetherline is kind of electric.
Yes, it demands patience. Yes, it demands a player willing to fail upward. But that’s exactly why it sticks. This one earned its spot.
Far Meridian II
This one dropped out of nowhere no teaser campaign, no hype cycle, just a quiet release buried under flashier titles. But Far Meridian II didn’t need fireworks. It delivered a slow burn space opera packed with emotional weight, political nuance, and writing sharp enough to cut through zero gravity.
Set generations after the original, it marries star bound diplomacy with personal reckonings. Choices aren’t just plot points they leave dents. Dialogue sprawls across philosophical territory most games wouldn’t touch. It’s not fast. It’s not flashy. But it lingers.
Unfortunately, it launched during a stacked release window, and even genre fans barely caught wind of it. A shame, but maybe not the end. Word is spreading if you’re after narrative depth and a bit of melancholy stardust, this one’s waiting for you.
Monarch’s Wake
A slow burn with sharp edges, Monarch’s Wake isn’t for the impatient. It’s a turn based open world strategy RPG that crams politics, betrayal, and survival into every part of its design. Here, permadeath isn’t just a mechanic it’s the narrative hook. Lose a key ally, and the entire trajectory of your kingdom reroutes. Nothing resets. No redos.
Each playthrough builds a different legacy. Some kingdoms rise through diplomacy and clever alliances. Others fall brutally thanks to one bad call or an ignored famine. It’s a game that rewards heads down strategists and players who don’t mind letting the story breathe. If you rush it, you’ll miss the richness. Stick with it, though, and the payoff comes in hard earned victories, unexpected betrayals, and slowly forged legends.
A quiet masterpiece for those who like their games cerebral and unforgiving.
Overframe Protocol
Set in a rain slick future where every shadow hides a secret, Overframe Protocol doesn’t shout for attention but it whispers the kind of story that sticks with you. At its core, this is a stealth puzzler layered with systems: shifting loyalties, AI surveillance patterns, and player choices that actually alter mission flow. It’s not flashy. It doesn’t hold your hand. But once you sink into its rhythm, it rewards patience with finesse.
The game’s launch felt like a whisper lost in a storm overshadowed by AAA giants that had more marketing muscle and shinier trailers. But beneath that noise, Overframe Protocol slowly started to gather steam. Word spread on indie forums. Streamers picked it up. Now, it’s building a fanbase that values its slow burn intensity and the way it trusts players to figure things out on their own.
If you miss the feeling of discovery wrapped in tension where even a wrong breath might give you away this one’s for you.
Skytorch
It’s hard to believe Skytorch was made by a solo developer it plays like a love letter to 3D platformers with a physics engine that dares gravity to try harder. The controls are tight but demand focus. You’re not just jumping from ledge to ledge; you’re throwing yourself into aerial puzzles that require both timing and instinct. Momentum becomes your best friend and your worst enemy.
There’s no filler here. Within 15 hours, Skytorch delivers a clean, undiluted dose of platforming brilliance. From impossible looking gaps to surreal environments that fold in on themselves, the game trades spectacle for surprise at every corner.
Don’t show up expecting a tutorial to hold your hand. You’ll fail a lot. Then you’ll get better. That’s the point.
Keep an Eye on These Titles
These aren’t games built for mass appeal or viral fame. They don’t rely on blockbuster budgets or billboard ads. What they offer instead is character jagged edges, experimental systems, strange beauty. You probably won’t hear about them at mainstream award shows, and that’s exactly the point. These games weren’t meant to blend in.
Try them if you’re looking for something with staying power. A game that lingers. Maybe not perfect, maybe not polished all the way through but memorable in the way a good late night conversation is. And when a game like that clicks with you, it tends to stick.
Support the devs. Share what you liked. These underdogs don’t have hype machines they’ve got communities. With a little push, they might just get the recognition they deserve.