That doesn’t mean December is a total wasteland, though—Ubisoft, for one, wasn’t scared of Cyberpunk—and as a side effect January gets to enjoy a few bigger releases, such as the new horror game from Bloober Team, The Medium. IO Interactive’s next slapstick contract killing game, Hitman 3, is also releasing in the first month of 2021.
For your free time planning purposes, here are all the big PC games releasing this December and January, as well as a few coming later in 2021:
December
Empire Of Sin | December 1
A prohibition-era strategy game from Romero Games—that’s the Romeros, Brenda and John—in which you can roleplay as fictional and historical mob bosses, including Al Capone, and build a bootleg booze and gambling empire.
Twin Mirror | December 1
Using the word “Twin” in the title of a game whose premise involves traveling to a small town to investigate a mysterious death feels like trolling, but Life is Strange developer Dontnod went for it anyway for its new adventure game. Rachel got a look at it recently.
Immortals Fenyx Rising | Dec 3
It’ll be interesting to see if Ubisoft’s new Breath of the Wild-ish game surprises us—it looks cool, but it’s presently a bit overshadowed by Cyberpunk 2077, which is out a week later. (If Immortals doesn’t sound familiar, that may be because it used to be called Gods and Monsters.) Read Andy’s preview for more.
Sam and Max Save the World | December 2
Some former Telltale employees got together to release a remaster of the studio’s first episodic game, which continued the adventures of the beloved comic book and LucasArts detective duo.
Haven | December 3
A co-op RPG about a couple trying to get by on a hostile planet. Not too many games star romantic pairs from the outset, or are about relationships, and Haven’s rhythm combat looks cool.
Cyberpunk 2077 | December 10
After multiple delays, CD Projekt says that Cyberpunk 2077 is definitely, for real this time, absolutely releasing on December 10. At least, that’s what they told their investors. Here’s everything we know about the game from years of previews and interviews.
Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond | December 11
A virtual reality WWII shooter created by Titanfall and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order studio Respawn Entertainment. Things are coming full circle: Respawn’s founders also founded Call of Duty developer Infinity Ward, which was originally formed from Medal of Honor: Allied Assault developers.
Airborne Kingdom | December 17
Build a city in the sky. I’m looking forward to this one—it potentially mixes the fun of sending your first scouts out in Civilization with fiddly city planning, both things I love.
More December releases:
January
Cobra Kai: The Karate Kid Saga Continues | January 5
To be honest, I didn’t know there was a Cobra Kai game coming until I looked at Steam’s upcoming games list just now. I don’t have high hopes, but I am pleased that licensed games like this still get made.
Hitman 3 | January 20
Agent 47 is back for more comedy assassination hijinks, and progress from Hitman 2 will carry over—in fact, you’ll be able to play the maps from both of the last two Hitmans in Hitman 3. We also recently learned that the engine supports 300 active NPCs at once.
The Medium | January 28
One of several games that was chased out of December by Cyberpunk 2077, The Medium is a new horror game from Bloober Team, developers of Layers of Fear and Blair Witch. It’s one of the Xbox Series X optimized games, so we expect some fancy graphics settings (ray traced blood river reflections?).
More January releases:
Further ahead
Here are some of the games we expect to see in February or March. (We’re not sure sure about Halo Infinite, Far Cry 6, or Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines 2, but they’re on the horizon somewhere.)
