Stuff I liked in 2026
Table of contents
List-in-progress of metal albums, books, and games I liked in 2026.
Heavy metal§
- Turpitude — Mordoré (black)
- Wildhunt — Aletheia (epic thrash)
- Pict - The Nomad (black/death/doom)
- coffret de bijoux — dyn vywjil nen jyn dij nendindalnen dyn lelqit nen vaw qanjiw / tremaalk' lalvunqat lalvunqat (post-black / electronic)
- The Luna Sequence — Rifts Become Passages (electronic)
- Gladenfold — Soulbound (power/melodeath) (AOTY so far!)
- Cryptic Shift — Overspace & Supertime (prog/death/thrash)
Books§
—
Games§
Fear the Spotlight
A short and sweet PS1-style horror adventure game
about two teenage girls who sneak into their school at night
in search of ghosts from a past tragedy in the school's theater class.
Not particularly scary or intense,
but with plenty of enjoyable atmosphere and a cute story that made me smile.
Archvale
A Zelda-style adventure RPG with bullet hell combat.
The RPG mechanics felt a little half-baked to me,
and the difficulty curve got a little spiky towards the end,
but it's a solid-feeling bullet hell that I had fun playing.
Pacific Drive
An unusual mashup of genres
that happens to be perfectly up my alley:
car building game meets cosmic horror.
The graphics are beautiful and the atmosphere immaculate,
the customization deep and the story fascinating.
It's a little slow and lengthy, but the pacing is a great fit for the atmosphere —
I never felt in a hurry to get out
(except when the storm anomaly was closing in behind my car).