Stuff I liked in 2026
Table of contents
List-in-progress of metal albums, books, and games I liked in 2026. Metal limited to 2026 releases, the rest whenever.
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)
- Cryptic Shift — Overspace & Supertime (prog/death/thrash)
- Archspire — Too Fast to Die (tech-death)
- Bloody Valkyria — Requiem - Reveries of the Dying (melodic/atmospheric black)
- Ethereal Darkness — Echoes (melodic death/black)
- A Forest of Stars — Stack Overflow In Corpse Pile Interface (avant-garde black)
- Plini — An Unnameable Desire (instrumental prog)
- Unlucky Morpheus — Gate of Hell (symphonic power)
- Fires in the Distance — Circadian Promise (death/doom)
- Gold Spire — Steps into Shadow (death / smooth jazz)
- Allt — Ataraxia (prog/metalcore)
- Evergrey — Architects Of A New Weave (prog-power)
- Haken — in a fever dream (prog)
- Atavistia — Old Gods Awaken (folk-melodeath)
- Frozen Crown — The Legend of the Six Kings (power)
- Brymir — What We Leave Behind (symphonic melodeath)
Books§
Adrian Tchaikovsky — Pretenders to the Throne of God
The latest addition to the Tyrant Philosophers series
I've alredy mentioned in previous years.
This one explores a new, Scandinavian- and Scottish-inspired corner
of the world which continues to be delightfully built,
with all sorts of fun and funny magic and gods
coexisting in a way that somehow feels entirely natural.
Like many of Tchaikovsky's works this is a tragic and brutal story of imperialist war,
but with just enough levity brought by wonderfully human characters
and playful fantasy worldbuilding.
Christopher Priest — The Inverted World
We follow Helward, a boy born to a secretive society in a strange moving city,
but the main character is the city itself.
Why does it need to move? Why do its denizens behave the way they do?
What's in the outside world, a world that seems to warp and twist in nonsensical ways?
I love a mystery story where the world itself is the secret to unravel,
and this is a good one.
China Miéville — Railsea
Another fun worldbuilding exercise, this one starting from one simple thought:
what if the Age of Sail but with trains instead of boats?
Instead of water and whales, the seas are full of tangled rails
and giant moles (and all sorts of other burrowing animals, but I'm partial to moles myself).
I wasn't entirely on board with all of the plot and characters,
but the world was fun enough to captivate me nonetheless.
Aleksi Stenberg — Kunnian kantaja
This one's in Finnish and likely hasn't been translated,
but I'd feel awkward changing the language for just this one mini-review,
so in English it shall be.
This is a medieval fantasy story in a simple, grounded world that feels very Finnish,
with much attention paid to how ordinary life functions in such a time and place.
A knight takes on a dangerous journey where bandits may lurk anywhere
and trust is hard to come by.
I greatly enjoyed the character writing and the attention to mundane physical detail.
China Miéville — Perdido Street Station (Bas-Lag)
A convoluted, borderline surreal urban fantasy story
full of strange magic and even stranger creatures —
insect-headed women, cactus people, high-dimensional poet spiders,
clockwork robots, almost cyberpunk-like horrors of body modification.
The three-part series anchors on the grimy and violent city of New Crobuzon,
but each book is self-contained with a (mostly) new setting and new characters.
The first one takes place in the city itself, following a renegade scientist's efforts
to fight a blight of mind-eating monsters accidentally unleashed on the city.
It's an often unpleasant and depressing read full of violence and tragedy,
but beautifully written with fascinating worldbuilding.
Margaret Killjoy — The Sapling Cage
I needed something lighthearted to read after Miéville's Bas-Lag trilogy dragged me through the mud,
and this was a perfect counterbalance to bring me back to a non-depressive baseline.
Not exactly a carefree feel-good tale,
but a heartwarming story of a transgender girl becoming a witch
and coming to terms with her identity and finding community
while battling rising forces of dark magic and authoritarianism.
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).
Pseudoregalia
A compact and beautiful PS1-inspired 3D metroidvania that's all about movement.
You explore a mysterious castle full of platforming challenges
which are often insurmountable at first but can be traversed in several ways
as you build up your kit of unlockable tricks.
Chaining moves together to jump and dash through the castle with ease
is an absolute blast all the way through,
and the game doesn't outstay its welcome,
keeping the extent of the world manageable even when you inevitably get lost for a while.
Also, you get to play dress-up with the cute goat-girl protagonist.
MOLE
The name caught my attention for obvious reasons,
but what's behind it turned out to be a brilliant horror experience.
You're a worker on a subterranean drilling vessel
headed towards some mysterious signal coming from deep within the earth.
The repetitive task of navigating the machine is punctuated
with increasingly surreal and frightening things happening around you
and the story of horror and tragedy that brought you here slowly unveiling itself.
If you liked Mouthwashing, play this one.
Cairn
One of the most affecting videogame experiences I've ever had.
On the surface Cairn is a surprisingly authentic-feeling simulation of bouldering,
with control over individual limbs and simulation of grip and balance,
but what elevates it into something unforgettable is the context those mechanics are placed in.
You're tasked with not just climbing a beautiful mountain with incredible views,
but surviving the trip by managing hunger, thirst, heat, and health.
Sitting down in your tent to cook up a soup after a tough climb feels amazing.
But more importantly still, the story and character of Aava
(a funny coincidence of a name)
and the people she meets on the mountain touched me deeply.
The way Aava isolates herself in an all-consuming focus on her work,
how she fails to connect with the people in her life,
how hermits on the mountain speak about their own solitude,
all profoundly resonated with my own struggles with loneliness.
It's a great game and a great story that each build on the other
to become one remarkable work of art.
Total Chaos
In a weird moment of thematic resonance,
here's another game with survival mechanics and narrative themes of loneliness
that I played at the same time as Cairn.
Total Chaos is an intense action-horror adventure focused on melee combat,
with a layer of resource management and improvised weapons.
The atmosphere is oppressively dark and disconcerting,
the combat weighty and impactful, and the monster designs terrifying.
There's a certain degree of jank that speaks of a small development team and budget,
which created a few frustrating moments for me but overall added to the game's sense of character.
Dressmaker
This game is completely different from everything else on this list,
and yet it's the one that most feels like it was designed for me personally.
As the name suggests, it's a creative sandbox where the only goal is to design dresses,
and it's quite impressive in the amount of creative options it gives you to accomplish this.
The process is simulated with enough detail to feel authentic,
but leaving out the more tedious bits of the real thing so you can focus on the design.
Clients with different needs and fun character writing come to you
to provide just enough creative constraints to keep the flow of ideas going.
I happen to be both an amateur seamster and an artist who loves drawing dresses,
so this game has been both a beautiful creative outlet and a source of very useful education.