August is already more than a week old, so naturally we’re getting this month’s wishlist together right on schedule. We’ll blame event season. Between planning for PAX West and TGS 2026, keeping up with releases, and pretending the backlog is still under control, time isn’t on our side.
There’s still plenty landing this month across RPGs, action games, indies, and a few harder-to-pin-down releases, which means the usual budgeting problem isn’t getting any easier. So, before event season completely takes over our calendars, here are 10 games we’re keeping on the wishlist this August.
Table of Contents
- #10 Beast of Reincarnation
- #9 Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls
- #8 OVER REQUIEMZ
- #7 Puppergeist
- #6 The Witch’s Bakery
- #5 Duskfade
- #4 Mortal Shell 2
- #3 Steins;Gate Re
- #2 Captain Tsubasa II: World Fighters
- #1 Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 2
#10 Beast of Reincarnation
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, PC
Release Date: August 4, 2026
Game Freak steps well outside its usual lane with Beast of Reincarnation, an action RPG set in a post-apocalyptic Japan in the year 4026, where Emma, an outcast afflicted by the same blight consuming the world, travels alongside her equally blighted canine companion, Koo. Together, they cross an overgrown wasteland hunting powerful beasts and piecing together the secrets behind their condition, with their relationship sitting at the center of the journey rather than simply dressing up another ruined-world adventure.
Combat has Emma fighting directly while Koo responds to commands, blending real-time swordplay with more deliberate RPG decision-making, while skill trees, gear, spirit stones, and flexible loadouts support ranged, stealth-focused, or aggressive approaches. Koo takes on a larger companion role as he’s part of the combat systems, which gives Beast of Reincarnation a more distinct identity than Game Freak simply taking a swing at a darker action RPG.
#9 Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls
Platforms: PlayStation 5, PC
Release Date: August 6, 2026
Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls puts Arc System Works on a 4v4 Marvel tag fighter, which is already a fairly easy pitch before getting into the anime-inspired character designs and the way each match revolves around team composition. The launch roster features 20 characters, but the larger hook is figuring out how those fighters work together through assists, combos, and matchup-specific synergies rather than simply picking one favorite and sticking with them forever.
There’s a healthy spread of offline and online modes, including Episode Mode, local Versus, Training, ranked and casual matches, and Arcadia Rumble, while traditional and simplified inputs should make it easier to get started without flattening the usual ArcSys learning curve. For a tag fighter with this many moving parts, making the first few hours approachable should give more players room to experiment before the matchup homework begins. Hopefully the PC release gets the technical attention it needs too, because a fighter this dependent on repeat play shouldn’t deal with launch issues.
#8 OVER REQUIEMZ
Platforms: Switch
Release Date: August 20, 2026
OVER REQUIEMZ is a dark otome adventure that takes The Wizard of Oz somewhere considerably less friendly, following high school student Yuhiru after she’s swept into the kingdom, sentenced to death almost immediately, and ordered to investigate monster-filled ruins alongside four death-row convicts and their mysterious supervisor. Escaping that sentence means surviving the journey, finding a way home, and deciding how much trust she can place in companions who weren’t exactly assembled because of their spotless résumés.
That setup gives its relationship-driven storytelling a darker edge, since every potential bond is tangled up with questions about guilt, redemption, and whatever these characters are still hiding. For players who like otome games willing to spend time with darker fantasy settings and people making deeply questionable decisions, OVER REQUIEMZ has a premise that can support more than the usual romantic route structure.
#7 Puppergeist
Platforms: Xbox Series X, Switch, PC
Release Date: August 20, 2026
Puppergeist is a visual novel and rhythm game about Claire, a witch who travels into the Doggie Underworld in search of her lost pup, only to encounter wandering canine spirits carrying their own stories of friendship, love, and loss. She uses music to connect with those souls while traveling alongside a demon named Lunne, so the trip gradually becomes as much about helping others move forward as it is about finding the dog she came looking for.
Progression is tied to rhythm challenges, with individual encounters built around different musical sequences and story beats rather than treating the rhythm side as a detached minigame. Connecting those performances directly to the spirits gives the mechanics an emotional purpose inside the story, and that’s a much more interesting use of rhythm gameplay than dropping button prompts between dialogue scenes.
#6 The Witch’s Bakery
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Switch, Switch 2, PC
Release Date: August 20, 2026 October 14, 2026
The Witch’s Bakery is a cozy adventure RPG about Lunne, a young witch starting a bakery in modern-day Paris, where her ability to see into people’s hearts means the job quickly involves more than keeping the shelves stocked. When someone’s emotions become especially tangled, Lunne can enter a magical Heart Palace where those thoughts and feelings take physical form, eventually finding the ingredient needed to bake something capable of helping that person heal.
Each day is divided between managing the bakery, exploring different parts of Paris, building relationships, learning skills, and improving Lunne’s magic before heading home for the night. The routine has the comforting structure you’d expect from a life sim, but the Heart Palace sequences give all of those social interactions somewhere more meaningful to lead. It still looks gentle and inviting, though there’s enough emphasis on vulnerability and emotional baggage to keep the premise from amounting to little more than magical bread and attractive Parisian scenery.
#5 Duskfade
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Switch 2, PC
Release Date: August 13, 2026
Duskfade is an action platformer about Zirian, who sets out to save his sister from Despair while trying to repair the fractured flow of time, a journey that takes him through worlds shaped by the mysterious Master Clockmakers. Forests, underwater regions, deserts, and cloud-covered heights give the adventure the kind of constantly changing backdrop that suits a platformer, while the larger story ties those places to Zirian’s own coming-of-age journey.
Movement looks like the real attraction, with jumping, dashing, grappling, and gliding feeding directly into combat and traversal instead of existing as separate toolsets. In a genre like this, simply getting from one place to another needs to feel good long before the next boss or story beat arrives, and Duskfade appears to understand that appeal. There’s a clear affection for older action platformers here, but the emotional framing and faster combat keep it from leaning entirely on nostalgia.
#4 Mortal Shell 2
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, PC
Release Date: August 20, 2026
Mortal Shell 2 expands the original’s grim action RPG formula into a compact, interconnected open world where exploration plays a much larger role, while still keeping the environments dense enough that wandering doesn’t become an exercise in crossing empty space. Players once again possess the dormant bodies of fallen warriors, with each Shell offering different strengths, abilities, and memories to uncover as the Harbinger hunts down the creatures guarding the stolen Ova of the Undermether.
Combat is faster and less restrictive this time, dropping stamina limitations while putting more emphasis on posture breaks, critical attacks, weapon upgrades, and switching between the strengths of different Shells. That should noticeably change the rhythm for returning players, pushing the sequel away from carefully rationing every action and toward more aggressive experimentation. With more than 80 dungeons scattered throughout the world, Mortal Shell 2 seems less interested in simply making the first game larger than in giving its combat and exploration more room to breathe.
#3 Steins;Gate Re:Boot
Platforms: Xbox Series X, PC
Release Date: August 20, 2026
Steins;Gate Re:Boot revisits the time-travel visual novel with refreshed artwork, a rebuilt interface, and a newly expanded version of Akihabara, while keeping the story centered on Rintaro Okabe and the increasingly dangerous realization that messages can be sent into the past. Characters have been redesigned by returning artist huke, environments have been reconstructed using period references, and a new scenario expands the story beyond what returning players already know.
The core structure remains choice-driven, with Okabe’s phone acting as a major decision point that can push events toward different branches and endings, meaning much of the tension still comes from seemingly small interactions carrying consequences much later. The new material gives returning players a better reason to revisit the story than a visual overhaul alone would, while newcomers get a cleaner way into one of the genre’s best-known science fiction stories. Either way, it’s probably time to start checking those messages again.
#2 Captain Tsubasa II: World Fighters
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Switch, PC
Release Date: August 28, 2026
Captain Tsubasa II: World Fighters picks up after the first game with a new story based on the World Youth arc, once again treating soccer less like a simulation and more like an anime battle system where a shot on goal can reasonably justify its own dramatic cutscene. The roster has grown to more than 110 playable characters across 22 national teams, with returning and previously unseen squads colliding through exaggerated super shots, blocks, and rivalries overseen by series creator Yoichi Takahashi.
The sequel expands its on-field systems with more tactical interactions, particularly during shooter and goalkeeper confrontations, while the New Stars Route lets players create a custom athlete and join Japan’s national team alongside Tsubasa. Spectacle has never really been the problem here, so giving players more to think about between those big signature moments should make the matches themselves more interesting. World Fighters can still behave nothing like actual soccer when the situation calls for it, which is probably for the best.
#1 Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 2
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Switch, Switch 2, PC
Release Date: August 27, 2026
Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 2 brings together Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots and the HD Collection version of Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, finally giving two very different chapters of the series a more convenient home on current platforms. The package also includes Metal Gear: Ghost Babel as a purchase bonus, alongside screenplay books, character and story reference material, the Metal Gear Solid 4 Database, and a second digital soundtrack collection.
The biggest draw is still Guns of the Patriots, which has spent years tied to older hardware, while Peace Walker remains one of the series’ more structurally unusual entries thanks to its mission-based progression and cooperative play. Bringing both forward helps clean up a series history that’s been increasingly scattered across generations of hardware, and Ghost Babel only makes the preservation angle more interesting. Vol. 2 isn’t simply another excuse to replay Metal Gear. It makes several of the harder-to-revisit parts of the series considerably less annoying to access.
