6 – Mutant Year Zero: Road To Eden

Mixing real-time stealth exploration with tight, turn-based tactical combat,  Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden delivers one of the most distinct XCOM-likes of recent years. You lead an unlikely team of mutated scavengers, including a cross-tempered talking duck and a cynical boar, navigating a beautifully bleak post-apocalyptic Earth in search of the legendary Eden. The core brilliance lies in its tactical preparation: before initiating turn-based combat, you move your squad in real time to scout terrain, set up crossfires, and silently pick off isolated enemies. Once combat begins, it transitions into familiar grid-based cover mechanics where positioning and environmental hazards are crucial. While it flew under the radar for many, its atmospheric world-building and slick mechanical fusion make it an underrated classic of the genre. While I do have my troubles with animals being anthropomorphised (I just find them creepy), it’s undeniable that this is one of the best turn-based strategy games for those who are looking more for a narrative, rather than an open-ended affair.

5 – Marvel’s Midnight Suns

I’m very happy to see that players are finally giving Marvel’s Midnight Suns the chance it never got when it first came out. Developed by the same team that worked on XCOM and XCOM 2, this Marvel adventure took the formula, changed it a bit by adding a deck-building system, and replaced the military operatives with Marvel Superheroes, and the aliens with evil goons! Players take the role of the recently revived Hunter, a legendary figure who had already saved the Earth once, and whose eternal slumber had to be interrupted to come back and kick some ass again! This Hunter is the game’s way of allowing the player to insert themselves into the mix of iconic superheroes without making it feel too forced.

While turn-based will always be turn-based, Midnight Suns’ biggest change was also the one that I think scared people the most, and that was the introduction of a deck-building system. It was justified by the developing team as a way to have these Marvel Superheroes be strong from the get-go (you know, without having to first research all the stronger abilities later down the line). I remember very clearly that the reaction wasn’t the most positive, with a substantial portion of the criticism attacking the perceived randomness of the system. As someone who considers the game to be one of his all-time favorites, I think this was an excellent choice that didn’t hamper my enjoyment of it in the slightest.

My biggest point of contention is how battles become repetitive if you decide to grind the game to 100%, as they’re not as random as they might initially seem to be. The game also features a major social aspect, and instead of a menu being used as a base, there’s an actual base that the player can explore, interact with their crew, and discover a substantial amount of sidequests and unlockables.

In 2026, players seem to be going back to it and falling in love with it, so if you have it hanging around in your Steam library but haven’t played it yet, go and give it a chance; you won’t regret it.

4 – Invisible, Inc.

Is it fair to call Invisible, Inc. a forgotten title? I think that, in 2026, yes, it is. When the game came out, in 2015, people fell in love head over heels with it, but after the hype had passed, I don’t recall hearing back from it. No YouTube essays, no post-mortems, no editorials, no DLC, no Invisible, Inc. 2. Nil, nada, zero. Let’s right that wrong! Invisible, Inc. is a very different experience from all the others on this list. Most focus on combat, while Invisible, Inc. is built around the idea of controlling a squad of spies on daring missions where confrontation more often than not means that things have gone awry.

Here’s the set-up: The base of your intelligence agency was raided and destroyed by a powerful megacorp. Now, you have 72 hours to find a new mainframe for Incognita, your AI. You’ll be going on daring raids, gathering resources (stealing credits, hardware, and data), hiring new agents, all in a bid to prepare for the final assault on the corporate infrastructure. Missions are tense, with the enemies’ threat level constantly rising the longer you spend on their sites. The game’s art style is also beautiful, and it’s a game that deserved way more love than it ever got.

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