7 new gaming releases you should give a try at least once

A new cycle of releases is setting the tone for 2025, with studios testing ideas that stretch exploration, combat precision, storytelling, and platform design. Alongside these projects, Canada's expanding regulated online casino ecosystem reflects a broader shift in how digital entertainment is accessed and experienced.

The gaming industry enters a new year with a steady release schedule for 2025 based on on-demand subscription platforms and live service updates alongside a consistent flow of indie releases. This reflected the gaming industry, projected to grow to $188.8 billion USD, showcasing an industry with diversity and a wide player base on a global scale across multiple devices. The digital distribution of video games has become the dominant method for players to purchase video games, allowing studios to operate without retail space to display their games or fixed marketing windows to promote their titles.

Canada's perspective on the evolution of digital engagement is unique. In 2024, the country earned USD 3.9 billion from online gambling, and the figure is anticipated to reach USD 8.7 billion by 2030. There is a growing demand for safe, regulated online casino alternatives. According to data from May 2023, digital gambling encompasses consoles, PCs, mobile devices, and internet-based casinos. Players are multiscreening and using every type of hardware, completing different types of digital recreation on casino consoles, and using entertainment gambling services online to a broader, unprecedented extent.

Light No Fire
Studio: Hello Games—Expected on PC and console platforms

In Light No Fire, Hello Games seeks to build a fantasy world that resembles Earth and uses the procedural design systems that the studio is famous for. Unlike the other titles, this one contains a single large planet built for long exploration, vertical movement, and optional synchronous cooperation. Developer updates and other first discussions reveal an interest in systems of land formations that shape the style and systems of travel, settlement, and control. This design is a growing trend. It shifts the focus of shared survival spaces from mission-based progression.

Zenless Zone Zero
Studio: HoYoverse—Releasing across PC, mobile, and console ecosystems

Players can experience HoYoverse Zenless Zone Zero with multi-device seamless progress and seasonal updates, and cross-device character team building. As preview videos focus on the flow animation and pacing of the fast, large-scale battles, the game cuts itself from the pack that competes for attention in the cross-device action RPG space. Zenless Zone Zero embraces fast-action combat and a modern, stylish design featuring a combat and progress system built on player choice. Finally, the game has grown to be an action RPG powerhouse on mobile and pc.

Princess Peach: Showtime!
Studio: Nintendo—Available for Nintendo Switch

Nintendo showcases the longtime character in her starring role, supporting her with special moves that allow her to transform for the theater and swap her to a new character for a new style of movement and traversal. The long-established character is now the focus of her own story, likely the start of a range of supportive action platforming moves, and the theatre style. Nintendo can now turn to new avenues for storytelling and character support with the audience. The community highlights the interest in how the design mechanics introduced with Peach will be used for platforming.

Pacific Drive
Studio: Ironwood Studios—Launching on PC and PlayStation platforms

In Pacific Drive, players must keep a single station wagon running while venturing into an exclusion zone filled with anomalies and damaged buildings. Survival in this game is about keeping the car alive and running. The car serves as an anchor point within the game while working on the resource management systems and upgrading features within the game. Streamers have mentioned this game in the same breath as other atmospheric survival games that focus on survival and resource management rather than straight-up combat.

Dustborn
Studio: Red Thread Games—Releasing on multiple platforms

In Dustborn, players guide a character and a group across a fictional, reimagined battleground that is North America. Players make decisions during the game to progress across the map, and these decisions are based on dialogue and relationships. Players do not earn XP through combat killing systems. This project fits in the unique, motivated track of creativity games that focus on the performance of the characters and emotional connection. Anticipation for the game's early narrative has communally sparked interest to differentiate other narrative games based on road stops within the interactive media players can control.

Flintlock
Studio: A44 / Kepler Interactive—Expected on PC and console platforms

A44's Flintlock The Siege of Dawn combines the tech of the gunpowder era and the supernatural by focusing on mobility and timing encounters. Within the action RPG genre, the title reflects an understanding of the demand on design systems around pattern learning and positional reasoning as opposed to the collection of equipment. All of the anticipation is around the design of the enemy's rhythm and how the agility used in combat will affect tactics.

Regulated online casino platforms expand Canada's digital gaming environment
While built on a different model from traditional game publishing, regulated online casino play remains a growing part of Canada's wider digital entertainment space. Ontario, Canada, has reported billions of dollars in monthly iGaming wagers in recent years, including CA$7.56 billion in wagers in July 2025, making online casino activity one of the province's most significant digital gaming segments. As players explore new titles across subscriptions, mobile platforms, and console ecosystems, many are also encountering new regulated online casino options through 120+ legal sites across 10 provinces, reflecting the same shift toward always-available digital play, secure transactions, and cross-device access.

Recent statistical data from the Canadian government shows that the lottery and raffle games remain one of the most common types of gambling in the country, with significant participation in both digital and in-person forms. This behavior is adapted to play in the regulated online casino environment, as online gambling interfaces are shaped by the gaming sector.

A changing year for players and developers
In all genres and formats, these releases show how developers are rethinking exploration, action systems, and narrative structure, as regulated online casino platforms adapt the same technologies to serve a distinct but adjacent niche of digital play. As facilities, frameworks, and pipelines mature, the upcoming chapter of digital interactive entertainment will gauge how much players will expand their conception of a game and where they will choose to spend time in worlds created to be shared, polished, and iterated upon.