I know everyone and their grandmother's dog is celebrating the imminent release of Hollow Knight: Silksong after years of some legendary-grade trolling, but I won't be among the hordes waiting for the doors to unlock on Sept. 4.
If any indie game has approached the same level of obsession for me, though, it was just delayed again. REPLACED has stubbornly occupied a recessed corner of my brain ever since its announcement back during E3 2021, and the latest news to come out of Sad Cat Studios has me feeling bittersweet.
REPLACED is properly landing on Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, and Xbox Game Pass in Spring 2026, and this release window seems confident. It finally seems like the end to my wait is in sight... but it's around the corner and out of this year, and the rest of 2025's video games just got a little less interesting because of it.
Sad Cat Studios recently released this trailer via IGN, and it's actually a fascinating watch that recaps the game's journey through development so far, and just how hard the studio is working to make this indie game truly unlike anything else you've ever played.
I could've told you that (and did) when I went hands-on with REPLACED over a year ago, and the game has only gotten more visually impressive since then. With incredibly detailed environments, properly gorgeous multi-level lighting, and literally hundreds of hand-drawn animations and VFX effects, REPLACED aims to masterfully blend retro and modern graphics — and, put simply, it looks like art.
And, no, REPLACED isn't a "walking simulator devoid of gameplay like all indie games," just to shut up all the drooling buffoons and their boisterous blustering early. This is a 2.5 action-adventure game set in a retro-futuristic, cyberpunk-twisted alternative of 1980s America, in which a nuclear disaster has irreversibly altered the earth and left society shattered.
REPLACED is a lot more than pretty visuals, and it's finally coming early next year.
You play as R.E.A.C.H., an advanced artificial intelligence... that's currently trapped within a broken human body. Even from the little I've played and seen of REPLACED, I already have high hopes for its deep, branching story. At the very least, I know its combat hits hard, with brutal animations underlining the dynamic and responsive controls.
According to game director Yura Zhdanovich, REPLACED is properly in its final stage of development, with the studio moving forward with final (intense) testing and polishing. It has already been four years since the reveal, so what's another six months or so?
REPLACED should be landing sometime in Spring 2026, and I truly hope this release window sticks, because I need this game injected directly into my brain. Yes, it's also coming to Xbox Game Pass as a day-one arrival, which is even more exciting (and is another thing this game shares with Silksong).
Okay, my 2025 backlog didn't actually need another game
After I learned that we definitely wouldn't be getting REPLACED before the end of 2025 (a reality some part of me had already accepted long ago), my initial reaction was one of overwhelming, never-ending, devastating, soul-crushing, traumatizing despair. Or maybe it was just disappointment.
Once that moment passed, I was relieved to learn that REPLACED is still coming and it has gotten even better, and then I was ecstatic to learn that we finally had a firm release window backed by some confident developer statements.
REPLACED may be my single most anticipated indie game, but 2025 is already stacked with a lot of incredible games — and more are coming in the next few months. My backlog is stuffed enough with 2025 video games I've yet to play, and more than a few of the upcoming releases are pinned to my radar.
I already said as much when I discussed the surprise release of The Rogue Prince of Persia a few days ago: "I still have a lot of other 2025 games I want to play, though, including The Alters, Ruffy and the Riverside, Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo, DOOM: The Dark Ages, Eternal Strands, and Heretic + Hexen. It really has been a busy year for gaming already, and there's still so much on the horizon, like Keeper and The Outer Worlds 2."
So, while there's absolutely no replacement for REPLACED this year, I certainly won't have a shortage of other awesome games to play. Just know that when REPLACED does finally come within arm's reach next year, I'll be among the very first to play it (and you'll almost certainly be hearing my thoughts after playing it).
If REPLACED wasn't on your wishlist already, I hope it is now. It still isn't? Well, you can go add REPLACED to your wishlist on Steam. There's no Xbox page (yet), but it's also coming to Game Pass on day one.
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