The Most Exciting Upcoming Shooter Games to Look Forward to in 2025 and Beyond

When Doom first burst onto the scene in 1993, it wasn’t the very first first-person shooter, but it did help revolutionize the genre’s formula to where it was never the same afterward. Since then, shooters (especially first-person shooters) have grown to become one of the most continually successful genres in the gaming industry, spurned on by innovations like competitive online play and the establishment of some incredible franchises like Call of Duty, Battlefield, and others. With Battlefield 6 finally releasing today, it’s a great time to take a look at some of the other exciting upcoming shooter games that fans have to look forward to for the rest of 2025 and into 2026.

• Release Date — October 10, 2025
• Developer — DICE
• Publisher — Electronic Arts
• Platforms — PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S

Today’s release of Battlefield 6 is one of the more hyped game launches of the year, made all the more exciting by the successful open betas that the title had during the summer. By all accounts, Battlefield 6 is a return to form for the franchise that has players saying the series is back in a big way, and the first wave of critical reviews for the title only echo that sentiment. The campaign is reportedly mostly forgettable and disappointing, but single-player is not why you play Battlefield. Battlefield is all about its large-scale multiplayer maps with vehicles and realistic approximations of warfare, and on that front, it absolutely delivers.

• Release Date — October 21, 2025
• Developer — Anshar Studios
• Publisher — 3D Realms
• Platforms — PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S

In just over a week, the legendary cult FPS Painkiller is getting a reboot with a new eponymously titled entry. This new Painkiller aims to embrace the horror elements of the original games while featuring vastly improved visuals, filling a nice niche in the genre that should please FPS fans looking for something that emphasizes fast and fun gameplay above all else. Notably, this is the first title in the Painkiller series to be developed by Anshar Studios, which boasts some notable credits that suggest this franchise reboot/remake is a perfect fit. Painkiller is also one of the few upcoming shooter games with a campaign that’s built around co-op play.

• Release Date — October 23, 2025
• Developer — DINOGOD
• Publisher — Annapurna Interactive
• Platforms — PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S

We tend to think of the blanket term “shooters” to refer to the first-person shooter genre, but the truth is that there are plenty of other kinds of shooting games that fall under that umbrella. One upcoming third-person shooter title that looks incredibly promising is Bounty Star, which is a curious blend of mech-based shooting, base-building, farming, and crafting. A hybrid between a third-person shooter and a farming sim wasn’t exactly something I anticipated to be one of the year’s most exciting upcoming indies, but with Annapurna Interactive publishing, it’s almost a guarantee that Bounty Star will be something special.

• Release Date — October 29, 2025
• Developer — Obsidian Entertainment
• Publisher — Xbox Game Studios
• Platforms — PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S

Obsidian’s The Outer Worlds might be labeled as an action RPG, but the “action” half of that descriptor refers to the game’s surprisingly great first-person shooter combat, which has come a long way since the days of games like Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas. Nowadays, RPGs with first-person shooting combat like Outer Worlds and Cyberpunk 2077 are just as competent as FPS games as they are role-playing experiences, which sets a high bar for The Outer Worlds 2 to clear. But given how great the combat was in Obsidian’s Avowed, players should be very excited to see what kinds of off-the-wall weaponry we’ll get to use in spreading wanton violence across the galaxy in Outer Worlds 2.

• Release Date — October 30, 2025
• Developer — Embark Studios
• Publisher — Embark Studios
• Platforms — PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S

After blowing players away with The Finals, Embark Studios is now set to release its second game with the upcoming ARC Raiders in just a few weeks. ARC Raiders is a PvPvE third-person extraction shooter with an emphasis on scavenging and a surprising amount of stealth mechanics, where every sound is liable to give away your position to threats both player and AI-controlled. The initial public playtests of ARC Raiders have been enough of a sample to showcase that it’s easily one of the most exciting upcoming extraction shooters, and its release is perfectly timed between the major drops of Battlefield 6 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 7.

• Release Date — November 4, 2025
• Developer — The Fun Pimps, iLLOGIKA
• Publisher — The Fun Pimps
• Platforms — PC

Players are likely most familiar with developer The Fun Pimps thanks to its popular survival game 7 Days to Die, and that title is getting a spin-off in November called 7 Days Blood Moons. 7 Days Blood Moons transforms the base-building and survival aspects of 7 Days to Die into a run-based structure where players work together to fortify their shelter before defending it from hordes of bloodthirsty zombies in an asymmetrical multiplayer setup where 4 players battle against 1 who controls a “Zombie Master” that leads an army of the undead. That clever asymmetrical twist and implementation of base building elements may be just enough to make 7 Days Blood Moons one of 2025’s sleeper hits.

• Release Date — November 14, 2025
• Developer — Treyarch, Raven Software
• Publisher — Activision
• Platforms — PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S

Call of Duty is back this year with the seventh entry in the Black Ops spin-off series, which is taking an interesting approach compared to past entries. Rather than feature a unique standalone campaign with a story akin to past Black Ops games, Black Ops 7 takes a sort of “Black Ops Multiverse” approach that sees timelines and characters from multiple games in that line of Call of Duty titles coming together for what’s sure to be one of the series’ most bizarre and over-the-top single-player modes. But let’s be honest — hardly anyone plays Black Ops for just the campaign, and the multiplayer is once again set to be the star of the show and the reason to pick up Black Ops 7 when it launches in just a few weeks.

• Release Date — November 15, 2025
• Developer — Battlestate Games
• Publisher — Battlestate Games
• Platforms — PC

For fans of extraction shooters, November is going to be a big month as Escape From Tarkov finally enters 1.0 and arrives on Steam. Escape From Tarkov is largely responsible for the rising popularity of extraction shooters as one of the newest and most exciting FPS subgenres, and the title’s Steam release is already poised to be one of the more successful of the year, given how dedicated the game’s following is among shooter fans. Escape From Tarkov is tense, tactical, and downright unforgiving when you’re first getting started, but it’s also some of the most fun you can have with an FPS. Here’s hoping that Battlestate Games delivers on its promises of more robust single-player modes and other bonuses players have been waiting for with Tarkov‘s 1.0 release.

• Release Date — November 18, 2025
• Developer — Polygon Bird
• Publisher — Polygon Bird
• Platforms — PC

Remember that “shooters” also includes scrolling shooters, or shoot ’em ups/shmups, which means a game like Birdcage absolutely belongs on this list as one of the genre’s most exciting upcoming titles. Birdcage looks to be as close as we’ll ever get to a true follow-up to the classic Radiant Silvergun, and that it looks as impressive as it does is a good sign for its eventual release on November 18. It’s worth pointing out that Birdcage is the debut title from Polygon Bird, but the initial impressions of its gameplay and production values have been strong enough to already help the developer secure funding for its next title (a turn-based RPG).

• Release Date — November 20, 2025
• Developer — Oneway Ticket Studio
• Publisher — Oneway Ticket Studio
• Platforms — PC

Oneway Ticket Studio’s debut game, The Midnight Walkers, is a horror-themed extraction shooter where players venture in solo or in a team of 3 to fight against both supernatural threats and other players. The initial impressions of it so far point to it being an extraction shooter take on the Dying Light formula, which sounds like it could be a winning combination. There are plenty of extraction shooters (and even a handful of other upcoming ones on this list), but there aren’t many horror extraction shooters, which gives The Midnight Walkers an edge to help it stand out when it launches into Early Access toward the end of November.

• Release Date — November 20, 2025
• Developer — City Connection
• Publisher — City Connection, Clear River Games
• Platforms — PC, PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S

Along with Birdcage, one of the other more exciting scrolling shooters set to arrive later next month is the HD re-release of the PS1 classic R-Type Delta. R-Type Delta: HD Boosted is a remaster of R-Type Delta that sees its visuals upscaled for modern displays and adds in a handful of quality-of-life features that players have come to expect from other similar ports. City Connection is handling this particular re-release, which, while not as esteemed as M2 when it comes to shmup ports, has exhibited steady improvement across its releases when it comes to input lag and the quality of additional features. Plus, having R-Type Delta on modern hardware is worth celebrating in and of itself.

• Release Date — December 4, 2025
• Developer — Nightdive Studios, Monolith Productions
• Publisher — Atari, Warner Bros. Games, Nightdive Studios
• Platforms — PC, PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S

Nightdive Studios is back at it again this winter with a remaster of the beloved FPS classic Blood. Titled Blood: Refreshed Supply, this latest Nightdive remaster updates the title to be playable on modern PCs and the Steam Deck without the need to tinker with the game’s files, as well as brings it to consoles for the first time. Fans of modern boomer shooters like Cultic and Dusk will be surprised to see how much influence Blood so obviously has on both, and there are even plans for Nightdive to continue with remasters of the game’s many additional expansions and chapters beyond those initial 40+ levels.

• Release Date — TBA 2026
• Developer — Saber Interactive
• Publisher — Focus Entertainment
• Platforms — PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S

Even though we don’t have a specific release date yet, Saber Interactive’s partnership with horror director John Carpenter on the upcoming Toxic Commando is easily one of next year’s most exciting releases. This over-the-top horror shooter feels like the perfect project for Saber Interactive to take on after the excellent Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II. Judging from what we’ve seen of the game so far, players can expect similar thrills as they mow down seemingly endless hordes of monsters, from your run-of-the-mill undead zombies to hideous mutated freaks that tower over the player.

• Release Date — TBA 2026
• Developer — Banana Bytes, Red Art Studios
• Publisher — Red Art Games, SUCCESS
• Platforms — PC, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Switch 2, Xbox Series X/S

Shmup players have an unexpected surprise to look forward to in 2026 thanks to the surprise announcement of a third game in the Psyvariar series. Psyvariar 3 isn’t set to arrive until next year at an unspecified date, but there are already some images and video circulating that indicate it’ll be a proper follow-up to the last game in the series, 2003’s Psyvariar 2: The Will to Fabricate. The Psyvariar games have always stood out when stacked up against their contemporaries, which should help distinguish Psyvariar 3 from other modern shmups that follow closely in the Cave school of danmaku, or “Bullet Hell”, design.

• Release Date — March 20, 2026
• Developer — Housemarque
• Publisher — Sony Interactive Entertainment
• Platforms — PlayStation 5

The recent Sony State of Play showcase that helped kick off Tokyo Game Show 2025 started with a bombshell reveal of Housemarque’s new game, Saros. Already, Saros is shaping up to be an incredibly promising follow-up to the excellent Returnal, and we don’t even have to wait that long to get our hands on it. The best part of the recent gameplay showcase was the announcement of Saros‘ release date, with the title set to arrive as a PlayStation 5 exclusive on March 20, 2026. Much like Returnal, it seems as if Saros will be a bullet hell-style third-person shooter with roguelike elements that involve dying and returning stronger than before to take on increasingly challenging threats.