It’s NFL Draft day, and if you play Fantasy Football, you know the stakes. Tonight, teams will draft the prospects they believe will be cornerstones not just in 2026, but years into the future. Stars like Heisman-winner Fernando Mendoza and unanimous All-American Jeremiyah Love will dominate the early rounds, while late-draft sleeper picks will round out rosters and determine which teams get an edge in the seasons to come.
Our Fantasy Gaming league is built of that same spirit. In January, six Punished Backlog writers drafted what they believed to be all-star teams capable of going the distance. The rules were simple: seven games (aka players), up to two of which could be holdover (or “keeper”) picks from the prior year. Five games would make up the active roster, while the other two would warm the bench. Players would be able to swap games in and out freely, with the caveat that five games must be “scored” by the end of the year, lest a team suffer an unfortunate goose egg. Whichever team earned the highest average Metascore by the end of the year would reign supreme. As I said, simple.
Fast-forward three months and change, and the competition is looking fierce. Games have hit storefronts, reviews have dropped, and scores have been tabulated — some great, others not so much. There’s still plenty of year left, but based on Q1 alone, this should be a nail-biter. Matthew Berry would be proud.
But which teams have risen to the top of the heap, and which have shown initial growing pains? Read on as we delve into the first Fantasy Gaming update of 2026.
Note: I’ll be presenting team updates based on inverse draft order (to maintain an air of mystery). At the end, I’ll show the current standings.
Team David
As the winner of Fantasy Gaming 2025, I was relegated to drafting last in January. Perfect; just how I like it. Not only did I have back-to-back picks (due to the snake format), but I had a worthy keeper in the form of Resident Evil Requiem. Capcom’s latest survival-horror game represented my 1.06, while I snatched up Mega Crit’s Slay the Spire II with my 2.01.
The keeper pick sure paid off, as Requiem launched to stellar reviews, settling in at an 89 on Metacritic. Slay the Spire II, meanwhile, entered early access in March; unfortunately, it seems like we’ll have to wait until 2027 for the full 1.0 release (if not even later), meaning I’m essentially holding the bag unless I choose to drop the game during a future waiver wire. TBD on whether I do.
Thankfully, I went conservative with my 3.06 and 4.01 picks, grabbing Dragon Quest VII Reimagined and Mina the Hollower, respectively. DQVIIR launched to a respectable 83, while Mina is slated to release sometime this spring. Based on my impressions of a recent demo, I expect the game to be another solid addition to my lineup.
My next picks: Playground Games’ Fable, due out this fall, and Naughty Dog’s Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophecy, expected by… who the hell knows when. If I keep one game heading into 2027, it’ll likely be Slay the Spire II, but dammit if I don’t want to swing big and see what the makers of The Last of Us have got cooking.
I ended the draft with a passion pick: Fabraz’s Demon Tides, an open-world platformer that I later reviewed and loved. I awarded the game an 8.4, which, purely coincidentally,1 mirrors the game’s Metascore of 84. Not too shabby.
Crunch the numbers, and I’ve got an 85.3 heading into Q2. In the words of Larry David, I’m feeling prettay, prettay, prettay… prettay good.
Team Amanda
Amanda and I have squashed our beef.2 While 2025 had us bickering over Hollow Knight: Silksong, we’ve cleaned the slate this year and are getting back to fantasy basics.
Amanda wasted no time getting started, using her 1.05 pick to grab the upcoming 007: First Light. She followed up by nabbing Housemarque’s Saros with the 2.02 — a game we should know quite a bit more about once reviews begin to drop in the next few days.
I feel like I led Amanda astray with the 3.05, explaining over the podcast that I felt Yakuza Kiwami 3 + Dark Ties was a safe bet. It didn’t help that Amanda and I independently played through Yakuza 0 for the first time this year, and we both came away extremely impressed. (Confirmation bias, amirite?) Unfortunately, Kiwami 3 released to a 74 Metascore — well short of RGG Studio’s typical greatness.
Thankfully, Amanda’s next pick, MOUSE: P.I. For Hire, got things back on track. The game has a solid 81 on Metacritic, while our own Donovan Harrell outright adored it, giving MOUSE: P.I. For Hire an illustrious (if not-so-elusive3) 9.8.
For Amanda’s next two picks, she went with two titles with February release dates: Norse: Oath of Blood and Tarsier Studios’ Reanimal. While the latter generally impressed, reaching an 80 on Metacritic, Norse fared worse, mustering only a 70. Thankfully, Amanda kept both on the bench, dodging a low score in the process, but she’s admitted over our Discord that the decision to sideline Reanimal stings in retrospect.
With her final pick, Amanda selected TR-49, a game she raved about in her review. Other critics weren’t quite as high as Amanda (who gave it a 9.6), and TR-49 has settled at an 83 Metascore.
All in all, a 79.3 so far. A solid floor! 007 and Saros are bound to give Team Amanda a much-welcome boost in the weeks ahead.
Team Gary
There isn’t too much to talk about with Gary’s team, at least for now. Several of the games he drafted — Control Resonant with the 2.03, Onimusha: Way of the Sword with the 3.04, and Stranger Than Heaven with the 5.04 — all have nebulous release windows. At this point, we’ll likely have to wait for Summer Game Fest for any movements there.
On the more immediate front, Gary can look forward to Mixtape (6.03), which releases on May 7, 2026. A few months later, Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter will enter the fray; it’s slated to hit storefronts on September 17, 2026.
The biggest news for Team Gary, by far, was the release of Sad Cat Studios’ Replaced, a long-awaited cyberpunk indie with gorgeous 2.5D voxel art and intriguing storytelling. Gary previewed the game back during February’s Steam Next Fest, and we’ll be publishing his official review tomorrow, April 24.
Unfortunately, Replaced suffered some nasty bumps — and bugs4 — in the road to release. Initial reviews range from glowing to lukewarm, with the top criticisms relating to the game’s combat and technical performance. The game sits with a 76 Metascore, which is decent, but hardly worth the 1.04 pick (which Gary used to retain Replaced as a keeper pick). Hopefully the score ticks up as more reviews roll in.
Rounding out the lineup is Grasshopper Manufacture’s Romeo Is a Dead Man, a game that’s as zany — and polarizing — as the developer behind it. The game has a decidedly mixed 72 on Metacritic; thankfully, Gary benched the game long before it released, saving him and his team a few points.
Driven solely by Replaced (for now), Team Gary sits with a 76.0, with plenty of room to scale the standings in the months ahead.
Team Sam
Sam had the third pick in this year’s draft. While he had his pick of the litter aside from the aforementioned Resident Evil Requiem and a certain mega-blockbuster (which we’ll get to shortly!), he chose to retain a carryover from 2025 in Marvel’s Wolverine from the ever-steady Insomniac Games. Now that we have confirmation that Wolverine is dropping in September, Sam is sitting pretty. All he has to do now is wait.
With the 2.04 pick, Sam went with another safe choice in Capcom’s Pragmata. Based on my preview impressions, I had a feeling we were in for something special, and Sam intuited that as well. Reviews dropped a week or so ago, and critics have been raving about it. The game sits with a well-deserved 86 on Metacritic. (Be on the lookout for a Pragmata piece from Sam in the coming days.)
Sam went big with the 3.03 pick, selecting FromSoftware’s The Duskbloods. We still know next to nothing about this one, other than that it’s a Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive (at least at launch) and that it’s an online PvPvE game. When I hear Nintendo + online, I shiver, but maybe The Duskbloods is the game to put a stop to the “Nintendo can’t figure out multiplayer” narrative.
The Duskbloods aside, everything else on Sam’s team has a stated release date. LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight (6.04) releases on May 29, Rhythm Heaven Groove (7.03) follows not too long after on July 2, and Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls (4.04) closes out the summer with an August 6 release. If even a few of these games can hit, Sam will be in a terrific spot.
Had we published this article a few days earlier, Sam would’ve been atop the leaderboard thanks to Pragmata’s 86. However, just two days back, developer poncle’s Vampire Crawlers released to an 81 on Metacritic. A solid score for a solid game (Donovan greatly enjoyed the demo), but that does bring Sam’s average down just a bit.
Team Sam heads into Q2 with an 83.5. Don’t let the last-minute regression to the mean fool you: Sam’s well-positioned to go far in this competition.
Team Zack
Zack — where do we begin, my friend? 2025 wasn’t exactly great for you. You finished second-to-last in the standings; saw a goose egg due to the excellent, but under-the-radar, Gigasword not getting enough buzz to qualify on Metacritic; and your big-ticket item, Grand Theft Auto VI, got pushed to 2026. It just wasn’t your year.
Well, you’re making it happen in 2027, buddy. That 1.02 pick went to good use, securing GTA VI for another (and hopefully the last) year. With the 2.06, you snagged a real value in Nioh 3, a game that has since gone on to hit 86 on Metacritic. Your next three picks were equally savvy, nabbing Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave (3.02), Phantom Blade Zero (4.06), and The Adventures of Elliott: The Millennium Tales (5.02). That last game sure whiffed on the title, but the demo was rad; a fifth-rounder was a bargain.
To round out the draft, you took Super Meat Boy 3D (6.06) and Chucklefish’s long-awaited Witchbrook (7.02). Mum’s the word on the latter, but the former released — sadly — to a 72 Metascore. Not to fear, however, as you were one step ahead, relegating the once-great franchise to a benchwarmer spot. The games business really can be cruel.
With that, you’ve got an 86.0. Pretty hard to beat! There’s only one person who might be able to pull it off…
Team Kei
And then, there was Kei. A Fantasy Gaming newcomer (yet also, paradoxically, oldcomer5), Kei was given the honor of drafting the 1.01 pick. He did not squander it, taking Playground Games’ Forza Horizon 6 without hesitation. The game’s due out in May, so we’ll see very soon whether the game delivers.
With back-to-back picks, Kei selected long-awaited indie Mewgenics (2.06) and Falcom’s The Legend of Heroes: Trails Beyond the Horizon (3.01). Mewgenics impressed our own Matt Plaus, who gave the game an 8.8. Again, coincidentally, the game landed at an 88 on Metacritic. Trails Beyond the Horizon also impressed, garnering an 84 Metascore. (Now if only I could just manage to break into the Trails series…)
Kei followed up by zigging, then zagging. He grabbed Fields of Mistria (4.06), currently in early access, with the expectation that the indie farming sim will drop in full sometime this year. With his 5.01, he went far bigger, grabbing CD Projekt Red’s upcoming Witcher IV. Surely, the game doesn’t come out this year, but Kei is planting his stake in the ground now, anticipating a potential 2027 release announcement down the line.
By the 6.06 pick, it was clear we were all beginning to scrape the bottom of the barrel. Kei selected Pony Island 2: Panda Circus, which is slated for release sometime this year. But then, the man zagged again, claiming Crimson Desert with his final pick (7.01). It was the biggest of big swings — a bet that developer Pearl Abyss would deliver on all of the hype and produce a game that played as terrific as it looked.
The gambit didn’t pay off. Despite going on to sell five million copies, Crimson Desert garnered mixed reviews on release, settling at a 77 Metascore. Fanboys will cry that critics missed the mark, but the reality is that Crimson Desert simply isn’t for everyone. As with Black Myth: Wukong before it, I plan to wait for a significant sale before trying it.6
With the dust now settled, Team Kei sports an average of 83.0 heading into Q2. That puts him in close contention with Team Sam, but it isn’t enough to knock the top dawgs off the leaderboard. Speaking of which…
End of Q1 Fantasy Standings
Thanks for reading! Here’s how the standings are shaking as of April 2026:
Click to reveal (spoilers!)
Congrats, Zack! Looks like Gary hasn’t effed ya quite yet.
Footnotes
- We only submit game reviews to OpenCritic, meaning our scores have no bearing on the outcome of Fantasy Gaming. No conflicts of interest here! ↩︎
- Speaking of beef, I wrapped up a binge-watch of Beef season two on Netflix last night, and let me tell you… I’m bummed. No spoilers here, but I just feel like the writers left so much on the table with the latest entry of the anthology series. The themes were interesting, the actors were terrific, and yet the writing just fell flat at the worst possible moments. Maybe it’s time I rewatch the excellent season one. ↩︎
- 9.8 is quickly becoming an amusing cliché in the Punished Backlog circle. We’ve awarded no 10s or 9.9s in the site’s nine-year history, but we’ve awarded 9.8s to six games: Turnip Boy Robs a Bank, the mind-blowingly good UFO 50, indie gem Tiny Bookshop, The Séance of Blake Manor from Raw Fury, Bladesong‘s early access release, and now MOUSE: P.I For Hire. ↩︎
- The bugs are also why our Replaced review is coming a week-plus after release. Press codes were delayed due to some behind-the-scenes dev work, and we only got ours on release day, along with a massive day-one patch. Gary’s been burning the hopefully-not-midnight oil to get his review ready for primetime. Stay tuned to find out whether the post-patch game overcomes the rocky launch. ↩︎
- Kei participated in Fantasy Gaming when we started it in 2018, but has graciously ceded his seat in more recent years to allow for others to give the competition a go. With former Punished Backlog writer Allison McDaniel retiring from fantasy duties this past January, Kei was more than willing to step back into the spotlight. ↩︎
- I’m still waiting on that Wukong price drop, for the record. Not losing any sleep over it, that’s for sure. ↩︎
David is the founder of The Punished Backlog. He has a problem finishing games he starts.
Just beat: Yakuza 0, Sleeping Dogs.
Working on: Ys VIII.
Can't wait for: GTA VI.
Follow David on Twitter at @David_Silbert to keep up to date with all things The Punished Backlog.
