6. Big Walk - 04/08 (OpenCritic: 88)
2. Marvel's Wolverine - 15/09 (OpenCritic: 78)
4. Gears of War: E-Day - 06/10 (OpenCritic: 88)
3. Order of the Sinking Star - 08/10
8. The Witch's Bakery - 14/10
7. Final Fantasy: Resonance - 22/10
1. Grand Theft Auto VI - 19/11
5. The Eternal Life of Goldman - 2026
Counter Pick: There Are No Ghosts at the Grand - Early Access 2026 (Result: 0 points)
2. The Blood of Dawnwalker - 03/09 (OpenCritic: 84)
4. Onimusha: Way of the Sword - 04/09 (OpenCritic: 86)
7. Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter - 17/09 (OpenCritic: 92)
8. Well Dweller - 22/09 (OpenCritic: 90)
1. Control Resonant - 24/09 (OpenCritic: 85)
6. Valor Mortis - 13/10
5. Phantom Blade Zero - 29/10
3. Rayman Legends Retold - 03/12
Counter Pick: Forever Ago - 08/10
***
Hello all! I've been thinking about this for a while, and since we have a clean starting point with the halfway point of the year, I figured I wanted to gauge interest. In case you're unaware of Fantasy Critic, it's essentially fantasy football but for video games. Take the role of a publishersand pick the games releasing this year that you think will be the biggest critical hits to show off your foresight! I'll give a short overview of what this would entail without going into the nitty gritty details, as this is just to see if there'd be enough people interested to start something in this vein:
If you'd want to participate, first of all (and most importantly), come up with a fun name for your fictional publisher. When we'd have a finalised group of people willing to participate, we start drafting. There'd be snake order picking (1 - 2 - 3 - 3 - 2 - 1 - 1, etc.). When you pick, there can be no repeats on games already picked. Only one publisher can publish a game after all! We'd go up to six ''main'' games for your publisher to release for the rest of the year. You will also (at any point in the draft) choose a ''sleeper pick''. This would be a game that needs to be indie-published, from a lesser-established developer, etc. that you think could impress. Again, details would come later if this ends up happening. Finally, you get one ''counter pick''. After the draft is done, choose one of the games someone else has chosen as one to bet against. If you're right and it performs poorly, you will gain points while they lose points.
The number of picks might change depending on how much interest there is as to not have an overwhelming amount of picks necessary between now and the end of the year. Scoring-wise, you'd gain or lose points based on the OpenCritic score of a game. For every point above 70, you will gain a point. For every point below, you will lose one. For example: an 86 score would net you +16 points, while a 54 score would net you -16 points. And in the case you have a real critical hit on your hands, you will receive a bonus point per point above 90. For example: a 93 score would therefore net you +26 points instead of 23. Finally, if your game starts looking like a stinker, you have one opportunity at any point during the league to switch out a game for a new one as long as review scores are not in yet. Think of it as the Xbox tactic.
At the end of the year, we'd host our own fun little awards show based on the results. If you ever thought you'd do better as a publisher choosing what games to spotlight, this would be the chance to prove it. If it sounds interesting to you, let me know through a comment to see if there's enough interest to host something like this! It would take some time to do the set-up, but then for the rest of the year it's watching the fruits (or rot) of your labour for some friendly competition.
@Tjuz Oh yeah! Count me in! I’ve never heard of this before but I have a little experience with fantasy football. I was bad at it because I didn’t know all the players very well, but I’m pretty sure I know my games better!
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@Th3solution Well, it seems like we might be able to play out A League of Their Own. I was thinking @Ravix or @Werehog might be interested? Just tagging you in case you missed the thread and are interested, but no pressure if not! Otherwise, I'd be fine going ahead with just the two of us if no one else shows interest if you are. Which of our behemoths would come out on top?!
@Tjuz sure, if all I have to do is remember to pick some games and perform occasional banter as to why I shall win all the awards etc, and leave all the actual work up to you.
Anyway, as I was reading your main post and the words 'name your publisher' crossed my eyeballs my primitive brain shouted "BoobySoft" so I guess we're commited now 😭😂 if the word booby is too offensive i'm sure 'BubiSoft' will suffice.
@Ravix Does BoobySoft exclusely release erotic visual novels by any chance? Kidding, I shouldn't judge a book by its cover. I'm sure you have a lot of award-winning fare under your belt! Maybe even some 3D RPGs with incredible plot if you catch my drift. You'll be the most beloved publisher by gaming bros across the world, no doubt!
@Tjuz Oi, Oi! You should have seen the '3D RPGs' on her, mate.
I do actually think your game is a good way to have us engage with what is coming out and could be good for discovery. I've already discovered a game I hadn't heard of but think will be charming and popular on release. But of course I won't say what it is yet in case I need to pick it for the fantasy league 👀
I guess even if just a few of us get involved it will be worth doing for that alone. Plus the banter
@Ravix Making good use of BoobySoft's graphical advancements, I see! The amount of pixels you can use nowadays for some accurate simulation. Truly something to behold.
But yeah, I agree it's a fun way to interact with the release schedule. Like I said in the main post, I'd always wanted to try doing it, but I lack people who care enough about games in my regular life! This seemed as safe a bet as any to find some fellow nerds who will equally enjoy obsessing about upcoming releases and have some friendly competition. Or in your case, maybe the occasional unfriendly competition. All are welcome as long as you don't get your posts censored!
I will now have to start thinking about which game you could possibly be talking about to steal it from right under you... is HuniePop 3 coming out by any chance?
@Th3solution what's left to lose other than our collective minds.
@Tjuz when were you hoping to finalise it to get people picking? I will still play with you two even if the other people can't see the potential wonders of your idea. Although doing it in public may paint us as the nerdiest nerds of the nerdy forum, but I will happily fight anyone that tries to make fun of you for wanting to get people engaged with a little forum fun 😁
When it seems you're out of luck.
There's just one man who gives a f*************ck
⚔️🛡🐎
@Th3solution These are some great names you've come up with. Each and every one fills me with confidence that you'll put out nothing but the highest quality of games. What could Pukas Arts mean otherwise?!
@Ravix I planned to keep it open 'til tomorrow, so... not long until you'll catch me tagging you for your attention and then harrassing you to make your pick every time it's your turn! I hope you're excited! I'll explain the whats and hows in more detail as we go. Only then may people see the nerdy fun they missed out on. It's hard to be pioneer folk like us!
@Tjuz Count me in, please! And with apologies for being late to the party. I can't promise that I'll be able to meet every deadline, but I'll try my best. I should also mention that, while I have heard of Fantasy Football before, I have absolutely no idea how it works and so, while your opening post does a decent job of explaining what I'm signing up for, I may ask to have my hand held at certain points.
As for my fictional publisher / developer name, I can't decide between "BioWerehog" or "iDoss" and since there's a good chance you might be considering a BioWare pun for yourself, I'll let you pick whichever fits best with the others. Thanks in advance!
"If I let not knowing anything stop me from doing something, I'd never do everything!"
@Tjuz Is there a Youtube video that explains this? I read your first post twice and don't get it at all. I thought fantasy football was that game the UAE were making that had Zeus as a footballer etc on the trailer and everyone on chat here (State of Play) met the announcement with absolute disgust. Also Werehog mentioned deadlines, I'm more curious than committed.
These violent delights have violent ends & in their triumph die, like fire & powder Which, as they kiss, consume.
@Werehog@GirlVersusGame (+ also anyone else passing by who is curious what this is about)
Not to butt in and supercede our fearless leader @Tjuz , but I can try to do a simple fantasy sports 101 education and perhaps this will seem less daunting. I’ll simplify it to the bare bones, just for clarity—
The concept of fantasy sports (fantasy football being the most popular version, but this is done with baseball, basketball, hockey,… just about any sport) is basically a bunch of buddies get together before the season begins and each picks their own virtual fictional team made up from players in the league. Then, as the season rolls on, each of those players stats on the real-world field are attributed to your virtual team. When the players you’ve picked play well, you do well!
So if you have a player on your team, like for example Lionel Messi, and he scores a goal in a game, he earns you virtual points for your virtual team. The basic idea is that you choose a team filled with the players who you think will have good individual performances that year.
The hard part comes where someone (TJ in our case) has to come up with a scoring and tracking system to attribute and translate real-world performance metrics to create points to the virtual teams. This is where it may get a little confusing, but we don’t have to worry about that as TJ will track and score everything. For now, just ignore the stuff in the first post about “sleeper picks” and “counter picks” until you understand the basics. Which is that the basic idea is our job would be just to pick a “team” of games that we think will perform well. Then when we are at the end of the season we’ll see who prognosticated the best.
So basically instead of running a virtual sports team, we’re running a virtual gaming production company.
The other confusing thing if you’ve never done fantasy sports is the “draft”. Drafting a player simply means choosing them for your team. A player can only be on one team; multiple teams can’t have the same player. So in our case, we may all think Wolverine is going to do well and we all want it for our personal fictional production company, but only one of us gets to have it. Who gets it? Well, that’s the “draft” process. “Drafting” is the concept of taking turns picking so that everyone gets an even shot at picking good players for their team. (That’s stuff up there about the “snake order” draft process is one popular way to make things fair)
I’ll pause here for questions.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@Th3solution Your explanation makes it sound like dynamic trading in the stock market. With stock validation and statistics and how it relates to real-world metrics, the idea being you simulate the future reaction and their reaction before any earning report. It's how a lot of insider trading goes undiscovered too, it leaves room to gamble with assets you don't technically have. At least it sounds like that to me, I'm not sure how to explain shifts in market sentiment but it sounds very similar to exit positions which you could apply to both what you and Tjuz said. In that context I get it but I don't follow particular studio earnings only a number of specific funds and investment branches, it would give me an unfair advantage if I was aware of something before it was made public like what happened a couple of months ago.
But the word fantasy is there so you mean publishers that aren't real? It also sounds like managing sleeper stocks and Tjuz's description made it sound like the shuffling of a portfolio to diversify and anticipate, which would also give someone the advantage. I literally just got messaged from Tjuz when I was typing this, I'll probably just quietly watch the thread. I'm not going to pretend to follow studios or their newest releases, if it was the business side then perhaps but I think the business side of the gaming industry currently is quite negative.
So basically instead of running a virtual sports team, we’re running a virtual gaming production company.
So virtual (simulated) performance optimization through shell companies but in a virtual setting? straight away my mind went to wash trading to increase fake volume. This is why I shouldn't play that game. I wish I had other words to explain what I'm gathering from both posts, and it would be cheating if I bribed Tjuz outside of the site with jelly-beans. I believe in playing fair, I'm just not sure how. I definitely think I'll just watch, but thank you for explaining.
These violent delights have violent ends & in their triumph die, like fire & powder Which, as they kiss, consume.
@GirlVersusGame you pick some games that are yet to release when Tjuz asks, and then you score points based on the review scores it garners. I know we are all kind of overthinkers here, but sometimes simplification is best 😄
@Tjuz@Th3Solution@Werehog I think that is all we really need to know to actually play this, right? And Tjuz will be in charge of the actual complexities that if there are any.
I did want to check was it based on just critic reviews? I'm not familar with open critic and if it combines user reviews or not.
@Ravix If they are real games why is the publisher not? do you mean if someone says 'Grand Theft Auto 6 all on black' then spins the wheel if the game performs well they get points? It's basically predicting review scores through industry metrics but you get to pick a not real publisher, or if the games aren't real then is there some kind of random generator program which gives the scores? which people then guess, I'll look into it again later, but dibs on PocketPet, like Palworlds Developer Pocketpair.
These violent delights have violent ends & in their triumph die, like fire & powder Which, as they kiss, consume.
@GirlVersusGame Yeah Ravix says it succinctly. This is going to be much simpler and I don’t think TJ plans on factoring in all the finances. I think most of that data is hard to get anyways. And we all know whoever picks GTA6 would win hands down if we included a game’s financial performance. So it will just be how the game scores on reviews, I think.
@Ravix@Tjuz One wrinkle that could be done is that the Push Square review score be weighted more as an extra bonus outside of the OpenCritic score. Would make for a fun homage to the site. Of course then that’s where we could get into ‘insider trading’ types of machinations where I could bribe Liam to inflate his review score for my games. 😂
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@GirlVersusGame The games are real. And the points we get are based on the real review scores. The game’s real publisher is not a factor and is insignificant. We are the “make-believe” pretend publisher in this game. My company will be called “Pretendo” and I will draft a stable of games that I will be the make-believe fantasy publisher for. There won’t be a wheel spinning, we will actively choose the games we want in our portfolio through the draft.
edit: it might make sense to realize this game will take months… as the review scores for the upcoming game releases will be trickling in for the rest of the year.
@Tjuz Also, when it comes time to do the draft, are you going to give us a large list of upcoming 2026 releases to choose from, or is it up to us to know what’s coming out?
Also #2 — if we pick a game and it ends up being delayed into 2027, do we get to pick another, or does that mean we’re just out of luck. Personally I think if a game is delayed then we should have to suffer the consequences of not getting credit for one slot of our portfolio, kind of like if I drafted a fantasy football player and then if they get injured then it’s just too bad as that’s the risk we take and I get a big fat zero for their contribution.
Welcome nerds… to the PushSquare Forum Fantasy Critic league of 2026! I, Tjuz, your (not so) humble host, shall inform you further in this message on how to lead your company to greatness. To start us off, and since we’re a patootie little league of four, we will be picking 7 regular games and 1 sleeper pick. I’ll repeat some of the information in more formal and organised terms so that everyone is one the same page.
***
How do I score points?
Whenever one of the games in your production line releases, there will be a seven day “waiting period” from the release date on. After those seven days, the OpenCritic score on that day will become your points for the time being. We’ll do a second pass at the end of the year if there are any major differences in the scores, but that should be enough time normally for scores to settle and points to be awarded.
For every point your game scores above 70, you will receive a point for your company. For example, a 76 score would net you 6 points. Once a game scores above 90, the rewards double! For ever point above 90, you will receive two points instead. Therefore, if your game scores 93, you will get 26 points in total for your release. If your game scores under 70, you will start losing points for every point under. A game with a 60 score would therefore net you -10 points.
In the case of special events, they’ll go as follows. If your game is flat-out canceled, you’ll receive -10 points for your embarrassment. If a game gets delayed beyond 2026, the game will simply award you 0 points.
How does the draft work?
We’ll be going in snake order to let you lay claim to the games that you believe will make your company stand out at the end of the year. For the uninitiated, a snake order simply goes from first to last and then last to first only to alternate from there. I will show the order at the end of this post as decided by a randomizer. Promise I didn’t rig it no matter what.
After the initial 7 picks are done, we will move to a special round of sleeper picks. They will be explained underneath. After that, your draft is finalised for the rest of the year… except for one possibility (mentioned in the next paragraph). When all of that is said and done, we will move into the final round of picks. Your counter picks. Simply choose any game from any of the other players where you think their high expectations are totally misplaced and it will net a loss of points. If you’re right, that player will score as normal for their game. However, you will gain a point for every point your counter pick goes under 70. But do keep in mind… the opposite is true. For every point your counter pick scores above 70, you will lose points. You can therefore either try to minimise the damage by a game you think will score squarely around 70, or you can bet big on a game you’re sure will be a disaster.
You do, at any point in the draft, have the opportunity to switch out a game of yours for anything else. You can only do this before review scores have started dripping in for said game. You can simply tag me whenever you grow wary of one of your particular games and notify me you’re switching it out and for what else. This also counts for delayed games, so maybe keep this possibility open in case you’re unsure one of your picks will actually make it to release on time.
What is a sleeper pick?
Sleeper picks are a pick that are bound by a small set of rules you need to abide by to be able to pick them. The idea of a sleeper pick is that it should be something totally out of left field that you believe could surprise audiences instead of a highly awaited release. For your pick to count as a sleeper pick, it should fit in these requirements:
The game must not be a sequel/spin-off attached to an IP or spiritual successor of any kind
The game should not have appeared in any previous Sony/Xbox/Nintendo showcase or Summer Game Fest
That’s it. Try and find the next Balatro or Vampire Survivors that might just appear out of nowhere to take over the world! You can pick any game that would satisfy these requirements for a regular pick as well, but you can only pick a game like this for your final sleeper pick.
***
I think that covers the bases fairly well? If you have any questions, feel free to ask me for clarification. I might’ve forgotten to mention something incredibly important. As almight as I am, I am not perfect! I will address your tags in a new post underneath just to keep this separate and easy to come back to if need be at a later date. I will edit this post into the first post of the thread, so it’ll be easily accessible.
Now, without further ado. The draft order is as follows:
I’ll address your posts first in the next post and then officially kick off the draft later today! Get your games ready!
Forums
Topic: PushSquare Forum Fantasy Critic - 2026
Posts 1 to 20 of 280
Please login or sign up to reply to this topic