This Week’s New Games

By Garrett Martin | July 28, 2025 | 3:00pm

Video Games Lists this week's new games

This week’s new games include a new RPG from a decades-old dungeon crawler series best known for its puzzle game spinoff, an escape room game with full motion video clips, and the side-scrolling return of one of gaming’s most significant ninjas. Here’s what Endless Mode will be playing this week; how about you?

Madō Monogatari: Fia and the Wondrous Academy

Platforms: PlayStation 5, Switch, PlayStation 4
Release Date: July 29

What’s a Madō Monogotari? It’s a series of dungeon-crawler RPGs that the dearly departed studio Compile started up in 1990. It’s best known in the states (and, maybe, elsewhere?) as the game whose characters were later used for a new puzzle game from Compile—a little game called Puyo Puyo. It’s the classic case of a spinoff lapping its parent, at least in North America, whose only previous Madō Monogotari game arrived 23 years after the series started and was originally localized as Sorcery Saga for the Vita. Madō Monogotari has always been a cult fave of dungeon-crawler devotees, in part because of its unusual quirks, like the lack of numbers and its entirely magic-based combat system. Our own Marc Normandin is one of those fans, and you’ll be able to read his thoughts on Fia and the Wondrous Academy later this week.

Tales of the Shire: A Lord of the Rings Game

Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch, PC, iOS, Android
Release Date: July 29

Would you like Animal Crossing more if it had some intellectual property in it? Are you somehow not utterly tired of Tolkien-related business? Want to get cozy with the coziest woodland-dwelling nerds around? Tales of the Shire aims to scratch every one of those itches. The first Tolkien life sim lets you role-play the idle life of a hobbit, from knocking out their daily chores, to palling around with all your furry-footed fellow villagers. It’s the rare licensed game that actually sounds like a perfect thematic fit, without any attempt to shoehorn something into a space where it doesn’t belong.

Dead Take

I like my video to be full motion, thank you very much. The new game from Surgent Studios (the firm behind last year’s excellent Tales of Kenzera: Zau) gets at least part of the way there. This creepy horror game might have a fully digital video game house to explore, but it also has copious real-life footage of the actors Ben Starr and Neil Newbon, two prominent and popular video game voice actors stepping in front of the camera. Other recognizable names from the world of games—actors, YouTubers, even Alan Wake designer Sam Lake—pop up as you get deeper into the mystery. It’s not entirely FMV, but it’ll do.

Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound

Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
Release Date: July 31

The Game Kitchen, Dotemu, and Koei Tecmo send Ninja Gaiden back to two dimensions with this retro-flavored callback to the 1980s arcade and NES games. It’s the third Ninja Gaiden release of the year so far, and frankly the one I’m most interested in. Those NES games are still remembered today for their cinematic cutscenes, but they’re very much of their era, offering an enormous challenge that often feels unfair when brushing up against the hardware’s technical limitations. A new game in the spirit of the old, but with modern standards, could make this prohibitively difficult and off-putting series playable for a larger audience. We’re all for that. Again, expect to see our review later this week.