Coming Soon is a forward-looking series about new turn-based games, released monthly. It also coincides with my favourite day of the week: #TurnBasedThursdays, a weekly community list of game devs showcasing their turn-based games. Give them a follow on BlueSky and keep up-to-date on new turn-based games alongside my LFG: Learning from Games and Science Shorts series!
👋🏼Hello JOMT Reader!
Every month around this time, I go hunting for new games that might be released the following month to include in this round-up. And every month it’s a struggle as turn-based games get categorized under several different tags in Steam, including turn-based tactics, turn-based strategy, and turn-based combat. That doesn’t include other types of turn-based games like board games or card games. I’m hoping that the re-categorization of genres that I’m working on will give me a more complete picture of turn-based games. In the mean time, I apologize for the skewed selection of games releasing next month!
Nature
🔗 Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1926610/Nature/
📅 Release date: November 5, 2025
🖥️ Developer: North Star Digital Games
📢 Publisher: North Star
🕹️ Platform: Steam (PC/Mac), Android, iOS
🎮️ The game
A nature-themed deck-builder where your decks evolve.
🎯 Who it’s for
You loved the first iteration of this game, called Evolution
You’ve always wanted a closer-to-life version of Pokemon
You love the option for both real-time and asynchronous multiplayer games
‼️ What I’m excited about
I had the pleasure of being out-Evolutioned in the original game against the game designer, Dominic Crapuchettes, in an online multiplayer match. I’m excited that the game will also have an asynchronous mode so that I can take all the time I want to plan out my turn.
The evolution part works really well in my opinion as you collect cards that grant abilities to your creatures. As conditions change on the game board, like less food or the appearance of edible opponent creatures, you can change the creatures you have by granting abilities like storing food or becoming carnivorous. It’s a clever system designed so that no two games are alike.
With the inclusion of the Flight and Jurassic modules, and more on the way as DLCs, I think you can look forward to playing many games of Nature without ever getting bored!
Slaves of Magic
🔗 Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1442610/Slaves_of_Magic/
📅 Release date: November 3, 2025
🖥️ Developer: Amethyst Dreamers
📢 Publisher: Amethyst Dreamers
🕹️ Platform: PC (Steam)
🎮️ The game
An X-COM-like game in a magical setting.
🎯 Who it’s for
You love X-COM but always wished that it was in a fantasy setting
You want near-infinite replayability
‼️ What I’m excited about
We’ve had turn-based games in a fantasy setting, but I’ve always wanted that grand strategic layer on top like in X-COM. Slaves of Magic will let you command a squad and build bases around the world. All with swords and magic.
The feature that I’m looking forward to is getting access to different squad mate types depending on where you are recruiting them from on the world map. It’s a subtle change that affects your base-building strategies, and one that I think will add a lot of replayability.
Veterum
🔗 Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1864690/Veterum/
📅 Release date: November 27, 2025
🖥️ Developer: Crasleen Games
📢 Publisher: Crasleen Games
🕹️ Platform: PC (Steam)
🎮️ The game
A semi-open-world turn-based combat game.
🎯 Who it’s for
You want some guidance on the open-world map
You want to create your own cruel maps for other players to suffer through
You like chess
‼️ What I’m excited about
Sometimes, I just want to get into a map and play chess. That’s what Veterum feels like as you make your way through points of interest on the strategic map. It’s open-world in the sense that you can choose to go any point of interest connected by a path. But those paths take some of the decision stress away, balancing it nicely with freedom of choice.
The gradual build of your squad and equipment as you discover the world around you is just the way I like to play these kinds of games. It also looks like you can make custom maps and share them with other players — so I’m excited about getting into the map editor and making an absolutely diabolical map.
If you liked what you read, please consider giving this post a like! What games are you most looking forward to? Let me know below!
Those all sound pretty great, but the Slaves of Magic one really stands out to me. It was only yesterday, I found myself thinking “I want XCOM, but not XCOM”. This sounds like it fits that want.