My Most Anticipated Video Game Of 2026 Might Be This Simple Vibes-Based Lanesplitting Indie

If you look at my playtime across all the video games I play, there's a single clear outlier: The "Forza Horizon" series has sucked up more hours of my time on this Earth than any other game. Yet I don't really do any of the games' races, I don't do most of the challenges, and once I've aced all the games' drift zones there's not much in terms of goals for me to actually hit. Instead, I use the "Horizon" games just to zone out — drifting back and forth, corner to manji to corner, without any interest in any of the objectives the game has set before me. Finally, someone's made a two-wheeled game entirely based around that kind of zen experience that feels like it's just for me: Upcoming game "LANESPLIT."

"LANESPLIT" is the second game from solo developer FunkyMouse, and while it doesn't officially release until January, the game's Steam page has a playable demo available for free. It's a very simple concept: Weave your bike through traffic at high speeds, that's it. The game itself is buggy and unpolished in all the ways you'd expect from Steam early access — I personally reported a bug on the developer's Discord server, only to find it had already been fixed with new code that will roll out in an upcoming patch — but it's already becoming my preferred game to turn my brain off and play. 

Sure, 2026 is going to bring us a new "Grand Theft Auto" and that James Bond game from the "Hitman" devs, but I honestly have enough big games that I'm already not spending my free time on. "LANESPLIT" promises — and, in its free demo, already offers — a nice, simple game to get you into the flow state on a single task. It's less of a competitor to "Forza," and more like an infinite runner or "Mirror's Edge" game. The only things you need to pay attention to are the cars ahead of you, and you can tune out the rest of the world — except, of course, for the breakcore music that the game plays once you start really moving. 

"LANESPLIT" is a simple little game from a one-person developer, and at my advanced age of 29 that's the exact kind of game I have the time and energy to play after work. I'm looking forward to the full release in January, where I'll get more bikes and player models to choose from, but I'm already having a blast with the little free demo that FunkyMouse slapped together. Give it a shot, and I'll see you in multiplayer once the full game drops.