While my love for MTG runs deeper than Urza’s Mine, it has been a little bit of an existential crisis — and still a little hard to process — the fact that I can show up to my local card shop in 2025 and get destroyed by a SpongeBob SquarePants Commander deck. While the Universes Beyond and Secret Lair sets have been pretty controversial, there’s no denying that they are extremely fun. Some sets, like Lord of the Rings and Warhammer, have been perfect fits, while others, like Sonic the Hedgehog and My Little Pony, are fun but canonically all over the place. So I’ve taken it upon myself to come up with 3 different IP universes that I think should partner with Wizards of the Coast in 2026.

Star Wars

Last weekend, the newest MTG set Edge of Eternities dropped, offering a unique backdrop for the game that somewhat divided the community at large but excited sci-fi-loving Planeswalkers.

“The story of the set is located in outer space and is top-down inspired by space opera,” as described by Wizards of the Coast. This set primes the pump for what could be an insane collaboration if Magic: The Gathering were to ever create a Star Wars set.

Fan-made Star Wars MTG cards have been floating around hobby groups and Reddit threads for YEARS, even before Universes Beyond started — and for good reason. The characters in Star Wars are powerful, diverse, and beautiful to illustrate. Imagine how smoothly droids could be imagined as artifact creatures, Sith characters would integrate into black and red, or how natural Wookiees and Ewoks would feel in green. Lightsaber equipment cards. Legendary ships. The possibilities are endless.

Honestly, I’m getting more and more frustrated just thinking about this potential set, because who knows if we’ll ever get it. But with Disney-owned properties like Deadpool and Spider-Man already making the jump to Magic: The Gathering, maybe it’s only a matter of time before we get a Mandalorian and Grogu partner Commander deck.

Harry Potter

Now, I’m not even a Potterhead, but it seems ludicrous that we haven’t seen an official Harry Potter Secret Lair or Universes Beyond set.

You could argue that Strixhaven already feels like a royalty-free imagining of Harry Potter within the MTG universe — and you wouldn’t be wrong — but that’s all the more reason to make it official in 2026. The different wizard houses fit perfectly into the MTG color wheel. Spells and incantations could be reimagined as instants and sorceries. Legendary beasts, illusions, and whatever the heck Dobby was could all come together in an epic set that would 100% bring in a new, enthusiastic player base.

Pokémon

Now remember: I warned you. If you don’t think MTG is the best TCG on the planet, you probably should’ve skipped this article. But for those still reading — hear me out…

Yes, Pokémon is an iconic trading card franchise that’s wildly successful and still thriving. People are still getting trampled in Walmart for a chance to collect rare cards. But that’s the problem — Pokémon is notoriously fun to collect… and painfully lame to actually play.

If the stars could align, imagine the sheer pandemonium and shock value of mixing humanity’s two largest trading card games into one mind-blowing collaboration. You’d combine the cultural power and nostalgia of Pokémon with the mechanical brilliance of Magic. Pokémon Trainers like Ash could be insane Planeswalkers. The famous type-based strengths and weaknesses from Pokémon could be mapped to MTG’s color system. Fantasy battles between Charizard and Nicol Bolas? Karn vs. Regirock? Fans of both games would lose their minds. And finally, we’d give Pokémon fans something better to do with their cardboard than just stuffing them into plastic binders.

There you have it — three franchises I’d love to see pop up in a Secret Lair or Universes Beyond release. Maybe if we all hold hands and believe, we’ll see one or two of these sets by San Diego Comic-Con 2026

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Cozy games are video games that emphasize non-competitiveness and relaxation. Staples of the genre you might recognize are games like Animal Crossing or Stardew Valley. So, if you have a Neanderthal brain like me but are getting tired of the ranked grind in games like Marvel Rivals or VALORANT, here are some games I recommend to chill out and forget about this mad world for hours at a time.

Schedule 1

Schedule 1 is the perfect game for adults who may have never experienced cozy games before and like drugs. The game is an open-world resource management game with very satisfying industry builder and automater-style gameplay as you get into the mid and late game. The graphics are simple, the music is vibey, and the mechanics are oddly therapeutic. In the game, you start by growing, harvesting, packaging, and selling the devil’s lettuce, aka ganj, aka Mary Jane, aka Jazz Cabbage, aka Macho Man Randy Savage.

You have to perform little minigames for each task, from putting soil in the planter, digging a hole, taking the seeds out of the package, covering it up, watering the plants, and even throwing away your trash… then you have to clip the buds, put them in little baggies, and hit the streets slanging more and more of that sweet sticky icky.

As your operation grows, you can expand and purchase new equipment, making the minigames less time-consuming. Eventually, you can hire employees to automate the entire process. As you expand your territory, the clientele gets harder to satisfy and you end up going full Breaking Bad, manufacturing meth and coke. It’s truly awesome.

Oh, and if you have friends, the game is multiplayer! Although this game sounds anything but cozy, I can’t tell you how therapeutic it was for me and my bestie catching up on life in Discord while spending 30 minutes cleaning and optimizing the trap house.

One of the coolest things about this game is that it was developed almost entirely by one dude! A single developer sold 6 million copies of a game at $19.99, totally life-changing and inspirational. In an era of gaming where major corporations are spending way too much money on games we didn’t ask for, Schedule 1 is a breath of fresh air.

The Planet Crafter

Game number two is another Steam gem I’ve been sinking an obscene amount of hours into to numb the excruciating pain of real life: The Planet Crafter. At its core, this game is a survival and resource-collecting game with tons of awesome crafting, base-building, and exploration. You start off crash-landing on an uninhabitable world with the goal of terraforming the planet by collecting materials to build drills to release pressure from below the surface, and creating heat and oxygen to cultivate a livable biosphere.

Oxygen is basically non-existent, so a large part of the early game is crafting tools like oxygen tanks, jetpacks, and exo-suits to help you explore further and further away from the crash site, until eventually you’re whipping around in a decked-out space buggy, launching full-size rockets, and visiting new moons and planets.

This one supports multiplayer for up to 10 people. And while it’s an open-world sandbox, it’s not procedurally generated, meaning the terrain is all linear. That might sound strange for a game like this in 2025, but it’s forgivable given how immersive the environments are and how enthralling the story is.

In a lot of games I play, I’m guilty of plowing through the campaign and skipping cutscenes and lore. But the eerie messages and mystery of the planet pull you in, and the further you explore, the more spectacular the findings.

Final Reaction

My one piece of advice for these two games, and cozy games in general, especially if you’re new, is to do just one thing: relax. My first instinct in both of these games was to fall down a YouTube rabbit hole, min-maxing each strain of Silly Cilantro or speedrunning my new ecosystem, but that defeats the purpose. Take your time, play your own way, enjoy the mundane, and speedrun on the next playthrough.

Well, I hope this was useful. I’m sorry everything kinda sucks and if it makes you feel any better, I don’t think it’s going to get better anytime soon. So that gives you plenty of time to pick up and enjoy these games!

The post These Two Cozy Games Helped Me Relax and Escape Reality appeared first on Nerd Reactor.