Over one million Steam users have added Total War: Warhammer 40k to their wishlist, according to a post by developer Creative Assembly on the game's Steam page on Wednesday. That puts it as #16 on SteamDB's rankings for the most wishlisted games on the platform - just two spots lower than the honest-to-Gaben Steam Machine.
Hype means nothing in terms of the quality of a game, of course, and these rankings don't give us any idea at all whether Total War: Warhammer 40k will be the best Warhammer 40k game ever, or another Dawn of War 3. But it's interesting to look at that list of wishlisted games and see what's occupying the gaming public's thoughts.
Unfortunately it seems that, whichever API provides websites with data about wishlist rankings on Steam doesn't publish raw numbers, so we can't say how big the gap is between TW40k and any of its competitors. But as of January 15, here's SteamDB's rankings for the 20 most wishlisted items on Steam:
| Game | Releasing | Genre |
| Subnautica 2 | 2026 | Moist survival crafting |
| Deadlock | TBA | MOBA Hero Shooter |
| Light No Fire | TBA | Fantasy survival crafting |
| Resident Evil Requiem | February 2026 | Survival horror |
| Slay the Spire 2 | March 2026 | Roguelike deckbuilder |
| Kingmakers | "Soon" | Action strategy hybrid |
| Blight: Survival | TBA | Dark fantasy extraction combat |
| ARK 2 | TBA | Dinosaur survival crafting |
| Unrecord | TBA | Tactical police shooter |
| Half Sword | Q1 2026 | Medieval combat sim |
| Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era | 2026 | Turn based strategy RPG |
| Witchbrook | 2026 | Wizard school life sim |
| Forza Horizon 6 | 2026 | Arcade racer |
| The Steam Machine | TBA | Hardware |
| Reanimal February | 2026 | Horror platformer |
| Total War Warhammer 40k | TBA | Grand strategy RTS |
| ILL | TBA | Survival horror |
| Chrono Odyssey | TBA | Action MMORPG |
| MOUSE: P.I. For Hire | March 2026 | Boomer shooter |
| Pragmata | April 2026 | Third person action adventure |
If there's one concrete message here, it's that gamers will happily pin their hopes on a wish and a prayer: exactly half of the list doesn't even have a release window, let alone a date. To badly misuse a quote from the impeccable Zora Neale Hurston, "Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board".
I'm very amused that TW40k is only slightly more hotly anticipated than MOUSE: P.I. For Hire, an indie boomer shooter with 1920s cartoon aesthetics. More power to the team making at Fumi Games who are working on it - I just imagine the marketing team at Creative Assembly pumping their fists in triumph when Total War: Warhammer 40k passed this tiny indie game in the wishlist charts, and I have a little chuckle.
The only strategy game higher up the wishlist chart than TW 40k is Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era. Nostalgia is a powerful drug. Though being fair, the classic HoMM games were mostly pretty good - not really my thing, but I won't yuck your yum if you like them.
And it's not like TW40k is a total outlier in terms of gamer tastes. I could argue that the horror games on the list, like the next Resident Evil and ILL, are tonally similar to Warhamnmer 40k; or that Half Sword's medieval martial arts simulation is as grognardy as Total War. But the game TW40k fans should really be looking at is Kingmakers, because it lets you travel back in time with an Abrams battle tank and use it to tear down a castle.
Which game are you most excited about? Let us know in the Wargamer Discord community - we're particularly interested in 'honorary' Warhammer 40k games. For a roundup of Wargamer's top stories each week, make sure you're signed up to our regular newsletter.