Well crafted WordPress gaming themes can be hard to find but there are a number of developers who have made some outstanding and dedicated gaming themes. If you have ever tried to modify and customize a regular WordPress blogging theme into an online gaming community website you will know that it’s possible to some extent but you might not get it tailored to work 100% the way you intended, leaving you frustrated. This is where selecting a theme specifically designed for gaming blogs, portals, communities, review and news websites will do the difference.
Common to most dedicated WordPress gaming themes is the use of high contrast colors to set the scene, such as either dark or light color schemes making an overall more impressive user experience. They are tailored to present a wide variety of multimedia files like movies, images and online content from different sources like YouTube, Yahoo etc. Embedding videos and uploading/adding images or content to your site have never been easier. Especially premium themes offer an advanced and user friendly backend system allowing you to tweak and customize any part of your theme. They also make use of either a user or author rating system adding powerful review and community functions. The home page is where all the magic comes true – assembling all featured posts of the latest video game reviews using large images and jQuery sliders to get the attention from users.
Free game themes don’t always offer these kind of advanced features to enhance the user experience and typically require more development to fit the webmaster requirements. However the strongest argument for selecting premium themes typically is the support and guarantied updates. When building a serious gaming site this is more important than you may realize up front. In this article I present a mix of 20 free and premium wordpress gaming themes that I think are among the best available right now. Please leave a comment if I missed a great WordPress gaming theme. Enjoy!
Disclosure: Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links and I will earn a commission if you purchase through those links (at no extra cost to you). I recommend that you do your own independent research before purchasing any product or service. This article is not a guideline, a recommendation or endorsement of specific products.
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1. eGamer WordPress Theme
eGamer is a beautiful and well organized video game blogging theme with premium features. It’s clean layout and sidebar on the left makes it easier to navigate than a standard blogging theme. The integration of an author rating system is a must have to get a theme like this to work. Ratings appear on the post page in a 0-5 star format and each post that has a rating is also shown on the homepage under Recent Reviews section. An effective way to catch the attention of users is the possibility to embed videos directly in posts in a pleasing manner.
If you don’t like the default magazine style layout you can easily change to a more basic blog style design. It comes with four different color schemes, rust-red being the default or you can change to blue, green or purple skins within the theme’s options page. You can also choose to feature your favorite posts on the homepage using the JavaScript powered scroller that includes auto-rotation of articles.
eGamer also gives users control over many of the theme’s functions, making the banner ads, recent reviews section, recent video section, popular/random articles section, and post-page thumbnails optional. All this is done within the excellent ePanel theme options page which is the place to change all theme specific features. You get additional support and updates from ElegantThemes ensuring that this theme will always run on the latest WP versions.
MORE INFO / DEMO – by ElegantThemes (premium theme)
2. LeetPress – A Gaming WP Theme
LeetPress has been specifically designed as a word press gaming theme. The fantastic clean design and dark color scheme (default) makes it an awesome experience for the visiting user. The slick rating effect is just amazing and adds to the professional feel of the theme. It works like an animated bar that grows to the respective rating – cool!
What I particularly like about this theme is the use of large images for the latest news posts on the home page rather than the usual smaller square images in a traditional blogging theme. And the simple layout that is not too crowded with widgets, confusing sidebars or banners. It features 4 skins (blue, red, orange and green), cool full width slider, review, video, slider and screenshots post types and comes with 8 help videos with voice to help you getting the theme setup and customized.
MORE INFO / DEMO – by ThemeForest (premium theme)
3. Continuum – Magazine WP Theme
Continuum is a premium WP theme perfect for hard-core online game news sites who have previously shoe-horned content into “bloggy” designs. It’s a well made theme with a very unique and professional style and an impressive list of features. This theme can be customized and tweaked to anything you want due to it’s more than 200+ theme options! Even though it sounds overwhelming it’s easy to manage and the pages are intuitively divided into separate tabs and each tab is further organized in sections.
It offers 11 custom widgets, 5 custom jQuery content sliders, 19 unique sidebars, built-in reviews, 3 custom menus and lots of premium magazine features just to mention a few of the many fantastic features. It’s designed specifically for Word-Press 3.0+ and features an extensive feed framework which intuitively groups and displays your posts and lets the user sort the posts the way they like.
Indeed a very unique and fresh theme for anyone looking for a very flexible solution – you’ve got to see the demo to understand the diversity of this theme!
MORE INFO / DEMO – by ThemeForest (premium theme)
4. Black Aperture
Black Aperture is yet another dark colored news and reviews theme specifically made for video games. On the homepage there’s a unique featured posts showcase for the latest video game reviews and the default 3 column layout allows you to have 2 widgetized sidebars. You can change it to a 2-column layout if you like which will remove the left sidebar though. It features dynamic resizing of images for various thumbnails which can be used through out the theme without the need to resize anything after the first image upload.
You have access to a custom built theme settings panel that allows you to customize the theme without editing any templates. Change the accent color used in the navigation and headings using a color picker, switch 3 to 2 columns styling, construct the main navigation bar and even manage ads.
MORE INFO / DEMO – by ThemeForest (premium theme)
5. Imperial
Imperial is an awesome, neat and clean wordpress theme with an amazing set of features that will make it an obvious choice for a gaming portal. The dark color scheme is perfect and sets the mood for reading and watching images and videos, though it’s possible to change the color to a light scheme if you like. It supports custom backgrounds so you can add an even more subtle feel to your site. It’s featuring a post slider that rotates on its own and is powered by JavaScript and you can turn any post into a movie, music or video game review. You can easily link to social networks you take part in and sidebars are widgetized and you can use custom widgets for the 3 main ad spots. You can use the custom built theme settings panel within WP-admin to customize the theme without any coding knowledge.
MORE INFO / DEMO – by ThemeForest (premium theme)
6. MoonCraft
MoonCraft is a totally different looking wp premium theme with a dark style well suited for game blogs or communities. It’s very flexible and responsive design makes it easy to be creative and drastically change the look and feel of the theme using the 6×6 different color combinations available. Just take a look at a few of these custom presets:
You can add optional sidebars with customizable sizes, 9 custom widgets, shortcodes with WYSIWYG editor buttons and the possibility to showcase videos and images using lightbox. You can even add a customizable image and video slider on any page and it’s touch screen compatible. You can select between 2,3 or 4 widegetized columns in the footer area and change between 3 different border styles and much more. If you’re looking for a different design for your blog this could be it.
MORE INFO / DEMO – by ThemeForest (premium theme)
7. Mammoth: Review/Community WordPress Theme
Mammoth is a community and review theme with a simple and appealing design that will do great for a gaming community blog. There is a nice and well integrated image slider just below the menu for maximum attention on posted news. Below is the actual posts and to the right the widget area. Being a community/review theme it features the powerful review system GD Star WP plugin making it easy for users to rate movies and games.
It offers 3 unique skins (black, light and brown), tabbed content to display news, previews, images etc. and frontend user options to register, login and profile pages. It’s got 5 custom widgets, unlimited sidebars and 3 SimplePress skins for the SimplePress Forum plugin and much more. It’s a very unique and powerful theme that will fulfill every need for a customizable community site.
MORE INFO / DEMO – by ThemeForest (premium theme)
8. Wave: A Video Centric Theme
Wave is a very beautiful and flexible theme catered to those who want to build a video focused site like a game review website. A great layout makes it easy to navigate and users will be able to rate individual posts. Both sidebars are widgetized and using the 3 main ad spots along with recent posts and recent videos will make it easy to customize the theme to your liking. It’s appealing grungy design might not appeal to you but you can easily change things to make it look more smooth.
It supports any video size up to 920px wide and you can flag High Definition videos with an HD tag and the theme will display it in full width. You can post videos from anywhere like third party services, videopress or self-hosted videos. The well documented backend system will make it easy to adjust specific theme options and the super lean markup and CSS makes advanced customization a pleasure.
MORE INFO / DEMO – by ThemeForest (premium theme)
9. TheSource
The Source is a three-column magazine style wordpress premium theme with a pleasing and sophisticated layout. It has been specifically designed to display loads of content in an organized yet visually organized manner making it perfect for online gaming magazines. The 3-column grid gives you increased control over your layout, and the full-width homepage slider creates a visual impact that is sure to pique your visitor’s interest. If you dislike the standard black color scheme you can select either grey, blue or red.
Furthermore you get a 4 column widgetized footer, homepage category boxes featuring the latest posts, styled popular, recent posts widgets and loads of shortcodes. There are plenty of opportunities using this theme and making a truly unique website is very easy and straight forward even if you are a beginner – thanks to the advanced features in the ePanel options pages. The ePanel is well known for being very user friendly and gives you great control of the theme.
MORE INFO / DEMO – by ElegantThemes (premium theme)
10. ReviewIt: Review WordPress & BuddyPress Theme
ReviewIt is a very well made, clean and organized WP theme targeted a niche market whilst being relevant. It’s a powerful review and community theme utilizing the GD Star rating WP plugin. It features 2 unique skins (light or dark), lots of amazing shortcodes and a commercial JW video player worth $80 that supports all major video formats. It has 8 custom widgets, improved PrettyPhoto LightBox, unlimited sidebars, jQuery disabled support and a nivo slider with the ability to showcase videos from youtube or play flash, mp3 etc.
It’s very customizable and there are tons of easy to use theme options through the backend system to customize your theme. Furthermore it’s 100% BuddyPress compatible. This is an absolute masterpiece with quality coding and could easily be a premium theme! This theme might be just what you are looking for?
MORE INFO / DEMO – by ThemeForest (premium theme)
11. Juggernaut: Blog/Magazine WordPress Theme
Juggernaut is a highly customizable premium word-press theme perfect for a gaming portal! It’s by far one of the best wordpress gaming themes with loads of options and functionality that will make it possible to customize many aspects of the theme to your liking. An awesome design and layout that ensures easy user navigation and attention on content. It features 2 unique skins (dark and light), 17 backgrounds, 2 sliders and a carousel slider that will scroll images across the page. It also offers 4 custom widgets, shortcodes, unlimited sidebars and jQuery disabled support. It’s fully documented and the backend system lets you adjust the theme with ease.
MORE INFO / DEMO – by ThemeForest (premium theme)
12. GameNow
GameNow is a premium word-press theme packed with features perfectly fitted for a gaming portal or blog. This theme uses high contrast colors and the design elements fits perfectly with a game site. You can even let your users choose between two color schemes light or dark. It’s easy to involve your users letting them rate games using the GD star rating plugin which allows for a user-integrated 5 star rating system.
This theme is fully featured with an intuitive theme options panel to customize the theme the way you like. It’s SEO optimized, has a cool JavaScript animated slideshow, adsense and widget ready. Furthermore this premium theme is created on a solid code framework and you will be able to be up and running with your gaming blog in no time!
MORE INFO / DEMO – by WPNow (premium theme)
13. GameUp
GameUp is a minimal and elegant theme that will appeal to anyone wanting to make a perfect gaming portal or blog. With it’s fresh and functional layout it is easy to publish content and customize the theme through the theme control panel which allows you to add logos, customize navigation, setup a featured category etc. It’s easy to setup a professional looking game blog in minutes. It features a front page slideshow to display news bulletins, automatic thumbnail generation with smart cropping capability so you won’t loose image quality. It offers easy drag and drop menu generation, widgetized sidebars, adsense ready, jQuery, social bookmarking and compatibility with the latest WP version.
MORE INFO – by Magazine3 (premium theme)
14. Game World
GameWorld is a fixed width game theme with a simple yet functional design. It’s high contrast color scheme adds to special mood of games making it a great choice for a portal for games. Below the main menu it’s got a featured image slider showcasing the news and tabbed browsing makes it easy to organize loads of content in to ordered categories. just below the image slider you can showcase the latest reviews of games and the widgetized side right sidebar makes a great place for recent posts list, archives etc.
MORE INFO by Templatemonster (premium theme)
15. GamesMania
GamesMania is a popular free premium WP theme with a very stylish and functional layout – perfect for gaming blogs or the like. It has an easy to use options page, supports post thumbnails, 125×125 banners ready, widget ready, gravatar on comments and SEO optimized. Compatible with latest word press versions like IE, FF, Safari. It’s one of the best free wordpress gaming themes available.
MORE INFO / DEMO – by Newwpthemes (free premium)
16. MmoPress
MmoPress is a free fixed width theme with an interesting and functional layout suitable for a game niche like online games or entertainment websites or blogs. It has an easy to use options page, supports post thumbnails, 125×125 banners ready, widget ready and SEO optimized. Compatible with latest wordpress versions.
MORE INFO / DEMO – by Newwpthemes (free)
17. Warlord
Warlord theme has a unique design and a good layout. This theme is perfect for PC and console game blogs and game review sites. It has a number of nice features such as theme options for setting the 125×125 advertisements, jQuery powered tabber and sliding featured images.
MORE INFO / DEMO – by Binuthemes (free)
18. Gamerpress
GamperPress is a simple two-column, magazine styled word press theme with fixed width layout and with a jQuery featured slider. A nice theme to make a blog for game reviews. It’s widget ready, supports social bookmarking and all major browsers.
MORE INFO / DEMO – by Binuthemes (free)
19. Fun Never Ends
This is a perfect free theme for those who want a clean and well crafted template to use for their gaming blog – great for starters. It offers a two-column layout with a dark design. It features a right-sidebar, page navigation, threaded comments, social bookmarking and is widget ready. It supports all major browsers on the market.
MORE INFO / DEMO – by EZwpthemes (free)
20. iGames
iGames is a free, cool and classic looking theme that will fulfill the basic needs for a great gaming website. It has an easy to use options page, supports post thumbnails, 125×125 banners ready, widget ready, gravatar on comments and SEO optimized. Compatible with latest wordpress versions.
MORE INFO / DEMO – by Newwpthemes (free)
{ 17 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi,
thank you for this wonderful list. I love introduced themes, especially LeetPress.
I think with these themes and MyArcadePlugin ( http://myarcadeplugin.com ) you could build an amazing Online Games Site supported by WordPress.
Best regards,
Daniel
These themes are very beautiful!! I wish there were some blogspot gaming themes also. I could have used some then
I think Counter Strike is the longest running game that is still playable by really ANYONE, as well as Counter Strike Source, I don`t get why people don`t rely on it.
Thanks for your nice WordPress Gaming Themes collection….
Hey – just wanted to say thanks for this great list of useful themes. I am building an iPad game review site, and this was very helpful. Do you have a favorite theme? Also, what are your thoughts on reviewit? It seemed like it had the most out-of-the-box features.
Thanks for your comment Peter. ReviewIt is indeed a great theme and offers many great features – not a bad choice for an iPad gaming review site! It also includes permanent updates and fantastic support which is just as important. And it’s clean and organized layout is appealing and user friendly. One of my favorites myself.
Another favorite theme of mine must be Continuum. With it’s very flexible layout you can customize it to look just the way you like. It has a huge feature list and a great review system. You get great support and theme updates also. An awesome theme.
Thanks for the reply. I think the one I’m settling on is made by the same developer as review it, but just a different style. It’s called “Score” by Ghostpool. http://themeforest.net/item/score-wordpress-buddypress-review-theme/703127?WT.ac=category_thumb&WT.seg_1=category_thumb&WT.z_author=GhostPool&ref=themespotters
great there are some freebies too, thanks
nice collection of themes . Thankx for sharing .
gonna use the theme ASAP. thanks for sharing.
There are lot of websites where you can embed their games to your website, for exmaple http://www.freegamesonline.eu.com This way you can safe your bandwidth.
Thanks for the nice collection of themes for wordpress, are but very good and are very professional, have a very nice design. . I just installed one of your collections was very good, by the way … I really like. . Thanks again for the work he did …
This is really helpful! Lately I am having problems with finding the best theme for my new website, with your collection I have what I need…
Thank you very much!!!
I love the 3rd one, thanks for the post
very thanks
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