2025 games: Upcoming releases
Best PC games: All-time favorites
Free PC games: Freebie fest
Best FPS games: Finest gunplay
Best MMOs: Massive worlds
Best RPGs: Grand adventures
On an average day about a dozen new games are released on Steam. And while we think that's a good thing, it can be understandably hard to keep up with. Potentially exciting gems are sure to be lost in the deluge of new things to play unless you sort through every single game that is released on Steam. So that’s exactly what we’ve done. If nothing catches your fancy this week, we've gathered the best PC games you can play right now and a running list of the 2024 games that are launching this year.
Sterling Shroud
Steam page
Release: January 4
Developer: Squid Snooze Studio
What better way to kick off another year of this column than with the nostalgic austerity of a monochrome point 'n' click adventure? Sterling Shroud is a horror game that kinda looks like an old Apple IIE obscurity: thin white lines etch out rough approximations of real places, and it's up to your imagination to fill in the rest. The setting is a camping trip gone wrong, and the format is the usual blend of screen-by-screen first-person navigation and puzzles aplenty. I love the art style.
Puck
Steam page
Release: January 5
Developer: Nils Asejevs
Given the recent success of stripped back multiplayer experiences like Webfishing and STRAFTAT, I wouldn't be surprised to see Puck—a no BS online hockey game—find its audience. And by no BS, I mean there aren't even really any rules: all you have to do is get the ball in the goal; there's no "off side" or fouls or anything like that (is my complete lack of hockey knowledge showing here??). In other words, this is probably a fun thing to jump into for ten minutes now and then. You might as well too, because it's free.
Subterror
Steam page
Release: January 4
Developers: Team Monumental
After a stint in early access, this cooperative horror game set at the bottom of the ocean is now feature complete. Teams of up to four players will need to escape abandoned underwater biodomes playing host to a variety of environments and wildlife. The domes are procedurally generated and range a bunch of biomes including deserts, forests and tundras. It looks like a richly atmospheric affair—kinda like a more stylistically varied System Shock 2—and while coop appears to be the best way to play, you can go in solo as well.
Beyond Citadel
Steam page
Release: January 3
Developer: doekkuramori
This is the sequel to 2020 anime FPS The Citadel, and while that earlier game looked like Blake Stone remade in the Doom engine, Beyond Citadel is a generational leap into the Quake era (though it retains 2D sprite enemies). While it doesn't seem to offer much new to the now-well established boomer shooter genre, it does have atmosphere to spare and, probably most importantly for its audience, an anime aesthetic unusually under-utilised in the FPS space.
Wood and Flesh: A Candleforth Short Story
Steam page
Release: January 5
Developer: Under The Bed Games, Bibiki
This breezy point 'n' click adventure is a bite-sized follow-up to last year's Tales From Candleforth, which was a surreal puzzle-oriented take on twisted fairy tales. This "short story" is basically a sample of a forthcoming sequel, and takes the series' "cozy horror" vibe and wraps it around another bunch of puzzles and escape room scenarios. This is free, as these "prologue" samples tend to be, so it might be worth some time if you're in the mood for oddball horror.
