2024 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 2023 games that are launching this year.
Grunnd
Steam page
Release: January 27
Developer: Sektahouse
Launch price: $15 | £11.39 | AU$21.50
The point and click adventure revival continues apace, with Grunnd being the standout among a handful that released last week. Melancholic and painterly, Grunnd follows the misadventures of a protagonist who, having slept through their stop on the train, disembarks at a mysterious town. The people here are weird and, to make matters weirder, there's "something ethereal and omnipotent" gazing down from the sky. Inspired by Franz Kafka, David Lynch, southern gothic and black metal, studio Sektahouse insists that Grunnd is more about weaving a gripping story than delivering a series of obtuse puzzles.
Temple of Starlight
Steam page
Release: January 25
Developer: Enlit Games
Launch price: $4.49 | £3.59 | AU$6.75
Portal has given rise to a great many first-person puzzle games, but Temple of Starlight can join the likes of Manifold Garden and Superliminal when it comes to the simple cleverness of its premise. Set in a surreal and monochromatic world, the player must wield various colored light sources to solve problems. This often involves mixing the primary colors of light—red, green and blue—in order to find the right mix to trigger events. The game spins a tale about a fallen civilization around these economical puzzles, slowly revealing why the Saasil people's starlight failed them. There are 30 puzzles all up, and Enlit Games predicts it'll take players about two hours to complete.
Atone: Heart of the Elder Tree
Steam page
Release: January 28
Developer: Wildboy Studios
Launch price: $12 | £10.23 | AU$17.56
From the creators of Nitro Kid comes this interesting hybrid of rhythm game, puzzle game, and visual novel. Drawing heavily from Norse mythology, Atone: Heart of the Elder Tree has a big focus on excruciating decisions that will change the course of the narrative, but you should also expect a generous serving of puzzles, some of which can be permanently failed and thus, consequential to the story. It's probably the combat that will raise most brows, however: it carries out as a rhythm game, with Guitar Hero and Dance Dance Revolution cited on the Steam page. Seems like a brilliant fit for Steam Deck, if you're lucky enough to have one.
Rogue Station
Steam page
Release: January 27
Developer: Quint Studio
Launch price: $10 | £8.50 | AU$14.50
Launched into Early Access last week, Rogue Station appears to be a neat hybrid of Rimworld, FTL and Into the Breach. It's your job to build, operate and defend a deep space mining station, taking care to juggle all the many and various tasks and problems arising from this stressful role. It doesn't help that, naturally, your station will occasionally be attacked, so it probably wouldn't hurt to buddy up with some other colonies—probably especially the mercenary agencies. Rogue Station looks promising, but within a year it'll get more content, including more enemies, maps, weapons, build options, and other stuff.
Garden In!
Steam page
Release: January 27
Developer: Dramatic Iceberg
Launch price: $9 | £7.19 | AU$12.59
Here's another gentle game about making things look nice. As the name implies, Garden In! lets you decorate various environments with lots of different plants. It's pretty simple: take a pot, fill it with dirt, and then plant one of the very many seeds there are to choose from. You'll need to then look after them, and each plant has different requirements to keep you busy, which is no doubt complicated by the fact that you can also create hybrid plants by planting different seeds in the same pot. This game is all about making you feel good, so the environments are customizable, as befits a game about beautifying your own personal plant space.
