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 2024 games that are launching this year.
Tales from Candleforth
Steam page
Release: April 30
Developer: Under the Bed Games
Tales from Candleforth is a point 'n' click puzzle adventure about darkly aberrated fairytales. Long ago, a "forbidden" book was rendered innocent when its pages were drawn over with innocuous children's stories, but recently the old text has started to reassert itself, blending with the fairytales in bizarre, terrifying ways. What follows is a fairly traditional take on the ye olde puzzle-centric adventure game, but with an art style that deftly mashes together horror and old school picture book whimsy. Kara played it earlier this week and came away impressed.
Dragon Ruins
Steam page
Release: April 30
Developer: Graverobber Foundation
Dragon Ruins is an old school grid-based dungeon crawler with 1-bit graphics. It's not all monochrome: character portraits are dabbed with beautifully muted colours to striking effect, but the corridors you'll explore are strictly black and white, making Windows 3D Maze look hi-tech. It's designed for "tired people" according to the Steam description, which means a campaign won't take you nights or even weeks to complete: you'll wrap a play through up in a sitting, though there's a NG+ mode if you want to take another ramble in the austere halls.
Seal: What the Fun
Steam page
Release: May 3
Developers: Playwith Games Inc.
This is one of two games released last week (the other is Feather Party) that feel like belated responses to Fall Guys. It's an online party game that throws players into a playlist of zany obstacle courses, most of which involve some hectic platforming. The art style is pretty derivative—it basically looks like Fall Guys—and so is the concept, but there aren't heaps of games like this around, so if you're looking for some lighthearted online competition it could go down a treat. It's just a shame these games, which generally work better on the couch, never have couch co-op.
Astro Pig
Steam page
Release: May 2
Developer: Garoa Studios
Astro Pig follows the trevails of spacefaring pig Buyk, who is exploring the great unknown for vague reasons. What matters most to us is that the several planets Buyk comes into contact with are riddled with puzzles and bonkers NPCs. Astro Pig is a stress-free affair, draped in pretty neon-hued pixel art garb, with a "lo-fi beats you can study to" soundtrack. Looks like a good rainy Sunday afternoon game.
Ingression
Steam page
Release: May 4
Developer: Espale Studios
If you're definitely not looking for a chill game à la Astro Pig, Ingression looks positively gruelling. it's a precision platformer with Portal-style portal hopping, and just the thought of having to balance the usual pressures of precision platforming with that skewed spatial awareness is making my brain short out. Still, if you sleepwalked through Super Meat Boy and N++, this looks like a cool new frontier of pain to explore.
