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.
Heading Out
Steam page
Release: May 8
Developer: Serious Sim
In the same spirit as Pacific Drive and Jalopy, Heading Out is a narrative-driven driving game that stands out from the usual racing fare. Blending visual novel elements with stylish black and white cross-country road tripping, it’s a roguelike with branching narrative paths. Decisions made will dramatically affect the outcome of each run through, influencing factors such as fuel consumption and even what’s playing on the radio. And yeah:, there are pursuits, primarily from the police, but this isn’t some hard-boiled action drama: it’s positioned as a thoughtful evocation of America’s endless highways.
The Bridge Curse 2: The Extrication
Steam page
Release: May 9
Developer: Softstar Entertainment
This horror game grabbed me because it’s developed by Softstar Entertainment, the Taiwanese studio responsible for The Legend of Sword and Fairy and Xuan-Yuan Sword series. While those are mostly fantasy RPGs with historical themes, The Bridge Curse 2 is a first-person survival horror. It’s set in a Taiwan-based university famed for its haunted halls. A group of students seek to capitalise on this infamy by creating a horror film of their own, but… things don’t go swimmingly, as I think you can probably guess. You’ll get the chance to play as four protagonists in The Bridge Curse 2, and expect the usual mix of puzzles with terrified piss bolting.
1000xResist
Steam page
Release: May 10
Developers: Sunset Visitor 斜陽過客
This narrative-centric sci-fi adventure is set after the extinction of humanity. A friendly alien species visited Earth, but their well-wishes were accompanied by a virus that wiped out the entirety of humankind. Oops. There is one survivor however, Iris, who is not only immune from the virus but is generally immortal. Somehow she clones herself and lives underground with this crew of doubles. You play as a Watcher doing Iris’s—otherwise known as the Allmother—bidding. This involves diving into the Allmother’s memories and experiencing what life was like before everything went to hell. Sounds like a fascinating, melancholy game, with inspiration drawn from Nier and the Perfect Blue anime.
The WereCleaner
Steam page
Release: May 8
Developer: Howlin’ Hugs
There seems to be a lot of games about cleaning up messes nowadays, and you can add The WereCleaner to that pile. It’s about cleaning an office space by day (which is normal) but by night you transform into a werewolf (not normal). As the latter it’s your job—or instinct, I guess —to murder every human unlucky enough to be working late, and to do this you’ll need to take a cleverly stealthy approach. Then you have to clean that mess up too. Sounds grim! But it’s actually meant to be funny. Best of all, it’s free.
Fay’s Factory
Steam page
Release: May 9
Developer: Egor Dorogov
This Early Access project is a very curious take on the ubiquitous deckbuilding RPG. Instead of doing the usual dungeon crawling, Fay’s Factory is set during a magical revolution, which is to say, the world is rapidly changing by dint of newly discovered magical means of production. So it makes sense that Fay’s Factory’s protagonist is building a spell factory of their own, which will help them travel the Hundred Kingdoms and fight people with innovative new sorceries. Developed by a sole dev, Fay’s Factory will stay in Early Access for around a year while the game’s narrative component is finished.
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