Five new Steam games you probably missed (February 23, 2026)

A strange monster sits in a dark dungeon — (Image credit: Black Lantern Collective)

Best of the best

Close-up of a masked man and woman holding guns as they enter a convenience store during a robbery — (Image credit: Rockstar)

2026 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 2026 games that are launching this year.

Horripilant

Horripilant | Official Release Date Trailer - YouTube

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Steam ‌page‌ ‌
Release:‌ February 21
Developer:‌ Alexandre Declos, Pas Game Studio

Horripliant is a horror grid-based dungeon crawler, or blobber, that borrows systems from the autobattler and idle game genres. The unnamed knight protagonist must gather resources to bolster their camp and upgrade gear, and as you'd expect, there are increasingly lucrative ways to expedite this process beyond lowly manual clicking. During enemy encounters the combat takes care of itself, essentially pitting the baddie's stats against yours. Don't worry though, Horripliant doesn't play itself: it also features some especially cryptic puzzles. The art style is appealingly rugged, drenching the whole affair in the aura of a long-forgotten shareware nasty.

F-22: Air Dominance Fighter

F-22: Air Dominance Fighter | Publishing Announcement Trailer - YouTube

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Steam ‌page‌ ‌
Release:‌ February 17
Developer:‌ Digital Image Design Ltd.

F-22: Air Dominance Fighter originally released in 1997, and while this thorough revamp is published my Microprose and certainly looks a lot like a ye olde Microprose sim, it was originally published by Ocean Software. F-22 may look like one of those steely flight sims of yore that require a 200+ page manual to figure out, but it actually leans arcade-ward: the Steam page claims it "couples deep modelling of avionics, flight dynamics, and radar with easy controls". The graphics have been marginally improved, but not so much that it F-22 doesn't retain its distinctive '90s charm.

Screaming Head

Screaming Head - Official Release Date Trailer - YouTube

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Steam‌ ‌page‌
Release:‌ February 17
Developer:‌ JZPS Games

Here's a deliberately garish 2D platformer about guiding a disembodied head—and an ugly one, to boot—through increasingly challenging gauntlets. If that's not your idea of a good time, I feel sorry for you, but it gets better: the ugly head's attack is a guttural, quite chilling scream (hence the name, I suppose). There's not much more I can say about this: get a load of the art style, and if it doesn't have you smashing that 'add to cart' button then it's clearly not for you.

Love Eternal

LOVE ETERNAL - Animated Launch Trailer - YouTube

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Steam page
Release:‌ February 20
Developers:‌ brlka

Love Eternal is another 2D action platformer, and despite its pared back approach to pixel art it's by all reports a quietly disturbing "psychological horror" with a richly discomforting atmosphere. In terms of the things you do with your hands, it looks like what would happen if you jammed VVVVV's gravity-switching mechanic into Celeste. In the words of one Steam review, Love Eternal is what happens when "VVVVVV woke up after having a rough tummy night and decided to eat Mulholland Drive."

Carmencarmen

Steam page
Release:‌ February 17
Developer:‌ Colectivo Rayente, Juanjo GarBas, Juanma Cabrera

Carmencarmen is a free game about exploring a rundown urban wasteland in a quaint yellow hatchback. It's an hour-long narrative-driven affair about talking with the people (or things) you meet, but there's a simple pleasure in handling the hatchback—it can drift and you really must drift it—and honking its horn. If I'm making this sound carefree and whimsical, do be warned that this outing gets very weird, and the early 3D art style only exacerbates its surreal-verging-horror leanings.

Shaun Prescott is the Australian editor of PC Gamer. With over ten years experience covering the games industry, his work has appeared on GamesRadar+, TechRadar, The Guardian, PLAY Magazine, the Sydney Morning Herald, and more. Specific interests include indie games, obscure Metroidvanias, speedrunning, experimental games and FPSs. He thinks Lulu by Metallica and Lou Reed is an all-time classic that will receive its due critical reappraisal one day.

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