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 2025 games that are launching this year.
Caput Mortum
Steam page
Release: August 28
Developer: WildArts Games
Caput Mortum looks like another modern take on King's Field at first, but it's a touch more ambitious than most of its contemporaries. It's set in 16th century France, specifically in a "tower of forgotten nightmares" where gangly monstrosities roam and murder on sight. Like Labyrinth of the Demon King, survival horror is as much an inspiration for Caput Mortum as classic first-person dungeon crawlers, especially when it comes to its arcane puzzle-solving, which is more complex than in the former game. More fascinating is its approach to controls: there are three modes including "default", "King's Field" and "modern". The last two are self-explanatory, but the default setting maps turns to the trigger buttons, the left stick moves, and the right controls your hand, which is used to solve problems and defend yourself.
QuantumPulse 2A
Steam page
Release: August 26
Developer: Dashing Strike
Clearly inspired by programming puzzlers like TIS-100 and Shenzhen I/O, QuantumPulse 2A has you working an assembly language on a fictional 1977 PC whose interface—or at least its font—is reminiscent of old BBSs. While solving the puzzles may seem pretty easy, it's the optimization that will likely prove a challenge, as you move through a sequence of 25 puzzles while competing with fellow galaxy brain gamers on a global leaderboard. These games aren't at all for me, but I love that they exist.
Quartet
Steam page
Release: August 27
Developers: Something Classic Games LLC
Quartet is an unashamedly orthodox JRPG inspired by the 16-bit era, but with smoother combat and a more lavishly detailed world evidently inspired by steampunk (but not completely indebted to it). Across its 25 hour runtime you'll experience the stories of four main characters in any order you want, in a style reminiscent of Octopath Traveller. This is a follow-up of sorts to Shadows of Adam, another straight-down-the-line JRPG that went down pretty well. If you've finished all the classics, as well as modern highlights like Sea of Stars, these are worth checking out.
Fear Effect
Steam page
Release: August 30
Developer: Implicit Conversions
Fear Effect originally released for the PlayStation 2 in 2000, and has been stuck there ever since. For a while Square Enix—who ended up owning the IP after devouring Eidos in 2009—seemed to have plans to make the Fear Effect series an ongoing concern. It released the kinda average Fear Effect Sedna in 2018, and even had plans to remake the original game before the project was canceled. That all seems to suggest that the series is dead, but at least we now have the original artefact on PC. It's a cel-shaded action game that definitely looks and feels like it released for the PS2 in 2000.
Quarion
Steam page
Release: August 29
Developer: Zejoant
Hollow Knight Silksong comes out this week and I for one am weirdly terrified to be sucked into a 50+ hour metroidvania again. If that's you, maybe Quarion will appeal more. It's a 2-4 hour pixel art metroidvania inspired by VVVVV. It's as straightforward as they come, but very charming, and the music sounds great.
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