The PC game releases we're most excited about in October

Baldur's Gate 3, Starfield, and Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty form a tough triple-feature to follow, but October is doing its damndest to keep us in our desk chairs, with a new Assassin's Creed, the sequel to one of the best city-builders ever, and the follow-up to a Remedy cult classic—and that's hardly everything October's bringing. Not a bad way to start the fall season, even if some of us will still probably spend it on yet another Baldur's Gate 3 playthrough.

For more, see our full 2023 PC game release schedule, as well as our look at 2024's upcoming PC games.

October's big PC release dates

Assassin's Creed Mirage | October 5
Fans of the Assassin's Creeds of old take note: Ubisoft's genuinely departed from the new-style RPG Assassin's Creed design to go back to the original stealthy parkour focus in a more digestible package. Morgan's got more on why he's hyped for it here.

Total War: Pharaoh | October 11
After last year's Total War: Warhammer 3, the RTS returns to historical warfare, bringing the series to Egypt for the first time—which is a little surprising, as Jon pointed out in his recent preview.

Lords of The Fallen | October 13
The 2013 soulslike by the same name wasn't the best example of the genre, but this one's from a new developer, and as I've insisted a couple times after seeing it back in March, it looks really cool. Harvey's seen it too, and agrees—watch out for a possible sleeper hit.

The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria| October 24
We were already looking forward to this Lord of the Rings co-op survival game about delving into dwarven mines before we found out you can sing proper Dwarvish drinking songs in it. After that, we were pretty close to sold. Fingers crossed it turns out to be a good time.

Cities: Skylines 2 | October 24
The sequel to one of our all-time favorite city builders, which filled the vacuum left by the not-quite-beloved SimCity reboot. There's some exciting stuff here: new road tools, a revised public transportation system, and uh, prison labor. Not as much fun, that last one.

Alan Wake 2| October 27
Alan Wake 2 is the sequel to Remedy's earlier game called Alan Wake. This surreal horror-mystery, which combines super hi-fi graphics with live-action FMV, has "cult classic" written all over it. Remedy continues to compete with Swery65 of Deadly Premonition fame to produce the most Twin Peaks game ever made, and you can read on about why Joshua was smitten with his Gamescom preview.

More games releasing in October

• October 3 — Battle Shapers (Early Access) - arena roguelike FPS (Steam)
• October 3 — The Lamplighters League - Pulpy '30s XCOM-like (Steam)
• October 3 — Station to Station - Cozy rail building (Steam)
• October 4 — Hellboy Web of Wyrd - Big Red roguelike (Steam)
• October 5 — Wargroove 2 - Advance Wars-like tactics sequel (Steam)
• October 10 — Forza Motorsport - Microsoft's circuit racing sim (Steam)
• October 17 — Sonic Superstars - New old-school Sonic (Steam)
• October 17 — Wizard With A Gun - Co-op sandbox survival (Steam)
• October 18 — Agatha Christie - Murder on the Orient Express (Steam)
• October 19 — Endless Dungeon - Tactical ARPG in Endless universe (Steam)
• October 19 — Gangs of Sherwood - Robin Hood co-op RPG (Steam)
• October 19 — World of Horror - Junji Ito-inspired roguelike RPG (Steam)
• October 20 — Slay the Princess - Visual novel horror game (Steam)
• October 23 — Three Minutes To Eight - Mind-bending point-and-click (Steam)
• October 24 — Dark Envoy - Realtime "guns and sorcery" tactics RPG (Steam)
• October 26 — Ghostunner 2 - Cyberpunk first-person parkour (Steam)
• October 31 — Jusant - Meditative mountain climber (Steam)