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.
Great God Grove
Steam page
Release: November 16
Developer: LimboLane
Great God Grove is a stylish top down adventure game about collecting dialogue. As the name implies, it’s set in a grove for gods who are meant to be deliberating over whether to delay the apocalypse or not. But things have not gone to plan: the god of communication is not playing nice, which doesn’t leave much hope for a non-apocalyptic outcome. So it’s your job to talk to more than 60 characters, collect their speech, and then deliver it to the right or most relevant character. It’s a really fun approach to the puzzling, and the art style is gorgeous too.
420BLAZEIT 2: GAME OF THE YEAR -=Dank Dreams and Goated Memes=- [#wow/11 Like and Subscribe] Poggerz Edition
Steam page
Release: November 15
Developer: Normal Wholesome Games
The trailer for 420BLAZEIT 2 wants to make it clear it’s not just a meme game: it’s a good FPS too. Jody agreed when he played it at PAX last month, but whether it’s a good FPS or not, you’re still going to need to appreciate the internet poisoned aesthetic (even if there is, apparently, a meme slider in the options menu). Across 13 levels you’ll take the fight to the meme-stealing Illuminati while downing choppers, no-scoping fools and, if you’re lucky, clearing arenas with a fart-shooting rifle. The result is a game that looks like the horrendous Quake maps your weird shut-in cousin made to amuse his Something Awful friends. It’s art, in other words.
ABI-DOS
Steam page
Release: November 16
Developers: ABI.DOS.SOFTWARE
I adore the idea of—but never play—the complicated OS simulators that ocassionally pop up on steam. ABI-DOS is the latest, which tasks you with building “circuits to manipulate and guide UBITS (colored digital blocks) toward specific goals based on the given documentation”. The problems are completely open-ended, so if you understand the technology at your disposal you could feasibly dream up a handful of solutions. Better still, the mysterious entity doling out these tasks is someone you’ll slowly learn about over the course of 50 puzzles, so there is a story here. If you’re a fan of the Zachtronics games, this looks essential.
Divine Dynamo Flamefrit
Steam page
Release: November 15
Developer: Inti Creates Co., Ltd.
Prolific pixel art purveyors Inti Creates (Blaster Master Zero, Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon) dabbles in Zelda-likes with Divine Dynamo Flamefrit, which I had no idea was coming despite loving Inti’s other stuff. With heavy anime stylings, DDF kinda follows in the footsteps of Blaster Master Zero, in the sense that the game has two traversal modes: as Yuto, things play out from a 2D top-down affair, and as the robot Flamefrit you’ll play in first-person. It doesn’t appear to be doing anything particularly novel otherwise, but you can rely on this studio to make great 16-bit style action games.
Finnish Cottage Simulator
Steam page
Release: November 16
Developer: Ranela Games
Why not a Finnish Cottage Simulator? In this first-person sim you get to hang out in a lake-side cottage. You can go fishing, drink beer, have a barbeque, and do quests for your neighbours. There are even boats and mopeds to drive. If this all sounds unpromising, then maybe you need to take a long, hard look at yourself. 207 Steam users have left “Very Positive” reviews since this launched into Early Access last week. There’s a sauna.
