Sorting through every new game on Steam so you don't have to.
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 2022 games that are launching this year.
TFM: The First Men
Steam page
Release: November 3
Developer: Gathering Tree
Launch price: $25 | £20 | AU$36.50
Launched into Early Access last week, TFM: The First Men is a real-time strategy and colony sim that takes its cues from the likes of Rimworld and Knights and Merchants. Its main point of difference is implied by its name: this simulation has you shaping the fate of the first humans. That means your every decision will basically shape humanity, both the quality of your peoples’ temperament, the kind of colony they’re capable of bringing to life and sustaining, as well as their performance in battle. Complexity is always the selling point for these colony sims so that description only scrapes the surface of what’s on offer with TFM, and that offering will probably expand a great deal during its projected two year Early Access stint.
Beneath Oresa
Steam page
Release: November 4
Developer: Broken Spear Inc.
Launch price: $25 | £21 | AU$36.50
Sound the roguelike deckbuilder klaxon, because there’s another for the pile. Beneath Oresa definitely stands out from the crowd though, because just look at it: it looks less like a card game, and more like the kind of cell-shaded brawler that Arc System Works would put out. Hand of Fate it ain’t though, because while those fighting animations are beautifully fluid, you’ll still be controlling the battle via the doling out of carefully chosen cards. Beneath Oresa is an Early Access affair, and over the next six to eight months it’ll get “additional factions, characters, card sets, and some sweet features to enhance gameplay”.
The Chant
Steam page
Release: November 4
Developer: Brass Token
Launch price: $40 | £35 | AU$49.95
If you ever visit an idyllic remote island, do not chant. That’s the lesson of The Chant, a third-person survival horror about a bunch of hapless folk who have opened a portal into a “psychedelic dimension of terror that feeds off negative energy” thanks to their careless chanting. This one’s inspired by ’70s psychedelic horror (I’m guessing The Wicker Man?) but it otherwise appears to play like a fairly conventional survival horror in the vein of Resident Evil 4. So expect resource management, tense and awkward scraps with strange beasts, and pants-crapping atmosphere.
How to Say Goodbye
Steam page
Release: November 4
Developer: Florian Veltman, Baptiste Portefaix, ARTE France
Launch price: $11.69 | £9.26 | AU$16.65
Here’s a pleasantly laidback puzzle game about helping ghosts move into the afterlife. Stuck in a surreal grid-based limbo, it’s your job to maneuver these marooned ghosts through 15 chapters that range in theme from “your kitchen to the moon”. You’ll meet a variety of ghosts along the way, all with their own melancholy stories to tell, and the art style takes its cues from children’s literature classics by the likes of Tove Jansson and Maurice Sendak.
Eschaton
Steam page
Release: November 4
Developer: jabuga
Launch price: $2.69 | £2.06 | AU$4.05
This week’s lo-fi horror gem is Eschaton, a bleak and surreal exploration game set in the remote Scottish highlands. Yes, it’s another horror that plunders the uncanny splendours of early 3D games, but some of us (me) cannot get enough of these short and experimental works. Eschaton has an interesting take on sound design, utilising “binaural beats as an experimental game mechanic”. As a result, you’re really going to need to play headphones to appreciate Eschaton, but then, who plays horror games without headphones? Expect terrified confusion.
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