One of the busiest months in years meant that not every studio could be a winner.
I don’t think it’s controversial to say that there’s a lot of good games coming out in 2025, but April in particular was ridiculous.
More than 100 games on my wishlist dropped over the course of just 30 days, and some of those (like the galaxy-brained Blue Prince and the hotly debated Clair Obscur) were all-eclipsing hits. We loved Promise Mascot Agency, but its release on the very same day as Blue Prince meant it was destined to be overshadowed. And yet Promise Mascot Agency is practically a juggernaut next to dozens of other games I had my eye on, all released in just four weeks.
While I tried my best to keep up with smaller releases, there were still tons of highly promising picks that slipped my net in April, only to land themselves on my to-play menu for the next few weeks. These are the ones I’m most eager to dig into.
Maliki: Poison Of The Past
Released: April 22nd | Steam reviews: 94%, 39 reviews | Steam Link
Would you believe that Clair Obscur was the second french JRPG of April? Released just two days prior was Maliki: Poison Of The Past, a game based on a French comic series about time travel, farming and evil plant monsters. By all accounts, it’s a fun Chrono Trigger-inspired romp that just happened to land at exactly the wrong time, overshadowed by the vastly higher profile release.
Mythical Concept Starnaut
Released: April 28th | Steam reviews: 97% positive, 45 reviews | Steam Link
A truly mysterious anomaly. A narrative-driven Vampire Survivors-like by the developers of the utterly oddball religious character action game El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron, which the store page claims it has some story ties to. Recently tripled in size as it left early access, but with a price tag increase to match, making it at least double the price of most of its peers. Still, a higher budget take on Picayune Dreams isn’t an unpleasant idea, and the few user reviews so far show promise.
Bionic Bay
Released: April 17th | Steam reviews: 90% positive, 264 reviews | Steam Link
This stylish, tricky-looking platformer made a bit of a splash when its debut trailer landed, but by the time the game was ready to roll out, April was already happening and it got lost in the crush. A shame, as it looks like a fascinating blend of precision Super Meat Boy-ish action, stylish (and sometimes silhouetted) visuals riffing off Limbo and smart physics puzzles reminding me of The Swapper.
Asura The Striker
Released: April 23rd | Steam reviews: 93% positive, 49 reviews | Steam Link
Anyone who knows me can confirm that a month has to be PACKED for a super-stylish Space Harrier tribute to fly under my radar. And yet here we are, with Asura The Striker’s kaleidoscopic dash through weird worlds, blasting and punching weird enemies. While this one is riffing off a Sega arcade classic that’s almost as old as I am, it does look to freshen it up a bit with multiple routes and endings.
Traveler’s Refrain
Released: April 11th | Steam reviews: 92% positive, 26 reviews | Steam Link
Baldur’s Gate 3 was a great reminder that bards are the most fearless member of any adventuring party. Who else would dare to just rock out in the middle of a swordfight? Traveler’s Refrain is a great-looking bardic-themed action RPG in the vein of Bastion or Hyper Light Drifter with an interesting spellcasting system where actions and choices alter the music.
Voidborn
Released: April 7th | Steam reviews: 90% positive, 262 reviews | Steam Link
Another low-fi, high-agility shooter seemingly inspired by the meteoric rise of Ultrakill. Voidborn has been a faint blip on my radar ever since its early access debut back in 2023. The final launch put it in my library but I’ve just not found the time to dig into it, despite vibing with the aesthetic.
I’ve heard rumblings that it’s less roguelike-ish than it first seems, but honestly, that only has me more intrigued.
I, Robot
Released: April 17th | Steam reviews: 95% positive, 20 reviews | Steam Link
Not even getting a full Digital Eclipse interactive documentary seems to have put Welsh game dev legend Jeff Minter (who apparently lives just a few miles from me) back in the spotlight. A shame as this looks to be one of his most fascinating works yet. A lurid reimagining of the first arcade game to have flat-shaded 3D polygon graphics instead of transparent vectors, and a weird one to play even before Minter moved in.
Lab Rat
Released: April 15th | Steam reviews: 97% positive, 188 reviews | Steam Link
Even launching in the middle of Steam’s recent block-pushing puzzler event, and receiving no shortage of praise, this Portal-inspired dystopian comedy seems like something that should have had longer in the limelight.
Great graphics, a strong sense of humor and what looks like a chaotically shifting rule set has me excited to dig into this one, especially after Void Stranger rewired my brain.
Peppered: An existential platformer
Released: April 7th | Steam reviews: 95% positive, 266 reviews | Steam Link
One that I’ve been waiting on for a while, and had a quick poke around when it first launched. As a platformer, it’s merely okay, with some unusual movement physics. But Peppered is more of a Jazzpunk-esque joke delivery system. A madcap scramble through a world where nobody can die, but decisions (or repeated failures) can send the story spiralling off into wildly different directions. I’ve already had a few laugh-out-loud moments and really want to see how far its timelines diverge.
Repose
Released: April 14th | Steam reviews: 90% positive, 74 reviews | Steam Link
With an aesthetic that reminds me of (shockingly good) spooky Virtual Boy maze adventure Innsmouth no Yakata, and a workplace horror story with shades of Severance, Repose has been on my radar since its debut trailer. Your job is to venture into an abandoned industrial complex and retrieve abandoned oxygen tanks from those who died in there before. You are assured that the cleaners will handle the corpses later. I’m sure things are fine and the gun they gave you won’t be needed.
And that’s not even close to everything from April that’s on my backlog. I’ve still yet to only scratch the surface of Clair Obscur, and even putting in dozens of hours, The Hundred Line is an intimidatingly massive undertaking. It’s a good thing nothing much is happening in May, then.
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