Dreamcore is a collection of first-person explorable “liminal spaces”. All the most obvious examples are included: There’s an eerily nostalgic labyrinth of indoor pools, an endless expanse of low-poly suburbia, a maze of barren children’s play areas, and—least interestingly, in my opinion—a “liminal hotel” styled on a Backrooms meme.
Liminal spaces are incredibly popular on Steam, just as they continue to be on most social media platforms. The term implies negative space and thresholds: places that are for passing through but not lingering in. They’re usually bleak, empty expanses that are meant to be lively and bustling. Its most popular manifestation is the Backrooms, a creepypasta meme which continues to spawn countless games. It’s probably the first 4chan-derived meme to get a major film adaptation.
Dreamcore has been out since January 2025 but has grown since then. Last week it got a new map in the form of Dead Mall which, as the name implies, takes place in an endlessly sprawling shopping centre styled on 1990s exurban behemoths. It feeds on a growing nostalgia for the once-maligned super mall, which nowadays feel like increasingly obsolete monuments to a less atomised time before eCommerce, fast delivery and brain-mulching smartphones.
This sense of loss is low-key the main driving force behind a lot of the main liminal spaces locales. Their peculiar horror comes from an unsettling combination of a tense loneliness, and the sense of living in a worst-case scenario future where all public spaces are voided.
I enjoyed playing Dreamcore, but it’s hard to know whether it’s an outstanding liminal spaces game because there’s just so many of them. There are countless pools games alone: there’s Pools (which Tyler wrote about in 2025), Tainted Pools, Liminal Waters, and the forthcoming Backrooms Anomaly: Pools just to name a few, and if you find that they all look kinda the same—which they do—then maybe you’d prefer this PS1-era take on the aesthetic. Dream Logic, Liminal Shift, Liminal Universe and Anemoiapolis both take a similar tack to Dreamcore, with their scrap book approach to a variety of liminal spaces.
Still, I reckon Dreamcore is probably among the best places to start if you’re curious about this despondent subgenre. It samples from an array of readymade themes and I can confirm that it runs well. Four of the maps have light puzzle elements, but I mostly ignored those in favour of just spending ten minutes or so wandering discomforting locations and taking screenshots.
The world obviously doesn’t need this many liminal spaces games, and I don’t doubt that many of them are opportunistic and low-effort. But I also kinda love the ubiquity of these artefacts: they feel like a form of melancholy 21st century folk art, utilising the most immersive and immediate 21st century medium (unless you count social media, where liminal spaces also flourish). It’s exactly what I love about PC gaming: non-commercial obsessions can flourish.
Top Steam games by revenue (May 12 – 19)
Steam releases its top sellers charts on Wednesdays, so the below chart doesn’t factor in some late week releases that might have been big.
|
Rank |
Game |
|---|---|
|
1 |
Subnautica 2 |
|
2 |
Forza Horizon 6 |
|
3 |
Counter-Strike 2 |
|
4 |
PUBG: Battlegrounds |
|
5 |
Apex Legends |
|
6 |
Marvel Rivals |
|
7 |
Subnautica |
|
8 |
Diablo 4 |
|
9 |
Overwatch |
|
10 |
LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Night |
Few surprises here. It might seem strange for Forza Horizon 6 to place behind Subnautica 2 in its launch week, but the former has had pre-orders open for most of 2026 while the latter has not. Subnautica 2 also led to a rush to buy its (heavily discounted) predecessors: Subnautica: Below Zero hit 13 in the revenue chart.
LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight will likely rank higher in next week’s chart, given how late in the week it released and considering it’s currently fourth in the realtime global bestsellers. 007 First Light is also picking up due to pre-orders.
An interesting anomaly in the realtime global bestsellers right now is Librarian: Tidy Up The Arcane Library, which right now is ranking eighth. I’ve never heard of it and it released in April, though this video from Skoottie published yesterday has amassed 274k views.
Last week’s Steam deep cuts
Halfmoon | May 22
Here’s a short ‘n’ sweet visual novel with a gorgeous art style and some point-and-click elements. It follows the travails of Mio, a dead woman who works at the Afterlife Information Center, where deceased souls go to be informed about their newfound non-existence. It’s by the same team behind “first-person dream simulator” Nidana.
Burden Street Station | May 21
Like a lot of the games published by Critical Reflex, Burden Street Station will either immediately repulse or fascinate you (maybe even both). It’s a scrappy and surreal point ‘n’ clicker about “dead-end platforms and unfinished stories”. It’s heinously ugly in an exquisitely beautiful way.
Midnight Special | May 21
With apologies to genre naysayers, we’re going the point ‘n’ click hat trick this week. Midnight Special is the most conventional of the three: it has chunky 16-bit pixel art and a strong ’90s LucasArts vibe about it, save for the fact that it’s a very gory horror outing. The premise is simple and familiar: you’re a babysitter in a creepy manor. Things, inevitably, get hectic.
The Meter is Running | May 23
This is a fascinating tycoon roguelike about running a flagging taxi business in modern day Istanbul. You inherited the company while it was severely in debt, so you’re going to have to work really hard and really fast to get this old grunt back on course. Of course, a taxi business is often at the mercy of its customers, and you’ll encounter some weirdos in The Meter is Running.
Best Steam user review of the week
My man Bubby goes naked in the first minute of the game, 11/10
– Houbs! on Bubsy 4D
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