2026 games: Upcoming releases
Best PC games: All-time favorites
Free PC games: Freebie fest
Best FPS games: Finest gunplay
Best MMOs: Massive worlds
Best RPGs: Grand adventures
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 2026 games that are launching this year.
Confidential Killings
Steam page
Release: January 13
Developer: Brane, Lorenzo Boni
Detective games had a resurgence in 2025 and they’re still coming. Detective Killings is a point ‘n’ click solve ’em up set during the seedy heyday of Hollywood: someone is systematically murdering actors, writers and producers, and it’s your job to find out who. After thoroughly investigating the gritty comic book-style crime scenes, you’ll need to reconstruct events in order to discover connections between the deaths, and how the people you meet factor into them. You do detective work, in other words. If you’re into L.A. Noire or James Ellroy’s Los Angeles novels, this looks like a nice fit.
Craftlings
Steam page
Release: January 16
Developer: Ariano Games GmbH
Craftlings mixes automation and Lemmings-style horde management, but instead of the short ‘n’ snappy levels of the latter, this outing takes place across 12 sprawling maps. As you’d expect, your craftlings can be assigned a bunch of different tasks including lumberjack, stone mason, warrior and more, and as those roles imply, there’s a big focus on resource management and base building. Unusually for games like this, you can also expect to face off against foes on occasion.
Streetdog BMX
Steam page
Release: January 15
Developers: Yeah Us! Games
Goddamn do I love a good push bike game. Most of my recent faves have been about going really fast down hills on mountain bikes (see Descenders, Lonely Mountains Downhill) but Streetdog BMX, as the name implies, is all about their more compact trick-oriented stablemates. Set across six maps, Streetdog takes the form of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater: it’s all about pulling off gnarly tricks, in particular wallrides, fakies and icepicks. Don’t ask me what an icepick is, but if you must know there’s a free demo.
EmuDevz
Steam page
Release: January 17
Developer: [r]labs
It’s worth stating upfront that EmuDevz requires a working knowledge of programming: “if you can’t write code yet, turn back while you still can”, reads the Steam page, but if you do have that skill this looks fascinating. Set in the year 32767 in the aftermath of an internet apocalypse, it’s your job to build an emulator for the fictional 1983 console NEES (one guess what that name is referencing). It’s a thoroughly unique premise, and I admire how uncompromisingly niche it is.
Big Hops
Steam page
Release: January 13
Developer: Luckshot Games
If programming a working emulator sounds is too complicated a task, this cheerful 3D platformer might be more your speed. Like most modern 3D platformers it adopts the ’90s mascot approach, quite effectively I would say, because I can easily imagine that cutesy frog in the above trailer on a cereal box. As you should expect from modern 3D platformers, Big Hops is designed to feel much more fluid than its predecessors: the frog can tongue swing and free climb, the latter with a Breath of the Wild style stamina bar. If you miss the 3D console games of yore, this one’s for you.
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