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.
Cult Vacui
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Steam page
Release: April 9
Developer: LBRTY games
Set on a remote Scottish island in the 19th century, Cult Vacui follows the travails of a janitor shipped over to work on the estate of a wealthy family. Unfortunately for him, he arrives at an inopportune time: a blood ritual is underway and it cannot be finalised unless everyone on the island is murdered, including him. Cult Vacui is a roughly two hour long point ‘n’ click adventure about avoiding murder at the hand of lunatics. The medium at the height of its powers, in other words.
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Subversive Memories
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Steam page
Release: April 8
Developer: Southward Studio
This Brazilian survival horror game seems to take inspiration from Signalis: its character models are fully 3D, but they navigate fixed perspective areas layered with pixelated scunge. Protagonist Renata has discovered an abandoned military research base where she’s privy to secrets “beyond her comprehension” inspired by Brazil’s repressive military dictatorship period, which ran from 1964 to 1985. As she explores this labyrinthine base she’ll tackle all the usual survival horror obstacles: puzzles, rugged combat, and inventory management. It takes around two to three hours to complete.
KuloNiku: Bowl Up!
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Steam page
Release: April 7
Developer: Gambir Studio
Another cosy retail sim with a focus on food prep, but this one stands out due to its “overwhelmingly positive” Steam user reviews. Importantly, it’s also a life sim, and when you’re not preparing meals in your restaurant, or engaging in cooking battles with enemy shopkeeps, you’re engaging with KuloNiku’s cast of typically zany characters, or else deliberating over new fittings for your noodle joint. It all comes wrapped in a quintessentially cosy anime art style.
ChainStaff
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Steam page
Release: April 8
Developers: Mommy’s Best Games
ChainStaff is an action-focused platformer with the most distinctive art style I’ve seen in this genre since, well, remember Spinch? Its art style balances perilously between distractingly ugly and actually-quite-beautiful-in-its-own-effed-up-way: it’s the kind of thing you have to see in action. Beneath the compelling eye candy is what looks to be a fairly conventional sidescrolling shooter, though our hero does have a grappling hook, and there’s a weird upgrade system involving the sacrifice or sparing of fellow soldiers.
Agony Increment
Steam page
Release: April 9
Developer: Parish Softworks
Another post-Cruelty Squad FPS draped in a deliberately disorienting and stubbornly garish art style. Not only that, Agony Increment seems to adopt some of the imsim elements, as well as a fully-kitted out combat system that lets you slide, dash and kick. It looks like the kind of thing you might have found on a mysterious demo CD in the late ’90s which proves irrevocably traumatizing. The Steam page doesn’t let on what the setting or story is here, and that makes me even more interested. The dreamy drum ‘n’ bass doesn’t hurt either.
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