Best of 450 recent/upcoming Steam Games (100 quickplay impressions and 8 genuinely great gems)

[u/Toma_L]

Heya,

best game gems I found all the way down. ⬇️

You might have seen my post about reviewing 130 Roguelikes and because I am releasing a game myself, I was curious how the current Steam release landscape even looks like. I have been reviewing/posting about Indie Games for 25 years now and started looking into the 450 recently released Steam games that were sent to my Curator account over the last 2 weeks.

I managed to look at 100/450 for first impressions and figured you might all find this interesting as well and finding the occasional gem you havent heard about yet.

Some games I played for a few hours, others for 0 as they didnt run and most somewhere in between.

As for me: If you want to check out the game I am working on, you can find Rogue Elements on Steam or Itch.

If you want to follow my newer Curator list, please do feel free.

You can find the full list of games and quick impressions here in this long list:
https://www.resetera.com/threads/1652407/

So onto my post! Would love to hear which games stuck out to you, or if you had other games that recently released under the radar games that would suit this list.

Stats after 100 games:

8 ❤️❤️❤️
19 ❤️❤️
20 ❤️
27 😑
26 👎

Some takeaways

- I am immensely impressed that I found 8 ❤️❤️❤️ games that I would put into my pantheon of my favourite games/best Indies I ever played over the years, many of them relatively unknown.

- I am even more impressed that almost half of the games I played were good to some degree. ❤️❤️❤️ and ❤️❤️ games I would play without hesitation any time, but even ❤️are original, unique and offered something that I found worth playing for and talking about, especially considering the online debate about the Steam store being flooded with "no effort slop". Absolutely not the case

- So much roguelite. Its an immense crutch for game design when people just slap roguelite elements onto their games, in exchange for "not needing to do game balancing" or have any other game progression loop. Good games with Roguelite elements still landed at the top of my list, but not because they relied on the roguelite elements to carry their games. I feel like this is a huge thing I want more of these developers to be aware of. Do not design only around Roguelite progression and there is value in a properly balanced gameplay challenge.

- Most games in 😑and👎 werent outright bad either, but lacked polish, clearly arent ready for a Steam release, have some bugs, UI issues or are early experiences for someone dabbling in game design. Again, surprised how few games were outright "slop" that entirely relied on AI.

- About 5 games were outright bad AI slop games, which is a number I expected much higher.

- I would estimate about half of the games used AI in some form. AI in most cases was used as an added layer for a developer, not to outsource the entire game making project. Most often it was used for localization and synchronization to give the game an added layer of polish. I may disagree on that type of AI usage, but I feel like most developers used it to plug a whole in their skill arsenal or to reach more players, which feels well intended at least.

Genre overview:

Action / Fighting / Arcade 28%
Simulation / Management 19%
Adventure / Narrative 19%
Shooter 18%
Roguelite 17%
Puzzle 17%
Platformer / Metroidvania 13%
RPG / Action RPG / Dungeon Crawler 12%
Strategy / Tactics 11%
Horror 11%
Survival / Sandbox 10%
Multiplayer / Co-op / Social / Party 6%
Racing / Driving 6%

Review data:

0 reviews but playable: 25%
1-9 reviews: 28%
10-49 reviews: 27%
50-199 reviews: 12%
200-999 reviews: 5%
1000+ reviews: 3%

Highlights:

❤️❤️❤️FOUNTAINS

store.steampowered.com/app/1841240/

2D Pixel Soulsvania, apparently a medium sized hit in 2024 with a new DLC. Really good stuff with an interconnected puzzle like overworld and great combat.

❤️❤️❤️Brave New Wonders

store.steampowered.com/app/2403830/

Gorgeous and deep automation game has some cool ideas with its programmable robots. Absolutely going to play more of it and it honestly deserves a lot more attention.

❤️❤️❤️Divine Frequency

store.steampowered.com/app/2548880/

Absolute fever dream of a lofi artsy gory horror shooter with incredible art direction, incredibly satisfying gunplay and a million more things you wouldnt expect here.

❤️❤️❤️Active Matter

store.steampowered.com/app/2887580/

Really cool extraction shooter with a proper PvE mode and all kinds of crazy space and time bending anomalies, that makes exploring this world a blast.

❤️❤️❤️Bait Soul

store.steampowered.com/app/3484100/

First autoattacking game that I genuinely love because of how hard and unforgiving it is. Very satisfying skills, tons of variety and stuff to discover, tough challenge. My jam.

❤️❤️❤️Isle of Reveries

store.steampowered.com/app/3100970/

Very, very cool zeldalike with challenging combat, intricate and difficult puzzles and a sizable world to explore. This game has a ton of very cool ideas. Put this on your wishlist.

❤️❤️❤️Deck of Stabs

store.steampowered.com/app/3658250/

Genuinely great, couldnt stop playing the entire morning. Good risk/reward, super satisfying deck building and cool enemy threats that make you reevaluate your options.

❤️❤️❤️Vexcell

store.steampowered.com/app/3845510/

Block machinations puzzle. This is ri-di-cu-lous-ly good puzzle design. I was in awe at these designs multiple times already in the first few levels. Top tier, every puzzle enjoyer needs to play this.

Second tier that was still fantastic:

❤️❤️Space Defender: Frontier Squadron

store.steampowered.com/app/1731170/

Almost shockingly good, space exploration, upgrading, combat, building up your fleet, quests and some very pretty space and particle effects. Good stuff.

❤️❤️Power Network Tycoon

store.steampowered.com/app/2429930/

Electrical Grid management game where the city develops around yourr infrastructure build by a power engineer. Goes into deeper systems and abstracts them enough for missions in a videogame. Really good.

❤️❤️Blood Dungeon

store.steampowered.com/app/2431080/

Addictive jump & run auto battler by the Nidhogg devs, in which your weapons fight for you. Satisfying loop, good upgrades, unique art style and a lot of madness.

❤️❤️Gladio Mori

store.steampowered.com/app/2689120/

Fighting game, where you win/lose by dismembering and severing arteries in potentially one hit. Won by severing someones feet and waiting for blood loss while he crawled. Community is hit or miss.

❤️❤️Roku and Rei

store.steampowered.com/app/2698700/

Good puzzle game, especially at that price point. You navigate two characters simultaneously in opposite directions. Very clever level designs too.

❤️❤️Tape 101: Liminal Descent

store.steampowered.com/app/3010380/

Exploring liminal spaces with some cool puzzles, incredibly haunting graphics/atmosphere and your trusty RC car. Very cool to explore.

❤️❤️Tears Apart

store.steampowered.com/app/3166920/

Roguelite with very satisfying combat upgrade mechanics, where you give new effects to your 5 hits as upgrades. Sometimes a bit fiddly and could use visual variety, but overall a really good time.

❤️❤️Fox Arcana

store.steampowered.com/app/3248700/

Autoattacking game, with a ton of crazy upgrades, pets and a solid Roguelite loop. Sometimes a bit frustrating to encounter elements that will need more grinding, but varied abilities makes it satisfying to play.

❤️❤️Bubble Frog DX

store.steampowered.com/app/3262600/

Flappy Bird style gameboy game with well designed level challenges, good pixelart and a cute presentation.

❤️❤️Carnaval Marbles

store.steampowered.com/app/3287950/

Very satisfying Casino roguelite where you upgrade your marbles, stack on some abilities and then see the numbers go up while the mayhem increases.

❤️❤️Recurrence

store.steampowered.com/app/3354130/

Really cool horror game with a repeating timeloop that makes you investigate your surroundings at different times of day. Camera drives me a bit insane, but otherwise very interesting.

❤️❤️The Blessed Fool

store.steampowered.com/app/3396560/

Short and very unsettling point and click adventure game that is more art than a puzzle game. Absolutely worth it for the experience if you enjoy that. Read achievements and item descriptions.

❤️❤️Kollectomaniac

store.steampowered.com/app/3491740/

At its core its a buying low/selling high shop simulator, but the added mystery through exploration and how items interact with each other is very fun to explore and rewarding on replays

❤️❤️RAKKA: WAKE 01 - SOOT

store.steampowered.com/app/3455080/

Gorgeous Visual Novel with a unique art style and very likable characters. Its a bit slow though, so bring some time and patience.

❤️❤️HIROTONFA's American Revolution Smuggler

store.steampowered.com/app/3789080/

Very cute buy high-sell low RPG that slowly gets more intricate over time with new mechanics, cute and actually funny dialogue, some romancing options and ship management.

[u/jagriff333]

I helped playtest Vexcell and enjoyed it quite a bit. I'm gad to see it getting recognition!

[u/Toma_L → u/jagriff333]

I was looking around to write the dev a message on reddit or somewhere, but I hope he knows that he created a special and valuable gem here that makes some people just happy, even if the Steam review number doesnt reflect that yet. :)