2023 games: Upcoming releases
Best PC games: All-time favorites
Free PC games: Freebie fest
Best FPSes: Finest gunplay
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 2023 games that are launching this year.
A Guidebook of Babel
Steam page
Release: August 3
Developer: StarryStarry
A Guidebook of Babel released for Nintendo Switch last year, but has finally made the jump to PC. It's a point and click adventure set on an arcane vessel known as Babel, which is populated by the dead. This afterlife-faring ship is literally fuelled by memories, so that will need to be dealt with, but you'll also need to jump into memories to slightly tweak their order of events, all the better to enact more preferable butterfly effects. While a proudly narrative-driven affair, A Guidebook of Babel is also very puzzle-centric, with some light RPG elements.
Paquerette Down the Bunburrows
Steam page
Release: August 3
Developer: Bunstack
This game about catching cute rabbits was a surprise hit on Steam last week. Described as a "pathfinding-based bunny-catching puzzle game", it's basically about learning the patterns of pixel bunnies and outsmarting them. This is gradually complicated with the addition of new tools—traps, pickaxes, carrots—and of course, increasingly genius bunnies. There are over a hundred to catch, all of which are added to a pen that you can then marvel at forever. Oh, and if that isn't enough bunnies for you, the same developer has another rabbit-centric game coming out soon called Horribunnies.
Refidenptio
Steam page
Release: August 5
Developers: Nezashiron Games
Refiendenptio is a bizarre, surreal first-person shooter about depression. Its 1-bit graphics style looks appealingly morbid, but also has some practical purpose: most enemies have two possible colors, and each weapon has two colors—you have to match them up, hence the high contrast visuals. The game takes place in the mind of the protagonist, who must navigate a world of despair in search of some semblance of hope, all the better to avert possible tragedy. Refidenptio is in Early Access, and will stay there for up to a year while the devs add heaps of new stuff to the game, including cutscenes, new baddies, new weapons, and more.
Frog's Adventure
Steam page
Release: August 2
Developer: Sokpop Collective
Sokpop Collective has gone and made a point and click adventure about a frog cursed with sudden intelligence. No longer are they are mere frog, going about their instinctual frog business: now they have a conscience and feel emotions. Quite undesirable! Your job is to navigate a charming hand drawn world in search of a fairy who can put you back to normal. Along the way you'll meet other animals also stricken by this intelligence curse. Expect fun conversations, tricky puzzles, and walking fish (who fish).
Pigsaw
Steam page
Release: August 2
Developer: Christopher Yabsley
Pigsaw is one of those bludgeoning horror experiences that is both shocking and darkly hilarious. It's set in an abattoir where the pigs are doing the slaughtering and the humans are doing the dying. It's extremely over-the-top, both in terms of its oppressive sound design as well as the sheer grossness of the pigs themselves, to the extent that even the likes of Murder House seems cheerful by comparison. You'll spend a lot of times quietly evading these monstrosities, or else shooting them directly in the face if you're lucky enough to have ammo, or bashing them with a pipe. The good news is that as hectic as Pigsaw is, it'll be over in an hour. It's probably all that you'll be able to cope with. This released on Itch.io back in 2020; this is its Steam debut.
