Thousands of new PC games release every year, and a lot of them are great. A lot of them are also bad. Some of them are really bad. And some of them are really good, but hardly anyone knows about them. It's hard to keep up!
Lists like our annual Top 100 focus on the whole history of PC gaming, which inevitably means that a lot of great recent releases don't make the cut. That's why we made this list, which exists to answer one simple question: "What PC game should I play right now?"
On this list, you'll find our favorite recent releases mixed in with great games from the past few years, classics we think now is a good time to revisit, and some hidden gems. It's a reflection of what the PC Gamer team is playing right now, not a list of the all-time best games ever, although there's overlap.
For a more comprehensive list of great PC games past and present, check out our Top 100 list. We also have some fresh picks for the best Steam Deck games if you have one of Valve's handhelds. We also stay on top of the year's calendar with our guide to the new games of 2024, organized by month.
Need something to play these on? We have a guide to putting together an entry-level gaming PC for around $750, and we have some recommendations for pre-built PCs, too.
Icon key
- 💻 = Suitable for low-end PCs
- 🙋♀️ = Singleplayer
- 🙋♀️🙋♀️ = Multiplayer
- 🎮 = Best with a controller
- 🆓 = Free-to-play
What we're playing right now
- Zero Sievert (85%) 🙋♀️: Extraction roguelike
- MechWarrior 5: Clans (82%) 🙋♀️: Standalone mech campaign
- Shadows of Doubt (83%): Innovative immersive sim
- God of War: Ragnarök (79%) 🎮: Not as good as the last one, but still good
- Judero (83%): Delightfully weird
- The Plucky Squire (85%) 🎮: Glitchy but clever puzzle platformer
- Core Keeper (86%) 💻🙋♀️🙋♀️: Minecraft meets Valheim
- Shogun Showdown (90%) 💻🎮: Master the blade
- Frostpunk 2 (85%): Super-bleak survival city builder
- UFO 50 (83%) 💻🎮: Retro indie collab collection of 50 games
- World of Warcraft: The War Within (80%) 🙋♀️🙋♀️: New story arc for the old MMO
- Tactical Breach Wizards (88%) 🙋♀️💻: Turn-based military magic
- Black Myth: Wukong (87%) 🙋♀️🎮: Action RPG based on a Journey to the West
- Sins of a Solar Empire 2 (87%)🙋♀️🙋♀️: A 4X-RTS hybrid
- Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess (86%) 🙋♀️: An action-strategy game from Capcom
- Earth Defense Force 6 ( 82%) 🙋♀️🙋♀️: Over-the-top alien bug shooting
- Conscript (83%) 🙋♀️💻: A grim old-school survival horror game
Recent hits
PC Gamer's Top 10
These are the top 10 games from the latest edition of PC Gamer's yearly Top 100 list, which was published last fall. The list was compiled before the release of our 2023 GOTY, Baldur's Gate 3, which I have a feeling just might appear on 2024's list—look out for that later this year.
- Disco Elysium (92%) 🙋♀️💻: Our 2019 Game of the Year and our reigning #1 game
- The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (92%) 🙋♀️: Still one of our all time favorite RPGs
- Crusader Kings 3 (94%) 🙋♀️🙋♀️💻: The king is dead, long live the king!
- Dwarf Fortress (84%) 🙋♀️💻: A legendary sim
- Half-Life 2 (96%) 🙋♀️🙋♀️💻: You might've heard of it
- Street Fighter 6 (89%) 🙋♀️🙋♀️🎮: The latest Street Fighter rules, especially for newcomers
- Red Dead Redemption 2 (88%) 🙋♀️🙋♀️: Rockstar's western epic
- Counter-Strike 2 🙋♀️🙋♀️: Formerly known as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
- Divinity: Original Sin 2 (92%) 🙋♀️🙋♀️: Larian's best game before Baldur's Gate 3
- XCOM 2 (94%) 🙋♀️: Masterful turn-based tactics game
More great PC games
These games aren't all piping hot out of the oven, but some things get better with age. They're the cream of the crop on PC, either scoring 80%+ in a review, winning one of our GOTY awards. If you just want a damn fine PC game from the past several years, close your eyes and point at this list—you'll land on something worth playing.
- Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth (80%) 🙋♀️ The latest and biggest ever Yakuza RPG.
- Tchia (90%) 🙋♀️ One of the best open world games of last year and of any year.
- Amnesia: The Bunker (93%) 🙋♀️ You have one gun, and there is one monster... which can't be killed with a gun. Good luck!
- Remnant 2 (84%) 🙋♀️🙋♀️ Surpasses the first game with better combat and even more procedural surprises and weird bosses.
- Viewfinder (87%) 🙋♀️💻 A trippy puzzle game in which you alter reality through "astonishing visual and space-bending tricks you've never seen in a videogame before.'
- Dave the Diver (91%) 🙋♀️🎮💻 A simple fishing and restaurant management sim at first, but it goes much deeper than that...
- Vampire Survivors (87%) 🙋♀️💻 The best value on Steam: A $5 bullet hell roguelike that would run on a toaster and is hard enough to stop playing that you might want a copy for your toaster.
- Pizza Tower (90%) 🙋♀️💻🎮 An ode to Wario Land that's better than Wario Land.
- Honkai: Star Rail (90%) 🙋♀️🙋♀️: The new RPG from the Genshin Impact studio.
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Pentiment (88%) 🙋♀️💻: A great, narrative-focused murder mystery set in the 1500s.
Marvel's Midnight Suns (88%) 🙋♀️: A deckbuilding tactics game and a superhero friendship simulator. - The Case of the Golden Idol (89%)🙋♀️:💻 Challenging detective puzzles with a fascinating story.
- Elden Ring (90%) 🎮🙋♀️🙋♀️: Surprise, surprise: This open world fantasy gauntlet from Dark Souls creator FromSoftware is brilliant.
- Immortality (95%) 🙋♀️💻: Her Story director Sam Barlow's latest video mystery is his best yet.
- Teardown (90%) 🙋♀️: A physics-based destruction engine that would've been fun even if it weren't also a genius puzzle game.
- Hitman 3 (90%) 🙋♀️: The art of assassination, polished as finely as Agent 47's head.
- Slay the Spire (92%) 🙋♀️💻: The deckbuilding roguelike all others aspire to beat.
- Total War: Warhammer 3 (90%) 🙋♀️🙋♀️: A brilliant final act with the series' most inventive and unusual factions yet.
- Strange Horticulture (90%) 🙋♀️💻: A beautiful and engrossing detective game packed with mysteries, puzzles, plants, and intrigue.
- Wildermyth (90%) 🙋♀️🙋♀️💻: Narrative design as genetic engineering, it will live in your head like an imaginary friend.
The best PC games by genre
Find our selection of the best PC games just a bit too broad? Perhaps you know you're after a gripping story, or an intense racer, or the kind of sim you can spend a whole weekend playing like a second job. Our genre lists have curated recommendations for RPGs, racing, strategy, and more. Check 'em out:
