25 Great Steam Games You Probably Missed In 2025—from Freebies To $40
2025 has been a shockingly great year for games, but as we at PC Gamer began work on our GOTY list, we realized that a lot of us hadn't enjoyed the same great games. My tastes as a PC gamer tend toward the crusty and obscure, and I always want to celebrate the games whose number of Steam reviews are only in the triple (or even double) digits.
To that end, here are 25 great games on Steam I've loved (or want to check out) from this year and think deserve more attention, arranged in order from cheapest to most expensive: The most expensive game on this list is $40, half of what they're trying to charge for a triple-A release these days, while more than half of the entries are under $20.
There are some other horror games on this list that I enjoyed as much or more than The Children of Clay, but nothing scared me quite as much as the 15 minutes it took me to reach the end of this free point-and-click adventure. The uncanny claymation of the central cursed idol, coupled with supremely eerie music and sound design, just freaked me the hell out. It's basically a "guy who dies in the prologue of a horror movie" sim.
This is a funky one: A free prequel to the standout 2023 first-person dungeon crawler, Lunacid, made with the 25-year-old Sword of Moonlight toolset, a free game making kit originally released by From Software and now maintained by a dedicated fan community. Come in expecting haunting atmosphere, oblique storytelling, and, if I'm being honest, so-so combat—but it's still rad as hell.
This is cheating a bit on my part, but Echo Point Nova's Under the Clouds Update added a free expansion pack to the Titanfall-esque, open world hoverboard shooter from 2024. It basically doubled the amount of game, and the game in question lets you careen around at 90 MPH grinding on rails and headshotting guys in slow motion. Echo Point Nova already felt like a steal at $25, and it's great solo or in up to four-player co-op.
A short first-person dungeon crawler that's better than it has any right to be. It's chunky and sluggish, but deliberately so, with graphics that remind me most of Old School Runescape. You play as an anthropomorphic, insectoid knight in a world of bugs, delving to the bottom of a sprawling labyrinth. The slow dance of combat is fun in its own way, and the vibes are immaculate.
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Cultic's conclusion (for now) had a slightly odd release: It's a sho
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