5 new Steam games you totally missed, but might be your new fave

Take a chance and wishlist

Keeping up with the flood of new releases from established studios is hard. Keeping up with the cool stuff emerging from completely independent teams and creators is harder than any FromSoft boss. To that end, we want to do whatever we can to shine a light on what’s out there.

At Polygon, we get a steady stream of emails from folks pitching their new games. We do our best to read them all. Playing everything is next to impossible. (We'll try, but that's life.) That’s why we’re spotlighting these games that look promising and worth watching. Here are five such projects, all at different points in their life cycle.

Burntcrust

What if Outer Wilds was about delivering piping hot pizza pie instead of excavating a lost alien civilization? That appears to be Burntcrust.

Nathan Prestidge, a solo developer based in Brisbane, Australia, promises his spacefaring delivery sim will turn interstellar travel into a cozy, if occasionally harrowing road trip. While there are ticking clocks and deliveries to be made, there appears to be just as much focus on radio stations, ship controls, and route planning. The immersive vibe should appeal to players who enjoy mood-driven sims. Single-player Elite Dangerous with extra cheese, anyone?

Purgatory Pitstop

Purgatory Pitstop sounds a ways off from a proper release, but its voice is already strong — and not just in the recorded performances. The pixel art and quirky humor beams out of this early look. The folks at Live Rail Games, a small UK-based team, built a “choice-based narrative game with restaurant management elements” out of the experience of running the only diner on the road to the afterlife. That means you can bleed patrons dry for profit or help them find peace… or maybe a little bit of both. If the writing lands and the choices meaningfully ripple outward, this might shape up as an intriguing blend of cozy vibes and existential dread.

Astro Protocol

I’ll be honest and say looking at screenshots of Astro Protocol makes my brain melty, which I believe is exactly what fans of the 4X genre are looking for. But here’s a nice twist for those who fall into that category but can’t devote half a day to sessions: you can apparently play a round of Astro Protocol in just one hour.

The team at Null Vector Studios promises the joy of terraforming a planet without the time suck. Based on descriptions, every tile matters, combat is unforgiving, and randomized tech trees keep runs unpredictable. If staring at the board doesn’t make your eyes cross, it sounds like Astrol Protocol will reward sharp decisions and test players with fast consequences. When they named it “hard” sci-fi, this is what they were talking about. And good news: the game is out now.

Bobo and the Chest of Nightmares

The PS1-style platformer revival keeps churning — remember we’re getting a new Bubsy in May? — but the folks behind Bobo and the Chest of Nightmares hope to mint a new mascot instead of just remixing old ones. In this adventure game you play as Bobo, a clumsy jester navigating Halloween-flavored dream worlds built around vertical playgrounds and expressive movement. From gliding with a jester hat to rail grinding and wall jumping, motion is the reward. Collectibles actually matter, so say indie developer Polycast Labs, and the bosses are true showmen. It’s nostalgic (I appreciate Polycast namechecking MediEvil in its descriptions) without being wholly inundated with brand iconography and aggressive graphical overload… with all due respect to Astro Bot.

Shadow Project

You can almost smell the rust and decay in early looks of Shadow Project. From descriptions and demo notes, SK Studios hopes its first game will lure in fans of atmospheric FPS in the vein of STALKER and Metro. Set in an alternate-history Soviet Union during its collapse, the gamemakers say they’re leaning on limited resources and environmental storytelling to bring that cloud of horror over the first-person action. The team’s emphasis on performance (specfically on older hardware, which they're trying to optimize for) suggests a focus on feel and tension. A demo is out now, so give it a whirl.