Participating in the "9 Steam Games I Want to Spread" Thing
Limiting myself to 9 because that's what the format was, but I could prolly go WAY harder
Last week, the 9 Steam Games I Want to Spread page was going around all over socials and I wanted to do one, but instead of "make an image with it and social media post it" I kinda figured it would be great blogging vector since:
- I'm nothing if not verbose about shit I like and want to share with others
- The world is on fucking fire right now and we all could use some good vibes
The only real downside here is that I've already written on this blog a fair amount about several of the games in my list of 9, but fuck it, we make do!
Note: I put Steam links in each game's title / images so you can check them out yourself!
1. Nitro Gen Omega
Released into Early Access 2025, 1.0 launched 2026364 reviews on Steam as of this publishing
What in the Adobe Premiere is happening here, you say??
One of my 2025 Game of the Year Indecision Blowout entries, I've written so much about Nitro Gen Omega since it launched in EA last summer that I don't know what else I can add other than most of my posts and impressions were written during the game's early access period, but the 1.0 came out this summer and it's so damn solid; I can't get enough of it.
If you haven't read my other posts about it (no worries, I get it) here's the pitch for due diligence: Nitro Gen Omega is an open world sandbox mech anime game where you fly around in an airship and take on jobs to try to save a world ruined by AI. Prescient! The incredibly slick turn-based combat functions more like directing and storyboarding mech fight sequences in a video timeline editor. It's incredibly satisfying. Positioning and scrutinizing the information available to you is everything as you plan out where you and your enemy will be when you want to pull off that sick punch or launch that missile - and seeing it all animated out in the resolution phase feels fucking great.
1.0 launched with a full story mode, multiple mech options from the start (in EA you had to unlock them as you went through missions), a full character creator if you don't wanna roll randos, and a few other quality of life improvements. The game rules so much.
IRONMAN MODE, YO. NO MISTAKES. NO BACKSPACE.
2. Beastieball
Released into Early Access 2024, ongoing updates1,376 reviews on Steam as of this publishing
Man, I remember when Clucks and Goji were only in the 40 level range. They grow up so fast.
Like Nitro Gen Omega, Beastieball is another one of my Game of the Year Indecision Blowout entries. I got hit with the creature collector bug pretty bad last year due to playing Pokemon Legends: Z-A and while my time with that game was huge, nothing has ever sold me on the premise of 'creature collector' as hard as Beastieball has.
From a gameplay standpoint it feels familiar; you "catch" not_pokemon (or in this case, they ask to join your team and you give them a sports jersey) and then engage in "combat" against other not_pokemon - but instead of 1v1 dog fights, it's grid-based 2v2 competitive volleyball that fucking RULES to play. Like, I'm mad at how much I enjoy doing the sports.
The game's story focuses on the not_pokemon League being a dangerous capitalist juggernaut with horrific environmental implications if left unchecked - it has an array of incredibly fun characters, beautiful music (Lena Raine can't miss, wtf), and if that isn't enough, there's online multiplayer (with tournaments!!) if you're into the competitive side of things which is kind of huge for an indie title like this? I'd recommend the game for the single player alone, so all the monthly Bigmoon Bash events and ranked defender stuff is just added bonus. I usually do at least one daily match with my ranked defenders. Good shit.
Oh, and they JUST added Steam Workshop support in the latest update so now you can mod the shit out of it if that's your speed. Because I will always been a Cohost sicko at heart, I just added Eggbug to my team and that's only scratching the surface of what's in there.
This game got me, man. I've found myself turning on Beastieball tournaments in the background which is a privilege I've only ever really afforded Towerfall, Rivals of Aether and Starcraft, the latter of which I played competitively so that's saying something.
Damn, Barnes. Chill out with the heated gamer moments™
3. Cobalt Core
Released 20233,332 reviews on Steam as of this publishing
HAND CANNON HAND CANNON
Cobalt Core is a game that I was introduced to via Cohost.
[Crowd groans]
Listen. LISTEN! I'll shut the fuck up about Cohost when Cohost stops being relevant and I frankly don't see that happening any time soon so you're gonna have to grow some thick skin or stop reading, ok??
Now, if you (like me) read the words 'roguelike card battler' and immediately want to projectile vomit everywhere, please stay with me because Cobalt Core is technically one of those but they did it right! I promise!
The gameplay loop is simple; you have a ship. The ship kinda sucks!! but each character that's on the crew has a deck of cards that give the ship abilities. Each turn, the ship has 3 energy to do things and you spend that energy on the cards to either move your weapons into range, or move yourself out of enemy weapons range, power up shields or just fucking fire like mad. Obviously this gets more complicated as more cards in the crewmember decks are found, more ships and crewmembers unlock, and so on.
For someone who never could really get into Slay the Spire, I'm kinda shook at how much these idiots consumed my 2023-2025 attention span. I locked in pretty early on, but then figured out that via Steam Link I could play it on my phone; in lieu of mouse you get a perfect 1:1 with touch controls so I easily sank hundreds of hours into this as a "play a bit before bed" game.
I'd dare say this is the most perfect card-based roguelite I've ever played. The main story mode rules enough as it is (unlock more plot per run) but they added daily challenge runs right around when I finished said main story and it keeps me coming back for more.
I love these idiots so much but they should absolutely not be in charge of a starship
Anyway, GIVE RIGGS A GUN
The weapons officer does not fuck around
4. Caves of Qud
Public beta released 2010, moved into early access 2015, 1.0 full release 202410,507 reviews on Steam as of this publishing
I agonized over which screenshots to use for Qud but felt this was the most representative.
Caves of Qud...oh wait, I'm sorry - 2025 HUGO AWARD WINNER Caves of Qud is fucking bonkers.
The pitch is an immersive, turn-based rogue game in a highly randomized simulated world with minimalist (formerly ASCII-only) graphics, where you make a character and go explore a ruined world where fresh water is currency, stories are dangerous, and ANYTHING goes.
I mean like anything, dude.
Host a peace conference with a sentient plant that has become the self-appointed mayor of an important settlement? Sure. Party in the communist collective's conversation pit and chat up a camel merchant over a hookah? Yup. Collect grafiti'd folding chairs to barter for water? Hell yea. Become [checks notes] hated by baboons for questioning the origins of the moon? Par for the Qud course. There's even a shirt for that irl.
The game's existence over the last decade and a half has been a wild one, but with the 2024 1.0 release it's never been more approachable; the graphical and UI improvements make it infinitely friendlier to newcomers but also the team added a "roleplay mode" that asks the question "what if permadeath was optional?" (Though I do recommend doing a permadeath run at least once so you experience Qud as it was originally meant to be experienced, but no shade in wanting your turtle man or human with laser eye implants to survive Bethesda Susa)
Live and drink, friends.
(It was one of my honorable mentions for the Game of the Year Indecision Blowout)
Truly, could happen to anyone
5. Into the Breach
Released 201812,488 reviews on Steam as of this publishing
I love pairing up Mafan with the Hazardous mechs
Now, it feels like a game with over 12,000 positive reviews on Steam doesn't need any help but I can't deny how important this game has been to me.
It's a fucking masterclass in design. You are presented with a beautifully rendered pixel art 8x8 grid with your 3 mechs on one side, alien monsters on the other with various buildings and other objects you want to prevent them from destroying scattered about, all set to a fantastic score by Ben Prunty.
There is something to be said about hiding information from players to deepen mystery or strategic options but Into the Breach takes the opposite approach: everything the enemy will do each turn is fully telegraphed and it's up to you to decide how to prevent those things from happening and / or let them happen and reposition yourself or the enemies to use those events to your advantage.
There's so much to unpack in this game - from the way the various mech units and squads interact, to the randomization of the enemy formations and levels you'll get per run; this is a game you could play literally forever vanilla (complimentary) but the Advanced Edition added so much more to it, and there's also mod support so the combinations went from endless to, fuck, I don't know - whatever "endless plus" would be.
The only downside of this game to me is that I prefer playing on phone and that means you're required to have a Netflix subscription due to a weird licensing deal (good for Subset tbh) - but recently I've found that with a cheap snap-on controller and Steam Link I can make up for that, getting probably closer to what the handheld experience on the Switch would be, but I have my Steam save and mod support.
Again, I think this game is relatively well known, but hell, things about this game permeated through to the design of both Nitro Gen Omega and Beastieball so I'd be hard pressed to leave it off the list.
Mods allow for entirely new squads and the people make them are dedicated to keeping the balance of the main game intact
6. A Short Hike
Released 201912,331 reviews on Steam as of this publishing
Second entry featuring Volleyball nets, curious
I know, I know, another "has 12,000 reviews" but dude this game is so goddamn pure and good. When Della and I used to stream on Twitch this was one of the games we did to completion in one night (it does have "short" in the name) and we were blown away by how fantastic of an experience it was.
Exploring a Canadian provincial park, climbing and gliding like Breath of the Wild in a crunchy, pixelated low-poly world, helping people with their problems, fantastic music, no combat, brilliant writing - like. I love this game. I love thinking about this game. The only thing that's come close to evoking the vibes is Little Gator Game which feels like a third person version of A Short Hike with a longer playtime expectation. Highly recommend that one.
Another fun thing is that this was developed by the creator of Mayor Bones Annual Ghost Town Pumpkin Festival; and the network test to see if the Pumpkin game would work at all (as it's a seasonal MMO) was done via an April Fools event that added multiplayer code to A Short Hike.
They're working on a new game (was was teased in the Pumpkin Festival 2025 game) and it looks like it might have some A Short Hike DNA in it. We'll see!
Same same
7. UNSIGHTED
Released 20211,817 reviews on Steam as of this publishing
The pixel art in this game is gorgeous
I think it's kind of beautiful that my favorite Metroidvania of the year 2021 was not the Metroid game that released that year by Nintendo, but rather the small indie title developed by a team of trans women in Brazil who put so much love and effort into a masterpiece about identity and exploration thereof.
Mechanically it has more in common with Hyper Light Drifter (see the end of this list) than a Metroid, but the trappings are all there; backtracking, powerups to visit old areas with new abilities, sense of dread and loneliness, and a time limit mechanic that fits into the story perfectly (though fully optional in accessibility settings).
There's something about this game in terms of its sheer size. You know that feeling you had when you were younger playing a game that just keeps expanding with new things to explore popping up and you wonder when you'll actually hit the limit? The way the Elden Ring map kept getting bigger every time you unlocked more is probably the closest I've felt to this - but man, Unsighted fucking goes places and would be a serious undertaking for a large team. What Studio Pixel Punk did with their limited resources feels like a goddamn miracle.
I haven't gone back to replay it since 2023 but I think I'm due for a new save. You should join me!
I did not enjoy the minecart section though lmao
8. Overland
Released into early access 2016, launched 1.0 2019486 reviews on Steam as of this publishing
Chompsky got me through so many scary situations, and that was BEFORE the update that allowed Dogs to drive cars
I picked up the 'first access' version of Overland on Itch.io pretty much as soon as it was available. It was on my radar due to the developer, Finji being the publisher of Night in the Woods (which I love but now have a very complicated relationship with1) and as a result I was highly active in Finji's discord at the time this game started to get hyped up. I was sold on the whole "X-COM but sorta Oregon Trail" premise, plus the incredible visual presentation had me hooked.
The game is (stop me if you've heard this before) grid-and-turn based where you drive across the continental US from East to West picking points on maps, and entering these fucking gorgeous low poly dioramas (can definitely feel the FF Tactics influence) where you need to collect supplies, rescue (or abandon?) strangers (and dogs!!) and try to not run out of gas before the monsters eat you. With the turn based move point system, it (again) feels in line with an X-COM style game, but you learn pretty quickly that hurting the monsters summons more monsters and you have to be very smart about what you do. This is not a power fantasy about killing aliens or whatever they are; this is about surviving and making it out west in the hopes of something better.
Getting to watch this game develop sort of in real time over those years was so fascinating, and I played the SHIT out of the 1.0 launch, both on Steam and the Apple Arcade mobile version. Looking at the review count, I really wish more people gave it a shot, it truly is something special. It had a neat feature where you could integrate it into your Twitch chat and new strangers you'd meet would inherit your viewers' names. Accidentally killed the then-Community Director Harris "Forest" Foster multiple times that way.
While it is a fantastic single player game, I actually highly recommend it as a couch game for a group of people. Make decisions as a team, see what happens, etc. Hilarity and more can occur, I promise.
A fun sidenote, my two claims to fame with this game are that Della and I were featured streamers for Finji's digital booth at Gamescomm 2020, and I think I have the honor of being the only musician to ever have covered a song from the game's incredible soundtrack by Jocelyn Reyes.
Poor Mako made it all this way only to get eaten two levels later
9. Hyper Light Drifter
Released 201610,498 reviews on Steam as of this publishing
The beauty of this game still hits me to this day
I've previously on the blog talked at length about what Hyper Light Drifter meant to me when it launched, and covered my experiences with it's now-doomed "sequel", Hyper Light Breaker extensively - so I don't wanna re-tread too much. Also, of all the games on my list of 9, this probably has the largest "yea...people have already played this one" in terms of reach; the Kickstarter for it was record breaking, the launch was lightning in a bottle that not even the developer was able to climb out of the massive shadow of - hell, Into the Breach is probably the only other game on this list that's had a cultural impact on games close to what HLD had (and that's partially predicated on ITB being from the FTL devs which was its own watershed moment for indie roguelikes).
If you've somehow never played Hyper Light Drifter (which hell yea, I'm so excited for you) the pitch is this: top-down, gorgeous pixel art 2D adventure game that's like a faster-paced SNES-era Zelda - incredible combat, deep exploration, story told only through images (there's literally no dialog in the entire game) and a soundtrack by Disasterpeace that's fucking haunting (complimentary).
It's hard, but it's fun to challenge yourself. There are secrets (both completely hidden and slightly telegraphed) everywhere and you can sink so much time into exploring this world and trying to piece together what the hell is going on. There's an in-game language people have translated, fans adopted names for various characters because they canonically don't have any - it's a wild experience.
Also if interested, after launch they also added 2 player co-op to the game which is janky, but pretty rad all things considered.
Again, this game meant so much to me when it launched and I'm so happy it exists and that I can still play it, even if the studio that made it has more or less fallen apart after years of publisher changes and layoffs. Hyper Light Breaker was supposed to be a true successor and man, it just didn't take.
In theory, there's still an animated series based off Drifter in development, but I don't know what the status is since it's been radio silent in the press since the 2019 announcement. Wait and see, I guess!
To make a long story short(TOO LATE), if you like top-down action games you can't really do better than Hyper Light Drifter; it's legendary in the indie space for a reason.
Rolling in the credit chips
Anyway, thanks for reading - here's your end-of-post cat. Her name is Possum and I have no idea why she's doing that face.
Look, I don't wanna be a downer (and content warnings for abuse, suicide) but Night In the Woods is one of my favorite games that is forever tainted for me because the coder and composer, Alec Holowka was a friend of mine until it turned out he was also a complete monster to the women and femme presenting people in his life in secret and was lying to pretty much everyone in his life. It was really fucked up finding out not only that he'd done horrible things to Zoe Quinn (what the media at the time focused on because Zoe's a bit of a lightning rod for chud clicks wanting to hate on them) but also to many others in his life that didn't make the news. I don't use the term "monster" lightly. And frankly, I think he was a coward for ending his own life rather than face consequences of his actions; the dude spent so much time putting on a "good guy" persona as a way to appear safe to vulnerable individuals he could prey on. Disgusting shit. Oh and anyone who thinks "Zoe Quinn lied and killed him" can go fuck themselves. He was more guilty than you will ever know.↩