PC gaming often doesn't get the attention it deserves; there are generally not the big inflection points like new console launches that can catch people's eye. And yet, PC is home to some of the best and most inventive games out there, and these games can often only be played on PC.
That meant that there was no shortage of new releases to consider for our list of the best PC games of 2024. For this list, as per usual, we've focused on games that are either only available on PC or those that we feel are meaningfully better when played on PC, be it due to improved visuals, better controls, or other factors.
If you're looking for more games to play, you'll also find multiplatform games on our top 10 games of the year list, and our 2024 Game of the Year is also available on PC (and it plays great on Steam Deck, too, if that's your access point to playing PC games). We also have our running list of the best PC games to play right now for even more recommendations.
1000xResist
Despite 2024 being filled with several phenomenal games, I'd argue that 1000xResist delivers the best narrative of the year. Actually, I'd go so far as to argue it delivers the best narrative of the past decade. As soon as I rolled credits on the surreal, futuristic adventure, it earned a place alongside my favorite works of animated science fiction--works like Akira, Final Fantasy VII, Psycho-Pass, and just about everything by Satoshi Kon. In short, 1000xResist is brilliant, immersive, and exceptionally written.
Set in the distant future, 1000xResist immediately drops you into a world in which a pandemic has eliminated the entire population save for one woman: The All-Mother. Following this tragedy, she decides to create a haven populated entirely by her clones, and the madness that ensues--and the past you slowly uncover--delivers a steady supply of emotional gut punches, shocking twists, and poignant lines of dialogue that will stick with you forever. Though calling 1000xResist a "coming-of-age story" seems a bit reductive, it tackles the subject and its themes head on, exploring sexuality, adolescence, and familial relationships as well as discrimination, xenophobia, and the Asian diaspora. All this accompanied by neon-drenched, cinematic shots and haunting music makes for an experience unlike any other.
-- Jessica Cogswell
Children of the Sun
Children of the Sun is a distillation of what makes sniping games special, as it shows how a single bullet can have massive repercussions. Granted, that one round chambered in your rifle can bounce between enemy skulls like a pinball from hell here, but Children of the Sun works that core mechanic into a brutally satisfying mix of puzzles and ballistic kisses.
There's beauty in the setup leading to that fateful squeeze of the trigger, as you scamper around bases inhabited by ne'er-do-well cultists who have no idea of the carnage being plotted against them from the shadows. Working out the perfect trajectory is immensely gratifying.
Children of the Sun is all about finding that golden path for your bullet, ricocheting it through mobs of goons, and turning the environment into a splatter-filled work of art that would make Jackson Pollock jealous. With its eerie vibes and digestible length, the game is a stylized blast of ultraviolence that shoots to thrill.
“Children of the Sun's unconventional approach to sniping is consistently thrilling and wholly satisfying. It might be full of gruesome blood spatter and cracked skulls, but it's also the thinking person's shooter--more of a delightfully macabre puzzle game than anything else,” Richard Wakeling wrote in our Children of the Sun review. “It's admittedly short, and the game's longevity will largely depend on how hard you fall for its inventive and bloody puzzles. That shouldn't be a problem when it's so difficult not to. And even if it's relatively one-note, Children of the Sun plays that note with such morbid aplomb that it's easy to recommend.”
-- Darryn Bonthuys
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Hades 2
Despite being in early access, Hades 2 is already an incredible follow-up to its predecessor--and considering Hades was one of the best games of 2020, that's pretty high praise. Whereas the first entry in the isometric roguelike series followed Zagreus, the restless prince of the underworld, Hades 2 follows his younger sister, Melinoe, who is tasked with saving her family after the titan Chronos wreaks havoc upon their domain. It's a brilliant way to approach a sequel, as there's a chill that comes from not seeing the charming, roguish Zagreus bounding about the palace that adds tension and stakes to Melinoe's quest.
Hades 2 features much of the same gameplay that made Hades so beloved, but new leveling systems, boons, and weapons shake up and elevate the series, allowing you to tailor your hero more than ever before. Whereas Zagreus was abundant with energy and witty remarks, Melinoe is more subdued, with a kind demeanor and an affinity for witchcraft. All of this makes for a hero that feels similar, yet entirely different.
New characters and locations give us an extended look at the land of Greek gods we fell in love with, while plenty of familiar faces and sights are a delight to stumble upon. And an increased focus on relationships and romance is always a fun time. Beyond that, even in its unfinished state, Hades 2 already has more content than Hades, with just one half of it taking roughly as long to complete as the entirety of the first game. Supergiant Games has never failed to impress me with any of its titles, yet I still can't believe just how spectacular its next title already is.
-- Jessica Cogswell
I Am Your Beast
One of the most-common tropes in action movies is the retiring professional dragged into "one last job" and all the chaos that ensues from them trying to reach that illustrious retirement. I Am Your Beast is an inventive look at what happens when you're comfy retiring early. As a former military operative recruited for one last job by his former employers, Alphonse Harding declines the opportunity--politely, at first. When the military won't take no for an answer, Harding makes them see it his way.
Harding's way, as it turns out, is to run through the woods stylishly executing dozens of former co-workers turned hapless villains "just following orders." With an experience designed to be a speedrunner's dream, Harding sprints through encampments, slides under trees, effortlessly scales trees and walks across branches and ziplines, all while he one-shots baddies, or drops bees nests on their heads, or even chucks bear traps and emptied firearms at their faces.
I Am Your Beast is a game of improvisation at 200 miles per hour. Even when you feel you've mastered a level having offed everyone in it at such a speed that you earned the best rating possible, new challenges and wholly new levels open up all the time, giving you even more to go back to. No two levels feel the same, so despite the game being mechanically simple on a fundamental level of button presses and possible interactions, the studio at Strange Scaffold skillfully remixes its own formula again and again.
-- Mark Delaney
Minishoot Adventures
Lots of indie games mash together two different genres, but rarely does the fusion find such stellar harmony as it does in Minishoot Adventures. Blending a top-down Zelda adventure with a shooter like Geometry Wars, you're the titular Minishoot--a plucky little sentient ship cleaning their corrupted world from a blight of other, evil ships. As you explore the bright and vibrant world you'll delve into deep dungeons, find powerful new equipment, and purchase upgrades to outfit your ship to the challenges ahead. Tough bosses will test your skills and put your new equipment to work just like the finest Zelda dungeons.
If you're a Zelda fan without much aptitude for shooters, fear not: a range of difficulty options let you customize the experience to suit your tastes. The combination works so well that it's as if the two were made for each other, and it feels both intimately familiar for Zelda fans and also like discovering something new at the same time.
-- Steve Watts
Mouthwashing
There are dark horror games. Then there is Silent Hill 2. Then, if you keep clawing at a layer of disquieting filth for a while longer, you'll find Mouthwashing, a game so uncomfortable that it actually left me with a sense of dread when I played it at PAX West in a brightly lit hotel room.
To speak to the game's opaque darkness, I would have to spoil things for you, and I'm not willing to do that. Instead, I'll do my best to tell you what else is notable about it. Perhaps most important of all is that its unrivaled darkness is not performed in vain. There is a point to Mouthwashing--a few, really. Its themes tackle subjects relevant on macro and micro levels and, despite existing in the near future, feel very applicable to our world today.
Using PS1-inspired art direction, Mouthwashing feels--for lack of a better word--yucky. Its story leaves some details fuzzy for a good while in the three-hour runtime so that it can land with more impact, but even when you don't know exactly what's going on, it just feels off. You'll sense it too, I expect. Mouthwashing is the closest I've come to the paranormal trope of cursed objects. Like toying with a supposedly evil doll propped up in the museum belonging to Ed and Lorraine Warren, playing Mouthwashing feels like it's letting something wicked crawl inside of your ear, embedding itself in your brain to where you can't ask it to leave or force it out. I can't really recommend this game to everyone, but if you want to play a horror game that will be considered a cult classic in due time, get in on the ground floor with Mouthwashing. Of course, if all of this sounds like too much, then by all means, stay away. Just understand it's nothing if not memorable.
-- Mark Delaney
Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl
Most games are made by developers who want players to deeply understand their creations, their gameplay systems, and their stakes. Games are so often hand-holdy power fantasies that something going against the grain can really stand out. Survival games have given us several such games for years now, with many of them likely pointing back to earlier Stalker games as inspiration. That's partly why it's so cool to see Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl arrive and once again be the bastion of uncompromising games set in hostile worlds that would rather bite off your hand than hold it.
At launch, much of Stalker 2's best attributes were apparent but seen through a layer of bugs and jank. Those blemishes were forgivable--the game had already been delayed quite a lot while its studio and Ukrainians in general dealt with a war that kicked off when Russia invaded the country in 2022. But the game has quickly improved regardless of the details. Several patches deep just a few weeks since launch, Stalker 2 feels like this year's Cyberpunk 2077: a game that is easy to love in spite of its faults, and one that is erasing those faults all the time, leaving behind only its special aspects.
As an open-world FPS game with bits of horror and survival mixed in, Stalker is a blend of genres that lend themselves to improvisation, emergent action, and rare occurrences that soon become campfire tales as you and your friends warm yourselves by the figurative fires of party chats and Discord servers. Stalker 2 is a story engine above all else, filled to the brim with characters who can be hard to identify and even harder to kill. But above all else, Stalker 2 knows what its strengths are. It leans into them and it expects you to meet it there or die trying.
"Criticizing Stalker 2's technical issues is tough, simply because it's astounding that GSC managed to launch the game in the first place," Richard Wakeling wrote in our Stalker 2 review. "Admittedly, this made it easier for me to overlook some of its irritating quirks, particularly when they weren't egregiously crashing the game. Yet even this might not have been the case if it also weren't an engrossing game. Stalker 2 is notably flawed in a few areas, yet these shortcomings tend to dissipate when a compelling, non-linear quest goes awry thanks to an unforeseen element forcing you into a frantic shootout. This unpredictability and the way its various systems interact to create anomalous stories sets Stalker 2 apart. Throw in a beguiling world and the fascinating mysteries hidden within, and it's difficult not to fall under its enticing spell."
-- Mark Delaney
Tactical Breach Wizards
Tactical Breach Wizards can be described most simply as Into the Breach, but with a story-driven campaign in place of a roguelike structure. It's much more than that, though, due first and foremost to the way it provides you with an incredibly wide range of possibilities on a given turn. Character abilities can be used to increase their own or teammates' available actions, and with attacks that can manipulate positioning, impact multiple targets, or otherwise accomplish more than one thing, you can spend a great deal of time considering how to approach each turn. That can lead to the immense satisfaction of completing even challenging levels in a single turn, provided you can piece together the correct series of actions to deal with numerous foes.
As in Into the Breach, it's also just tremendously fun to push and pull enemies, causing them to miss attacks or hurt their teammates. Even better, defenestrating enemies--throwing them out of windows--is a reliable and enjoyable means of dealing with them. Beyond all the tactical gameplay, the heart of Tactical Breach Wizards is a crew of surprisingly well-written characters that help invest you in the story. To top it all off, the dialogue is frequently hilarious, somehow pulling off the accomplishment of being perhaps the funniest game of the year. Whether you play on a PC or Steam Deck, Tactical Breach Wizards is a terrific experience.
"Tactical Breach Wizards is the largest and most ambitious game [Suspicious Developments] has worked on yet, and the extra time it took to get here has certainly not been wasted," Alessandro Barbosa wrote in our Tactical Breach Wizards review. "It presents familiar tropes of the tactical turn-based genre and removes a lot of the friction that acts as a barrier to entry, without sacrificing the fundamental thrill of formulating a perfect turn and executing it. Coupled with an incredibly personable cast that is brought to life through witty and hilariously written dialogue, and you'll find it hard to resist the urge to breach into battle just one more time after each well-deserved victory."
-- Chris Pereira
UFO 50
UFO 50 can be difficult to summarize because it's not just one game, but 50 games. The daring experiment headlined by Spelunky's Derek Yu imagines a fictionalized video game console that spanned the 1980s and creates a full-fledged library of retro games to go with it. With such a premise, you might expect the inclusions to be smaller-scale minigames, but these largely feel like full-scale games at the size and scope you'd have actually seen in the time period. The games themselves span a massive array of genres, from metroidvania to deckbuilder to idle clicker, and everything in-between. The games have classic aesthetics with modern touches and sensibilities. There's also a rich meta-fiction that builds as you explore the games and their fictionalized developers, and even a PC "terminal" console that lets you discover and input codes for extra features and cheats. It's a package that's deep and rich enough to appeal to connoisseurs of game design, and approachable enough for those who just love finding new retro-style video games.
"Simply put, UFO 50 is an audacious triumph," I wrote in our UFO 50 review. "Dozens of the games are compelling enough to warrant a full playthrough, and even some of the less successful experiments have some intriguing element or inventive idea to draw you in. Best of all, it's exciting to have such a rich vein of strange, creative video game experiences to examine. This is nostalgia, but not the candy-coated feeling of reliving what we've already experienced. It's remembering how it felt to discover something new."
-- Steve Watts
V Rising
V Rising is not only a fantastic vampire experience but a brilliant example of how a game’s base components can all be familiar, but when weaved together can create something unique.
The game is basically a fusion of Diablo's isometric combat with open-world survival-crafting games. You build up your level by crafting better gear, exploring the biomes of V Rising’s world, and working your way through a list of bosses to eventually take on Dracula himself. When you defeat a boss, you unlock new rewards, like recipes for a new weapon type or a new crafting bench. The loop of earning new upgrades, gear, and cosmetics from each boss is very satisfying and gives the game a focus other survival games can struggle with.
You’ll run the gamut of every gothic monster and archetype you can think of, from werewolves and giant spiders to mad scientists and corrupt holy priests. The creativity on display in the mechanics make each fight an unexpected surprise, where you never quite know what you're going to get.
The real star of the show is the robust castle-building system. While you start with decayed brick and wood walls, very quickly you're constructing beautiful castles, and the tools allow for you to get very creative while also not being overwhelming.
Like other games of its genre, V Rising is at its best played with friends. Whether you are competing against each other or working together, it makes the whole experience more fun. So slap on your finest Visual Kei and get to blood-sucking.
-- Jean-Luc Seipke
