Check out 4 fresh game releases that aren’t Monster Hunter Wilds

The dust on the yesterday’s horizon has become today’s stampede. Monster Hunter Wilds has launched and we are all choking on up-kicked sand. So far the action game has hit a peak of 987,000 players on Steam and all my news feeds are nothing but Rathalos screams. This is what we call a “big ‘un”.

But what trembling critters are eking out an existence in the disturbed ground beneath Capcom’s feet? Other games still exist, and some are just unlucky enough to step out of their bolthole the same moment a much scarier freak is on the prowl. Here are 4 games that just released which may be worth a look if you have no time for big beasties.

Faceminer

Released yesterday, Faceminer is a dystopian clicker game about scurrilously slurping up all the data you can about random people on the internet. Described by developers Wristwork as a “creepy narrative-driven incremental management sim”, it’ll put you in charge of a very Windows 95-like operating system. Nic played the demo and innocently tinkered with the fictional computer’s Winamp-style music player, before succumbing to deeper techno-dread. I refer you to his words:

“What it lacks in novelty, it makes up for in sheer ominousness. Also, I’m incentivised to do it well, because the game informs me I’m in my ‘employee trial period’. I move through ‘filtered suspicious faces’ to ‘unsorted political operatives’. I click, and my money goes up, and that is how I know this is a worthwhile endeavor, despite the sinking feeling in my gut.”

PGA Tour 2K25

It’s golf. And probably the most expensive game on the list, with the biggest publisher name attached. PGA Tour 2K25 came out today, which suggests 2K are comfortable launching their sports game alongside Capcom’s gargantuan freak, perhaps concluding that the venn diagram of golf likers and lizard enthusiasts leaves only a slim overlap. But Steam itself strangely seems to disagree. In the box titled “Is this game relevant to you?” the store claims this putt ’em up is similar to at least one other game I have played: Monster Hunter Wilds. Okay.

Elite Dangerous: Trailblazers

Not a full game, but a significant update to the long-running space sim. Trailblazers makes it possible for space pilots to stake a claim on whole star systems, and start building the orbital stations, refineries, and planetary outposts that commanders usually frequent, but in currently unpopulated systems. There’s a big rundown here from the developers, which explains in brief the many steps it will take to build your frontier spaceport. As a lapsed space trucker it is an appealing fantasy.

“Turn your system into a gateway to the unknown – a perfect home base for your expeditions into the black,” they say. “Become a destination for Commanders looking to make a name for themselves in a bustling hub for missions.” In reality, this is sure to involve enough grindy shipping to complete whole seasons of true crime podcasts while flying back and forth between a rubber factory and a glue store. It’s also technically in beta. And if you want to give your colony its own name, you’ll have to pay extra real money for Elite’s special spacebucks. But as an extra bit of grindy endgame, it does seem to open up the Milky Way quite a bit.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection

Forget what I said about the golf game being the expensive one. Is £55/$50 a good deal for 14 old Yu-Gi-Oh games stretching back to the original GameBoy titles? Longtime fans and retro game dweebs might be pleased – some of these old card battlers were only released in Japan but have finally been localised for this collection. At least some of the games will feature online multiplayer battles, such as Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters 4: Battle of Great Duelists. And the games boast a “rewind time” function, that’s like the much-appreciated fast-forwarding of Squeenix’s Final Fantasy re-releases. But, uh, in reverse.

Anyway, there you go. A small menu of other games if you’re not into making pants out of majestic symbols of raw nature. There are, as ever, a bunch of other small games released today in Steam’s ever-expanding soup of personal projects, sex games, and cynical AI trash. But these are the four that made it through the RPS bullshit filter, a frightening machine that no single worker here knows how to operate in its entirety. You want more good curation like this? It’s easy, just keep coming back. We like it when your eyes touch our words.