Steam Charts: There Is Hope Edition

The gaming tundra

Feature by John Walker Co-founder

Published on Jan. 22, 2018

Well sound the klaxons, unfurl the flags, hoist your main-braces and petards whatever they may be, 2018 is proving far more interesting for charting Steam games. Of course we can't escape the three usual suspects, but beyond those this is quite the collection of interesting, independent, and novel games.

10. Subnautica

With the game out of early access and fully released tomorrow, it seems attention is already re-gathering. And well it should be, because this is just so flipping good. A survival game that understands sparsity isn't the only route to success, that gets that stories encourage progress, but don't need to take the front seat, and most of all, just lets you swim around surrounded by bonkers alien fishies.

There's so much more to it than you might first think on starting, and it wipes the seabed with so many of its competitors. I do hope we see this one riding much higher next week with its official launch.

8 & 9. Dragon Ball FighterZ

Via Steam's own witchcraft, this is somehow occupying both the 9 and the 8 spot this week, and that's despite not even having launched yet. Enough people don't care to wait for reviews to find out if they're wasting their £45 (good lord), and presumably by its double-charting, even enough have spent the idiotic £75/£88 on the special editions of a game that might be terrible. Or good. They don't know!

And what do you get for paying double? Astoundingly little. The FighterZ edition gives you eight extra characters to fight as and "a girls stamp pack", and the ninety quid Ultimate throws in, er, the "Anime Music Pack" with 11 songs, available in March, and the "Commentator Voice Pack" in April. Good grief.

7. Grand Theft Auto V

Welcome back to another round of What’s Another Thing You Could Buy Instead Of GTA V Again?

What’s Another Thing You Could Buy Instead Of GTA V Again?

This bottle of unicorn tears.

6. Divinity: Original Sin 2

Now, here's a dilemma. (Great cars, them Dilemmas -Ed.) DOS2 is a brilliant game, came out later last year, and fully deserves to ride high in the charts. But, stick around for too long and, well, I start to get bored.

I really had no strong feelings either way about GTA V or Counter-Strike GO. Ask me a year ago before I took over this most esteemed of columns and I've had said of either, "Sure, I hear they're great, not really played them." Ask me now and I'd say, "Those bloody games..."

I don't want that to happen to DOS2! I don't want to need to think of a snarky way of dismissing it every week as it inevitably takes up a spot in the best-sellers. I don't want to start attaching the wrong screenshots. So what I'm going to need is for everyone to buy this splendid game, but to pace yourselves so it's always the eleventh best selling game on Steam. Just organise this amongst yourselves, and everyone will be happier for it.

5. They Are Billions

They are billionaires, more like. When Fraser looked at this at the beginning of the year, he found himself equally enthralled and infuriated by it, but in the good ways.

Strategy meets tower defence meets survival meets the inevitability of zombies. And it all seems to rather work. And indeed, rather sell. This one's sticking around for a bit, it seems.

4. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

BLAH BLAH BLAH NEXT.

3. Human Fall Flat

This remarkable success story continues, as the cute physics puzzler from nearly two years ago is experiencing the most extraordinary late surge.

Multiplayer was added in October last year, but it seems it was over Christmas that it caught the attention of the masses, estimated lifetime sales doubling since the holiday. I'm determined to find out more about this, so have donned my investigative hat, and will return with information.

2. Slay The Spire

We go now live to our reporter on the scene, one Brendan Caldwell, who is red-eyed and dizzy from staying up way past his bedtime playing this last night:

"Here's how a single turn of combat might go in Slay the Spire: You are confronted by the Devil as imagined by Salvador Dali, so you instantly headbutt him, bash him with the hilt of your sword, then dropkick him in the head. You laugh and click "end turn", knowing that a few more volleys like this will soon be his end. He is no match for y-- Wait... what does it mean when your enemy becomes "enraged"? Oh no. OH NO."

Gruesome scenes.