Keeping up with all the new games on Steam can be a job unto itself, and potentially disappointing if you're rushing to grab stuff the second it launches. That's why every month we wait for the dust to settle before picking the best new Steam games we've played and adding them to our Steam Hype Playlist. For your perusal, here's the January 2026's Steam games that kicked off this year with a bang.

While low on big AAA releases, January was still packed with interesting titles, including a new strategy game from the team behind XCom's infamous Long War mod, some great RPGs, the world's most in-depth fantasy blacksmithing sim and the game that defined a whole new subgenre of incremental time-sponge. Let's take a look:

Cairn PC

The developers of cinematic boss-rush Furi and romantic RPG Haven are clearly not content to stick with any one genre. Cairn is a dramatic, narrative-driven rock-climbing simulator set in a sci-fi world. Study the mountain-face from a distance, plot a route and then slowly ascend one hand and foot at a time, carefully balancing resource usage and muscle strength until you can catch your next safe breath. Tense, and beautiful - while it may not be the grittiest and most simulations of mountaineering games, there's plenty here to keep you thinking, and yet more to come, with several pieces of free DLC due over the coming months.

Bladesong PC

Making a very strong early access debut, Bladesong really is a one-of-a-kind game. A detailed fantasy blacksmithing simulator, tasking you to design ornate custom weapons to order through an incredibly powerful design interface. While you can just treat it as a sword-makers sandbox, the meat of the game is in its RPG campaign, a prose-heavy and very well-written saga, taking jobs and levelling up as you develop your craft and unlock new styles, components and materials to use. And of course, once you've designed a sword, there's a robust photo mode to show off your virtual handicrafts to anyone interested.

Terra Invicta PC

The team behind XCom's famous Long War mods (the XCom 2 version being commissioned by Firaxis themselves) have always had grand designs, but this might be a bit much. Terra Invicta takes the XCom concept of Earth preparing for a fast-approaching alien invasion and expands it into an almost Crusader Kings-like simulation grand strategy game. Each faction you can play as (with every other one being AI-controlled) has has their own goals ranging from a force dedicated to exterminating the aliens and their collaborators at all costs to cult worshipping the aliens as gods. And in the middle, you've got some fun groups like a faction of war profiteers that are happy to sell tech to every side (aliens included) so long as they come out filthy rich at the end. Huge and complex (especially once you get to the space combat), with the first DLC starting to roll in now.

Escape from Ever After PC

Visually and mechanically based on the classic Paper Mario series but very much doing its own thing, tone and narrative-wise, Escape From Ever After is a great lightweight RRPG with a sharp satirical bent. As the latest employee of an all-consuming corporate power, you and your team are sent on quests to story-book worlds to bring them under control and scout new hires. Naturally, rebellion is order of the day. Expect light platforming, turn-based combat with a lot of timed hits (a Mario RPG staple) and plenty of jokes. Plus, it just looks a treat, standing proudly alongside the Thousand Year Door remake in style.

Berry Bury Berry PC

A surreal, chaotic and slightly menacing first-person incremental game about feeding a bottomless, ever-expanding pit with fruit. Simultaneously relaxing and stress-inducing, as your bank balance swells ever further, your upgrades become ever mode powerful and the world grows increasingly cluttered with coins, fruit and shattered glass, with VHS distortion accompanying every misstep. Not a horror game, per se, but a sharp antidote to the current crop of 'cozy' games.

MIO: Memories in Orbit PC

There have been SO many great metroidvanias released over the past year, and while Silksong might be the giant looming above all, Memories In Orbit is a great alternative or follow-up. Involved and lenghty, but not quite on the absurd RPG-like scale. Set in a vast sci-fi megastructure populated by robots of all shapes and sizes, MIO's world is a treat to run and jump through, with a vast pencil-shaded 3D world visible in the background, while the action takes part on a 2D plane. The action also takes more than a few notes from Hollow Knight, with some tricky multi-phase bosses (that often use the 3D space to fantastic effect) and some hairy platforming challenges.

The Legend of Heroes: Trails beyond the Horizon PC

Forget Final Fantasy, the Legend Of Heroes series might be the longest-running RPG saga around, running since 1989. A couple spinoffs aside, there's around twenty games here, and Falcom reckon that the saga is approaching its conclusion in the next few years. What started with standard medieval fantasy has followed a world to the dawn of the space age, with Beyond The Horizon's heroes fighting to make sure all things go smoothly for mankind's first space exploration mission. While you could start with Trails Through Daybreak as the start of this particular story arc, the recently-remade Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter is probably the best introduction to this world.

Cult of the Lamb: Woolhaven PC

A massive expansion for Massive Monster's compelling and creepy-cute hybrid of roguelite hack n' slash action and town-builder. Woolhaven nearly doubles the scope of an already-long game, adding a second, tougher story that makes most sense to explore after clearing the original main quest. This expansion focuses on the story of the lamb themselves, and the culture and region that their wooly kind came from, with tougher requirements needed to survive up there, Needless to say, things aren't so happy up on the mountain, and there's some really gnarly new dungeons to dig through, like the fleshy, gory Rot zone. Combined with the previous endgame-extending Relics Of The Old Faith update, this game could easy devour 50+ hours of your life now.

Pathologic 3 PC

Bleak, cruel, frustrating and shockingly funny. The latest in a series of first-person adventures about surviving a supernatural plague in a surreal turn-of-the-century Russian town, Pathologic 3 puts you in the shoes of a self-obsessed, frantically self-medicating man of science who finds himself drawn into a time-loop until he can do the impossible and save the town. Think Gregory House meets Doctor who, by way of classically bleak Russian theater, asking you to do differential diagnosis while the superstitious townsfolk try to burn down everything that reminds them of sickness. This is also a fine place to start with the series, as Pathologic 2 & 3 are part of a non-linear, three-part remake of the original, which had three playable characters with their own stories.

And that's it for January! The year's off to a great start, with a great range of games across all genres, and even potentially starting some new ones. Picked up any from this lineup, or want to give a shout-out to one that didn't make our shortlist? Shout it out in the comments below.