The best Steam games in 2025

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle screenshot
(Image credit: Machine Games/Bethesda)

If you own a gaming PC of any kind, Steam should be the first app you install. Valve's popular gaming client is the go-to way to download and play PC games, and with over 100,000 titles to choose from, finding the best Steam games can lead you down a rabbit hole.

Whether it's a gaming laptop or handheld gaming PC I'm testing, Steam will always be the first on my list of apps to use. Even after amassing over 200 PC games in my Steam library over the years, that's only a drop in the bucket in the vast range of blockbuster hits and indie gems available to check out on Valve's digital storefront. But you know what? There are still plenty of essential titles every PC gamer should have on their list.

From open-world epics like Red Dead Redemption 2 to gold-standard classics like Half-Life 2, the number of games to play (and replay) on an all-new gaming laptop or Steam Deck OLED is endless. And there's more to come, like Doom: The Dark Ages and Monster Hunter Wilds.

Plus, with RTX 50-series GPUs offering smoother frame rates and even greater visuals, plenty of titles are getting even better to play on PC. So, boot up your gaming rig and check my hand-picked list of the best Steam games to play right now.

The best Steam games

Best free Steam games

Why you can trust Tom's Guide Our writers and editors spend hours analyzing and reviewing products, services, and apps to help find what's best for you. Find out more about how we test, analyze, and rate.

We’ve researched the best free Steam games based on their popularity, the depth of their gameplay and our own personal experiences with them. The games listed below are perfectly playable, even if you never spend a cent, with rich experiences for paying and non-paying players alike. Furthermore, we’ve tried to explore a variety of genres. (Free-to-play shooters may be a dime-a-dozen, but they’re not necessarily to everyone’s tastes.)

Darragh Murphy
Computing Editor

Darragh is Tom’s Guide’s Computing Editor and is fascinated by all things bizarre in tech. His work can be seen in Laptop Mag, Mashable, Android Police, Shortlist Dubai, Proton, theBit.nz, ReviewsFire and more. When he's not checking out the latest devices and all things computing, he can be found going for dreaded long runs, watching terrible shark movies and trying to find time to game

With contributions from
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