3 games from the PC Gaming Show you can (and need to) try today
- Nate Hermanson
- 6 days ago
- 6 min read
To close out the Summer Game Fest weekend of shows, the PC Gaming Show did what it does every single year: it gave us way too many games to consider and did it with the kind of charismatic flair that only Sean "Day[9]" Plott, Frankie Ward, and Mica Burton can provide. It did feature way too many cutaways to a PC being built, but it was jampacked with the kind of oddball PC niche-filling games that don't really have a place in any other showcase this week.
Coming just a day before the official kickoff of Steam Next Fest, the PC Gaming Show featured tons of games that you could dive into immediately. To celebrate the end of our livestreamed reactions this weekend, we decided to stop talkin' about games and finally get to check some out — and come back to you with hands-on impressions of some incredible looking indies.
Developed by: Soft Rains
Published by: Soft Rains
Genre: Sci-fi clean-em-up
Release Date: Coming soon
Ambrosia Sky was so eye-catching that it got my pick as the game to watch from all of the PC Gaming Show on stream, but after getting my hands on its demo, I still had more to say.
Coming to us from Soft Rains, a new Toronto-based indie studio with developers from the likes of Riot Studios and Ubisoft Toronto, Ambrosia Sky is a self-described sci-fi "clean-em-up" that sees players stepping into the space suit of Dalia on an emotionally charged journey home. Dalia is a member of the Scarabs, a group of scientists on a mission to finally unlock immortality by traveling to the location of freaky space catastrophes that expose the human form to unexplainable things. The latest catastrophe just so happened to hit Dalia's former home, a farming colony on the outer rings of Saturn.
Your goal as Dalia is to get in, clean up the fungal presence that has taken hold of the colony and its inhabitants, and extract valuable data from the recently deceased who consented to the experimentation the Scarabs are performing.
Dalia's equipped with a chemical spraying gun akin to a power washer that can chew through the various forms of exofungus that crawl over the space station dynamically. There are two types you run into in the demo: one with explosive fruits that can cascade into chaos and one with electric properties that can sap important doors, terminals, and more of their power.
What results is a gameplay experience that has the melancholic environmental storytelling of something like System Shock, the deeply satisfying clean until it's gone gameplay of PowerWash Simulator, and an unexpected third thing: sneaky puzzle solving that sees you leveraging the fungus in your favor. In the demo's second mission, you get some of the more advanced features for your spray gun, which showcases some of this puzzle-solving by having you shoot out electricity-absorbing goop to reroute power to where you need it most.
It's an incredible mix of concepts that work together perfectly, and we cannot wait to see how Soft Rains polishes this up on the way to launch. Because we're already ready to play the whole damn thing.
Developed by: River End Games
Published by: Nordcurrent Labs
Genre: Isometric cinematic stealth thriller
Release Date: July 15, 2025
Continuing my trend of highlighting things I talked about on stream, we're going all the way back to 2024 to give Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream a double dip. This isometric stealth game initially caught our eyes for its blend of old-school PC gaming sensibilities with modern cinematic presentation. And with the release just a month away, its demo proved that its eye-catching qualities had the right stuff to back it up.
In Eriksholm, you step into the stealthy boots of Hanna, a young orphan recently bedridden from a bout with the devastating Heartpox that's making its way through town. Her brother, Herman, has spent weeks caring for her through it all and finally gets to see Hanna's spirits lifted... only to suddenly go missing the morning after she's well again.
When guards come knocking, Hanna immediately dives into survival mode and begins a long journey to discover Herman's whereabouts, dipping and dodging away from the authorities and picking up help from her allies all across the city as she does.
What surprised me most about going hands-on was how fluid and dynamic its stealth gameplay was. Unlike the isometric PC gaming roots it seems to pull its look from, Eriksholm has way more in common with something like A Plague Tale: Innocence than it does a PC stealth gaming classic like Commandos. You'll smartly dive behind cover, wait for openings in guard routes, and use birds and noisy surfaces to distract them on your way to the next exit.
Similar to A Plague Tale's elder sibling Amicia, Hanna is no fighter, but she's got her own sneaky tool set to assist in her journey forward. Instead of a slingshot, Hanna has a dart gun, inherited from the leader of some sort of orphan criminal syndicate that she has history with. Stick to the shadows, dart unsuspecting guards, and keep a "by any means possible" mentality on your way to your brother.
Eriksholm: A Stolen Dream is an isometric dream. You won't have long to wait, but get your taste of the game today, because it's so worth it.
Developed by: Sonderlust Studios
Published by: Sonderlust Studios
Genre: Narrative reclamation colony sim
Release Date: 2025
One of the things we appreciated about the PC Gaming Show was the number of games showcased that blended very traditional gameplay-driven experiences with deep narratives. And the game that shows the most promise out of that batch just so happened to be one that had a demo ready for us to hop into immediately: Generation Exile.
Sonderlust Studios brings an incredible pedigree to the table for this one, with team members who've worked on the likes of Gone Home, Baldur's Gate 3, Firewatch, and Mark of the Ninja. And all the talent you'd expect of folks who worked on those masterpieces is on full display in Generation Exile.
Players will serve as a generation ship's leader, inhabiting a role thrust upon you when a horrifying force known as The Scales disrupts your living situation just two years into your journey away from Earth, while you are still bound for your new planet. You and fellow survivors find yourselves having to rise to the surface of the ship's generated biome, forced to use only what you've got right in front of you to survive the long trip to a new home. Repurpose old buildings, cleanse the environment, and optimize the production of new goods. Classic colony sim stuff.
But it's Generation Exile's unique narrative moments — powered by the game's social systems that require you to keep track of each colonist's relationships — that elevate it to something remarkable. You settle disputes. You hang out with your best friend at their empty birthday party. You help someone build an antenna to "communicate with aliens." It all makes these "units" something more: people whose journeys you want to track. So many games try to offer this through dynamic gameplay alone, but a deft narrative hand scripting your way through it goes a long way toward making it more engaging.
Generation Exile's turn-based colony building is interesting, but it's the narrative potential that has me really enthralled.
If you want to hear about even more games that the VGG crew fell in love with from the show, check out our video highlights and honorable mentions from immediately after the PC Gaming Show.
Inside this spotlight are:
All Systems Dance: A corporation and CEO breaking dancing game from Mighty Yell.
Blippo+: A weekly broadcast from another planet, both for your Playdate and your PC/Switch.
Ambrosia Sky: The game so nice we had to feature it twice.
Grave Seasons: A farming sim where your crush might literally be the death of you.
Mandrake: A dark and magical farming sim without a single bit of cannibalism.
Arcane Eats: A deckbuilder where you build recipe-less dishes for your whiny customers.
CloverPit: An addictive slot machine roguelike that features piss as a mechanic.
Dead Reset: An FMV time loop horror game whose devs ask you to die as much as possible.
Stars of Icarus: A follow-up to a cooperation-focused starship battler13 years in the making.
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