Browse by year
151 games released in 2021 and reviewed here, best first.
151 reviews
An autobiographical narrative game about two non-binary art-school graduates saying goodbye to their shared London flat, Mixed across its Steam reviews for its distinctive art style and authentic emotional core — undercut by an extremely consistent complaint about slow pacing and dry dialogue, a well-corroborated complaint that its deeply personal writing feels insular rather than crafted for a broader audience, and a short runtime many feel is overpriced.
5.5 / 10
A puzzle-platformer solved entirely by singing or humming pitch into a microphone, Very Positive across its Steam reviews for its genuinely unique concept and charming art style — undercut by an extremely consistent, severe complaint that its core pitch-detection mechanic is unreliable or outright broken for a wide range of players, independently verified against tuning equipment by multiple reviewers.
5.5 / 10
A tiny-bird skateboarding game from Glass Bottom Games, Very Positive across its Steam reviews for its charming premise, music, and customisation — undercut by an extremely consistent complaint about floaty, unresponsive controls and a widely criticised camera that a large share of reviewers say undermines the core skating loop.
5.5 / 10
A solo-developer escape-room-style puzzle adventure through a mysterious woodland — logically satisfying puzzles wrapped in almost no story, a missing settings menu and a runtime most reviewers clock at under an hour.
5.5 / 10
A Norse-mythology survival action RPG built for up to ten players racing giant seasonal invasions before Ragnarök, Mostly Positive across more than 17,000 reviews for a genuinely inventive structure — undercut by a specific, bizarre UI flaw that can permanently delete a character with one misclick, and a mandatory always-online requirement even for solo play.
5.5 / 10
SoftCowGames' free tower-defense idler has a real early hook — upgrade a castle, unlock weapon tiers, farm bosses for legendary loot — but years of player reviews describe the same save-corruption bugs, a 10%-only offline rate and shop pricing that turns "just cosmetic" into a running joke.
5.2 / 10
A genuinely good 2001 D&D hack-and-slash, ported to PC in 2021 with barebones options — and, per its three most-upvoted 2025-2026 reviews, hit with a Steam-only price hike right before a "sale" that discounted it back to roughly its normal price.
5 / 10
A villain-lair-management sim sequel to the 2004 cult classic, Mixed across 7,550 reviews for its charming presentation — undercut by an extremely consistent complaint from longtime fans that its core gameplay has been simplified and slowed into tedium relative to the original, compounded by a rapid cadence of paid DLC releases confirmed via the developer's own patch history.
5 / 10
A cyberpunk action-adventure styled like a moving comic book, Mixed across a small sample of Steam reviews for its striking panel-based visual presentation — undercut by an extremely consistent complaint about clunky, unadjustable gunplay and camera controls that this review confirmed went unaddressed by any post-launch patch.
5 / 10
A genuinely large-scale, systems-dense K-fantasy MMORPG whose launch became a cryptocurrency story before it became a game story, and whose Steam review base is split almost exactly down that same line.
5 / 10
A Slay the Spire-style roguelike deckbuilder built around confronting phobias with coping-mechanism cards — a genuinely distinctive premise that a meaningful share of its own reviewers, including a reviewer identifying as a psychology lecturer, say the game doesn't earn, on top of a separate, more familiar complaint that the card system itself is too shallow to sustain repeat runs.
5 / 10
A Two Point Hospital-flavoured prison-management sim with genuine charm and a supportive launch window, undercut by thin long-term content, a restrictive early economy, and a developer that stopped updating it in August 2022 — confirmed by a news feed gone quiet and a concurrent-player count in the single digits.
5 / 10
A stylish sci-fi platformer-metroidvania set inside a computer system, Mixed across its Steam reviews for a genuinely striking aesthetic and premise — undercut by an extremely consistent complaint about clunky platforming and combat controls, a confusing visual style that actively hurts spatial judgement, missing basic accessibility options, and a developer that stopped meaningfully updating the game within weeks of launch.
5 / 10
A top-down medieval parody of classic Grand Theft Auto games, Mostly Positive across its Steam reviews for its funny premise and soundtrack — undercut by an extremely consistent complaint about frustrating, clunky controls, harsh mission checkpointing that forces full restarts, and bugs that Steam's own achievement data confirms have kept completion rates extremely low.
5 / 10
A minimalist, satisfying skateboarding game originally built for mobile and Apple Arcade, Very Positive across a small sample of Steam reviews for its tricks and style — undercut by a consistent, well-corroborated complaint that the PC version is a neglected, content-incomplete port relative to its mobile counterpart, thin overall content, and launch-state bugs this review confirmed were never patched on Steam.
5 / 10
An East-Asian-themed entry in Firefly Studios' long-running castle-building RTS series, Mixed across nearly 1,900 reviews for its aesthetic and accessible core loop — undercut by an extremely consistent complaint from longtime series fans that it represents a significant downgrade from 2005's Stronghold 2 in nearly every dimension, compounded by homogenised faction design and technical instability on larger maps.
5 / 10
A card-battling circus-management RPG set in post-Civil War America, Mixed across a small sample of Steam reviews for its distinctive theme and art — undercut by an extremely consistent complaint that its circus setting is a thin cosmetic reskin over standard deckbuilder mechanics, poor tutorialization, and a widely repeated sense among reviewers that the resulting gameplay is simply boring.
5 / 10
A star-voiced, time-loop interactive thriller from Luis Antonio and Annapurna Interactive, Mixed across more than 3,500 reviews — praised for its premise and strong voice performances but undercut by a consistent, well-corroborated complaint about punishing loop-repetition tedium and a widely criticized late-game twist that many reviewers feel cheapens everything built before it.
5 / 10
A veteran-defined tank warfare MMO whose Steam launch stumbled over locked-out existing accounts in 2021, and whose long, escalating pay-to-win reputation reached a documented breaking point in May 2025 when Wargaming introduced tiered loot boxes that sent its most invested ten-year players heading for the exit.
5 / 10
A dark-fantasy co-op dungeon-crawler brawler by Ronimo Games, Mixed across its Steam reviews for its charming aesthetic and fun boss fights — undercut by an extremely consistent complaint that its forced online structure and low player population make it difficult to actually play, compounded by shallow content and persistent bugs that this review confirmed the developer stopped meaningfully patching within a year of launch.
4.5 / 10
A one-person Steam sim about physically building a mining rig and speculating on a simulated coin market — a genuinely different idea to the genre's usual click-and-wait idlers, left to rot by a developer who stopped updating it within a year of launch.
4.5 / 10
A solo-developer idle empire-builder from Pixelabor — harvest wood and stone, build five structures, toggle an auto-battle against a numbered ladder of enemies — whose own store page still calls itself a free game more than five years after Steam started charging NZ$4.79 for it, with zero user reviews on record either way.
4.5 / 10
A farming sim and monster-taming hybrid crossing Stardew Valley with Pokemon-style creature battles, Mixed across its Steam reviews for its charming concept and cute "planimal" designs — undercut by an extremely consistent complaint that it shipped as a full release feeling like early access, severe launch bugs, and shallow, underdeveloped monster-battling systems.
4.5 / 10
A visually striking brawler-platformer in which an immortal warrior fights while literally dying and reviving mid-combo, Mixed across a small sample of Steam reviews for its distinctive art direction — overshadowed by press-reported allegations from former developers describing the project's completion as built on "abuse, manipulation, and theft," and undercut further by an extremely consistent complaint that the core combat is repetitive and poorly executed.
4 / 10
