10 Best PC Games Of 2018 (So Far)

Halfway through 2018, these are the best pc games we’ve played yet.

- Hayden Dingman

As always, it’s hard to believe we’re already halfway through 2018. Seems like just yesterday we were crowning 2017’s best PC games (go.pcworld.com/17be), and now there’s six more months of titles swelling the backlog.

This year’s been a bit odd though, with many of the biggest and most anticipated games (Sea of Thieves) floundering, and others ending up on this list that I hadn’t even heard of until they popped up on Steam (Yoku’s Island Express). We’ll see how many of them survive for our final Game of the Year list in December, but for now? Read on for our 10 favorite PC games of 2018...so far.

SUBNAUTICA

I’m not much of a fan of survival games normally, but Subnautica ($25 on Humble, go.pcworld.com/subnh) had me hooked for weeks. The mysteries of its alien oceans held so much promise, and I fell right into the familiar loop—crafting gear to go deeper to find new loot to craft even better gear, and so on, sinking ever further into the depths and encountering weirder and weirder creatures.

It’s a marvelous example of worldbuilding, blended with a story that casually guides you to interesting hand-crafted moments without undercutting the strengths of its sandbox. Just enough direction to keep you moving forward. Or downward, as the case may be.

A CASE OF DISTRUST

I’m a sucker for a good detective game, and A Case of Distrust ($15 on Steam, go.pcworld.com/dists) is a great one. Set in San Francisco in the 1920s, you play as Phyllis Cadence Malone, a private investigator on the trail of a murder. The game is almost entirely based around conversations, as you interrogate various members of the community and try to catch them in lies.