If your backlog needs padding but your wallet is on a diet, Steam delivered again this week — a scattershot of small indies, cozy experiments and bite-sized curiosities, all free to grab and keep. Some of these are weekend time-fillers; a couple are the kind of odd little projects that quietly swallow whole evenings.
What showed up
Valve’s storefront has been flooded with new freebies from indies around the world. Highlights from the most recent round include:
- Train Wreck — 3D top-down local co-op where up to four players run trains, dodge robbers and deliver cargo in a Wild West setting.
- Slash — a skill-based action game where you parry bullets with a sword, earn currency and outfit your avatar.
- PolyLumina — a neon rhythm toy that lets you compose polyrhythmic chord patterns and watch reactive visuals bloom.
- Bygone Snow — a short visual novel built for a Game Boy Advance feel, offered on PC via emulation.
- Gravity — a click-and-drag platformer where an artificial gravitational field guides an astronaut through obstacles.
- Ball Roller — a tough physics puzzler; roll a ball up punitive inclines solo or with friends.
- Jurassic Wrap — a father-and-son platformer about rescuing dinosaur eggs while avoiding hazards.
- CivIdle — a slow-burning Civ-like idle game (more on this below).
- Check system requirements before you hit "Play Game." Even small indies sometimes assume a surprisingly modern GPU or specific OS features. If you plan to play on Steam Deck, remember the console’s recent improvements to background downloads and low-power modes can help manage installs and battery life — handy if you want to try multiple picks without swamping storage. See more about the Deck’s download mode in our piece on the new Steam Deck download feature playing on a Steam Deck.
- Ratings aren’t everything, but they’re useful. Some of the newest freebies already boast Very Positive or Positive review tags — Lucid Clowder and Tiny Crate, for example. Others are experiments: short, rough around the edges, but with neat ideas.
- This kind of steady trickle of free indie releases is a reminder of how dominant Steam remains as a distribution hub for small teams and personal projects. For more context on that landscape and developers’ views, our coverage of Steam's role in PC distribution digs into why so many indies land there first.
That list doesn’t even cover the other recent freebies that surfaced in late November and early December: atmospheric crafting puzzler The Last Elixir, rocket-y orbital toy Cosmic Drift, frantic third-person shooter Lucid Clowder (which currently sits near 96% positive reviews), and stealth-leaning Not My War, among others. Many of these have already earned solid player ratings, which is encouraging for anyone hunting low-risk gems.
CivIdle: the tiny empire that won’t stop growing
Amid the batch, CivIdle has become the headline-grabber. It recently reached 1.0 and — yes — it’s completely free. Think Civilization boiled down to its numeric heart and left to simmer in the background: tech trees, historical personae offering quirky bonuses (imagine Florence Nightingale = Happiness), and sprawling, procedurally generated maps that you can nudge when you feel like playing.
What sells it is presentation. CivIdle leans into a stark, retro-Windows aesthetic that brings to mind grey-and-blue UIs of the late 90s and early 2000s. It’s oddly hypnotic; the UI feels like a nostalgic database you don’t remember wanting to scroll through. Gameplay pleasantly matches the look: you’ll tinker with research, growth and trade while the world quietly ticks along. If you want a full all-nighter 4X session, this isn’t it — but if you like the idea of empire-building as a relaxing background hobby, it’s dangerously watchable.
The developer sells a voluntary Supporter Pack and a tiny cross-platform cloud save unlock, but the base experience is the full game and costs nothing.
How to approach these freebies
Should you download them?
If you enjoy discovery, yes. Most of these titles are low-commitment: small downloads, simple mechanics, and a good chance one will click. CivIdle is the rare freebie with the stamina of a larger design; the others are quick experiments, cozy co-op toys, or short narrative bites. Download, experiment, and uninstall if something doesn’t stick — little risk, potential for big fun.
A final note: free doesn’t mean unfinished or throwaway. In the best cases, these small projects are where developers test concepts, build communities, and sometimes evolve into something much larger. If one of them surprises you, consider tossing a tip to the creator or grabbing a support pack — it’s how those tiny sparks often turn into the next must-play indie.