Hurry! Steam rolls out 12 free games in huge giveway — don’t miss out

Grand Emprise
(Image credit: Tbjbu2)

What's this? Free Steam games, you say? Wait, 12 free games?! Don't mind if we do. If you're in the mood to ride a triceratops, nail your three-point turns in virtual driving tests or simply want to help an adorable cartoon bee get his honey back, you're in for a treat — totally gratis.  

As helpfully revealed by Twitter channel SteamGamesPC (thanks Gaming Bible), Steam casually made six titles free at the start of the week, before dropping a further half dozen freebies. While some of these games are just the prologue version of the full title, they still serve up good chunks of gameplay to help you make your mind up on the final product.

Free Steam games

Ashes to Ashes

(Image credit: Team Beams)

First up, we have Ashes to Ashes. This Wild West shooter may look like a low-rent Red Dead Redemption 2, but wait, there’s a twist! Your gunslinger is a zombie… who can apparently use magic. Bet you didn’t see that one coming.

The next free Steam title is Death Roads: Tournament Prologue. This is just a taste of the final game to come, and intriguingly it combines violent car battles, deckbuilding and roguelite elements.

Grand Emprise: Prologue certainly doesn’t lack ambition. What starts as a dino-riding homage to ARK: Survival Evolved promises a time-travelling adventure that will eventually blast you to the stars via rocket ships. Oh, and it also promises you’ll be God. No biggy. The final game has a lot to deliver on.

Who needs dinosaurs when you’re stuck in the woods trying to solve puzzles as a teenage orphan though, right? Their Land’s puzzle-heavy action game sounds intriguing, even if the trailer is a tad bleak.

Street Sense 2

(Image credit: Project Whitecard Inc.)

Have you been struggling to pass your driving licence? Then Street Sense 2 could be the game for you. This seems to be a virtual driving test simulator. Seeing as I racked up three major errors on my first failed test, maybe I should use Street Sense 2 to brush up my motoring ‘skills’.

There's another glorified demo, this time in the form Bunker Builder Simulator: Prologue. The full game will have you digging holes and erecting bunkers, which will no doubt come in handy when the zombie apocalypse is upon us. The undead hate cramped spaces, right?

Even more free Steam games

The second collection of freebies Steam dropped this week starts with Cat-asclysm. Puzzles, platforming and pummelling foes are all on the cards in this isometric action-adventure. 

Next, it's Exorsite. Blending RTS elements with the action of a team shooter, Exorsite is still in Early Access, but the combination of top-down tactical views mixed with ground-level firefights is definitely intriguing.

Is it a bird?! Is it a plane?! Oh wait... it's Bee-Man. Woo-hoo? This retro styled puzzle-based platformer sees you chasing down the titular insect's lost honey. 

Staying with critters on a mission, the fluffy fiends of Untamed: Tactics: The Beginning are only too happy to tear the fur off each other as they battle across grids in this tactical RPG. 

Force of Nature 2

(Image credit: A.Ystd)

The Prologue version of Force of Nature 2 gives you a brief taste of the final sandbox survival game, where gathering resources is crucial. Oh, and it also lets you mess up aggressive swarms of crabs. So there's that.

We round the not so dirty dozen of gratis games with the Prologue edition of Cosmic Coliseum. This frenetic action-shooter with roguelite elements appears to have all the colors. So much, so my scorched eyeballs need to go for a lie down.

Now that you’ve hopefully stocked up your Steam library with the free titles above, you should check out the best Steam games you can buy in 2023.

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Dave Meikleham
UK Computing Editor

Dave is a computing editor at Tom’s Guide and covers everything from cutting edge laptops to ultrawide monitors. When he’s not worrying about dead pixels, Dave enjoys regularly rebuilding his PC for absolutely no reason at all. In a previous life, he worked as a video game journalist for 15 years, with bylines across GamesRadar+, PC Gamer and TechRadar. Despite owning a graphics card that costs roughly the same as your average used car, he still enjoys gaming on the go and is regularly glued to his Switch. Away from tech, most of Dave’s time is taken up by walking his husky, buying new TVs at an embarrassing rate and obsessing over his beloved Arsenal.