Best of Steam for May 2017

As it is every year, May is the calm before the E3 storm, which is a particular blessing this year considering the great bounty January through April bestowed upon gamerdom. But even the "calm" season has plenty to offer, as you can see from the seven games we've picked as the Best of Steam for May.

(Produced in partnership with Dell)

Yes, it's true, we won't be getting the further adventures of Tommy Tawodi laying waste to hostile alien civilization with a little help from his American Indian ancestors, so we'll just have to settle for an ominous looking first-person thriller involving space station resident Morgan Yu taking on the creepy, squishy baddies who've been sieging mankind for the last few decades by bending the fabric of reality all around him. Not exactly a giant leap for mankind, but it looks like a hell of a lot more fun.

Release date: May 5th

There's a growing appetite for some of that particular brand of old-school 90s FPS mayhem, and at the buffet table being monopolized by 2016's Doom revival and Quake Champions, Strafe is the game equivalent of Patton Oswalt's skit about Black Angus. It aims to be the ultimate in lightning fast, guns-upon-guns, kill-everything-in-a-room chaos, where blood and gore isn't so much a special effect as a new Whole Foods branded organically-sourced paint base. Unlike Doom and Quake Champions, however, Strafe hasnt forgotten where it came from in the least, and renders all of this in glorious 32-bit pixels and polys. This is the kind of 90s nostalgia we can get behind.

Release Date: May 9th

Yeah, we know, it's May, we'd all like to put cold and snow as far behind us as humanly possible right now, but you might turn your attention towards developer Mojo Bones' long-in-development survival title. Taking place in the aftermath of an extinction level event, plunging the world into a nigh-eternal winter, you play as Jacob Solomon, one of the beleaguered survivors. After Jacob receives a garbled signal that help may be on the way within 30 days, he becomes determined to lead a group of survivors through the deep freeze to salvation. While the typical survival title mechanics seem to be in play, Mojo Bones is promising far more focus on narrative than rote survival. If anything, the premise begs the question of who exactly sent a message of help in an event where everybody's dead? We'll all fid out later this month.

Release Date: May 23rd

Rime has been popping on on the radar around E3 time every year since 2013, and after four years and two publisher changes, it's finally real. The wait may very well have been worth it, too. The game still has the same Ico-Meets-Wind Waker majestic cel-shaded island architecture, but much of the clutter has been stripped away, leaving a narrative-focused puzzle title brimming with heart and soul.

Release Date: May 26th

When Get Even starts, we know: You play as a man named Cole Black--which, it must be said, is one of the best hard-nosed noir character names in recent memory--who wakes up in an abandoned asylum with most of his memories memories gone, except for the fact that there is a teenage girl with a bomb strapped to her chest who needs rescuing. Naturally, Cole has a few questions, like, why is he in an abandoned asylum, who's this girl he's supposed to rescue, and why, exactly, does she have a bomb strapped to her chest. Luckily for him, Cole woke up with a device that lets him enter his own mind and piece together his shattered memory piece by piece. It's a pretty solid premise, and some of the folks resposible for the Painkiller games are developing. That's a pretty fine seal of quality right there.

Release date: May 26th

Just in time to terrify anyone thinking of maybe taking a camping trip some time in the near future, Mrs. Voorhees' baby boy is on the warpath in digital form again after a brief, bloody stint throwing machete parties in Outworld. This Kickstarted gorefest drops its multiplayer portion in May, allowing up to seven hapless camp counselors to face off against a eight player who gets to control Senor Hockey Mask and favorite sharp thing as he skulks, slashes, and stalks his prey in the woods of Crystal Lake. Fun for the whole family!

Release Date: May 26th

For the lucky folks with an Oculus Rift or an HTC Vive, this May will bring players the ability to go where no one has gone before like never before. VR will allow players to step into the shoes and red shirt of a Captain, Helmsman, Tactical, or an Engineer, and decide how the USS Aegis navigates through uncharted space and a tense political situation with the Klingons. As far as we know, none of UbiSoft's promo material mentions anything about the Kobayashi Maru, so, yes, we're pretty sure you can win this one.

Release Date: May 30th