Six years ago, a Souls-like game appeared that hardly anyone had on their radar,and it became a surprise hit. This week, its sequel is arriving, and it’s turned out to be significantly bigger, complete with an open world.
Things are getting crowded, as everyone wants to make a splash before gamescom: You’ll get Lovecraftian horror, a sandbox MMO from a genre legend, and three major expansions. As we do every Monday, we’ve summarized all the important Steam releases for you here.
- The Highlight of the Week: Mortal Shell 2
- More Exciting Steam Releases This Week
- Monday, August 17, 2026
- Tuesday, August 18, 2026
- Wednesday, August 19, 2026
- Thursday, August 20, 2026
- Friday, August 21, 2026
The highlight of the week: Mortal Shell 2
Genre: Action RPG / Soulslike – Developer: Cold Symmetry – Release Date: August 20, 2026 (Steam)
Mortal Shell was a real critical success in 2020:a compact Souls-like from a small studio that didn’t want to copy FromSoftware but had its own unique vision. You play as a being that slips into the bodies of fallen warriors. Each of these bodies comes with its own stats, weapons, and playstyle.
That’s exactly what the sequel builds upon:There are eight shells to choose from this time, and the world is no longer a series of interconnected corridors but a cohesive area with over 60 dungeons that you can tackle largely in any order you choose.
Cold Symmetry has also tweaked the combat system: The stamina bar is gone; instead, Mortal Shell 2 now uses a stance system. Combined with the “Harden” ability—which turns you to stone in the middle of an animation—this creates a combat experience quite different from the typical “Souls-like” dodge-and-roll spam.
Anopen beta has been running on Steam since June 5, and the numbers look promising: The developers report around 600,000 downloads, along with a 93 percent positive rating.
The Standard Edition costs 50 euros, while the Devout Edition costs 60 euros and unlocks access up to 72 hours early—meaning as early as Monday. The regular launch is on Thursday.
More Exciting Steam Releases of the Week
Table of Contents
Monday, August 17, 2026
- The Lantern of the Laughless Saint (Early Access): If you’ve been waiting for The Elder Scrolls 6 for years, you should check this out. The developers are building an open-world role-playing game that’s clearly inspired by the classic Morrowind.
- Tukoni: Forest Keepers:Kyiwer Studio Dream Operator is adapting the picture books by Ukrainian illustrator Oksana Bula, who serves as art director on the project. You play as a forest spirit who sews pillows, gathers herbs, brews tea, and solves hand-drawn puzzles before the first snow falls. The story is told entirely without text, using only animations and pictograms. The demo has a 97 percent positive rating, and the game has already won a few small awards for its visuals even before its release.
- WE ARE SO DEAD (Early Access):Friendslop is a must-see again this week: One of you is already dead and, as a ghost, can see what’s lurking in a haunted house—but can only communicate through a Ouija board. The rest must work with him to banish a demon.
Tuesday, August 18, 2026
- The Sinking City 2: Frogwares returns to Lovecraft’s world, this time without open-world detective work. The sequel is a classic survival horror game set in the flooded Arkham of the 1920s, where resources are scarce and you, as an occult researcher, must set things right after a failed ritual.
- Stars Reach (Early Access):Raph Koster was the lead designer of Ultima Online and creative director of Star Wars Galaxies; his new project, Stars Reach, is a sandbox MMO set on a single, persistent server. There are no classes—you’ll become a merchant, explorers, politicians, fighters—or all of the above at once. Whether the technology can live up to expectations, however, remains to be seen.
- Darkest Dungeon: The Fire’s Edge (Expansion): The first DLC for the original Darkest Dungeon since 2020, released just in time for its tenth anniversary. Red Hook brings over two heroines from the second game—Duelist and Runaway—and adds three new Hamlet districts.
- Starsand Island:The second 1.0 release of the day comes from the anime world. Seed Sparkle Lab’s life and farming sim launches in full with online multiplayer for up to four players, as well as a fall event centered around pumpkins. Anyone who jumped into Early Access back in February can finally bring friends along.
- Twisted Tower: For anyone who misses BioShock: a shooter set in an abandoned 1950s amusement park
Wednesday, August 19, 2026
- STEINS;GATE RE: BOOT:Perhaps the world’s most famous visual novel returns with completely redrawn artwork. All voice recordings have been re-recorded, the music has been re-produced, and there’s an additional storyline and a new ending.
- Hero’s Adventure: Another Tale:This spin-off of Hero’s Adventure: Road to Passion sends you back as a nameless fighter into a pixelated China full of monasteries and martial arts schools, where your decisions shift the balance of power.
- Nioh 3: Hell Rising (Expansion):Team Ninja delivers the first DLC for Nioh 3, sending you to the Edo period of 1651, which has been transformed into a hellish landscape. New weapons, gear, and an additional difficulty level are included; the expansion is part of the Season Pass.
- Hearth and Hamlet:A mix of city-building and idle clicker: You start with a campfire, assign workers to gather wood, stone, and food, enact laws, and research your way up to the Mage Academy. According to publisher Runic Forge, the demo attracted over 100,000 players and has an 86 percent positive rating.
Thursday, August 20, 2026
- S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Cost of Hope (Expansion):The first major story expansion for Heart of Chornobyl runs parallel to the main campaign and unlocks two new regions, including the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant itself. It also features new weapons, new enemies, and a conflict between Duty and Freedom in which you must take a side. On the same day, Update 2.0 will be released for free to all owners, upgrading the Zone to Unreal Engine 5.5.4. You can see what it looks like here:
- Gallipoli: BlackMill Games continues its WW1 series—following Verdun, Tannenberg, and Isonzo—on the Ottoman fronts. 25 vs. 25 players, ten historical classes ranging from officers to medics, over 50 period-accurate weapons, and the series’ signature one-hit kills.
- Brigador Killers (Early Access):In this insurgency simulator, you fight on foot and in vehicles, build up an arsenal, and then kill “rich bastards,” as the developers call them.
- Vacation Cafe Simulator: In an Italian coastal town, you run a small café, cook pizza, pasta, and bruschetta through mini-games, buy ingredients from local winemakers and farms, and decorate the café to your liking.
- How to Fish: After a boating accident, the four of you are stranded on an island and start fishing. Sell your catch, upgrade your gear, take down boss fish, and so on.
Friday, August 21, 2026
- VHOLUME:In a dystopian concrete city, you run, jump, and slide through massive levels à la Mirror’s Edge to retrieve your family’s food rations.
- Settler’s Domain: A single developer spent two years crafting this pixel-based building game, in which you construct over 80 buildings, manage resources to combat hunger and disease, and either negotiate with—or choose not to—competing neighboring settlements.
- Detective Sherlock: Shadow Stalker (Early Access):A first-person investigative game set in Victorian Dartmoor, where interrogations and dialogues are generated in real time by an LLM. Whether this results in cool investigative work or quickly gives you the feeling that you’re talking to a chatbot—we’ll have to wait and see.
What’s ending up in your shopping cart—or at least on your wish list—before Gamescom takes over everything next week? As always, feel free to let us know in the comments section!
By the way, despite the upcoming Gamescom, there are a few blockbusters coming up next week. You can already see which ones they are in our monthly video preview.
