Five more games that didn’t cross your feed this week, pulled out anyway. There’s a management sim run entirely by cats with opinions, a co-op horror game set in 1652 Chile, and a dinosaur holding a greatsword in its mouth, so let’s not waste time on preamble.
1. Cat Isle
Cat Isle hands you all the usual tools of a cozy management game — build restaurants, decorate a little island, expand as you go — and then quietly takes away your control over whether any of it works. The cats decide that. Domkegames and pixelduckoo’s pixel-art release, out on Steam July 20, 2026, is built around the fact that every cat that wanders onto your island or settles there has its own favorite foods, drinks, and preferred atmosphere, and the game doesn’t tell you what those are. You find out by watching: a small orange cat sniffs a fully stocked fish stall and walks away without eating, a gray cat strolls past your string lights and potted plants and curls up somewhere you didn’t design at all. So the actual moment-to-moment loop is less “decorate for you” and more “decorate for an audience of finicky animals who will not pretend to like your choices.” If you’ve ever wanted a cozy game with a little more friction and judgment baked into it, this is that game.
2. Company of Heroes 3: Final Stand
Company of Heroes 3: Final Stand strips out the base-building the series is known for and replaces it with something tighter: twelve escalating waves, four factions, and roguelite runs where you’re not managing an economy so much as surviving the next onslaught. It’s out now as a standalone release, no need to own the base Company of Heroes 3 first, priced at $29.99 with a 20% launch discount for anyone buying in early. That standalone pricing is worth noting on its own — Relic isn’t asking series veterans or curious newcomers to buy in twice. There’s also a launch patch bundled into the release that’s tied directly into how the mode plays, so this isn’t a side mode bolted onto the existing game so much as its own self-contained thing. Good pick for CoH fans who want a faster, meaner version of the format, and for strategy players who’ve bounced off base-building in the past.
3. The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu
The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu drops up to four players into 1652 Chile, digging through a cursed jungle for treasure that isn’t worth what it costs them. It’s a first-person co-op survival horror game from ACE Team and Nacon, out July 15, 2026 on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S, and the premise is straightforward until it isn’t: the jungle fights back, monstrous creatures roam it, and reality itself warps the longer your group stays. Sanity management sits at the center of it, which means the real tension isn’t just the monsters — it’s whether your squad can keep functioning long enough to fight them and keep exploring at the same time. Worth flagging that this one built real pre-launch momentum for a mid-size horror title, crossing hundreds of thousands of Steam wishlists before it even released. If you and three friends want a co-op horror game that isn’t set in the usual haunted house or space station, this is a different flavor entirely.
4. Dinoblade
Dinoblade opens with a young Spinosaurus clamping a two-handed greatsword in its jaws and charging at another dinosaur carrying a weapon of its own, and that image is more or less the entire pitch. It’s a single-player soulslike action RPG, out on Steam July 23, 2026, structured around boss fights the way boss-rush games are — you guide that Spinosaurus through a prehistoric world thrown into chaos by what’s likely the asteroid impact that ended the age of dinosaurs, fighting one heavily armed rival dinosaur at a time to push back against extinction. It has Steam Achievements and full controller support, but the reason to care about it isn’t the feature list, it’s the premise executing itself completely straight: armed dinosaurs, boss-rush structure, no wink to camera. For soulslike fans who’ve fought every human-shaped boss there is and want something that swaps out the aesthetic entirely.
5. Terra Invicta
Terra Invicta puts you in charge of a faction after aliens have already landed, and the fighting you’ll do first isn’t against them — it’s against six other factions all trying to steer humanity’s response before anyone agrees on one. From Pavonis Interactive, the studio behind the Long War mod for XCOM, it hit full 1.0 release on January 5, 2026 after three and a half years of development built on player feedback. You pick one of seven factions, each with its own stance on the alien arrival — some pushing for peace, others clearly not — and the game runs on two tracks at once: shadow-war politics and espionage on Earth, and eventually space colonization and direct conflict once things escalate that far. It’s a grand strategy game in the fullest sense, asking you to manage governments and secrets long before you’re managing fleets. For strategy players who want scale and patience rewarded in equal measure, and who remember what the Long War mod did to XCOM’s difficulty curve.
🎁 This week’s giveaway: Machine Party
We’re giving away 2 Steam keys for Machine Party, courtesy of the developer.
Free to enter, no purchase necessary, 18+, void where prohibited. Official rules.
You’re reading The F5 from Best F’ing Games — Five F’ing Games you’ve never heard of, every Saturday. Know someone who hunts hidden gems? Forward this along.
