While many people dread the current state of the AAA industry, there are countless original creations on multiple platforms, including Steam. Now is your chance to play one of the highest-rated games of the year, completely free.
Over on Steam, you can find the fourth-highest rated game of 2025. With overwhelmingly positive reviews and an incredibly unique premise, it should keep you busy for a while, and beyond.
ENA: Dream BBQ Is Completely Free Via Steam
Get Ready For A Ride
With the premise “Experience surreal environments and inexplicable characters as ENA in a new wild world,” you’re off to the races in ENA: Dream BBQ. This chapter-based game is a wild interactive adventure that lets you explore environments and meet oddball characters. The animation style is highly varied, drawing on multiple generations of games.
There are no catches here, or limited-time promotions to worry about. Chapter 1 is entirely free, while other chapters are “in development” and will be sold as a paid release. If you’re a fan and want to support the developer, there’s a “supporter edition” available now for $9.99, which includes hidden collectibles, animatics and concept art, pre-production animations, in-development screenshots, developer commentary, and downloadable gifs and wallpapers.
All in all, it’s a pretty fantastic deal for a game that’s so highly related like this. It’s great to see indies still climbing to the top of the Steam charts, giving gamers something different to choose from amid the deluge of AAA development. It’s also a win-win for everyone involved, as the free first chapter concept has helped promote tons of games that wouldn’t otherwise stick out on the very busy Steam marketplace.
It’s One Of The Year’s Best-Reviewed Games
It’s A Good Year For Original Indies
Over on SteamDB, ENA: Dream BBQ is the fourth-highest-rated game on the platform, only below Dispatch, Schedule I, and Deltarune. That’s great company to have, especially given that they’re all ostensibly indie releases. On ENA: Dream BBQ‘s heels is Bongo Cat at the fifth overall slot, followed by Rhythm Doctor, Split Fiction, Poco, Shelldiver, and Mindwave rounding out the top 10.
Again, that’s a pretty great spread, and a good indicator of how healthy the indie scene was in 2025. Innovation is incredibly important, especially now, as some creators and gamers wrestle with the idea of more games using generative AI.
Even still, 2025 isn’t over yet, and Steam continues to deliver original experiences. It makes me hopeful for 2026, seeing everything indie developers have accomplished over the past year, especially when it comes to games that are Steam Deck compatible.
