Every day, Steam’s new releases section swallows a dozen small games whole. Today, three of them are chasing the same dragon: Souls-like combat on an indie budget. The results are… educational.

Crimson Oath has the most interesting case study energy, and not in a good way. Developer Parry Frames Team — yes, they named the studio after the parry mechanic — built a stealth-and-parry action adventure that currently sits at 149 concurrent players and three user reviews. One player called the combat “pretty tight” but noted that enemies “kind of just stand there like statues waiting for you to backstab them.” Another critic, who bounced after 24 minutes, had a more fundamental complaint: “I wish the parry system was more rewarding… when parry like 3 or 4 times and nothing happens it gets kind of disappointing. You do have parry in your name so lets make parryi[ng]…” When your studio’s entire identity is your core mechanic and your core mechanic has no payoff, that’s a problem. The 20% launch discount brings it to $9.59.

SAMUKID takes a stranger path. Developer ArmedPeseant blends roguelike deck-building with grid-based tactical movement, and its single reviewer praised the movement system as “really fun, unique, and cool” — almost RTS-like in how you push units around the battlefield. At $5.99, it’s the cheapest of the three. It also has zero concurrent players, so that one glowing review is carrying a lot of weight.

Blood Radiant goes hardest on lore — interdimensional flesh demons harvesting humanity’s pain as “loosh” — and its lone reviewer clocked 2.5 hours, citing “good dodge and parry mechanics.” They also noted the game identifies itself as a VR title on launch, which is either a bug or the most avant-garde design choice of 2026. Zero concurrent players. $11.99 on sale.

Three games, three tiny teams, three different answers to the same question: can you bottle FromSoftware’s lightning on a shoestring? One has players and janky AI. Two have nobody playing at all. That’s the Steam new release churn — ambition by the bucket, execution by the spoonful.

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