Highguard Struggles Amidst Mixed Reviews: A Surprising Week for New Releases
47.6K reviews found across 431 games released this week
Data from January 22 - January 30, 2026
Analysis
Highguard kind of dropped out of nowhere, but led the releases this week with over 31 thousand reviews - nearly 2 out of every 3 reviews posted on Steam this week for new games was for Highguard..
.. and boy did the community have some depressing reviews, with only 38% of reviews recommending Highguard..
Notably, reviews from Russian players were particularly harsh, landing a mere 19% positive score.
On the other end of the spectrum, the incredible sci-fi rock climbing game Cairn (from the developers of Furi and Haven) captivated players with a stellar 94% positive review rate, showcasing that engaging gameplay can shine through even in a crowded market.
Let's read on to see the top five reviewed new releases for the week!
Summary Statistics
Top Performing Games
Highguard received a staggering 31,185 reviews with only 38.86% of them being positive. The game struggled particularly with Russian reviews, which had a starkly low positive score of 19%.
Just look at this sad lil graph, I've been breaking down these geographically based reviews for years but this is one of the first universal slams I've seen.
The core negative feedback came down to:
- 20%: Lack of original content / stale gameplay
- 17%: Performance issues
The review with the most "helpful" votes from the Steam community - with over 7000 votes - and it truly cuts into some of the core frustrations of this remarkable free to play game:
Concord got a lot of mentions, particularly in the negative reviews (over 70% of the time Concord was mentioned - which was within nearly one in 20 of all reviews - it was a negative review. Overewatch was up there too:
Highguard is doing consistently badly in all languages, though breaking the 50% positive ranking in Japanese! Kudus to the Japanese localisation team!
Here's a complete language breakdown of the game as of this moment:
But it's not all doom and gloom for Highguard. Already over 300 of their reviews have flipped from Not Recommended to Recommended, like this one:
It's almost astounding that the second game in the "most reviewed list this week" had a review score only slightly higher that one of the worst reviewed games of the year.. but.. Half Sword accumulated 2,904 reviews and managed a slightly better positive score of 39.42%, with Russian reviewers being more favorable at 41.7%.
The core complaints from Half Sword were:
- 22%: Performance issues
- 14%: Comparison to demo
CODE VEIN II had 2,327 reviews, achieving a decent positive review score of 52.92%. English reviews were relatively strong at 55.4% positivity.
What is WITH so much grump on Steam this week? It's almost like the world is burning.
Cairn
And yet despite all this - Cairn dazzled players with 1,404 reviews and an impressive 94.41% positive score, especially favored in English where it received a remarkable 95% positivity.
ALL markets gave Cairn a resounding thumb up - amazing work from The Game Bakers, the seasoned (and amazing!) developers of Furi and Haven.
R.I.P. - Reincarnation Insurance Program collected 880 reviews with a positive score of 74.91%.
R.I.P. has just over 50% share of reviewers coming from China - which puts it already in a super unique space on steam.
After a solid twenty minutes of googling - the best I could find regarding the developers of the game WarmCore - was: "WarmCore Studio has been active on the market since before 2026"
Thanks, Google.
In any case, congrats to WarmCore for hitting the ground running - 74% rating is outstanding for most developers, but to see such a response from China?! Amazing!
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