Best Emotional Games on Steam
Games designed to hit hard through story, music, character, or atmosphere.
Browse all Emotional →
1It Takes Two - Embark on the craziest journey of your life in It Takes Two. Invite a friend to join for free with Friend’s Pass and work together across a huge variety of gleefully disruptive gameplay challenges. Winner of GAME OF THE YEAR at the Game Awards 2021.
Mar 25, 2021
In this game, you can…
- pilot a pair of underpants.
- dj a night club inside an air conditioning vent for a crowd of living glow sticks.
- stop the story to play mini-games where you can electrocute the other player.
- fly a plane made of underpants later on.
- use a magnet turret to shoot magnets and turn a wall into a huge co-op traversal puzzle.
- fight through a shooter chapter where one player stuns enemies with goop while the other ignites bugs with flares.
- drop into an isometric hack-and-slash chapter where one player is a wizard and the other is a knight.
- get shrunk into dolls so a bed, a book, and a tiny pond become massive obstacles you have to climb and cross together.
2Detroit: Become Human - Detroit: Become Human puts the destiny of both mankind and androids in your hands, taking you to a near future where machines have become more intelligent than humans. Every choice you make affects the outcome of the game, with one of the most intricately branching narratives ever created.
Jun 18, 2020
In this game, you can…
- get a main character killed early, and the story just keeps going without them.
- open the game and have the main-menu hostess talk to you about your choices and react if you got someone killed.
- lead a robot uprising by turning workers into rebels, painting messages on walls, and choosing whether your movement stays peaceful or turns violent.
- reconstruct a crime scene from scattered clues and then interrogate a suspect with whatever story you built.
- talk your way through a hostage negotiation while every timed reply can push someone toward living or dying.
- be a housekeeper doing chores, then get yanked straight into a life-or-death escape in the same chapter.
- choose to disobey your orders to protect a child, and watch that one act reshape what your character even is.
- finish a chapter, see a branching flowchart of everything you didn't do, and replay to unlock a totally different chain of scenes.
3God of War - His vengeance against the Gods of Olympus years behind him, Kratos now lives as a man in the realm of Norse Gods and monsters. It is in this harsh, unforgiving world that he must fight to survive… and teach his son to do the same.
Jan 14, 2022
In this game, you can…
- throw an axe across a fight, watch it carve through enemies, then recall it to snap back into your hand.
- fight with your kid as a real partner, calling on his arrows to stagger enemies and open them up for your hits.
- fight a full-on dragon as a giant set-piece boss encounter, not just a background monster.
- row a boat across a huge lake and trigger long myth stories and character backstory while you travel.
- go from a quiet hunting trip to carrying your wife's ashes on a journey that keeps expanding into new realms and threats.
- parry a hit with your shield, counterattack, chain into rune attacks, and swap between throws and melee without breaking momentum.
- hunt down optional valkyrie bosses that hit harder than the main story's big fights and demand real mastery.
4Ori and the Will of the Wisps - Play the critically acclaimed masterpiece. Embark on a new journey in a vast, exotic world where you’ll encounter towering enemies and challenging puzzles on your quest to unravel Ori’s destiny.
Mar 10, 2020
In this game, you can…
- swap passive bonuses on the fly, even mid-fight, to change how you move and hit.
- turn a quiet hub into a busy safe zone by recruiting allies through side quests and materials.
- launch an enemy into the air, shoot it with arrows, then slam it back down with a hammer.
- chain jumps, dashes, grapples, and bashes to rocket across the map.
- fight multi-phase bosses and restart from the current phase when you die.
- race time-trial courses built around pure movement speed and clean routes.
- get a new area-specific power, then return to old zones and open totally new routes and secrets with it.
- use a real weapon loadout with melee and ranged options, then switch your style by re-slotting your kit.
5Persona 5 Royal - Lead the Phantom Thieves of Hearts in this award winning, stylish turn-based RPG filled with dungeon crawling, party customization, strategic combat, and Persona fusion. Explore Tokyo, build relationships, battle Shadows, and infiltrate the minds of the corrupt to make them change their ways!
Oct 20, 2022
In this game, you can…
- get framed for assault, moved to Tokyo, then dragged into a parallel world by a talking cat to commit heists.
- send a calling card, break into someone's mind, and steal their "heart" to change how they act in real life.
- talk enemies into joining you mid-fight, then fuse them into new monsters to build custom battle strategies.
- spend a full in-game year budgeting every day between school, jobs, friends, workouts, and night-time dungeon raids.
- hide behind cover, grapple to hidden routes, and ambush guards in themed dungeons that play like stealth heists.
- trigger a critical hit, chain teammate follow-ups, and end the turn with a screen-filling group finisher.
- build friendships that unlock concrete combat perks and special moves, not just extra dialogue.
6DELTARUNE - Dive into the parallel story to UNDERTALE! Fight or spare your way through action-packed battles as you explore a mysterious world alongside an endearing cast of new and familiar characters. Chapters 1-5 are available now, with more planned as free updates!
Jun 4, 2025
In this game, you can…
- play a funny skeleton fight song on piano, then get run over by a dog driving a golf cart
- shop for a new TV by debating "groovy vs glooby" with the janitor, pulling out a diagram, buying it, and learning it's glooby
- fight battles that suddenly turn into punch-out against a giant robot, then switch into wario-ware-style minigames the next chapter
- keep picking "hug ralsei" in battle until it becomes your whole strategy
- heal yourself with a hammer, flirt with a watercooler, and swim through an acid lake
- stumble into secret bosses and a hidden route that changes the tone into something genuinely eerie
- graze bullets on purpose to build power faster while the battle box shifts and moves around you
- return to town and see the game acknowledge whether you chose to act kindly or fight
7This War of Mine - In This War Of Mine you do not play as an elite soldier, rather a group of civilians trying to survive in a besieged city; struggling with lack of food, medicine and constant danger from snipers and hostile scavengers. The game provides an experience of war seen from an entirely new angle.
Nov 14, 2014
In this game, you can…
- peek through keyholes, steal unseen, and hear the owners realize their medicine or food is missing.
- walk in on a soldier cornering a starving girl, intervene, kill him, take his gun, and limp home badly wounded.
- kill someone in panic, hear nearby civilians scream "You killed him!", and watch your own survivors spiral into depression or leave.
- spend the day patching walls, building beds, cooking, and keeping everyone alive until night lets you risk a supply run.
- choose one survivor to sneak into a random ruined location at night with a strict time limit and barely any bag space.
- have your shelter raided at night, then wake up to missing supplies and wounded survivors if nobody stood guard.
- jump an armed man from the shadows, stab him silently, grab his gear, and then get shot while trying to escape.
- get an endgame epilogue that tells who survived, who deserted, and who broke after you finally make it to the end.
8OMORI - Explore a strange world full of colorful friends and foes. When the time comes, the path you’ve chosen will determine your fate... and perhaps the fate of others as well.
Dec 25, 2020
In this game, you can…
- swap everyone's mood mid-fight, where happy, angry, and sad counter each other and add extra effects when you get hit.
- trigger special follow-up attacks based on how close your friends are, with different effects depending on the relationship.
- make choices that open different areas, bosses, and endings, turning what looks like a short RPG into a much longer run.
- wake up in an empty white room with only a lightbulb, a laptop, blankets, tissues, and a sketchbook.
- fight bosses that change and escalate as the battle goes on, so the fight itself plays out like a story scene.
- roam a bright hand-drawn dream world, then step back into a quieter real town, with the game using that contrast throughout the story.
- replay for a whole second layer of content, with perfect-run conditions, a boss rush, and a superboss that expects real mastery.
- notice small details early, then come back later and realize they were foreshadowing, with scenes and objects clicking into place hours afterward.
9To the Moon - A story-driven experience about two doctors traversing backwards through a dying man's memories to artificially fulfill his last wish.
Sep 7, 2012
In this game, you can…
- rewrite a man's memories so his final wish feels fulfilled in his last conscious moments.
- start at a patient's deathbed and work backward through his past, memory by memory, until the real story clicks.
- dive into a dying man's memories and rebuild them into a new life.
- hunt down a key memento in each scene, then solve a small tile-flip puzzle to unlock the next memory jump.
- piece together a romance in reverse, watching a relationship's end before you learn how it began.
- notice tiny throwaway details in dialogue and objects that later snap into major reveals.
- walk through memory-anchored places like a carnival, a library, and a childhood home, each tied to a different turning point.
- watch two doctors argue, joke, and make hard calls while they race against their patient's failing time.
10Persona 4 Golden - A coming of age story that sets the protagonist and his friends on a journey kickstarted by a chain of serial murders.
Jun 13, 2020
In this game, you can…
- step into your TV on a rainy night.
- build friendships — even with a shrine fox — that directly power up your combat fusions.
- fight someone's "other self" so their Persona can awaken and join your team afterward.
- live a full school year where every day is two choices.
- capture Personas, then fuse them into custom builds with the exact skills and resistances you want.
- dive into a foggy TV-world dungeon of random floors, hunt the staircase, and push deeper for treasure and rare fights.
- investigate a string of disappearances by chasing clues across town, watching the Midnight Channel, then entering the next victim's TV world before the deadline hits.
- bounce from goofy school trips and club hangouts to life-or-death boss fights as your classmates become a full detective squad.
