31 December 2025

One of Steam’s Highest-Rated Games of the Year Can Be Played for Free

By newsgame

The fourth highest-rated Steam game of 2025, ENA: Dream BBQ, is entirely free to play. Originally released in late May, the surreal indie title received enough player acclaim to even break into Steam’s all-time top 30 highest-rated games.

ENA: Dream BBQ is a bizarre adventure game by ENA Team, an indie collective started by Peruvian artist and animator Joel Guerra. It is not just based on but serves as a continuation of Guerra’s viral series of YouTube shorts known for surreal art, distinctive characters, and absurdist themes. ENA received three shorts between May 2020 and February 2021. For episode 4, Guerra did something different by enlisting enough help to turn it into a video game, which reached Steam on March 27.

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ENA: Dream BBQ Is the 4th Highest-Rated 2025 Steam Game

ENA: Dream BBQ received widespread fan plaudits from the outset. Less than a month into its early spring release, the surreal adventure game had amassed 18,000 “Overwhelmingly Positive” reviews on Steam. Overall player sentiment remained unchanged in the eight months that followed, but with plenty more people voicing their admiration for the free-to-play title. According to SteamDB data, ENA: Dream BBQ currently has 32,782 reviews, with 96.50% of them being positive. This places it in the top five highest-rated 2025 releases on Valve’s storefront.

Top 10 Highest-Rated Steam Games Released in 2025

Rank	Game	Positive Reviews	All-Time Rank	Price	Release	Player Peak
1	Deltarune	97.10%	7	$19.99 (-20%)	Jun 4	133,930
2	Schedule 1	96.86%	10	$13.99 (-30%)	Mar 24	459,075
3	Dispatch	96.54%	26	$26.99 (-10%)	Oct 22	220,060
4	ENA: Dream BBQ	96.50%	29	Free	Mar 27	10,988
5	Bongo Cat	96.13%	51	Free	Mar 5	194,508
6	Rhythm Doctor	96.01%	63	$15.99 (-20%)	Dec 6	2,892
7	Split Fiction	95.91%	71	$37.49 (-25%)	Mar 6	259,003
8	Poco	95.91%	73	Free	May 20	251
9	Shelldiver	95.85%	79	$3.74 (-25%)	Nov 16	2,286
10	MINDWAVE Demo	95.70%	91	Free	Jan 14	465

Apart from being free to play, ENA: Dream BBQ is also free of microtransactions—at least for the moment. It does have a premium version, though one that primarily caters to hardcore fans. This so-called “Supporter Edition” of ENA: Dream BBQ includes a wide variety of materials from the game’s development, including pre-production animations and concept art, alpha and pre-alpha screenshots, and developer commentary, on top of some miscellaneous extras such as ringtones and wallpapers.

ENA: Dream BBQ Chapter 2 Is Currently in Development, But Won’t Be Free

ENA: Dream BBQ was envisioned as an episodic game, with its current version offering only one chapter, titled “Lonely Door.” Chapter 2, “Fly in a Web,” does not yet have a release date. However, ENA Team has already confirmed that the second episode will be added to the game in the form of paid DLC. The developer has yet to discuss specific price tags.

Among the rest of this year’s top 10, only Deltarune and Schedule 1 received enough positive player reviews to break into Steam’s all-time top 10 rankings. The remaining eight titles still secured spots within the all-time top 100. ENA: Dream BBQ is the highest-rated free Steam game of the year and the second highest-rated free title overall on the platform, only behind HoloCure – Save the Fans, a hit 2023 bullet hell game starring Hololive VTubers.

Steam users partial to indie and artsy experiences have one other free title from this year’s top 10 to take note of: a circus-themed point-and-click adventure called Poco. Released on May 20, this interactive story about the world’s smallest clown holds 95.91% positive player reviews on Valve’s marketplace. Unlike ENA: Dream BBQ, there are currently no plans to add paid content to Poco. The hand-painted adventure originally started as a university thesis project and only resorted to Kickstarter to help finance some additional expenses like festival submission fees, but it was never intended to be a for-profit product.