Although there aren’t many Steam games on Mac, there are definitely some amazing gaming titles that are supported for Apple computers. We’ve put together a list with some of those titles to show you that it’s indeed possible to have a great time gaming on a Mac. So, without further ado, let us jump right into our list of the best Steam games available on Mac.
List of Steam Games on Mac
- Hollow Knight
- Disco Elysium
- Dying Light
- Borderlands 2
- Tomb Raider
- Metal Gear Solid: Revengence
- Subnautica
- BioShock
- XCOM 2
- Hades
These are some of the best, top-selling, and highest-rated Steam games that you can play natively on a Mac. We can strongly recommend all of them, as each title is considered top-tier in its respective genre and can provide you with a fun and engaging gaming experience. Further down this page, we’ve included a brief review of each game, where we’ve highlighted what makes it stand out, so go there if you want to learn more about any particular title.
How to Play Steam Games for Mac
To play Steam games for Mac, it’s enough to download the game through the Steam client and then launch it from there. If a game you want to play lacks a native version, then you can resort to cloud gaming or Windows emulation, both of which are valid methods to play unsupported games on an Apple computer.
On our site, we have detailed guides on how to use different cloud gaming platforms and how to emulate Windows in order to play Steam games on Mac.
Cloud Gaming Guides
Windows emulation guides
If there is a game that you really want to play on your Mac, but it’s not supported for your operating system, we recommend checking out these guides as they all cover viable methods of playing unsupported games.
On the other hand, if you are interested in trying out some of the best video games that can be played natively on an Apple machine, be sure to check the reviews we’ve posted below.
The Best Steam Games Available for Mac
Hollow Knight
Hollow Knight is often viewed as one of the greatest indie games of all time. It is an 2D action-platformer metroidvania known for its unique and immersive atmosphere, mysterious lore, and highly-responsive and fluid combat system.
In this game, you play as a silent protagonist known only as “the Knight” whom you know nothing about initially. But as you progress through the game and explore the dimly-lit caverns and corridors of a massive underground kingdom called Hallownest, you start piecing together disjointed fragments of information. Eventually, you’ll start revealing the history of both the game’s unusual setting and that of its protagonist.
Needless to say, your journey through Hallownest won’t be without its dangers and obstacles. You’ll face a wide variety of enemies and bosses, and will need to apply fast reflexes, well-timed attacks, and quick thinking to find and exploit their weaknesses, while remaining safe from their attacks. It’s a rather difficult and often unforgiving game that’s often likened to a Souls-like game. However, if you like challenge and care about the presentation and atmosphere of a game, Hollow Knight is definitely an experience that I can recommend.
Disco Elysium
Another indie darling, Disco Elysium mixes together a murder mystery noir story, a traditional RPG gameplay, and a dystopian setting to create a unique gaming experience that surprises you at every corner. It’s a game unlike any other, yet many of its elements will feel familiar to people who like role-playing games.
At the start of Disco Elysium, you wake up as a half-naked man with a terrible hangover and alcohol-induced amnesia. You soon find out that you are a cop detective, but can’t remember much else about your past. The main part of the story kicks off when you find a hanged person, at which point your task becomes figuring out why and how they died. The gist of the game is basically a murder mystery, but it’s all about the way it’s presented.
While uncovering the mystery, you also try to figure out who you are and so a large portion of the gameplay actually happens inside your character’s head. Different parts of his psyche take on the role of separate characters and the way you manage them determines both what happens inside and outside the protagonist. It’s a truly unique take on the classical RPG formula, but one that works incredibly well. Unlike other games in the genre, Disco Elysium doesn’t have combat, but there are still dice rolls during conversations with other characters, and your character’s stats combined with the roll you get determines if a given conversation goes your way or not.
Ultimately, Disco Elysium is as much an experience as it is a game, and it’s one that I can very strongly recommend to people who enjoy unconventional takes on established tropes that challenge the way you view a particular genre and gaming as a whole.
Dying Light
Zombies have always been a popular film and video-game trope and there are countless gaming titles where they are featured as the main antagonist, so is there anything about Dying Light that sets it apart from other zombie fiction? The premise of this game is quite generic – a virus outbreak causes a large Middle Eastern city to be quarantined, and you are dropped in the middle of it all with the goal to find a rogue political figure who may hold the key to a cure.
However, what makes the game different and unique from other zombie apocalypse titles is the dynamic between the player on one hand, and the infested city and its inhabitants on the other. In Dying Light, weapons and ammo are scarce, and you cannot hope to stand your ground against the coming hordes. Instead, it’s all about using your character’s parkour skills and the surrounding urban environment to find creative ways to escape the hungry “biters” when your weapons are no longer enough. And then there’s the day and night cycle that drastically affects the gameplay by making the zombies more aggressive, numerous, and dangerous at night. This adds a welcome layer of tension as you are in a constant race against the clock, jumping from rooftop to rooftop on your way to the nearest shelter, which you must reach before the sun sets.
Dying Light is very well-polished gameplay-wise, has great graphics for a title from 2015, and is also not particularly demanding, so it can provide decent performance even on weaker machines. The only two possible downsides are that its story can be a bit lackluster due to being predictable, and some of the voice performances aren’t great. Other than that, if you are into zombies, parkour, and survival horror, this is definitely a title you need to check out!
Borderlands 2
Borderlands 2 is an action FPS game often seen as the ultimate looter shooter experience. This game is all about exploring the planet of Pandora, defeating hordes of enemies, fighting in challenging boss battles, and, above all else, finding tons and tons of loot and weapons.
If you like shooter games with a big weapon variety, then this one’s for you. Thanks to procedural generation, each weapon you can find in Borderlands 2 is unique in some way, and the only weapons that stay the same between playthroughs are the legendary ones, which are quite rare anyway.
And, of course, using all those weapons is super fun due to the varied and well-balanced enemies. At the start, nothing will be too challenging, but it won’t be long before the aliens of Pandora start to ramp up the difficulty, forcing you to adapt quickly and never letting you feel too comfortable or safe.
And to further enrich the gameplay loop, Borderlands 2 lets you pick between four unique characters, each with their own set of skills and abilities. This leads to a huge number of possible combinations and strategies to try, lending the game huge replayability, especially if you bring along a friend or two for some co-op fun.
Tomb Raider: The Survivor Trilogy
It’s difficult to separate the three latest Tomb Raider games and recommend a single one of them simply because they present different chapters of a singular storyline, and picking only one of them would leave out a huge chunk of the story. That’s not to say that they are the same game – Tomb Raider (2013) offers the coolest setting and environments, Rise of the Tomb Raider (2015) is often regarded as the best overall, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider (2018) features a more mature story and tone, and has the coolest tombs to explore.
Looking at the trilogy as a whole, though it has certainly started to show its age by now, it’s still a very well executed addition to the long-standing Tomb Raider series. It brings back the elements that made the earlier games recognizable, but also adds modernized gameplay mechanics and improved graphics. Like the older Tomb Raider games, The Survivor Trilogy is all about exploring exotic and often dangerous locations and descending into the depths of buried tombs and ancient ruins. This time, however, you follow the story of a younger and less experienced Lara Croft, as you witness first-hand her journey to become the battle-hardened explorer we’ve come to know her as from the other games in this franchise.
A lot of what’s in this trilogy reminds of the earlier Tomb Raider installments, but the true highlights of these three games are what makes them different. The Survivor Trilogy is grittier and more mature, painting Lara as an actual person with weaknesses and flaws rather than the near-superhuman she was often portrayed as in the earlier games. On top of that, this trilogy features more advanced gameplay with puzzles of higher complexity, a more diverse combat system, and better exploration as the three games, while still linear, give the player more freedom to roam around and find hidden secrets off the beaten path.
In conclusion, if you are a fan of the Tomb Raider franchise and/or like action adventure games set in exotic places, this trilogy is an easy recommend from us!
Metal Gear Rising: Revengence
Metal Gear Rising: Revengence is a 2013 action game and a spin-off to the acclaimed Metal Gear Solid series. The game puts us in control of Raiden – a cybernetically enhanced ninja whom we know from Metal Gear Solid 2 and Metal Gear Solid 4 and the story is set some four years after the latter. Plot-wise, you get the expected intrigue with powerful military corporations, political scheming, and characters double-crossing one another, but the true highlight of this title is its gameplay.
Compared to the other games from this series, which had a defined focus on stealth, the intense hack-and-slash combat in Revengence comes as a notable deviation from the established formula. There are still the trademark stealth sections of the Metal Gear Solid games, but those mostly take a backseat to all the slicing and dicing you’ll be doing with Raiden’s high-frequency katana that can cut through almost anything.
Even though this is now a 10-year-old game, its visuals still mostly hold-up today and enhance its faster-paced and action-packed gameplay. And then there’s the soundtrack that perfectly blends electronic and orchestral music to complement the combat-oriented gameplay.
Some imperfections of the game are its occasionally temperamental camera, its overly-challenging, and a story that requires you to have some prior knowledge of the stories of the previous games.
Other than that, however, Metal Gear Rising: Revengence offers top-notch action with a fluid and over-the-top combat system, while retaining a lot of the trademark stealth and secret agent vibes that the Metal Gear series is known for.
Subnautica
Subnautica is a survival exploration game set in the ocean depths of an alien planet that’s mostly covered in water. Like with other survival games, your primary goal is to gather resources and use them to build a secure base and craft equipment to help you survive the harsh environment. However, what sets Subnautica apart from other games in this genre is its incredibly well-realized open world.
As I said, everything takes place underwater, and though this may seem like a turn-off to some players, it takes no more than half an hour of Subnautica to fall in love with its ocean depths. It’s a vibrant world teeming with life, where each different handcrafted area and biome have their unique flora and fauna. Just don’t be fooled by the pretty fish and corals – danger lurks everywhere in Subnautica and the deeper you go, the less safe it becomes. From carnivorous fish, to environmental hazards, there’s always something that can get in the way of your quest for exploration. Then again, this is the bread and butter of every good exploration game, and it is what will be your main drive to further improve your equipment, so that you can finally see what you’ll find another kilometer or two below the surface. And trust me, there are things to be found down there.
Subnautica truly is one of the best survival and exploration games out there that perfectly captures the excitement that comes from venturing into an exotic alien world shrouded in mystery and filled with promises of secrets waiting to be revealed.
BioShock
The Bioshock series is made up of three games celebrated for their unique atmosphere, world-building and mature story. The first and the third games are both considered among the best ever made. We put the series here as a single entity, but we’ll quickly go over the individual games if, for example, you just want to try one game and not the entire series.
The first game is set in the 1960s and takes you to Rapture – a dilapidated, yet majestic underwater city whose citizens went insane because of genetically modifying themselves too much in pursuit of physical and mental perfection. It puts a steampunk twist on the 60s aesthetic and adds mild horror undertones for a creepier end result. The environments show incredible attention to detail, making the storytelling in Bioshock 1 a prime example of the age-old advice “show, don’t tell. Starting the game, you, as the player, are given no context on why you go to Rapture, but as you fight against Rapture’s mutated citizens through gloomy corridors and derelict halls, you start piecing together a shockingly clever story that eventually changes your whole perspective of the game.
BioShock 2, on the other hand, takes place after the first game and uses the same setting, aesthetic, and gameplay, but some of the spark from the original seems lost here. This is likely because the sequel is the only title in the trilogy that’s from a different studio. Not that the game is bad per se – some even say it offers better gameplay – yet it’s definitely two big steps back in terms of story, characters, and overall atmosphere, while being a step forward in gameplay.
And then we come to BioShock: Infinite – it looks and feels quite different from the first two, but it also brings back the charm that made the original a classic. Here Rapture is replaced by a floating city named Columbia. The writing and atmosphere in this game are as good, if not better, than in BioShock 1, and the two DLC episodes called Burial at Sea tie the game back to the first two. It retains the improvements from Bioshock 2 while polishing the gameplay further and introducing a companion character that spends most of the game with you.
If you aren’t sure which one of the games to try, I recommend starting with the first one and then going straight to Infinite. BioShock 2 is optional if you loved the setting of Rapture and want to return to it, in the heavy shoes of a different and more powerful character.
XCOM 2
The next game we want to tell you about is XCOM 2 – a tactical turn-based sci-fi strategy, where you play as the commander of a resistance force fighting against an alien race that has taken over earth. The gameplay is split into two halves – one is the turn-based missions, where you control a team of up to 8 soldiers (12 in special missions), and your goal is to complete a certain objective, while fighting any alien enemies that come in your way. The second half is team and base management. Here, you upgrade your equipment, research new tech, and make changes to your troops so that they become more effective in the field.
Paying close attention and micromanaging both aspects of the gameplay is crucial, because if you go into a mission unprepared, or you don’t carefully consider each move of your troops, you won’t last long against the unforgiving alien enemies. XCOM 2 is a tough game, and its perma-death mechanic (if you lose a soldier, they’re gone for good) means that every major mistake you make will have actual long-lasting consequences on your entire playthrough. On top of this, the turn-based nature of the game means that RNG plays a huge role when determining the outcome of a hostile encounter, meaning that even when you’ve done everything possible to prepare for a mission, things can still go south really quickly. Because of this, the game is definitely not for everyone, but that is not to say that XCOM 2 isn’t good. Quite the contrary – it is a splendidly-well executed strategy that really makes you summon your inner tactician, as it both teaches you to think three moves ahead and also account for the fact that, like in real life, chance can always mess up your plans, so you need to have a plan B.
Hades
The last title on our list, Hades, is a roguelike inspired by ancient Greek mythology that is known for its fast-paced and fluid combat and seamless blending of story and gameplay. The game follows the story of Hades’ son, Zagreus, whose goal is to leave his father’s domain, the underworld, and reach Mount Olympus, where he hopes to find his mother, Persephone.
The procedural generation that roguelike games are known for generally leads to a looser narrative and few (if any) hand-crafted characters, but what’s unique about Hades is that despite being a roguelike, the game actually has a well-written story and interesting characters. Furthermore, it’s possible that you don’t get the full story in a single playthrough, which encourages players to have another go, giving the game huge replayability.
Of course, I should also mention the top-notch combat system of this game. There’s a satisfying selection of weapons to find and use and each of them feels distinct and favors a different playstyle. And then there’s the boon mechanic, which lets you receive blessings from the Olympian gods to enhance your abilities and obtain different bonuses. The cool part about this is that you can combine different boons that synergize with one another and make your character even more powerful. The freedom to fine-tune your build lets you tailor everything to your specific playstyle and adds a ton of variety to an already well-executed combat system.
Overall, as far as roguelikes go, Hades is definitely one of the best in the genre, so if you are into dungeons, fast-paced hack-and-slash combat, and a gameplay that encourages you to explore and learn things for yourself, then you should certainly check this one out!
Stay connected