Initial scrolling of the Steam Summer Sale seems pretty lackluster, but digging through the comments sections in other threads, a few gems have stood out, and it doesn’t appear we have a thread dedicated to this yet, so post what you think are the best deals here!
Not mandatory ofc, but it’d be helpful if…
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One game per top level post, so comments stemming from it are focused on on just it.
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Hyperlink the game title to its Store Page
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Include both the normal and sale price / %off
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Include a short blurb about the game - if it’s one you’ve played before, what did you like about it? If you’re diving in blind, what grabbed your attention?
Good hunt’n!
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Well now there is a dedicated post. Yours. 😄
Kingdom Come: Deliverance - $8.29 CAD (80% off)
Probably my favourite ARPG. You play as a peasant with no skill, and that actually translates in game. If you’ve ever rolled your eyes at games where you effortless smash waves upon waves of enemies, this game is for you. Beating even the lowliest grunt can be quite challenging, forcing you to play in ways other than “beat everything up”.
The neat thing is the story is not only based on real life events, but all the towns exist (still to this day in the Czech Republic), the geography is super accurate (relative distnace, rivers, ridges, etc) and even the buildings are modelled off the real things (some are still standing, or you can still see their ruins).
This game ticked so many boxes for me, and is a steal at $8
Fury Unleashed 2,92€ instead of 19,50€.
Metroidvania with roguelike elements and metaprogression. Graphics are timeless (the game plays inside of a comic book, which is a nice change), very tight gameplay, tons of weapons and cool bosses.
Smooth working 2-Player-Coop!
Minishoot’ Adventures $11.99 (20% off)
Isometric Zelda / Metroidvania / bullet hell with a lot of accessibility features and neat art where you’re a lil spaceship guy. Has a demo to see if it’s your jam. Already beat it twice, would really love for them to make DLC or a sequel.
Jupiter Hell, 8,39€ instead of 20,99€.
Spiritual successor to DoomRL. a turnbased roguelike that doesn’t feel turnbased, with smooth animation and fast gameplay. 3 different classes with a lot of gamechanging perks, tons of guns and heaps of demons, what else could someone want?
Celeste $1.99 (90% off, new all-time low)
Hard but fair precision platformer by an expert of platformer design. Excellent controls, deep platforming mechanics, and a cathartic story about internal and external struggles.
I’ve been wanting to play this for a while and that price made it an instant buy. Really glad I did. Some of the strawberries are hard and unfair tho, haha.
Also 🏳️⚧️
So true
Is the character trans? I have flinished the whole game and I can’t recall that.
https://maddymakesgames.com/articles/is_maddy_trans/index.html
Is Madeline Canonically Trans?
Well, yeah, of course she is.
This feels painfully obvious to a lot of (mostly trans) people, and likewise it feels painfully obvious to me too, in retrospect. It has also become painfully obvious to me that I, myself, am trans. But these are things that I was not aware of during the development of Celeste, where I was writing Madeline and speaking from her perspective. Creating Celeste with my friends helped me reach the point where I could realize this truth about myself. During Celeste’s development, I did not know that Madeline or myself were trans. During the Farewell DLC’s development, I began to form a hunch. Post-development, I now know that we both are.
So she is essentially retroactively trams.
Not that I mind, but it is what it is.
Read further, while the author didn’t realize what she was doing it is a trans narrative through and through, and the free dlc ending did contain the flag because by then she did know.
When Madeline looks in the mirror and sees her other self; when she attempts to abandon her reflection, who then drags her down the mountain; when the two reconcile and merge to become stronger and more complete… that was all unknowingly written from a trans perspective.
Yes, Maddy is trans. This is both from word of god and a hint in the background of a piece of art in-game.
Inscryption $7.99 (60% off, new all-time low)
You find an old, abandoned video game and load it up. It’s an atmospheric, spooky card game, hiding layers of secrets for you to discover. The less you know before starting the game, the better your experience will be.
I’m trying this game on PSN, but often the dealer is just throwing high numbers at me and I can’t see any economic way I can match them with my own summons. Two bears in a row; what do?
It’s my common issue with Roguelikes. You’re replaying the first level a lot and things don’t really develop much very quickly. I kinda just gave up.
+1
Indeed, if you like creepy games and card games just buy it without looking closer - it is an incredible experience that shouldn’t be spoiled.
I’ve heard many glowing reviews with this same sentiment. In order to avoid most spoilers, may I ask you here - if I didn’t enjoy Undertale, would I still like this? I didn’t enjoy the metagaming that undertale did, making fun of the player for reloading a save. It felt dishonest. Does Inscryption also do this?
I’ll back up June. I was “that’s pretty nice” on Undertale but wasn’t nearly as positive on it as its fandom was. I loved Inscryption. It’s not meta like Undertale, but it does have occasional fourth wall breaks, which is part of its game-within-a-game fiction.
Just picked up Bloons 6, (~$1, 90% off) for those who like tower defense games. Lots of unlockable content and metaprogression, if that’s your jam.
The greatest tower defense game ever made, really. It’s seriously impressive how it appeals to very casual users and the most extreme fans that want a challenge. I also really respect that, while the game has some mictrotransactions, you can’t use any of them on the hardest difficulty.
It is genuinely ridiculous how much content there is in this game for the price. Like, a lot of it looks like an excuse to play the same levels a dozen times with minor variations, but then there are tons of levels, lots of events, ongoing updates with new content of all types, so many different towers and upgrades to play with, community maps to add even more variety… It looks like I’ve played over 200 games and I have so much of the game that I haven’t even touched yet.
it is ridiculous how much content that game offers for the low price tag. one of my most played right now. the only td I have found that well maintained and very replayable
Tunic $14.99 (50% off, new all-time low)
A little guy in a green tunic picks up a sword and goes on an adventure, but the game is in an unknown language and you only have a few pages of the manual. It’s like a metroidvania but your progress is based on knowledge.
It’s a great little game, but don’t be afraid to drop the difficulty down later on. It really does detract from what makes the game special.
As someone who never touched the difficulty, I think my smooth experience came down to considering the encounters more, not dial-mashing the controller. Some fights work a lot better with certain equipment. There’s three kinds of defense suitable for certain attacks: Shield, dodging, and sprinting (a certain enemy has a long gun attack, for instance, that’s good for sprinting).
I think I did struggle a bit at an eventual “rush” segment, but that’s coming up near the end of the game.
Such a great game
Ultimate Chicken Horse $5.24 (65% off, matching the all-time low)
Design platformer levels with your friends, then race them to the end, locally or online. Points are only awarded if someone died, so make the level extra dangerous!
Really great party game, kids love it. There’s a constant push-pull to make the level just hard enough. It kind of breaks down though if somebody has made it effectively unwinnable for everybody and you can’t find a way to unblock it. Otherwise though, it’s a fantastic game.
Assault Android Cactus $4.99 (75% off, matching the all-time low)
Slick arcade-style twin-stick shooter with a pumpin’ soundtrack. Clear out arenas full of robots, build up combos, and go for a high score. A large roster of characters offer a wide variety of playstyles. There’s also 4-player local co-op.
Cactus is probably the single best mastery/arcade style twin-stick shooter out there. Don’t let the cute looks fool you, while this game is solid to just enjoy, the chaining and level design offer great challenge if you want it, and the way each character changes both the basic play and the way you chain a level show a just fantastic design level.
It usually goes $5 in sales, but it’s still crazy we can get games that good for so little.
Hypnospace Outlaw $4.79 (a bizarre 76% off, new all-time low)
Explore a remarkably authentic simulation of the 1999 World Wide Web as a moderator of a Geocities-like website hub. Rather than just being a joke about the corny retro graphics, it’s a heartfelt funeral for that era of the internet.
hackmud
$19.99$14.99 (25% off)If you’re into scripting or hacking you should check this game out. It’s an interesting twist on the Multi-User Dungeon genre. The game presents mostly as a command-line interface where your goal is to seek out targets to pwn for money/points. NPC targets will have vulnerabilities you need to find and exploit in order to expose a hackable part. Once found you engage hackermode where you’ll have a timelimit to break the target’s security (mostly through bruteforce cracking). The game allows you to write short scripts in JavaScript to automate searching for vulnerabilities and cracking security.
Being Multi-User, there are other users online doing what you’re doing and you’re free to chat with them and exchange scripts. You’re also free to write malicious scripts that will steal money/points from others who don’t check scripts before running them!
The part I found cool was that the game mirrors IRL hacking much closer than other hacking games. You’ll often need to submit incorrect data to NPC targets to get an error message that will contain hints about where to go next. Ex. A webpage has “News” and “About Us” sections. You can request a section that doesn’t exist to get an error message that shows all acceptable sections: “News”, “About Us”, or “Employees”. You’ve found a hidden section! Using scripts to send a bunch of mal-formed data at a target and then analyzing which ones generate an exploitable error is part of real-life security testing.
Gato Roboto $1.99 (75% off, matching the all-time low)
Polished metroidvania with great monochrome pixel art. You are a cat piloting a robot suit. It only lasts a few hours, but they’re hours well spent.
I really enjoyed this one. It’s a bite-sized Metroidvania that isn’t super special, but it has some fun gimmicks and doesn’t overstay its welcome.
Disco Elysium is 90% off.
$54.49$4.54 (that’s in Canadian, not sure about the US price exactly.)I honestly couldn’t even tell you what it’s about, but it’s one of my favourite games ever. You can die from reading a book that’s too sad and if you do it right, you can smell communism.
Incredible game that can be a little jarring for people who are probably expecting something like Baldur’s Gate 1&2, Fallout 1&2, or some other kind of isometric killfest RPG. It essentially turns the dialogue into 90% of the game, but the dialogue is so damn good that it doesn’t matter.
It also takes getting used to damage, as sometimes you can “die” in seemingly random ways. I was on a rooftop, I think trying to reach for a scarf or something, and failed my roll. That caused me to apparently get so depressed that I lost the game. I can’t remember which stat/trait it was but I think there’s a morale or mental trait you have to watch out for too.
Pirate this game if you wanna give it a try, don’t ever buy it. This is what the developers have advocated for and it actually fits right in with parts of the game itself.
Disco Elysium is always free, the devs got fucked and won’t get a cent from sales, everyone should pirate the game.
I really wanted to like this one but I just can’t handle being as much of a fuckup as this game will inevitably make you.
The ending makes it all up. It’s like a slow, painful crawl back to the surface.
I picked this up on gog a bit ago. I have yet to start it.
Shakes fists violently at >400 hours into elden ring
after the first few hours I just couldn’t put it down
