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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The Witcher 3 - Wild Hunt
$39.99$3.99 (90% off)If you’ve somehow managed to avoid Witcher until now, it’s a dark medieval fantasy, 3rd person, open world RPG based on
NorseSlavic mythology. Lots of political intrigue, choices that actually impact outcomes in game. Fantastic voice acting, story, soundtrack, and combat/gameplay mechanics. This is one of the best games on the market - if you don’t already have it, now’s the time! There are also two DLCs that are each the size and scope of an entire standalone game - don’t miss those!Also available DRM free on GOG for the same price.
(shoutout to @[email protected] for GOG intel)
I started replaying Witcher 3 a week or so ago. It really is an amazing game. But I will admit that the combat is just ok. It’s not awful, but it sure as heck isn’t great. The magic and other mechanics, I’d also call them just OK, maybe even occasionally bordering on less-than-good. Geralt’s movement, even just traversing or trying to loot things, can often be slippy and weird.
Thing is, all of the other parts that are important for a great RPG and narrative just shine SO much more brighter that they really make up for the very mediocre gameplay aspects. It really is more than the sum of its parts.
It was never a strong combat game imo. It’s a fantastic game despite the combat, not because of the combat.
Once you get a hold on dodging/parrying/etc, you’ll feel like a damn ninja, especially on harder difficulties; but leading up to that, yeah combat is… OK. Also don’t miss out of experimenting with different builds - one of my favorites optimized using bombs, which later into it makes you a walking B-52 - fun build if you enjoy clearing trash via a wave of pure chaos, then mopping up the stronger guys by way of the sword.
And yeah, the whole package is what counts here: Witcher 3 is a fantastic all around game. It isn’t without it’s imperfections, but they are barely noticeable amidst the tsunami of ridiculously high quality you’ll be hit with from all the other features.
For sure! And as much negative I said about the combat, it’s punchy, never drags on, and the enemies you fight are usually all set up well as part of the story. They’re not just random mobs, so even the fighting has good narrative weight even if it’s not the mechanically deepest ever.
This time through, I’ve been making different choices and stopping to explore more and take in more of the world. First time I played it, I had NO IDEA that if you stopped and listened to some npc convos you can pick up quests that way! Doesn’t even really feel like I’m playing it over again, or retreading the same stuff. There’s SO much in it.
Good fish! I will download it right away.
Just one question, I have never played any of The Witcher series game. Would I be okay in jumping directly into the 3rd part?
Witcher 2’s controls are a bit janky, but it’s a solid game in and of itself for the story alone; if you can stomach some pretty bad mechanics to enjoy an otherwise decent product, I’d say start at #2.
Witcher 1 is… so bad it’s kinda comical. I’d just pull up a story summary of Witcher 1 on youtube and call it a day. If you’re a masochist, go ahead and give the actual game a whirl; but I’d recommend modding the snot out of it to at least make your character OP as fuck, allowing you to mostly skip the god-awful combat. But even then, the only selling point is the story, which again you can just pull up on YouTube.
That said, you can dive into 3 with zero knowledge of the previous two and be just fine. There are things that will go over your head, but nothing significant.
It helps if you know the lore, because at the beginning there is a scene where someone asks you about decisions you made in the first two parts. But I didn’t know anything and just guessed. But after that you don’t really need to know what happens before
This is optional and only happens if you check “Simulate Witcher 2 Save” when creating a new game I believe. Just choose no.
Can you suggest a video which briefly explaines the lore of 1 and 2?
Sadly no, it’s been a long time. My guess would be as good as yours. But like Singfeld said, you can skip that option
Yes, tbh. Most missing backstory tends to be from the books rather than the games, and anyone with half a brain can infer what’s going on.
open world RPG based on Norse mythology.
Slavic mythology, not Norse.
Oh, good catch. Fixed.
Subnautica
$29.99$9.89 (67% off)Sci-fi survival builder: you’re on a massive spacecraft that ends up crash landing on an ocean planet; your goal is to figure out wtf happened and find a way off the planet. This game is 80% feel-good tropical diving simulator; and 20% thalasaphobic deepsea horror. This has become one of my go-to “idk what to play” games that I keep returning to for a nice digital tropical vacation… with a dash of fleeing in terror from, uh… spoilers. No really though, if you don’t already know this game’s story, DO NOT start looking up videos and posts etc about it - just buy it and dive in.
20% thalasaphobic deepsea horror
I’m not sure about that percentage
Never mind the depths I was already on edge when I met the fucking crashfish
He’s just happy to share some sulfur! and wanted a hug
The audio in this game really seals the deal. You’re just swimming along collecting resources and hear a terrifying roar. But you look around and can’t see where it came from… Do you keep going or nope the fuck outta there and go take a breather in your life pod for 20 mins while your heart rate comes back down?
This is one of my personal favorites and the one that introduced me to the crafting/survival genre. I highly recommend it.
Same here!
Do you have another recommendation? Preferably something with multiplayer and would be even cooler if it has a server I can host!
I really liked Grounded.
I haven’t tried it yet, but Abiotic Factor looks pretty fun and has great reviews. It’s early access though.
Abiotic Factor
Hadn’t heard of that one… it’s like a survival builder set in Half Life 1 lol. Wishlisted!
Not multiplayer, but Green Hell is also fantastic.
The Forest is a good multiplayer survival crafting game, with a pretty cool story. The sequel is also already out I think.
Just to throw a few other options on the pile:
- Valheim is more combat oriented, but is probably my favourite survival crafting game after Subnautica. You’re playing vikings trying to earn their way into Valhalla. I die a lot. Very fun.
- Planet Crafter is more chill, more jank, and more linear, but it’s a survival crafting game that is clearly heavily inspired by Subnautica. You are sent to a mars-like planet to terraform it as part of your prison sentence. It’s a great podcast game, just build and explore and watch numbers go up.
- Less on the survival crafting side of things, the environmental storytelling is also really good in Outer Wilds and Return of the Obra Dinn. Very different games, but they were actually what I went to after Subnautica to scratch that itch and it worked weirdly well.
Should I also get the Below Zero bundle?
Depends on what you want. If you want more of Subnautica story then get it. If you want more Subnautica style going into the depths, Below Zero doesn’t go that deep and about half the game is actually above water. While I loved Subnautica I felt pretty disappointed by Below Zero.
Absolutely. Below zero is more story oriented but still great.
It’s such a great game. The entire mood of the game and the sound effects and music is so good
Satisfactory
$29.99$14.99 (50% off)Sci-fi, you’re dropped down to a lush alien planet to do what humans do best: strip all of its natural resources! Combat is limited, but boils down to fighting off wild animals - the main gist of the game is building and optimizing things like miners/conveyor belts/smeltors/assemblers/etc to automate the pillaging of the environment with increasing efficiency… which admittedly sounds more like work than play, but this title caught me a bit off guard with how fun and - true to its name - satisfying it is play.
They’re also planning on raising the full price shortly to $40, most likely with the launch of 1.0 the next update coming soon. Amazing game!
They can raise the price and try to FOMO me into buying it, and I can lower the price to free
I wouldn’t say it’s a manipulation, the game is far beyond the original game at this point. I’m surprised it’s even on sale ATM. It’s an amazing game.
Just a warning: The current version has performance issues, it stutters like crazy even on beefy setups. It seems they didn’t get the level streaming implementation of UE5 right on the first try. This will probably get fixed for 1.0, but currently it’s painful playing in some parts of the map.
How is this different from Factorio?
It’s a 3D first person game instead of a 2D isometric, and most of the differences stem from that. More manual building (they added blueprints but I don’t know how good they are), infinite resource sources which means setting up a mining outpost is permanent. Much less focus on fighting wildlife, though that is present.
Overall, it’s a much more relaxing, slower paced game than Factorio. Both are good at different aspects of the same thing.
Being able to build vertically makes it a very different experience. Using a hyper tube chain to yeet yourself all the way across the map is chef’s kiss.
The blueprints are helpful for mid to late game when you need to set up dozens of the same thing. It’s not a perfect system, but can definitely be a time saver.
The combat is totally different. There’s no raid/defense mechanism. The mobs have a fixed spawn point. They’ll stop respawning once you start building around that point. Once you learn the appropriate attack/dodge maneuver for each type, they’re barely even a nuisance to kill.
There’s also a new 3D factory game called Foundry. Having bounced off of Satisfactory, that one seems more promising as a fan of Factorio.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Disco Elysium is always free, the devs got fucked and won’t get a cent from sales, everyone should pirate the game.
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.
I got a game over because I sat in an uncomfortable chair.
DE is fantastically well written, equal parts emotional and hilarious depending how you play and one of my all time favorite games. Big recommend
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
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.
Valheim
$19.99$9.99 (50% off)You’re a viking that died and you find yourself in a purgatory called “Valheim” to prove you’re worthy of Valhalla. Another survival builder - with a somehow charming combination of really bad graphics paired with really good lighting. The combat is kinda clunky, but the other elements of this game make up for it. Well worth $10!! Don’t forget to turn your music on before summoning a boss.
I have a couple hundred hours on Valheim from the past couple years, and I love it. I haven’t played since Ashlands came out, but I’m excited to jump into it at some point.
You’re a viking that died
Pretty sure they all did that
Yeah but these vikings extra died.
Wildermyth is a lovely combination of storytelling and xcom-style combat, with a genealogy system and chances for your heroes (and their descendants) to reappear in future games.
Love wildermyth
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
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.
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.
I don’t think this is anything like undertale, and I didn’t like it either. It doesn’t make fun of you for reloading iirc
Thank you!
It’s a completely different game vs undertale. It’s like comparing Dota 2 to DiRT rally, haha. It’s worth going in blind, and the post-game is extremely good and very replayable (and adds new content).
Inscription is fucking awesome. And you don’t really need a mouse, so it can be nice for flights, or if you want to play one-handed for some reason.
The post-game is SO GOOD.
It’s one of those rare videogames that makes non-gamers ask “What is that?” And then “where can I buy it?”
Thanks for that. Added to my wishlist.
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
This War of Mine: Complete Edition
£26.93£3.91 (85% off)In my opinion one of the greatest games but also one of the saddest. If you already own the game then I highly recommend all the DLC as they all bring some interesting scenarios to the game.
Played it pirated years ago. Not really looking to play again tbh because it’s so sad, but I’ll buy it discounted for supporting, I back then liked the very original angle of playing with trapped victims instead of army.
Your link is to example.com
Fixed. Thanks.
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.
I really enjoyed hacknet, is this similar? :O
Only the theme really.
In hacknet, when you try to hack a target you’ll see it has SSH and FTP services running. You run fake programs like SSHcrack.exe and FTPbounce.exe to exploit those services and the you’re in.
In hackmud, when you try to hack a target you’ll see it has an “ez_35” lock and a “c001” lock. The ez_35 lock requires an unlock word, something like “open”, “unlock”, “release” and a digit between 0 and 9. The c001 lock requires a color like “red” “purple” “lime”. You need to enter the right inputs within the time limit to hack the target. You can do it manually, but most targets have too many locks with too many options to manually guess all of them in time. You’ll need to write your own real life script in JavaScript that can detect locks and automatically guess every option for those locks. If you’ve ever done programming challenges then you shouldn’t have too much difficulty writing these scripts. If you’re new to programming it’s not the easiest tutorial. The game provides very little direct help.
Grounded
$39.99$19.99 (50% off)This is basically “Honey I Shrunk The Kids” as a survival builder. Set in the 80s, you and up to three others are teens that miniaturized by… well you gotta figure out the how and why, and how to return to normal size by navigating the back yard of a scientist with some knowledge on the tech. TBH, I didn’t really expect much from this game, but found myself having a ridiculous amount of fun with it. It is REALLY well made - the attention to detail is insane, from the yard design to build pieces. I wish I had this game when I was a kid, but still enjoyed the hell out of it in my 30s.
Shattered Pixel Dungeon,
9.99 USD6.69 USDIt’s a turn-based traditional roguelike + dungeon crawler, i.e. there are no in-game permanent upgrades to make the characters stronger, and only you the player get “stronger” as you become more knowledgeable. If you are into that kind of game, this is absolutely one of the best I’ve played!
The developer Evan has been continuously updating the game for the past decade, with a new, sixth playable hero scheduled to release later this year. The game is also free and open source, so you can even play the full game for free. I bought the Steam version (and has sunk 100+ hrs into it) because it’s so rare for me nowadays to find a game I don’t get tired of after a handful of hours. (Not saying short games are necessarily bad though, some of my faves are very short too.)
Also, check out the official [email protected]!
I play this on my android phone. It’s free, ad-free, and you can pay to support.
The updates have been awesome. It’s extremely difficult, and it’s not unusual to die a buncha times before your first success.
Trombone Champ 60% off
Trombone Champ is the world’s first trombone-based rhythm music game. Unlike most music games, you can freely play any note at any time. You’re not just following along with the music, you’re actually playing the music!
This one plays great on the steam deck. I played the happy birthday song for my kids and it was awful in the most amazing of ways.
Another for the wishlist. Thanks for posting that.
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.
I’ve played somewhere around 1500 hours across multiple systems. There’s really nothing else quite like it.
My kids played this till their eyes bled. Great local screen party game.
