The Steam winter sales are here, up to the 4rth of January.
What game did you enjoy playing and want to share with the community, and why?
It’s like a mini (or a bit larger) review for the people in the community to discover your loved game, and get it for a smaller price. Also remember to share a link to the store page to help people find the game.
The game must be on sale currently and must not be a free to play game, or what would be point of this post.
The release date doesn’t matter. Neither the sale amount. If you enjoyed the game, it should be shared.
You can put the game type/tags at the beginning of your comment if you wish so, it may help other people.
Please a single game per comment if you post a review.
I’ll start in the comments.
I just bought Mad games tycoon 2. Because I heard it was a better/improved game of game tycoon which I played a lot. And ofc, I also bought Baldurs gate 3! Honestly I was considering not buying bg3 and waiting for it not to be discounted, because I wanted to give more money to Larian studio haha
Lately I’ve been playing Spark the Electric Jester 3, Freedom Planet 2, Sonic Superstars, Vampire Survivors, and Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade. I think all of these are on sale!
I’m a platformer gal, especially fast-paced Sonicy ones, so Spark the Electric Jester, Freedom Planet, and of course Sonic Superstars are right up my alley. Sonic Superstars really isn’t a $60 game but I’d say it’s $36 sale price is all right. Freedom Planet 2 absolutely nails fluid 2D level design with insane levels of polish. And Spark 3 may be one of the finest 3D platformers ever made, with a tight control system and a incredibly high skill ceiling.
Vampire Survivors, however, is not a platformer. It’s a bite-sized RPG where your control of your character is exclusively directional and what upgrades to their skillset they get. It is incredibly addictive and while each session can last a maximum(ish) of 30 minutes I find myself wanting just one more try all the time. If you’re not sure about it, the mobile version is free with ads, but it’s really best played on PC.
And I don’t think I have words for FFVIIR. Say what you want about Square Enix (such as “fuck those guys”), they make a solid JRPG, and this enhanced remake of the first… like, quarter of the first disc of Final Fantasy VII? is excellently done and takes enough liberties with the storyline to feel fresh without feeling so different that it’s unrecognizable. (and the fact that they took liberties is actually a story point in and of itself but I’ll just leave it at that)
If you liked vampire survivors and retro graphics you might want to check out Halls of Torment. It looks like old school Diablo but it’s a vampire survivors like game.
Thanks for the recommendation! Diablo II was one of my favorite games when I was a kid so this is way, way up my alley.
I’ve been playing Bomb Rush Cyberfunk and Automation/Beam.ng mostly but I’ve been severely addicted to the free demo for Half Sword. It’s the most brutal, jankiest medieval combat simulator I’ve ever played and it’s as frustrating as it is fun. I can’t stop playing it.
I finished Laika : Aged through blood. An indie metroidvania / 2d bike shooter / bullet time.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1796220/Laika_Aged_Through_Blood/
It’s the story of a mother in a post-apocalyptic environment having to care for her daughter and village while doing the war outside.
Everything, art, music, is a masterpiece. The music is just extremely good.
Outside of special zones, there are 20 you have to find, and it cycles between them. All 20 are voiced, with words or humming.
The story is good, and is extremely anti-war.
The gameplay feels amazing. It can be hard at first, but I quickly learned how to control the bike and and to do backflips and frontflips at the right time to reload guns and the pary.
The main character laika is one-shot, but the game isn’t very punishing. The respawn points aren’t too far away from each other, and they are optional. When you die, you loose a pouch with the currency, and can get it back.
There are some little issues with the game tho. The ending seems to be a bit rushed. The ending boss isn’t that difficult, and there were some cuts it seems.
But overall these little issues aren’t that bad, and the game is still amazing for an indie.
That actually looks like a lot of fun, thanks for sharing!
Tried this on a Next Fest and it was super cool, definitely something different and interesting if you’re into side scrollers.
I tend to play co-op with a friend and enjoyed playing V-Rising on a private server. We built up our vampire lair and roamed the lands collecting resources and expanding the lair. The bosses are challenging, and the map is varied. It is also fun to play with friends as the game accommodates this very well.
A few hidden gems I’ve played:
Dungeons of the Endless: https://store.steampowered.com/app/249050/Dungeon_of_the_ENDLESS/
Solasta Crown of the Magister: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1096530/Solasta_Crown_of_the_Magister/
Tower of Time: https://store.steampowered.com/app/617480/Tower_of_Time/
Detroit: Become Human: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1222140/Detroit_Become_Human/
The Dark Pictures Anthology - Man of Medan: https://store.steampowered.com/app/939850/The_Dark_Pictures_Anthology_Man_of_Medan/
I hope you like them all as much as I did.
I’ve been eyeing Solasta for a while, but I’m curious, does the base game have enough meat to it, or is this a case where the base game is a bit lacking and really starts to shine in the dlc? I’ve read some reviews to this effect and would like to hear another opinion before I purchase it.
I loved all of it, personally. Is there anything in particular you’re looking for that I can comment on, in terms of RPG’s?
My only two complaints with Solasta was that I felt the random encounters with traveling got annoyingly frequent and the cutscenes are definitely indie, but I enjoyed the game as a whole so much I stopped caring about either.
But I can confirm that the DLC’s have a ton of meat too.
I’ve definitely been eyeing Solasta since BG3. Is it combat heavy enough that it could be a podcast game? It’s unclear how story focused the base game is, and I get the sense that player made content is the draw.
There’s plenty of combat. If you’ve played BG3 I imagine you’ll enjoy it.
The caveat is that it’s made by an indie studio, so the cutscenes aren’t AAA, but I think the game is amazing regardless, and that includes the expansion packs.
Dungeons of the endless is beutiful. A unique roguelike thats more strategic than action based, but gives your choices real weight. You will have to lose people and you will make mistakes to complete the missions, but every one of them leaves you with a sense of impact.
I get the same vibes from it as FTL, the sense of weighty choices. A great buy at $2.50
There is a new “action focused” sequel to dungeon of the endless whose name i forget because its an entirely forgetable game. It fully eliminates meaningful gameplay in trade for mediocre combat. It can be skipped entirely.
I think Dungeons of the Endless also has one of the best soundtracks in recent years. I like to have it on shuffle when I’m doing yoga.
+1 for Solasta. I was playing it on Xbox with friends and loved it. There’s also the option for user made adventures I believe, which opens up so many possibilities.
Spirit of the North
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1213700/Spirit_of_the_North/
An indie adventure/exploration/puzzle game. There is no combat in this game. You explore, solve puzzles, and take in the vibes of a story told without any dialogue at all. It’s all in the visuals, music, and mood. This is Abzu with foxes.
The gameplay is fairly simple, but also pretty forgiving - there are very few places where you need fast reactions or precise timing, and if you fall off a platform you only have to redo the last few jumps, not the entire level. It’s the kind of puzzle game where you have plenty of time to think things through and even more time to just enjoy the journey. Definitely a game for the casual gamer who wants to look at pretty landscapes, listen to beautiful music, and bark at things.
If you stick exclusively to following the story, it’s maybe 2-3 hours long, and getting 100% completion on all achievements, collectibles, and alternate skins took me 16 hours. So it’s not a huge game - which means the best time to buy it is when it’s heavily discounted, like right now.
I love this game so much. I like a lot of games, but it’s rare that I absolutely adore one. In fact, I might just go and play it again tomorrow.
I’ve bought this game because of you. This looks amazing, thank you for bringing it up!
No problem! I hope you enjoy it as much as I have! :)
The sequel is being released sometime next year, too. It may be the one game where I break my usual rule of not buying a new game at launch.
Can anyone recommend a hunting or fishing game? I’ve been into watching outdoors videos and activities, but never been on any of those activities and pretty much can only do it virtually right now lol.
Bassin’s Black Bass with Hank Parker for the SNES. The best fishing game ever made.
Only slightly facetious: Cruelty Squad
Rdr2 has some hunting in very beautiful outdoors.
Yes finished that one and I love it!
For fishing, Dave the Diver and Dredge are awesome.
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American/Euro Truck simulator are always on sale, and are rad
I’ve been playing Roboquest the last few days and have to say it’s the most fun I’ve had playing a shooter in a long time. https://store.steampowered.com/app/692890/Roboquest/
Does Roboquest have LAN? Searches in the forums lead to dead links for answers.
I don’t know if it has a LAN specific option. but If you are both playing on Steam or Epic, it supports multiplayer/crossplay between the two platforms. Though you don’t access it directly from the home screen. Play through the beginning tutorial section till you reach your home base, then one of the buildings you can interact with is the multiplayer menu.
No LAN is a no-go for me lately, for multiplayer games. I’m tired of games being designed with forced obsolescence. Sometimes you get lucky and the game has LAN but doesn’t list it on the features, so I figured I’d ask.
That’s fair. I’ll double check this week and let you know if it’s got direct LAN multiplayer.
Thanks, I appreciate it. I feel like it’s been a while since FPS games have been made for me.
sorry to get back to you super late on this. Roboquest doesn’t seem to have a traditional LAN setup without some sort of modding. I did find out recently that Lethal Company does have LAN multiplayer if that isn’t already on your radar. Good luck.
I fired it up and didn’t see any multi player options.
Really? It advertises co-op on the store page.
edit: I see multi player after digging through the menu, but it appears to be steam friends.
I know this game has gotten a lot of attention but Sea of Stars was my favorite game of the year, the story and art was charming and well done, and the gameplay was great and about the perfect length IMO. Its only been out 4 months and I’m already itching to do a replay
Reminds me I need to get around to playing more. Got to the like first real city and then got busy with a lot of things but it’s cool for sure.
The start is painfully slow though
Fair enough, I think it helped that I’d been awaiting the game for so long that I was willing to forgive a slow start
I didn’t get far in it because the characters seemed very bland to me, and the story setup generic, but perhaps that could improve over time? I know some games leverage their length to pull off slow character development well, even if the basic character templates are straightforwardly tropey. But this one didn’t grab me enough at the beginning to justify investing my time in it, personally.
I’m glad it exists for the people who do like it, though!
In this game you play as an alligator who is an investigator (they rolled with that pun) who throughout the game does various puzzles and gets into fights. It’s not egregiously long and has multiple endings that change depending on your actions, all of which allow you to unlock the true ending, I guess. I have only gotten a single ending, so I don’t know what all the endings are.
It has an easy, normal, and hard difficulty which change the fight difficulty. It says relaxed (easy) difficulty is for those who are just there for the story and puzzles, so I’d assume it might either make the fights ridiculously easy or skip them. No clue since I jumped in straight away on hardcore.
I personally found most of the characters besides one certain robot to be enjoyable. The characters are also fully voiced (English only as of now), but there are 10 other languages for the text. Everything said will pop up in a dialogue box you have to click through, so you can’t miss any dialogue unless you purposefully skip through all of them. Even if you do, afterwards you can open the pause menu and find a transcript of all the dialogue, too.
The game also has a demo for the first chapter, so you can play that and see if it’s a game you would actually buy. Currently it’s $13.99 for the base game or $19.05 for the game alongside the official soundtrack and an artbook. If nothing else, I at least recommend looking up the soundtrack piece Brok and Graff, which is my personal favorite song in the whole entire game.
The wife and I have really enjoyed playing Ravenswatch.
It’s an early-access rougelite that plays a bit like a Diablo/League (sans toxicity because it’s co-op, not competitive)
Farm efficiently and level your hero within the time limit and fight a boss at the end.
It’s a great time and 20% off on the sale
You should try Halls of Torment for a Diablo-looking rogue-like. I adored it!
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