It's that time of year again, friends. What have you picked up/what do you recommend for the Steam Summer Sale?
For me, I recommend DAVE THE DIVER. A single-player RPG about a guy who scuba dives by day, then brings his catch to work at a sushi restaurant by night. It has beautiful, colorful pixel graphics, and tons of minigames popping up in unexpected places. I haven't finished it, but so far, it's even faintly based. It openly mocks Dave for being fat, as well as making the save-the-whales Greenpeace standin a bunch of evil, drooling morons that Dave regularly dunks on and has to fight. It's on sale for $18, it's rated Overwhelmingly Positive, and it's a big thumbs up from me.
I also picked up Card Survival: Tropical Island. It's a game about, well, surviving on a tropical island using cards. Click on locations to explore them, and find cards like Palm Tree, Stone, or Heavy Rock. Drag the Stone onto the Heavy Rock to get a Sharpened Stone. Drag that onto the Coconuts from the Palm Tree to get Cocount Milk, Coconut Meat, and Coconut Shells. You now have a little something to eat and drink, but be careful: too many Coconut products will give you diarrhea, which could be deadly on this remote island.
Don't be fooled by the dated graphics. Card Survival is clearly incredibly deep and made with a lot of love and care. It's on sale for $17, and it's rated Overwhelmingly Positive. Full disclosure: despite liking card games and the theme, I didn't care for the actual gameplay and ended up refunding it. Still, I really do think that's a "me" problem, and feel very good about shouting it out.
Not new (to me), but I always recommend Rimworld without hesitation. An incredibly good colony management game with a ridiculous mod scene. In past years, the dev has refused to put it on sale, but it's currently going for a minor discount of $28, it's Overwhelmingly Positive, and it's worth every penny.
In a similar vein, Against the Storm is a very good title that combines a city builder with a roguelite. You are sent out to build a new village, each of which will have different resources and options available. You must take those options and combine them into a thriving new city. Once you've scored enough points (by making your people happy, producing manufactured goods, sending resources back to the capital, and so on), you've won that round. Your city will appear on the map as you are sent out to start a new city. But beware! After every five cycles or so, the Storm will wipe the map clean, leaving only the capital city safe. Against the Storm is rated Overwhelmingly Positive, and it's currently on sale for $20.
Another good older one is Noita. You play a wizard in a roguelike where every pixel is made out of a simulated material. Fight monsters and find loot, new wands, and spells as you descend into the earth, but be careful! That puddle of Oil will light on fire if a spark lands on it. Noita is Overwhelmingly Positive, and currently on sale for just $10.
Still another game I picked up earlier is War of Rights. It's a first person shooter that literally tries to be a Civil War infantry simulator. Designed around relatively large multiplayer battles, you will be handed a musket and expected to stay in line with the rest of your unit, obeying your officers orders (you won't accomplish much running off with your single shot anyway.) It has incredibly realistic graphics for an indie title, using CRYENGINE, and at least one server has had a battle going every time I logged on. My only minor complaint is that you don't necessarily want to play it constantly; being a Civil War infantryman is more of a mood than a lifestyle these days. It's rated Very Positive, and it's currently 50% off at $15.
Those are some of the titles I recommend this year. What about you?
Six recommendations (links to trailers included):
Hong Kong Massacre: Absolutely a blast to play. 65% off on Steam. It'll take about four through six hours to complete. It's not long but it's one of those games you might replay to enjoy the very satisfying shooting physics and unlock more stuff. It's essentially like a top-down version of Max Payne 3, but one bullet kills you (or the enemies) and there is no drunk-o-vision. The destruction physics in the environment are absolutely on-point. It has a straightforward story that very well could have been a John Woo film, zero wokeness, and is completely awesome. I had always thought the game was made in Unreal but it's actually running on Unity. Looks fantastic and the gunplay is extremely satisfying.
Midnight Fight Express This is one of the most badass games you'll ever play. Essentially it combines the best of the John Wick-style shooting and Judo-melee, with awesome beat-'em-up mechanics and tons of weapons. The game never feels like you're fighting against the controls, and every aspect of the combat is so smooth. It's a shockingly polished game, too. The story is pretty nice as well, but I'm not going to spoil any of that. it reminds me if AKI's No Mercy was combined with Dead To Rights. Surprisingly, it's another Unity-based game, so it has super smooth framerates, none of the frame processing hitching you see in a lot of other games, and it's extremely responsive, and absolutely no wokeness at all, in fact it sometimes takes the piss out of the wokies. It's currently 30% off.
Cobra Kai: The Karate Kid Saga Continues: This one really took me by surprise. I'm not into licensed based games, but this is a really well done beat-'em-up for the most part. Great 2-player co-op options, and it has two story modes as you play as Cobra Kai or as Miyago-Do. Both sides feature four player characters you can tag out, and it has lots of unlockable content, and a healthy dose of different stages to traverse. I like the stage designs and interactables, and the Cobra Kai side is really fun to play and have some great moves. Once again, it's a highly optimised Unity game; runs great, has smooth frames and plenty to enjoy, especially if you have family or friends for local co-op. Some of the animations for some of the characters are bit... clunky, but otherwise it works well. It's also 75% off on Steam right now. Also, no wokeness that I've encountered at all.
Resonance of Fate: Bit of a reluctant recommendation here. If you're into JRPGs this has one of the most unique turn-based combat systems in any game. It's really cool because it's focused on gun-ki-do, basically. Heavily inspired by stuff like The Matrix and Equilibrium. It's not an easy game at all, though, and it doesn't rely on traditional grinding to get strong, but rather the synergy you adapt in how you utilise the resonance feature. The story makes no sense whatsoever in relation to the world building, and it's pretentious and dumb and ends before anything really comes together coherently. However, the combat system alone is well worth it if you're into unique JRPGs. I would highly suggest watching some tutorials, especially regarding the first boss fight, because it's not so much about how high your level is but how you combine scratch + physical damage and guard-breaking enemies. It's currently 40% off right now.
Sifu: I've never raged at a game the way I did with the absolute cheap final boss in this game. It's so ridiculously hard I'm not even going to say how many hours I wasted trying to beat him. Essentially I just had to restart the whole game on a whole new difficulty because he was that hard. That being said, this has the kind of fighting combat system I wish other games had. There are no fancy auto-dodge mechanics here, you manually have to jump and dodge and parry directional attacks, and that's what makes the game so hard. But at the same time, this is one of the most rewarding hand-to-hand beat-'em-up games. Also, the multiple endings and unlockables makes this one of those games you can just keep returning to in order to get better and improve. Once you learn to master the mechanics you can put on some Tony Jaa-tier bone-breaking fight sequences that are as satisfying to pull off as they are to watch. In some ways in never gets tiring once you start improving your technique.
Exanima: Not discounted at all, but it's only $14.99, and probably the best $14.99 I've spent in a long time. This game is very challenging but well worth it. It's very similar to Hellish Quart, insofar that HEMA tactics work like a chef's kiss in this game. Distance, spacing, zoning, and footwork are all essentials to winning. It utilises physics-based, procedural animations, so you don't rely on key-frames to monitor when to strike, but rather distance and openings. It has somewhat simple controls, but this is the very definition of simple to learn but unbelievably hard to master, all because the game's physics system takes height, weight, mass, and kinetic movement into account. So different opponents wearing different armour and using short/long weapons will all vary how difficult they are to fight and what weapon will work best/worst against them. There is no single answer in this game, and ultimately it boils down to what you feel most comfortable using.
This is also the only game that gets warhammers and flails right. Dual-wielding flails are some of the most dangerous weapons, just because of their unpredictability and how much damage they can dish out. You also can't block flails properly, so you mostly have to just get out of the way, since they can swing around or over shields and parries. Warhammers are a real treat to use because they get crushing damage right in this game. Leading an opponent to trip over another dead body or stumble over a chair and then do a downward swing to crush their skull offers a sickeningly satisfying result. A lot of times direct kill shots will take out an opponent (or you) in one hit. A lot of the reviews that said this game would ruin hack-and-slash ARPGs for you forever weren't lying. It's hard to go back to the traditional hack-and-slash games after playing this. This is a huge and hard recommendation here for anyone who enjoys medieval games but want something with actual realistic, physics-based combat.
I'll second MFE, I was really bummed when I realized I only had one mission left.
I liked the idea of Sifu more than the game itself. I usually don't put up with any kind of grind. I have so little time to play, I like each session to end with some kind of progress.
That said, Sifu is beautifully crafted, in all senses.
Same here. Most newer games I'm always looking forward to getting to the end, but I was still ready for more in that game.
I usually dedicate free time to a game (when I have time) in case of a grind, but I have to 100% agree with you here. I, too, love the concept more than the execution. I personally think they did a better job with Absolver than Sifu when it came to balance and time commitments. Absolver was also strangely better optimised than Sifu. There's nothing more obnoxious than losing a fight because of a frame processing stutter for a game that isn't even graphically taxing (happened infrequently but enough during the final boss fight that I actually missed a couple of parries as a result).
But you're right, it's beautifully crafted. I hope they make a Sifu 2 and commit to a more unique art-style that really dives into the washed out painterly effect a bit more. The environments were perfect because they felt lived in and real, and were actually scaled properly. I just think the character art was a little too flat. Harsher contrasts with the shadows and some of the shader effects could have helped them both look more set into the environment and also standout design wise.