Ive been spending a few hours on Elin lately. It's like a JRPG version of Stardew Valley, with lots of dungeons to explore, recipes to craft, and crops to harvest.
I also played Dead Cells this year, which is a very fun sidescrolling roguelike with a good selection of different weapons to come across, with a variety of different playstyles depending on what you find.
This one is pretty obvious, but I had a blast with Persona 5 Royal this year. An excellent, extremely stylish JRPG that I (and everyone else) recommend highly.
As I have in multiple years past, I again highly recommend Noita. A very deep roguelike where you play a wizard delving into the earth, finding more magic wands and spells that you can mix and match to make the perfect wand. Additionally, every pixel in the game is made out of materials like flammable Oil, fire-quenching Water, dangerous Acid, and so forth, leading to many interesting interactions.
Another re-recommendation from me is DAVE THE DIVER. A beautiful, colorful pixel world in which you scuba dive for fish by day, and serve them in your sushi restaurant at night.
If you haven't played RimWorld yet, I don't know what you're doing. An exceptional base builder, and in my opinion, one of the best games on Steam. It's also actually on a minor sale right now, which hasn't happened in years past.
Finally, perhaps my favorite couch coop game on Steam is Plate Up!. Up to four players cooperate to run a restaurant. Every few days, you will have to pick a complication, like adding a new dish to the menu, or breaking the parties down into parties of one (so it's the same amount of guests using many more tables). I've busted this out multiple times now at couch parties, and it's always a ton of fun.
What about you? What do you recommend?
Don't think I'm getting anything. My backlog is long: currently sitting on the last 1/3 of pathfinder kingmaker, the last half of rogue trader, wrath of the righteous, shadow of war, mad max, the batman arkham games in my queue.
Path of Exile 2 is calling but I don't feel highly compelled to answer. Maybe if Space Marine 2 drops below 30 but I don't see that happening.
Phoenix Point is scratching my XCOM itch. It feels like a really sincere attempt that needed at least another 6 months of cooking in early access to tune the systems. I read there is an overhaul mod that fixes a lot and integrates the DLC (which appears to make the game worse in its vanilla form). I'm currently playing an unmodded game either to completion or to long enough that I get tired of it, then take a break, then come back and try a fully modded run.
Also planning on getting hades 2 when it leaves early access. I know it is woke but i like the gameplay, might just pirate it though. And slay the spire 2 hits early access next year but will probably wait for release.
And of course in addition to my steam library I have about 400 slop titles on the epic store in addition to all the humble bundle/subscrption titles I never played, then the random stuff that amazon gives away for free.
I'm pretty sure I'm set for gaming until the day I die.
edit: well I might pick up space marine 2 if that drops below 30 because that $20 savings will be my excuse to spend $600 on a new video card and $1500 on a new TV.
Path of Exile 2 is really good, but it will be free when early access is over. Still I've put like 90 hours in it already. Fun.