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?
It's weird. I used to look forward to the winter Steam sale as a wild time to pick up all sorts of gems. Now it's just another week as I grind through life because nothing in the store window holds any real appeal.
Instead of picking up something new I reinstalled Dragon Age Origins and that's been far better than whatever's being released nowadays. My time with that has really driven home how graphics have plateaued for well over a decade now. That used to be unthinkable back when we were making the jump from the Super Nintendo to the N64. It's also driven home just how bad video game writing has become over the years, holy shit.
Nothing.
I got Stellaris years ago and the mod scene there means I'll probably be playing it forever.
On top of that, X-Com 2 which is in a similar xeno infested boat, there are cracks, private servers and a whole host of other games out there which mean not only do I have more time than money or sense to spend, but there aren't any actual monetary costs involved now either.
Stellaris is quite good, and I've sunk a few hundred hours into Hearts of Iron IV, as well.
Last time they had good deals across the board was back when they still called it the Christmas Sale. Nowadays it’s like 5-10 games with “good” sales (80-90% off of an inflated price which hasn’t decreased in years, with all the DLC maybe going for 20% off).
I did buy Grim Dawn for 90% off though - had my eye on it for years and I’ve been enjoying it so far, and it’s good to know I have some ARPG goodness to play offline that isn’t D2.
Stellaris seems interesting and I’ve heard a lot of good things about it. If I enjoy Civ but never tried other games in the genre which go more hardcore, what are the odds I enjoy Stellaris?
I too love Civ, but Paradox makes the best "emperor" games in my opinion. There's a little bit of a learning curve, but they're absolutely fantastic, and I've spent tons of hours on Stellaris, Crusader Kings, and Hearts of Iron IV. Vanilla Stellaris is just four bucks on Steam right now, and totally worth it. The only bad thing about Paradox is they're pretty bad about constantly putting out DLC and expansions, but the vanilla games are completely playable.
I did pick up Grim Dawn too. There are a few other good deals I found like Gurumin, Touhou Artificial Dream in Arcadia, and Okami is also good. I'm mostly looking for games that might be good on Steamdeck at this point.
Did you know that the russian govt allows russians defacto access to all western games and media for free due to the their antagonistic relationship with western empire? Any time you feel you might open up steam and send money to a AAA studio that hates you, you could open up Yandex instead.
Stickied for game recommendations
Sweet, thanks!
I got Yellow Taxi, the first Hades, and Enshrouded.
Dave the Diver and Rimworld are great buys
Ended up getting three things in this run:
This is the Police: A strategy, narrative based game where you are the chief of police for a city, and you have to deal with reaching your retirement in the near future. It is up to you to decide exactly how far you will go, how much corruption in the force you are willing to tolerate, and how likely you are to obey corruption from city officials . The company that made it (Weappy Studios) is also pretty good, and I am looking forward to their new game they are coming out with next year called Hollywood Animals (which is you in charge of a film studio starting in the 1920's, but it doesnt exactly shy away from how filthy and degenerate Hollywood is behind the scenes and you have to deal with that).
Arms Trade Tycoon: Tanks: Still in early access at the moment, but it is a very traditional tycoon game. You are in charge of a business producing tanks for the militaries of the world, at the moment with the only option being the British starting in WW1 (but the plan is to eventually have the major players up to modern day). Pretty straight forward, nothing too different.
Laysara: Summit Kingdom: A city builder and resource management game. In terms of actual gameplay, it doesnt exactly reinvent the wheel. But the twist is that you are, like the IRL Tibetan cultures it is based on, building on a mountain side, and elevation has a lot to do with how you handle situations (ie: certain resources either grow better at different elevations, or are completely locked out of some). And of course, you have to plan around and be prepared for avalanches.
And finally, on the note of recommendations, for any RTS fans here, I am once again recommending Last Train Home. You play as a commander in the Czechoslovakian Legion on the last train out of Russia during their legendary run up the length of the Trans-Siberian Railroad to Vladivostok. It has a great blend of RTS gameplay in actual battles with resource management and survival aspects on the main screen when you are controlling your train. And the game is absolutely not shy as showing that the Communist were evil, brutal thugs who were arguably worse for Russia than the Tsar ever was, which is something of a rare message in modern gaming.
I loved This is The Police.
Played it years ago on console.
It's too bad that the crime elements are scripted, meaning the same calls always come at the same times on the same days, reducing replayability (and making memorization and savescumming the best options).
There's still enough RNG to make it interesting (there's permadeath and it's devastating when multiple cops get wiped out on a call).
There's also some strange mechanics where the game is tougher in the early midgame when resources are low but the game gets too easy once you learn the tricks to have a massive staff that reduces the tough decisions later on.
The game also has a strange design choice where the final stage changes game genre completely becoming X-com lite (IIRC, I had to look up walkthroughs and savescum because the new mechanics aren't well explained).
I can't even remember if I eventually bought This is the Police 2 on sale or not. I never played it, but apparently it got woker as the main character became female and the main game play element became the X-com missions.
I dont know if I would agree to that for This is the Police 2. At least from what I saw of the trailer for it (since I was interested but decided I would get it later if at all), the female chief of police admits that she is in over her head and effectively pawned off to you (still the guy from the first game) to be the chief behind the scenes while she is still the official one. Which would absolutely break a ton of the rules that the Woke demand for games. But that is just my own opinion at least.
You may be right.
I never actually played 2.
The first one had a Film Noir storyline centered around a male old school uncouth police chief past his prime but with some goodness left.
There were also based elements, such as the ability to instruct your officers to beat the shit out of the feminist protest.
As soon as I saw a complete gameplay change and a woman on the cover of the sequel, I lost interest.
I feek like the autumn sale just ended (though I did procrastinate and only made final checkout decisions on the last morning deadline).
I'm a newfag to the PC master race after being a longtime console user.
So far I've only really been playing mods of 4x games that I already played vanilla on console.
The two games that stood out were Out of the Park Baseball 25 on 80% off and Sid Meier's Colonization for less than 2 bucks.
I've seen a few playthroughs of Colonization on YT. IIRC, the game wasn't woke and quite a bit of depth even if the UI looked like ass.
Once you have the basic mechanics of (CivIV?) Col down, I highly recommend downloading the 'We The People' mod. It greatly expands the mechanics and gives you a lot more to do. (If you're playing classic Col I'm not sure there's many mods out there for it.)
Going to look for any RPG from the past or civilization style games. Also are there any good simulation games outside of Sims?
I had fun with the original Planet Coaster and Cities: Skylines. Unfortunately, the sequels to those games are getting mixed reviews, so I haven't played them. You might be able to get a good discount on the originals, though.
Thanks! Also may get some Sierra games for nostalgia.
Oh man, those maddening Sierra games lmao. Gold Rush!, while less known than other games, has always held a weird soft spot in my heart. It's a dollar on Steam right now. Don't get the "remake." It was awful.
I don't think I got anything this winter sale. I've been playing playing pathfinder wotr with the wokeless mod and I'm currently on my second playthrough, I barely noticed the winter sale was on.
I picked it up a week or two ago, on a historical low that's a little cheaper than the Steam sale, but I've been playing Wantless: Solace at World's End, and enjoying it quite a bit. It's a nice mix of turn-based tactics and looter, with lots of build creativity; all things I really appreciate.
It's rather indie, with both the positives and negatives that come with that. Some of the balance decisions and corresponding gameplay incentives are, well, a bit suboptimal in my opinion. But it's still really fun.
Gifts for gaming friends and family. They will most likely return the favor, so I cannot wait to see what kind of grab bag of heavily discounted titles I receive this year.
That's such a cool tradition.
I love it.
Indeed. We usually try to get things we can play together, which sometimes works well and other times not so much. It is difficult to coordinate time together when everyone has families/jobs/obligations.
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.
Another pede in the gaming /c recommended Drova Forsaken Kin.
And now I recommend it too.