I didn't get anything this sale, but my current play is 75% discounted: Pathologic 2. It's my second serious attempt to beat it and honestly I don't know if I'll ever finish it because of how stressful and sadistic the challenge is. As such I can't tell if I love it or hate it... or maybe I'm pretty sure that it's both at once.

In any case it's a genuinely unusual game and worth a look for anyone who wants something a little off the wall. I've read that the writer originally conceived of it as a play and it still retains that kind of atmosphere, with occasional shadowy characters whose main purpose is to provide meta-textual commentary on the events as they unfold, as if it's a performance. That and the surreal design of the town and all the cryptic language gives a unique and dreamlike air to the setting (a town threatened with plague).

But coming to it knowing a little about how aRtSy and jank (mainly poor optimisation) it was supposed to be, I was surprised how many gameplay elements there are, even if none of them are spectacular. Generic explore, loot, lockpick, raid & trade, touch of crafting, Oblivion-like FPS melee and shooting (if you can ever find ammo) and some diagnosis/dosage minigame. What make it tough are the brutal time limits and status gauges (health, hunger, infection, etc.) which are tuned to torture you and ensure you struggle, suffer, miss mission markers, die (lives are unlimited but death has other consequences) and generally never feel comfortable or happy. That's why even though it's not a survival horror in tone, it has that level of stress. And I'm still not sure if that even works as a concept, but here I am thinking about it and talking about it, so there you go.

I didn't get anything this sale, but my current play is 75% discounted: Pathologic 2. It's my second serious attempt to beat it and honestly I don't know if I'll ever finish it because of how stressful and sadistic the challenge is. As such I can't tell if I love it or hate it... or maybe I'm pretty sure that it's both at once.

In any case it's a genuinely unusual game and worth a look for anyone who wants something a little off the wall. I've read that the writer originally conceived of it as a play and it still retains that kind of atmosphere, with occasional shadowy characters whose main purpose is to provide meta-textual commentary on the events as they unfold, as if it's a performance. That and the surreal design of the town and all the cryptic language gives a unique and dreamlike air to the setting (a town threatened with plague).

But coming to it knowing a little about how aRtSy and jank it looked, I was surprised how many gameplay elements there are, even if none of them are spectacular. Generic explore, loot, lockpick, raid & trade, touch of crafting, Oblivion-like FPS melee and shooting (if you can ever find ammo) and some diagnosis/dosage minigame. What make it tough are the brutal time limits and status gauges (health, hunger, infection, etc.) which are tuned to torture you and ensure you struggle, suffer, miss mission markers, die (lives are unlimited but death has other consequences) and generally never feel comfortable or happy. That's why even though it's not a survival horror in tone, it has that level of stress. And I'm still not sure if that even works as a concept, but here I am thinking about it and talking about it, so there you go.