It’s that time of year again. Steam has put so many games on sale, and all so that you can fill up your library just as school lets out and summer begins. We have a few suggestions of what to grab in this massive sale to help you get started. Enjoy our picks and get some deals.
Switch ‘N’ Shoot — 25% off at £2.16
Switch ‘N’ Shoot is super-addictive game — each time you play, you want to give it one more go. The developer’s high score is automatically on the scoreboard, challenging you and taunting you as you play. See if you can last for more than one sector in this well polished game.
Law Mower — 75% off at £1.74
I think retro fans or people who love old arcade games are going to get the most out of Law Mower. It reminds me of games like Burger Time and other old odd NES games. You don’t see those types of games much anymore. For that, I give kudos to the developer as it captures the gameplay perfectly. Law Mower may not have been what I was expecting but it delivers the one thing it promised. There will be grass, and much mowing to be done.
Small Radios Big Televisions — 80% off at £1.79
I really enjoyed this experience. Whilst the core gameplay is that of a point and click game, there are fresh ideas that elevate this beyond its core genre to be something genuinely interesting. The idea of experiencing sound in this way in a game is something very different, and I applaud the 2-person team for what they have created here. A great, colourful art style mixed with excellent sound and an interesting story make for a game I would recommend to players looking for a calm, different experience. Well done Fire Face, I’m looking forward to what you come up with next.
Automata Empire — 80% off at £1.23
There are a ton of titles you can choose when starting a map (the game claims over 40,000) with more able to be unlocked by completing games my favourite I’ve seen so far are ‘Decrepit Don Sporkepak’ and ‘Provisional Witch Slygrep’. The game’s five modes, and option to play in both singleplayer and multiplayer, as well as various other gameplay options,to spice it up, ensures Automata Empire has a lot to offer. And after the few hours I’ve pumped into it, I still feel like I know nothing about this game and its intricacies.
Love is Dead — 75% off at £2.24
I think that Love Is Dead is made with a lot of love. It’s a really charming little game to pick up, whether that be because you’re just a fan of puzzles games or you’re after a fun game to play with a friend or a loved one. The story is cute and the level design is appealing and fun to circumnavigate — it will have you laughing with one another rather than screaming at one another, although that really depends on what you’re both like!
Detective Hank and the Golden Sneeze — 50% off at £1.99
The ‘hand-drawn’ artwork is lovely, adding that storybook illustration feel and the use of the notebook-style paper and pen behind the story text is both practical for reading and relevant to the theme – as if you’re taking notes for the case. The accompanying music has the ability to be nicely inoffensive whilst you’re playing but get stuck in your head for hours afterwards. With Obsessive Science Games based in the Netherlands, at times the translation is a little off which can be off-putting in a game which is entirely text-based, and some of the humour gets lost in translation, but overall the dialogue is interesting and really quite funny.
Scrap Galaxy — 75% off at £1.44
As it stands, Scrap Galaxy is an outstanding local multiplayer with many more options than standard arena-shooters. Its options and combinations do mean that the game has a slight learning curve hiding deeper techniques, but AI opponents, plenty of rule customisations and a few mode choices give Scrap Galaxy more than enough content to be accessible.
Lumini — 75% off at £1.99
So all in all, It’s a game that has made an environment an absolute marvel to explore as you progress along a path riddled with puzzles. It’s probably advised that you play with a controller, as the game itself says on the splash screen, but even with a keyboard and mouse it’s still quite fluid to play, until you split the swarm of Lumini. If you want to relax without the frustration of constantly failing really hard puzzles or battles, then this game is one for you. So get your headphone, crank that volume and chill.
My Lovely Daughter — 75% off at £1.99
My Lovely Daughter is a twisted point and click adventure game where you play the role of an alchemist who has seemingly died. You have very little memory of what happened before you had died, but you do remember some of your own spells! You also have a magical book that gains knowledge right before you do, helping you along the way.
Frostpunk — 50% off at £12.49
Frostpunk is a tense and exciting city-builder; it paints a beautifully bleak dystopia of hypothermia, starvation and hope, and puts you in charge of ensuring the last bastion of humanity survives. The moral choice system – whilst providing some emotional context to New London’s fate – falls flat after a few hours of gameplay. Eventually, each of your choices are made by a mere glance towards the Hope and Discontent bars and selecting whatever prevents one of the other from ending the game.
Katana ZERO — 25% off at £8.54
The level of difficulty was spot on for me for most of the game. The final boss was quite tough but could be defeated handily once I had figured out the patterns. It did get a touch frustrating in the last few areas of the game as the stages became very crowded with enemies. There would be occasions where I would just get overwhelmed by the volume of the opposition and it felt a little cheap. Still, the short reset time meant I wouldn’t stay annoyed for long, and a little persistence lead to victory before too long. The whole game took around four-and-a-half hours including these restarts, and it felt like just the right length.
Return of the Obra Dinn — 10% off at £13.94
This strikes a nice balance between giving the player a sense of definitive progress without giving too much information away. Additionally, Return of the Obra Dinn‘s progress is nonlinear. Happily making guesses and carefully gathering as much information as possible before making a decision are equally viable methods of progressing.
Enter the Gungeon — 50% off at £5.49
When all is said and done, Enter the Gungeon is more evolution than revolution. I can’t think of a specific bell or whistle it uses to shout its message from the rooftops, but what it does do is more or less everything well. It looks and sounds good, with a fantastic feel which is head and shoulders above almost any other twin stick shooter I’ve played. It offers a good level of challenge and feels pleasingly tactical, whilst the co-op mode is more than just a tacked-on, throwaway element. Enter the Gungeon is a great game and like so many others, it feels as if it belongs on Nintendo’s exceptional handheld. Highly recommended.
Read our Nintedo Switch review.
GRIS — 33% off at £9.70
GRIS is a relatively short game, finished in an hour or so, but I have never played anything like it, and I would guess that most players haven’t either. It is an emotional journey that feels like a perfect representation of an art game, fulfilling the artist’s purpose through play — a bite-size game that can be played in one sitting, that provides the game’s vision in its entirety. I would certainly recommend GRIS to anyone looking to play something uniquely beautiful, as it is easily one of my favorite games this year.
Read our feature on the graphics in GRIS.
>observer_ — 70% off at £6.89
So it is, then, that Bloober Team have made a middling horror game, but an amazing detective game. The scouring of crime-scenes with the main character’s narration and abilities is a perfect rendition of the classic movie detective finding a hidden clue that we’d have never found, and it does so with perfect style and deployment, putting recent efforts at ‘sense’ and ‘instinct’ in games to shame.
Wargroove — 33% off at £10.71
I enjoyed myself every time I opened up Wargroove, regardless of small issues and major difficulty spikes here and there. The execution of the core of the game is impeccable. The campaign is really cool, there is an arcade mode, one turn puzzles and a bunch of other extras to unlock. And as when I spent hundreds of hours in my childhood playing Advance Wars with my friends, I plan to do so again, but this time with dogs.
Heaven’s Vault — 20% off at £15.99
What Heaven’s Vault gave to me is the ability to slow down — after a particularly intense time where I was stressing it allowed me to just relax and figure out a puzzle. With the beautiful atmosphere around it, if the idea of archaeology seems intriguing you should definitely give it a try.
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Disclaimer: Jupiter Hadley, one of the website owners, is an Adept Game Wizard for Armor Games, who published Love is Dead. This has not affected our decision to cover the game. You can read more information on our disclaimers here.
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