Initial scrolling of the Steam Summer Sale seems pretty lackluster, but digging through the comments sections in other threads, a few gems have stood out, and it doesn’t appear we have a thread dedicated to this yet, so post what you think are the best deals here!

Not mandatory ofc, but it’d be helpful if…

  • One game per top level post, so comments stemming from it are focused on on just it.

  • Hyperlink the game title to its Store Page

  • Include both the normal and sale price / %off

  • Include a short blurb about the game - if it’s one you’ve played before, what did you like about it? If you’re diving in blind, what grabbed your attention?

Good hunt’n!

  • turmacar@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    2 hours ago

    Minishoot’ Adventures $11.99 (20% off)

    Isometric Zelda / Metroidvania / bullet hell with a lot of accessibility features and neat art where you’re a lil spaceship guy. Has a demo to see if it’s your jam. Already beat it twice, would really love for them to make DLC or a sequel.

  • Silverchase@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    43
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 day ago

    Celeste $1.99 (90% off, new all-time low)

    Hard but fair precision platformer by an expert of platformer design. Excellent controls, deep platforming mechanics, and a cathartic story about internal and external struggles.

    • barsquid@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 hour ago

      I’ve been wanting to play this for a while and that price made it an instant buy. Really glad I did. Some of the strawberries are hard and unfair tho, haha.

      • lud@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 day ago

        Is the character trans? I have flinished the whole game and I can’t recall that.

        • June (she/her) 🫐@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          14
          arrow-down
          4
          ·
          1 day ago

          https://maddymakesgames.com/articles/is_maddy_trans/index.html

          Is Madeline Canonically Trans?

          Well, yeah, of course she is.

          This feels painfully obvious to a lot of (mostly trans) people, and likewise it feels painfully obvious to me too, in retrospect. It has also become painfully obvious to me that I, myself, am trans. But these are things that I was not aware of during the development of Celeste, where I was writing Madeline and speaking from her perspective. Creating Celeste with my friends helped me reach the point where I could realize this truth about myself. During Celeste’s development, I did not know that Madeline or myself were trans. During the Farewell DLC’s development, I began to form a hunch. Post-development, I now know that we both are.

          • lud@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            7
            arrow-down
            2
            ·
            1 day ago

            So she is essentially retroactively trams.

            Not that I mind, but it is what it is.

            • June (she/her) 🫐@lemmy.dbzer0.com
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              15
              arrow-down
              4
              ·
              edit-2
              1 day ago

              Read further, while the author didn’t realize what she was doing it is a trans narrative through and through, and the free dlc ending did contain the flag because by then she did know.

              When Madeline looks in the mirror and sees her other self; when she attempts to abandon her reflection, who then drags her down the mountain; when the two reconcile and merge to become stronger and more complete… that was all unknowingly written from a trans perspective.

        • Silverchase@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          arrow-down
          3
          ·
          1 day ago

          Yes, Maddy is trans. This is both from word of god and a hint in the background of a piece of art in-game.

    • brenticus@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      7 hours ago

      It is genuinely ridiculous how much content there is in this game for the price. Like, a lot of it looks like an excuse to play the same levels a dozen times with minor variations, but then there are tons of levels, lots of events, ongoing updates with new content of all types, so many different towers and upgrades to play with, community maps to add even more variety… It looks like I’ve played over 200 games and I have so much of the game that I haven’t even touched yet.

    • kiagam@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      14 hours ago

      it is ridiculous how much content that game offers for the low price tag. one of my most played right now. the only td I have found that well maintained and very replayable

  • Silverchase@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    26
    ·
    1 day ago

    Tunic $14.99 (50% off, new all-time low)

    A little guy in a green tunic picks up a sword and goes on an adventure, but the game is in an unknown language and you only have a few pages of the manual. It’s like a metroidvania but your progress is based on knowledge.

  • Silverchase@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    26
    ·
    1 day ago

    Inscryption $7.99 (60% off, new all-time low)

    You find an old, abandoned video game and load it up. It’s an atmospheric, spooky card game, hiding layers of secrets for you to discover. The less you know before starting the game, the better your experience will be.

    • Wahots@pawb.social
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      20 hours ago

      Inscription is fucking awesome. And you don’t really need a mouse, so it can be nice for flights, or if you want to play one-handed for some reason.

      The post-game is SO GOOD.

      It’s one of those rare videogames that makes non-gamers ask “What is that?” And then “where can I buy it?”

      • choss@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 day ago

        I’ve heard many glowing reviews with this same sentiment. In order to avoid most spoilers, may I ask you here - if I didn’t enjoy Undertale, would I still like this? I didn’t enjoy the metagaming that undertale did, making fun of the player for reloading a save. It felt dishonest. Does Inscryption also do this?

        • Silverchase@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          21 hours ago

          I’ll back up June. I was “that’s pretty nice” on Undertale but wasn’t nearly as positive on it as its fandom was. I loved Inscryption. It’s not meta like Undertale, but it does have occasional fourth wall breaks, which is part of its game-within-a-game fiction.

        • Wahots@pawb.social
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          20 hours ago

          It’s a completely different game vs undertale. It’s like comparing Dota 2 to DiRT rally, haha. It’s worth going in blind, and the post-game is extremely good and very replayable (and adds new content).

  • Silverchase@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    19
    ·
    1 day ago

    Ultimate Chicken Horse $5.24 (65% off, matching the all-time low)

    Design platformer levels with your friends, then race them to the end, locally or online. Points are only awarded if someone died, so make the level extra dangerous!

    • paddirn@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      15 hours ago

      Really great party game, kids love it. There’s a constant push-pull to make the level just hard enough. It kind of breaks down though if somebody has made it effectively unwinnable for everybody and you can’t find a way to unblock it. Otherwise though, it’s a fantastic game.

    • travysh@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      19 hours ago

      I’ve played somewhere around 1500 hours across multiple systems. There’s really nothing else quite like it.

  • Silverchase@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    11
    ·
    1 day ago

    Gato Roboto $1.99 (75% off, matching the all-time low)

    Polished metroidvania with great monochrome pixel art. You are a cat piloting a robot suit. It only lasts a few hours, but they’re hours well spent.

  • TerkErJerbs@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    5
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    24 hours ago

    Ghostrunner 2 is 80% off for $17CAD and runs great on the deck. It looks like some of the best speed swordplay vibes from Cyberpunk and I’m stoked to play it.

    Also picked up Rage for 5 bucks.

  • Silverchase@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    11
    ·
    1 day ago

    Hypnospace Outlaw $4.79 (a bizarre 76% off, new all-time low)

    Explore a remarkably authentic simulation of the 1999 World Wide Web as a moderator of a Geocities-like website hub. Rather than just being a joke about the corny retro graphics, it’s a heartfelt funeral for that era of the internet.

  • ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    21
    ·
    2 days ago

    hackmud $19.99 $14.99 (25% off)

    If you’re into scripting or hacking you should check this game out. It’s an interesting twist on the Multi-User Dungeon genre. The game presents mostly as a command-line interface where your goal is to seek out targets to pwn for money/points. NPC targets will have vulnerabilities you need to find and exploit in order to expose a hackable part. Once found you engage hackermode where you’ll have a timelimit to break the target’s security (mostly through bruteforce cracking). The game allows you to write short scripts in JavaScript to automate searching for vulnerabilities and cracking security.

    Being Multi-User, there are other users online doing what you’re doing and you’re free to chat with them and exchange scripts. You’re also free to write malicious scripts that will steal money/points from others who don’t check scripts before running them!

    The part I found cool was that the game mirrors IRL hacking much closer than other hacking games. You’ll often need to submit incorrect data to NPC targets to get an error message that will contain hints about where to go next. Ex. A webpage has “News” and “About Us” sections. You can request a section that doesn’t exist to get an error message that shows all acceptable sections: “News”, “About Us”, or “Employees”. You’ve found a hidden section! Using scripts to send a bunch of mal-formed data at a target and then analyzing which ones generate an exploitable error is part of real-life security testing.

  • Silverchase@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    1 day ago

    Overcooked! 2 $6.24 (75% off, matching the all-time low)

    Chaotic co-op cooking, local or online. Complete restaurant orders quickly in increasingly absurd scenarios. Cook in a haunted kitchen, above a mineshaft, in the middle of the highway, or on a burning hot air balloon that crashes into another restaurant! This is the kind of game that people joke will ruin friendships.

    • TBi@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      19 hours ago

      I got overcooked 1. It was over difficult and felt too much like work and not fun like a game should be. Maybe 2 is better but I’ve no incentive to try it out.

      • Schmuppes@lemmy.world
        cake
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        16 hours ago

        Maybe you’re just not the type of person for that type of game. I’ve spent lots of hours playing it with m girlfriend. Sometimes it’s fun, often it’s frustrating and I just can’t be motivated to try and improve my efficiency to get that third or fourth star in many of the levels. It’s fine that way.

  • Silverchase@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    1 day ago

    Assault Android Cactus $4.99 (75% off, matching the all-time low)

    Slick arcade-style twin-stick shooter with a pumpin’ soundtrack. Clear out arenas full of robots, build up combos, and go for a high score. A large roster of characters offer a wide variety of playstyles. There’s also 4-player local co-op.

    • TyrianMollusk@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      8 hours ago

      Cactus is probably the single best mastery/arcade style twin-stick shooter out there. Don’t let the cute looks fool you, while this game is solid to just enjoy, the chaining and level design offer great challenge if you want it, and the way each character changes both the basic play and the way you chain a level show a just fantastic design level.

      It usually goes $5 in sales, but it’s still crazy we can get games that good for so little.

  • B0NK3RS@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    27
    ·
    edit-2
    2 days ago

    This War of Mine: Complete Edition £26.93 £3.91 (85% off)

    In my opinion one of the greatest games but also one of the saddest. If you already own the game then I highly recommend all the DLC as they all bring some interesting scenarios to the game.

    • freebee@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      20 hours ago

      Played it pirated years ago. Not really looking to play again tbh because it’s so sad, but I’ll buy it discounted for supporting, I back then liked the very original angle of playing with trapped victims instead of army.

  • mox@lemmy.sdf.org
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    32
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    2 days ago

    Wildermyth is a lovely combination of storytelling and xcom-style combat, with a genealogy system and chances for your heroes (and their descendants) to reappear in future games.