Edit: it looks like the banner is incorrect. On the front page of steam it’s the right dates and says summer, but when I click on it to see all the sales it says spring with the dates for the spring sale. It’ll probably get fixed soon.
Soulstone survivors is solid for $10. Vampire survivors x action RPG with large number of unlockables
Dude. Fair warning for anybody getting into Vampire Survivors.
It’s designed with bunch of video lottery type effects.
This thing will grab you and not let go. Particularly after you get good at it.
Each round is 30 minutes. I think that’s so people will step away regularly instead of being stuck there. Seriously, its addictive.(And cheap, and fun, and constantly getting free updates, and dev has his own damn wiki not on fandom.)
for everyone who has an issue with the 30 minuted per run: later on you can speed up the game, so each round is down to 15 minutes.
I already bought them a week ago, but Furi and Blasphemous since a friend got them, and we already beat Furi together. Gorgeous game, though the walking sections make me not want to play again, especially since my Furier difficulty save reset.
Also Bloodstained to go with Blasphemous in a bundle, since I was thinking about it for a while, and Beastieball, since I saw some posts from one of the devs on Bluesky a while back and they seemed cool. And the game seems to have great reviews.
Speedrun mode in Furi auto skips walking segments.
Does it still give you the ranking at the end for achievements? Or just seeing how much I got KO’d?
No ranking, IIRC.
I loved furi, but damn those walking sections just made me roll my eyes. Developers think they can just get away with forced slow walking to build atmosphere.
What’s with the cynicism? Game is a boss gauntlet, what do you mean “get away” like they’re some AAA developers getting away with a lazy design choice? You can enable auto walking in those segments and go refill your water or something, but that was a creative choice, not a “let’s cut corners—they won’t even notice” choice.
I mean “get away with” as in they think they can do it in a half-assed manner. In a movie, as you mentioned the director is a wannabe film director, you don’t just throw in sad music and expect the audience to ‘buy into’ the quality of the scene. You have to craft the previous scene, and set up the flow into the current scene, and have decent dialogue, decent acting, decent lighting, decent sound, etc. etc. etc. If you just half-ass it and throw in sad music, the audience is going to either realize you’re just trying to jank with their emotions in a sloppy manner, or be completely pulled out of the experience.
The walking in furi may have been okay if it was just in one section, or had waaay better dialogue rather than eye-rolling pseudo-philosophical wanking that was actually interesting to pay attention to during the walking… but making it a repeated thing? It was annoying. It ruined verisimilitude. It made me angry that I couldn’t make the character decision to just stab the dude cosplaying as a rabbit right in his rabbity face.
Yeah, but it’s a boss gauntlet from an indie developer… the whole point is the boss fights—this is where all the resources went. Everything you demanded above requires more development hours (more money) or better creative choices. For an indie game, pumping money in any place other than your core gameplay experience is not an option most of the time, and poor creative choices aren’t always made out of laziness.
You talk like you know they had the resources but decided to “half-ass” it, which’s an odd assumption to make about a trivial part of the game. I agree these parts should’ve been skippable from the get-go, and I understand how frustrating walk-and-talk segments can be in action games and I agree they don’t belong there at all, but none of this justifies the cynicism.
One of the devs boxed, and while I can’t find a source, I heard the walking is supposed to give the same feeling as stepping into the ring. Which is pretty neat.
But I started turning on Youtube as early as after the 2nd boss…
Site is unreachable to me now.
That’s pretty much the norm on the first day.
I’ll start looking tomorrow and compare all the offers.
Yep, the sale is THAT GOOD.
Tower wizard just came out but it’s amazing at $3
Tower Wizard is really good. If you want a taster of the style, the dev has a previous game Magic Archery which is 100% free (no microtransactions), just a very good, short, incremental game.
Looks cool but I’ve never played a clicker game. I like Melvor Idle but I’m not sure how much I would like simply repeatedly clicking on things to progress
Totally understandable, but this one is set up so you’re not actually just clicking more than a few seconds at the beginning. And then it is really streamlined going forward so you’re actually doing micromanagement on your tower. You can click on something to slightly boost its production speed, and pretty early on you can unlock an auto click where you just cover your cursor over or something if you wanna boost it, but it’s totally optional
From those that I bought, It’s probably the game I’ve played the most, though it is more of an idle game than anything else and at higher levels it became old really quick (for me).
There’s a million free versions of this game on any appstore. This is just like, idle clicker + wizards
Well, I bought RoboCop.
I mean, after that third movie he wasn’t doing so hot so I suspect Murphy’s pretty cheap……
Yeah, but I’m cheaper so I only paid for the mass produced version. No movie bullet holes for me I’m afraid…
I’d buy that for a dollar
I’d rather use that dollar and buy an older game i haven’t played than spend it on pretty skins.
Amen to that
Finally bought the Dead Space remake and WOW do I love this game. It’s even better than I remember the original being.
Good to hear, I think I won’t have time to get around to it this year so I’ll hold off for now
They really fixed most of the aging game problems with the remake imo. I tend to prefer my horror with some agency to fight back.
Outer Wilds at 40% off again. Does it ever get lower? I know I should pay full price because it’s supposed to be a masterpiece but I’m afraid I’ll bounce off it. Also a bit hesitant to play it because I’m afraid it will just give me more existential dread and anxiety and I have too much of that already.
IMO outer wilds has a strong tone of optimism and hope in the face of existential dread, so I think you’re probably good on that front. And if you’re at all a fan of environmental storytelling and don’t hate physics sims, I think you’ll like it just fine. If you’re super unsure, maybe watch like the first hour (or less if you find your answer early) of someone doing a blind playthrough and see if the manner of storytelling grabs you.
According to SteamDB, 40% is tied for the all-time low.
Ah thanks. That’s what I thought.
https://isthereanydeal.com/game/outer-wilds/info/
Store low at the major retailers (incl. Steam) is $15
I picked it up and put it down a few times because I kept getting stuck and felt like I wasn’t making any progress, but holy shit when I finally got a small amount of assistance from a friend and got things moving it was like an avalanche and it all unraveled magnificently.
The DLC was somehow even better than the base game by quite a wide margin for me, but I absolutely had to get help starting it because I couldn’t figure out how without cheating.
Yea I personally couldn’t get really into it. I mean it’s fascinating, beautiful, very intense (it has all the extremes of space)… but I’m stuck and can’t find the motivation to go further. It’s pretty cryptic. If you’re into puzzle games you might crack it better than I do
Ugh, I have to decide between the various ace attorney collections, elden ring, and lies of p, because I can’t justify buying all of them…
Go for Elden Ring!! If you have not played any soulslike before this game is a great introduction to the genre. It’s also so BEAUTIFUL, the lore is amazing, and most importantly…it’s so fucking fun! An experience you won’t forget.
The only one I don’t have is the Miles Edgeworth one, I still need to start Apollo Justice…
I may be a patient gamer, but I could stand to be even moreso
Edgeworth’s games are very different in structure but SO GOOD. I played the first one when it came out and it instantly became my favorite in the series. I still need to get around to playing the sequel though, lol.
Personally, I’ve never played the Ace Attorney games so I can’t comment on them, but between Elden Ring and Lies of P I’d suggest Elden Ring if you’ve never played it. Lies of P was fun but it never quite hooked me the same way. Also if you’ve never played a Soulslike before, Elden Ring is a fantastic place to start. The DLC is also amazing, and is probably my favourite add-on content of any game ever. It was a bit controversial at launch for being very difficult, but I think that’s kind of the point.
Elden Ring is definitely the easiest to get into, but I think by the end becomes the hardest of all the Souls games on a normal playthrough. Due to its open world though it is easy to trivialize the game if you’re really struggling, with the exception of the final boss of the DLC who is just a brick wall no matter what (or at least was at launch, I haven’t played the DLC in a little while so that might’ve changed). Elden Ring wasn’t my first Souls game, but it was for all my friends who played it, and they all loved it just as much as I did. I’d put it in my top 3 of all time, maybe #1.
With all that being said, Lies of P is still a really good game, and I’m sure other people feel differently than I do comparing the two, those are just the thoughts of a massive Elden Ring fan so maybe take it with a grain of salt.
I’ve bounced off a couple souls games before but I’m now like 150 hours deep into elden ring on a friend’s copy, lol, but they only have the base game. I’d like to play the dlc (which is not on sale) eventually so I think it makes sense to get my own copy at some point (I’ve heard transferring saves is pretty easy on pc)
ETA: I normally don’t like hard games but I keep feeling like elden ring is encouraging me to be better rather than trying to defeat me, which is a difference I think a lot of hard games miss
That’s a good point, I hadn’t thought of it that way before but you’re right. As much as I love Sekiro and Dark Souls they don’t really encourage you to do better, more just punish you for messing up.
In Demon’s Souls, when you died the first time you were stuck at 50% max health until you regained human form, and dying in human form darkened the world tendency.
In Dark Souls, if you got cursed your health was capped at 50% until you removed the curse which wasn’t free. In the original build of the game the curses stacked all the way to 1/16th of your max health but thankfully they changed that.
In Dark Souls II you lost a fraction of your max health after each death until you were down to 50%.
In Bloodborne, your heals didn’t replenish after death so each time you healed and died you lost that heal and would have to go around finding more heals.
Dark Souls III wasn’t too punishing, I can’t think of anything at the moment that was super punishing about that game. It was my go-to recommendation for beginners until Elden Ring for that reason.
In Sekiro, every time you died you lost half your money and couldn’t get it back. You also had a chance to make a random NPC sick which would prevent you from continuing their quest until you healed them, which wasn’t easy or cheap. The chance to get someone sick also increased the more you died. I think the baseline was 13% chance to get someone sick, and increased every subsequent death until it capped at 50% each death, though there was a way to reset that number.
Elden Ring is kind of like Dark Souls III in that it doesn’t really punish you for dying, which I think is the right approach. If you go with Elden Ring and love it, and do the DLC and love that too, I’d strongly recommend going to Dark Souls III next. It’s the closest to Elden Ring.
I like to try to recommend people who are interested in Souls games to start with Dark Souls 1. If that’s your first soulslike the bosses will still feel epic and it will be a magical experience. If you start with Elden Ring or DS3 and go back to Dark Souls you will get completely underwhelmed.
Between Pyromancy, Zweihander and Poise DS1 is also by far the easiest of the games, even for newcomers.
That’s true, but I find the sluggish pace (by modern standards) and the second half of the game feeling a little unfinished or rushed makes it a toss up with newbies. I’m a massive fan of Dark Souls 1, but I can see why some people would find it dated. Dark Souls III on the other hand feels like a modern game still, so for someone used to mainly playing modern games I can see why they’d be turned off. Personally I mostly play games from the 360 generation so DS1 doesn’t feel dated to me, but I totally get it.
It is dated, and the last third of it does suck. In truth it would probably be a good candidate for a remake.
Even then, it is a wonderful game that you can only really enjoy fully if you haven’t played any later soulslike first. To me, that first time experience is worth trying to push for.
Fair enough. I played DS1 after DS3 and thoroughly enjoyed it, but my experience probably wouldn’t be everyone’s. If someone is planning on playing the whole series anyway, yeah start with the first. But if they’re not really sure, I think DS3 is a safer bet. Though now I’d say Elden Ring.
I’ve heard that recommendation a lot - “play DS1 first because otherwise you won’t have the patience to play it later”, and TBH all that tells me is to skip 1, play the more recent entries, and then move on to the many, many other games that I keep meaning to play, lol.
It’s not really that you won’t have the patience later. It’s more like this: Dark Souls 1 is extremely basic in its boss design. If that’s your first soulslike, it doesn’t matter because you have no frame of reference and you’ll have a great time. Come back to it later and you’ll react with “…that’s it?” to a lot of bosses, which is a shame. This is something I’ve seen a lot from people whose first soulslike was Elden Ring.
The world and level design in Dark Souls 1 is still on an absolute top tier level so skipping it altogether would be sad. Many consider the first half of DS1 to be the best level designs FromSoft has ever done.
Still a little expensive for my taste but I think I’ll pick up Space Marine 2 since a buddy has been hounding me to play it with him
Bloons TD 6 is $1.39 so I bought a copy for my wife so we can play together.
That’s a steal. It’s a great game
And once again, Steam runs into various errors for me because of the high number of people getting in on the sale.
A beautiful reason to be inconvenienced. Enjoy gaming harmony my friends.
Guardians of the Galaxy was surprisingly good. More so than the movies, the game gives all the characters their due time.
Just make sure to stop when people speak, otherwise you’ll go past the invisible point that makes them stop and then you’ll miss out on the dialogue.
Could have taken some notes from God of War there.
Titan Souls is a fantastic boss rush game where you die in one hit but the bosses only take a few hits as well. You only have one arrow to shoot and you need to go pick it up or stand still to recall it to yourself before firing again.
That’s a neat concept, and it’s got a cool art style. I’ll be checking this one out for sure.
Can anyone recommend a game that can be played over zoom (preferably in a web browser) that isn’t:
- Jackbox
- What the Dub
- Rifftrax the Game
- Papa’s quiz
- Use Your Words
Tic Tac Together is team-based recursive tic-tac-toe. When both teams try to claim the same square at the same time, they have to fight for it by playing a subgame. Or a subsubgame. Et cetera. It’s surprisingly strategic. How much board control should you give up to secure a contested square?
I’ve heard good things about Sunderfolk but haven’t played it myself. It has hex-grid tactical combat with co-op done via smartphone, so only the buyer of the game needs to share their screen.
I’ll check those out and thanks!
Picking up Rogue Legacy 2 at half off. I really enjoyed the first one
