steam sale

[Acidbaron]

You'll want to get Sundered.

Looks nice, not that great at those kind of platform games though

[Ozyorkbourne]

So the steam sale started. What are you guys getting from it?

I've gotten South Park: TFBH, Rust, was thinking of getting the Witcher 3 Wild Hunt GoTY, possibly a Total War game. I've heard good things about TW Rome II but I've never played a TW game so I'm not sure about dipping my toe. There's so much DLC but most of it looks overpriced and has mixed reviews.

[avitush]

Well. Frostpunk has been my big one from this sale. 16 hours played in less than a week, which is a lot for me. I'm definitely getting my money's worth.

[Halicia]

Well. Frostpunk has been my big one from this sale. 16 hours played in less than a week, which is a lot for me. I'm definitely getting my money's worth.

I thought I got my money's worth just from the "walking in snow" animations.

[Ripster42]

Haven't really had anything catch my eye yet. Still a lot of time to go. Really wanna see a sale on Octopath Traveler but I think that's just wishful thinking.

IIRC they had some legal nonsense a few years ago, so the sales don't change the whole time. If it's not on sale at the start, it's not going to be on sale. That's a good one though.

[Temp name]

IIRC they had some legal nonsense a few years ago, so the sales don't change the whole time. If it's not on sale at the start, it's not going to be on sale. That's a good one though.

I think they can still add games to the sale, but they don't do the flash sales (which were nice when you caught them, but stupid otherwise)

[OnlineSamantha]

Just got a Rift S so I picked up Beat Saber, Thumper, Budget Cuts, Space Pirate Trainer, Job Simulator, Sairento VR, GORN, SUPERHOT VR, Arizona Sunshine, Slime Rancher, Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, and The Forest.

[avitush]

I thought I got my money's worth just from the "walking in snow" animations.

Yeah, Frostpunk has been amazing. It's my favorite single-player Steam purchase in recent memory. It was on my wishlist for so long because I kept thinking "it looks interesting, but not $30 interesting" to myself. I finally got it on sale for $15, but now I know it would've been well worth the full price.

I've gone through the New Home scenario a few times now (replayed a couple of times for achievements and to see what's different when I try different tech paths, faith vs order laws, etc). All the hours I've spent playing so far, and I haven't even played the other scenarios yet.

I have read a few reviews that say the higher difficulties are borderline broken. Will be interested to see how that plays out. I have a lot of experience with city builder/survival games, so hopefully I'll be up to the challenge there.

[avitush]

Oh boy. Surprise $50 Steam card! I was going to just stop with Frostpunk since it was already over my "budget" for games, but the Steam card changed that. I figured I might as well burn that card while the sale is going on and get the most out of it (since some of these are $60 normal price but currently $20 on sale, like SC6), even if I may not get around to playing some of the games for a while.

My haul from the sale:

Frostpunk (bought with my own money during the sale, before I got the gift card)
Soulcalibur 6
The Dwarves
Age of Empires 2 HD
Underrail (interesting looking post-apocalyptic RPG that I've had on my wishlist for a while)
Witcher 2
Pyramid of Prophecy DLC for Heroes of Hammerwatch

I've already downloaded and played around with Soulcalibur 6 a little bit. From what little I've played so far, the game looks amazing and is a solid improvement over SC5. I've been a big fan of Soulcalibur since SC2 and am not disappointed with what I'm seeing so far in SC6. It bothers me a little bit that Tira is DLC and not on the base roster (she's been around long enough that I think she should be on the base roster), but I can deal with that, I guess. I'll probably eventually be tempted to get that Tira DLC since she's one of my favorite characters. Raphael, Tira, and Taki have usually been my mains in the previous games.

The Dwarves looks like a sort of action/tactical RPG, from what I gather. It's based on a book series that I've read and love. That was what got me interested in the first place.

Witcher 2 should be fun when I get around to it. I've heard good things about the Witcher series in general from...pretty much everyone I know who has played them. I've been advised to just skip the first one, watch a compilation of all its cutscenes and such on YouTube, and start actually playing with the second one, so that's what I'm doing.

Underrail is something that randomly popped up in my queue one day and got added to my wishlist because the trailer/reviews made it look fun. I love isometric RPGs and the post-apocalyptic setting that it appears to have.

Age of Empires 2 HD is something I've wanted for a while because I played the original AoE2 back in the day and enjoyed it. I lost the box/physical copy long ago, so I haven't played it in forever, but I have fond memories. So hopefully the HD version will be fun for me.

My Steam wallet still has a dollar and change left on it after all those. I'll probably just sit on that and put it towards my next Steam purchase, whenever that happens (either that, or some game on my wishlist goes on sale with an absurd discount that makes it cheap enough for the dollar and change alone to cover it). Although I doubt I'll be buying any more games for a while, since I have a huge backlog of games now. Thanks to that gift card, I wiped out a big chunk of my wishlist. $50 went quite a long way when some of the games on my wishlist were 90% off.

[Acidbaron]

Glad I picked up grim dawn it really puts diablo to shame.

Can't find one thing that diablo is better at, maybe later on grim dawn gets a bit more boring yet to complete a full run of the story.

[Jastall]

Well. Frostpunk has been my big one from this sale. 16 hours played in less than a week, which is a lot for me. I'm definitely getting my money's worth.

Same, it's a really well put together game, even if it has probably less replay value than most city managers/builders. I struggled a bit at first but you can easily have everything on cruise control regarding your resources, until the game throws new problems at you of course. I almost made the mistake of abandoning survivors at first, but once you get enough wood housing and feeding people is pretty easy all things considered.

I ended up also getting the last DLC I missed for Pillars of Eternity II, the Forgotten Sanctum which is good but quite a bit more punishing than the last time I played that game. I've had my eyes on Darksiders III and Subnautica as well, but I very well know that between WoW getting patched and my current backlog I won't play either of these for months so I held off. Not like Steam sales are uncommon anyway.

[avitush]

Same, it's a really well put together game, even if it has probably less replay value than most city managers/builders. I struggled a bit at first but you can easily have everything on cruise control regarding your resources, until the game throws new problems at you of course. I almost made the mistake of abandoning survivors at first, but once you get enough wood housing and feeding people is pretty easy all things considered.

Yep. I screwed up a lot of things and failed my first attempt. I think I tried to research heating tech too early too hard without focusing as much on the other trees. So I found myself at the point where I had a fully upgraded generator but constantly running out of coal because my coal income (as well as other resource income) was total shit. I also picked a lot of bad laws (dueling law, etc). Second playthrough I managed to win it, but just barely.

Third playthrough, I focused more heavily on resources first in the tech tree. I ended up with 3 advanced coal mines, 2 advanced wall drills, and 2 advanced steelworks, all fully staffed. I was rolling in resources to the point where I was constantly having to build more of those resource depots to hold stuff, and nothing else was a problem. I completely destroyed it that time without breaking a sweat.

Just need to check out the other campaigns now.

[babyback]

A first world problem to the max. I have disposable income and usually buy games when they come out so I basically already own everything I find remotely interesting during Steam sales.

[Jastall]

Yep. I screwed up a lot of things and failed my first attempt. I think I tried to research heating tech too early too hard without focusing as much on the other trees. So I found myself at the point where I had a fully upgraded generator but constantly running out of coal because my coal income (as well as other resource income) was total shit. I also picked a lot of bad laws (dueling law, etc). Second playthrough I managed to win it, but just barely.

Third playthrough, I focused more heavily on resources first in the tech tree. I ended up with 3 advanced coal mines, 2 advanced wall drills, and 2 advanced steelworks, all fully staffed. I was rolling in resources to the point where I was constantly having to build more of those resource depots to hold stuff, and nothing else was a problem. I completely destroyed it that time without breaking a sweat.

Just need to check out the other campaigns now.

I figured early on that all those generators upgrades probably weren't for show and that the temperature would just keep dropping (-150c? jesus fuck) and also that the thing eats through more coal than modern day China in its entirety. I went full tilt on heating and resource upgrades, trusting that housing and feeding were secondary concerns. Turns out I was right, I especially find food to be a suspiciously lax gameplay mechanic in a setting where the vast, vast majority of lifeforms should by all rights be dead towards the midgame. Pretty sure even hardy critters like polar bears can't survive -100 and lower when all water would be frozen solid, cutting off access to their food sources. Herbivores are right out as even lichen would die fast.

I had some Hope and disease problems until I decided to scrap some housing to make room for some temples and such. Some people were angry at first, but it allowed me to heat everything quite nicely and drastically cut down on the number of afflicted. Coal was easily taken care of by mines, thumpers and an outpost.

[Raelyn]

I would like to try Rimworld as it has very good reviews, but is never on sale I guess a game with 98% positive rating doesn't need to whore itself for clicks!

[RadasNoir]

Saved up some money during the past week or so, and managed to finally buy a bunch of stuff that have been wallowing on my wishlist for some time:

Battle Chasers: Nightwar
Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2
Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 and the Uprising Expansion
Darkest Dungeon
Divinity: Original Sin 2
Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
Warhammer: Vermintide 2

All that, and miscellaneous DLC for various things I already own.

So far, Sins and Darkest Dungeon have probably been the standouts for me. I really enjoy Sins take on RTS on the scale of a 4X (moreso than I did Stellaris's) and the mod support for it is incredible. Meanwhile, while I already dug Darkest Dungeon's Lovecraftian aesthetic, I've found myself also enjoying the gameplay more so than I thought I would.

On the other hand, there's Battlefleet Gothic and Vermintide. With Battlefleet Gothic, I've found the slower pace of ship movement and the battles in general to be more tedious than I expected, and when it comes to Vermintide, I also thought that slaughtering hordes of evil rats would be a tad more engaging. And both have the problem where the tedium can be replaced with frustration when fights start to get a tad chaotic. Maybe I just need to keep at it, and see if I can't find a character/faction that I enjoy playing....

Otherwise, everything else has either been enjoyable, but nothing I feel like gushing about just yet, or I haven't had the time to play enough to gauge one way or the other.

[avitush]

Warhammer: Vermintide 2

Vermintide 2 is great and worth every penny. If you've played VT1, you'll already have a good idea of how to play VT2. All the same concepts from VT1 apply, but VT2 has better graphics and a few features added (so a proper sequel, basically). I don't care as much for the base career each character has, but it doesn't take incredibly long to level up and gain access to more. Slayer Bardin is my favorite. He's squishy as fuck, but he's a ton of fun.

Definitely best played with friends (although that's just a personal preference for me, I don't like playing with randoms as much). Bots are better than they were in VT1, but still....kinda dumb.

I had some Hope and disease problems until I decided to scrap some housing to make room for some temples and such. Some people were angry at first, but it allowed me to heat everything quite nicely and drastically cut down on the number of afflicted. Coal was easily taken care of by mines, thumpers and an outpost.

I wasn't as big a fan of coal thumpers the first time I used them (granted, that was my first playthrough where I failed, so take that how you want). They seem to work, but that's a lot of workers required since I had to staff the coal thumper itself and gathering posts around it. Not as much a problem late game when I had a huge population, but I had issues keeping everything else staffed earlier. My "rolling in resources" playthrough, my entire coal income was from 3 advanced coal mines (all upgraded through tech, and automatons working two of them 24 hours a day) on the coal deposits. I did put down a charcoal kiln later game because I had excess wood, but otherwise, that was most of my entire coal income. Towards the end of that, I was hovering around something like 15k coal with steam hubs everywhere and the generator going wide open. That did start to drop pretty rapidly during the storm though (the charcoal kiln was inoperative and one of the coal mines collapsed).

But yeah, I'm getting replay value already. I've replayed New Home just for achievements and different tech trees. And to try different laws and such (went Faith the first time and Order the second time). I've also done a "nice leader who truly cares about the citizens" playthrough and an "evil dictator who forces children to work 24-hour shifts" playthrough now. Even if you're being a total dick, you can keep hope and discontent in check if you use the right abilities/laws at the right times. There are just so many different ways you can play the game, and I love that.

I've taken a small break from Frostpunk to check out a handful of those other games I grabbed but have an urge to play it again now. Think I'll start the Ark scenario tonight.

[Arrashi]

I would like to try Rimworld as it has very good reviews, but is never on sale I guess a game with 98% positive rating doesn't need to whore itself for clicks!

Rimworld would be worth it for 200% of its price. Its one of few games with actual endless replayability.

[unholytestament]

Age of Wonders 3 is free on Steam right now. Offer ends July 15th.

[RadasNoir]

Age of Wonders 3 is free on Steam right now. Offer ends July 15th.

Ooh, thanks for the heads up. This was actually something I considered grabbing during the recent summer sale; now I'm glad I held off.