Steam Sales

[kingcharlesiii]

Has anyone here heard of a game called Sunless Sea? It's on sale now and I'm really curious about what people think about it. I generally trust the games people like here and a dark, open world survival game seems like something everyone would like.

[Stormweaver]

Has anyone here heard of a game called Sunless Sea? It's on sale now and I'm really curious about what people think about it. I generally trust the games people like here and a dark, open world survival game seems like something everyone would like.

It's not bad. I havn't played it since shortly after it came out, and there have been updates since, so I may be a little out of date.

The worldbuilding and atmosphere is great - lots of lovecrafty vibes, but a fair bit more lighthearted. The vast majority of your time will be spent sailing from one place to another, or shooting things - and it's slow. Really slow. Kinda relaxing, but it can drag on a bit after your first few deaths. Beyond that, it's 'roguelite' - there's a succession mechaninc that lets you carry over some very limited progress from a previous playthrough. Lots of RNG in the dialouge choices, and a smaller amounts of it in the world map - stuff stays in similar places, just in different orders.

In the end it's a game about planning routes, hoping that you find new places before you run out of fuel and supplies, and trying to keep track of half a dozen quests at once. And infecting the world with mushrooms, because reasons.

[MoRmEnGiL]

Invisible inc is also 33% off, for me that is 13,32 euro. Not a bad price considering it is a great game, though you will get better discounts in the future for sure.

I know this is getting rave reviews, and as a fan of both turn based tactical games, and of Klei (due to Don't Starve), I wound up picking it up last week.

Sadly, my opinion on it is "meh". A lot of the reviews rave about depth, but I didn't really see it to any extent that would impress me. The campaign is very short, the options in the strategic metagame/world-map feel very limited, and I didn't see a whole lot of tactical diversity. I played for a handful of hours, and didn't feel compelled to boot it up again since.

So yeah, I'd recommend holding out for a better sale if you want to give it a try. It seems like a solid little game, but really nothing to rave about.

I see. Thanks for the warning man :]

[FlowerChild]

The Long Dark is currently at 50% off.

This is one I would recommend for survival fans. Extremely slow pace, there's one level in it (Coastal Highway) that still pisses me off as I think it's over-saturated with loot which can kill the fun of a session, but if you're into slow methodical survival gameplay, this is a game I really love.

I see. Thanks for the warning man :]

Well...don't get me wrong. Like I said, I think Invisible Inc. is a solid little game, I just don't think it quite lives up to the hype.

[DaveYanakov]

Divinity: Dragon Commander was worth it when I paid full price and is now 75% off for the day. It's a very simple example of an RTS but the actual fun is off the charts which makes up for mechanics that are basic by modern benchmarks. You play as an emperor fighting a civil war against your siblings on a Total War-style map with one set of battles per turn. In between those battles you interact with your generals which changes their ability to fight the battles you cannot personally command, and deal with a squabbling council who bring decisions that affect your armies and territory bonuses.

And when you personally command a battle you can stop hanging back and giving orders in order to personally take the field. As a dragon wearing a jetpack.

[BinoAl]

Antichamber is down to 1.99. I wouldn't recommend it at full price simply because there's no replay value and it's rather short, but for 1.99, I'd absolutely recommend it. It's one of the most interesting games I've ever played.

[Larmantine]

Don't know if it is on sale anymore, but I grabbed Planetary Annihilation for ~ 5 Euros a few days ago, and I'm having a blast just in Singleplayer. I've yet to touch Multiplayer. It's not SO DEEP (it is quite deep) and strategical as SupCom or TA but it really is fun. I've been playing it nonstop. When you first collide a moon/planet into another celestial body, the feeling is superb. I've yet to try out the death-star thingy.

EDIT: Yup, it's still on sale for 4,19 Euro (in my country at least). Any RTS fan should give it a go.

[devak]

Don't know if it is on sale anymore, but I grabbed Planetary Annihilation for ~ 5 Euros a few days ago, and I'm having a blast just in Singleplayer. I've yet to touch Multiplayer. It's not SO DEEP (it is quite deep) and strategical as SupCom or TA but it really is fun. I've been playing it nonstop. When you first collide a moon/planet into another celestial body, the feeling is superb. I've yet to try out the death-star thingy.

EDIT: Yup, it's still on sale for 4,19 Euro (in my country at least). Any RTS fan should give it a go.

Well for 5eu it's worth a try.

I backed the thing, pretty fun game but ultimately, somehow, my computer hates PA and PA hates my computer. So my performance with it is just to cry about, even though i have a pretty good computer.

[Larmantine]

I backed the thing, pretty fun game but ultimately, somehow, my computer hates PA and PA hates my computer. So my performance with it is just to cry about, even though i have a pretty good computer.

Dunno man, I have a ~4 year old laptop and the game runs just fine. (I have an i7 @ 2.36 Ghz and a GeForce 610m (which is complete shit)). Sure, some framerate issues start once the units are nearing a thousand, but that issue was present in SupCom, so I've no problem with it. Maybe now they fixed the issues that were present when you were playing it. There was an update few days ago.

[Sarudak]

I have never been able to play the game. I backed it on kickstarter and I've never been able to get past generating planets

[Stormweaver]

Race The Sun is free for 24 hours (more like 15 now) on steam if anyone fancies it.

[Dralnalak]

Infinifactory is 33% off, for those who haven't picked it up yet based on the recommendations on this board.

[Taleric]

Not steam but a sale. Spintires, and awesome Russian terrain vehicle simulator. Runs smooth! Mostly great physics! Get logs from one site to another conserving your fuel fighting the terrain.

https://gamesrepublic.com/game/simulati ... 24890.html

Worth 9 buck prob no more.

[Stormweaver]

Reassembly is 33% off at the moment.

It's...interesting. I've sunk a good 13 hours into it in a couple of days and have had fun so far - Modular, Physics-based ship building and destrustion is always fun, and there's a kerbal-like quality that will leave you designing a ship for half an hour, giving it a go for a few minutes and then jumping back in the editor.

I'm not certain how it'll do in terms of longevity - the content feels front-loaded (later, unlockable factions have a pitiful amount of building blocks compared to the starting faction) and gameplay doesn't really seem to ramp up as time goes on. It's cheap though, which is nice.

[Larmantine]

Reassembly is 33% off at the moment.

It's...interesting. I've sunk a good 13 hours into it in a couple of days and have had fun so far - Modular, Physics-based ship building and destrustion is always fun, and there's a kerbal-like quality that will leave you designing a ship for half an hour, giving it a go for a few minutes and then jumping back in the editor.

I'm not certain how it'll do in terms of longevity - the content feels front-loaded (later, unlockable factions have a pitiful amount of building blocks compared to the starting faction) and gameplay doesn't really seem to ramp up as time goes on. It's cheap though, which is nice.

This is a great game. I've sunken the last few evenings to it. However, some factions are so friggin OP, like the Tinkrell with their modular weapons, sure, they are fixed and you have to steer the ship always to shoot, but at some point I was to able to rip through entire Agent fleets with my ship like a hot knife through butter. The cannons were so powerful that it was faster to travel by shooting them and move by recoil, than to use the ship's thrusters. The farmers were interesting, many playstyle possibilities. The starting faction became OP soon enough (Missiles FTW) and the Red faction was downright underpowered (perhaps by design). One thing I don't get though - as you travel through wormholes, the enemies get tougher with each hole? If not then there really is no reason to progress further as once you can easily defeat an agent fleet, you've basically won.

[DaveYanakov]

The stealth release of Planetary Annihilation: Titans is a replacement of/expansion for the original release of Planetary Annihilation. Heavily optimized and full of features that should have been in the release it is on sale for a few more days at 66% off. Kind of a burn but at least they're offering it for free to the kickstarter backers. I personally only paid $15 in the first place so $13.50 on top of that still works. YMMV.

It is kind of a blast to play when it includes tactics like setting up a device that blows up the entire planet in response to a full fledged invasion and then retreating your commander through a gate at the last second in order to win a match.

[FlowerChild]

The stealth release of Planetary Annihilation: Titans is a replacement of/expansion for the original release of Planetary Annihilation. Heavily optimized and full of features that should have been in the release it is on sale for a few more days at 66% off. Kind of a burn but at least they're offering it for free to the kickstarter backers. I personally only paid $15 in the first place so $13.50 on top of that still works. YMMV.

Yeah, I dunno man. I saw that thing release and just kinda facepalmed about it. PA is right up there with Starforge and Spacebase DF-9 in the short list of spectacular early access disasters, and following that up with charging a substantial amount for a glorified patch is unlikely to do anything good for their reputation :)

[BinoAl]

...Planetary Annihilation: Titans...

Eugh. I died a little bit inside when I saw that on steam. I bought the first PA on sale once, figuring "Hey, it might not be much yet, but this could end up really cool!". To see them release what amounts to a patch as a separate game entirely makes my original buy feel like a total waste, since the game in it's state at the time was definitely not worth the money to me.

[Gilberreke]

They're asking for 37€ for me, so yeah. I assume the sale is only if you own the previous game? The whole thing sounds like BS to me.

[FlowerChild]

They're asking for 37€ for me, so yeah. I assume the sale is only if you own the previous game? The whole thing sounds like BS to me.

Yeah, it's only for people that previously owned PA, and they're giving it out for free for people that backed them on kickstarter. Remember how it cost something like 90$ during early access for awhile though? Those people are essentially getting screwed and are only getting the 66% discount when they way overpaid for the original title. I could imagine it being very hard to stomach shelling out additional cash for Titans after that.

For me though, it largely comes down to the original PA just not being fun. It didn't feel like a finished game (maybe I'm a few patches behind, but comments I've seen tend to support it still isn't pre-Titans), and definitely didn't feel like a worthy successor to TA and Supreme Commander. To me it felt a lot like a very light rush-centric RTS with very little depth to it, despite the big ticket planet smashing action. I also found the 3D planets served to reduce tactical depth as it largely eliminated chokepoints and made terrain barely a consideration. By contrast, one of the big "oh wow!" factors about TA when it first came out was the 3D terrain (which no one else had at the time) and the tactical depth it brought to the table.

I've tried a number of times to get back into it, still having an underlying and lingering desire for it to be good, but I've inevitably given up after a couple of hours each time, and I just really can't say that it is fun. Overall strategy seems to boil down to "expand as fast as humanly possible and rush rush rush". Defensive units seem to be a complete joke, hardly worth building, and getting better at the game seems to revolve entirely around me pushing myself to expand and click faster rather than come up with any interesting strategies until one side's big blob of units is bigger than the other side's big blob for the win.

Anyways, suffice it to say that when I see an expansion/new-game/paid-patch that doesn't seem to address these underlying issues anyways and seems to mark the end of support for the original title as well, my response is "fuck this". Maybe if it ever drops to a couple of bucks or something I might try it out, but even with this 66% discount thing (which I do have access to), I've basically got zero inclination to pick it up.

[DaveYanakov]

On the plus side, there are some fairly substantial mods that overhaul the original title to a similar degree so there are options for it. I put more hours into Total Annihilation in my youth than any other RTS combined but I can see where I may be the only one interested in this one anymore. You're understating a bit when you call PA one of the most spectacular Kickstarter failures.

[dawnraider]

Sir, You Are Being Hunted is on a pretty hefty 80% sale for only $4 until the 21st.

[devak]

Yeah, I dunno man. I saw that thing release and just kinda facepalmed about it. PA is right up there with Starforge and Spacebase DF-9 in the short list of spectacular early access disasters, and following that up with charging a substantial amount for a glorified patch is unlikely to do anything good for their reputation :)

I think PA gets way more flak than it deserves. But yea, their reputation is destroyed and i don't think anything other than a rename will do.

[Stormweaver]

For anyone else who has seen it be brought up on here and is curious to try - The Dawn Of War Franchise is free to play all this weekend on steam. And 75% off if you like it.

[DaveYanakov]

Grey Goo, a recent release RTS of the 90s style is both free to play for the weekend and 60% off to purchase if you like it. I'm going to be trying it at some point for sure