Many Welps

Even though I wasn’t playing all that much last year, I was still buying games. Which in retrospect, seems a bit silly as they’re still sitting, unplayed, staring back at mean mournfully from my library. But those games are old now, and the Winter Sale had new games to buy, so I set out to only buy a handful of that either looked interesting in the moment or had been on my wishlist for a while. I know Steam sales aren’t what they used to be and that better deals are often found on other sites during them but the seasonal sales are still when I do most of my shopping. I did show some restraint this time around.

My “strategy” for these sales is to go to my wishlist, sort it by discount, and start adding games to my cart that appeal to me in the moment. Then I wait a few days, review the cart, remove some games, review the wishlist again, maybe add some more things, repeat until right at the end of the sale when I finalize my purchase. I find it helps cut down on impulse purchases which I’m prone to. This is the period when I trim games from my wishlist as well. My “now or never” price point for a game is under $5. If it hits that, and I’m still passing it over, off it goes back into the ethereal mists of the Steam store.

My budget for this year’s Winter Sale was lower than usual on account of trying to buy games that I wanted to play over the next month rather than hoarding them until an unspecified date in the future. After 10 years on the platform and a backlog hundreds deep, it’s safe to say I’ve got plenty of options for when that unspecified date finally comes. But buying new games is fun and relatively cheap so what’s a little retail therapy right?

So, what did I actually buy? I know you’re just dying to know! I settled on four games by the end of the sale. One of which i ultimately ended up refunding because I could not get it to run.

Wytchwood: I added this to my wishlist earlier this year when I was looking for cozy games with quests. In my searches, Wytchwood kept coming up, though it’s debatable on how “cozy” it really is. The main objective is tricking people into situations so you can capture their souls for an angry demon-goat…but there’s no combat so lots of materials to collect, recipes to unlock, and a whole lot of quests. I also thought it would be a nice game for the Steam Deck which it’s turned out to be. I’ve already sunk some very enjoyable hours into it.

ATLYSS: This one’s a singleplayer/online action rpg that has the aesthetic of a 2000s era free to play MMO and some of the gameplay loops to boot. I tend to avoid early access, but it looked right up my alley and has an Overwhelmingly Positive score so I took the chance. I’ve played maybe 30 minutes, much of it spent grinding monsters for items to complete quests…it’s definitely my kind of game. All it’s missing to fit that F2P vibe is some fake micro transactions.

The Forest: Right before the Winter Sale started, I was in the market for a survival crafting game. The Forest, is one of those games I’ve seen around the Steam store for years but was always one I scrolled past when I saw it on the front page. I’m not typically one for survival crafting, but I wanted one that wasn’t in early access and The Forest was only $2! It was on the right sale at the right time.

Ghost of a Tale: This is one of those games that’s been on my wish list for years. It always caught my eye with it’s mouse characters and pretty screenshots on the store page. This year, it was $3 and I was determined to finally play it. Unfortunately, I could not get the game to start. It would go through the initial cut scenes but once it got to a point where I would could move the character the whole screen froze up. I went through all the basic troubleshooting: uninstall/reinstall, comparability mode, messing with resolutions and windowed mode, but I could not get it running. In the end, I refunded this one.

I was happy with these, and they came out to a grand total of $15 (after the refund). I was under budget!

Then the Squad got together and decided to go on a shopping spree…it’s hard to get four people to agree on games to play. So sometimes we go through a Steam Sale together and see if there’s anything that appeals to all of us. There’s a lot of lobbying back and forth as each of us try to convince the others why we think we should all get this or that. We typically settle on a few after much debate and it’s enough for us to play until the next big sale.

These are the four additional games we picked up for the group:

Nuclear Nightmare: To be perfectly honest, I have no idea what this game is. None of us had heard of it before but it was $2, has guns, and looks spooky so I’m sure we’ll enjoy it.

Ranch Simulator: A bit suprised by this one. The Squad tends to play action games and this one is definately not an action game. I think it will be a nice change of pace though for our group gaming sessions.

Warhammer: Vermintide 2: We played through the first Vermintide years ago and enjoyed it. We weren’t particularly good at it. We’ve been eyeing the sequel for a while but, up until this year, it hadn’t been cheap enough for us all to buy it.

Forever Skies: Another survival crafting game. This one looks like a mix between Raft (but in space!) and Subnautica.

I’m definitely set on games for a while. I’m not planning on buying anything new until Monster Hunter Wilds comes out at the end of February. Can’t wait for that one!