The 27 Best Steam Games on Sale Right Now

Giveaways

One Steam key each for:

• Spy Fox in Dry Cereal
• The Swapper
• OlliOlli
• The Stanley Parable

To enter, comment with your choice on Facebook or below on Medium.

On Jan 1, I’ll pick a random winner, one for each of the four games. Onto the list.

Control four giants as you shape the biome of the planet for the benefit of its human inhabitants — your subjects. A nice, fairly relaxing god-game draws awareness to the interconnectedness and independence of nature. A bit repetitive and simplistic, but beautiful and satisfying. Plenty of difficulty and optimization, if you’d like.

Your banner leads a caravan across breathtaking European vistas.

Gameplay is a slow-burn experience, alternating between dialogue-driven decision and turn-based grid combat. If you love mythology and don’t mind the slower pace, this is your game.

An excellent side-scrolling platformer with sharp gameplay, a mysterious and engrossing story, and hauntingly beautiful pixelated graphics — especially when it comes to the alien life it portrays.

I’ve only put it so far down the list because I’ve yet to finish it, and it’s pricey for being rather short (although it was released not too long ago, so it will drop eventually.)

“What falls faster: 400 pounds of feathers or 400 pounds of beef?”

If the mind-bending MOON met the isolation of Interstellar or Alien, The Swapper is as much about atmosphere and story as it is about gameplay. And all are refreshingly original — if a bit simple.

I consider myself an avid puzzler, yet SpaceChem is so far beyond me that I’m skeptical to even recommend it. It’s not that this game is no fun, but more so its difficulty and complexity inspires a sense of wonder and awe something like legends of alchemy. It beats you in the head and dares you to disrespect the chemistry, a cruel, logical Walter White imposing on your naive and feeble Jesse Pinkman of a mind.

The creator of SpaceChem, Zachtronics, said that “Sokobond makes me want to stab myself.”

That’s high praise, coming, I think, from how Sokobond masks its complexity and difficulty with an appearance of simplicity. I enjoyed Sokobond more because it is that much cleaner and more accessible with a slower learning curve. Just don’t think it’s any easier.

What Banished lacks in depth or replayability it makes up for with one of the most polished and streamlined executions of a familiar concept. When I find myself bored with Civilization, I wonder why I didn’t play Banished instead — it has all the joys of city building and the one-more-year addictiveness without ever feeling dry.

Much like the world in which its set, there’s a lot more than may first appear in Papers, Please. Set aside any worries about a game in which you literally do paperwork, because the gameplay is a difficult, satisfying, and rewarding way to explore the many stories and ambiguous morality that it offers. Also, you could run this game on a potato and it would look good.

Someone said that this game exemplifies the capacity of video games to show a narrative, rather than just tell you one. If the idea of actively solving a mystery in rural Wisconsin appeals to you, Ethan Carter certainly delivers. The graphics are fantastic and natural, but the puzzles can be obtuse or unintuitive.

Learn to program…in assembly language. You have to really like puzzles and/or computer science to enjoy this at all, but the concept is too cool to ignore.

A curious hybrid with some good gameplay and lots of style behind it, the genre-blurring Dungeon of the Endless exemplifies an ever-present sense of danger in that videogame mainstay: the dungeon.

Skateboarding games can only exist in spite of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and OlliOlli does it by being very, very different. Eschewing punk music for hip-hop and electronic describes their respective styles. Whereas Tony Hawk is free-flowing, OlliOlli commits to the idea of a line/path and a purity in execution. This rigidity feels stifling at first, but is immensely rewarding. Note that this game is impossible to play without a gamepad.

A cyberpunk comedy, Jazzpunk blends Bladerunner with Monty Python. Short and satisfying ‘puzzles’ with actual laughs (see minigame ‘Wedding Qake’) make a delicious cake that is short enough not to be very filling. Like lots of funny things, if you don’t expect a whole lot of resolution it can be quite enjoyable.

I’ve seen Jazzpunk as low as $1 before. So unless you’re dying to play it, keep an eye out.

Virtual Nazis are a dime a dozen, too, but Luftrausers succeeds by capturing that Frankenstein’s monster-feeling of weird and wild technology. WWII was dominated by technology in the skies, on land, and underwater, and Luftrausers is speculative fiction at its best packaged in tight, responsive controls.

The gateway drug to pretentious, minimalist puzzle-platformers, Braid set the bar high all the way back in 2008

Doled out in shorter bursts than Nidhogg, the worthy Towerfall still knows how to deal out frantic, local-multiplayer action. With four capable gamers, this game plays like a finely-tuned machine. However, with less than four people or more casual players, the game can be short, frustrating.

A streamlined reimagining of the best parts of Dungeon Siege with none of the boring bits, Torchlight II is a great way to get in some mindless questing in with your friends without dealing with all that MMO nonsense.

The zombie fad has been dead almost as long as the undead themselves, but Left 4 Dead 2 remains one of the best cooperative shooters, especially in a genre otherwise dominated by the notion of ‘competition’.

You and your three teammates form a scrappy band of misfits; together you are torn between moving quickly to escape the next wave, or playing smart and slow to pick the best route while conserving strength and supplies. It is this tension which pulls teams apart from within and without and separates their members. To oppose this tension is unnatural, but sticking together is the only way to survive. Smartly designed levels, the real strength of the series, further the natural tendency to separate, creating both an ever-present sense of danger opposed by a cautionary fear.

Yet it is the natural bottlenecks or timed events (ex: you must activate an alarm which alerts both friend and foe, leaving you holed up in a barn, itself under siege from the invisible hordes emerging from the surrounding cornfield, until rescue arrives) that force your team to stop and think.

Although not particularly frightening, these moments capture what is most tense, thrilling, and, above all, fun about sitting on the couch with friends and yelling at the TV.

Rocket League came out of nowhere and dominated overall sales. Selling nearly 2 million copies since April, Rocket League is the fifth most-downloaded game this year. For a small game from a minor studio (Psyonix), this is beyond impressive. Based on the Unreal Engine, the graphics are great but somewhat demanding for older computers. In terms of gameplay, it’s an absolute blast.

I still remember waking up on a surprise high school snow day in March 2008. As my birthday was just a few days prior, I decided to buy myself The Orange Box — actually, my first digital purchase — and as it downloaded I spent breakfast deciding which one of the bundle I was going to play. I ended up going sledding instead, but Portal was on my mind.

Featuring 2007’s Portal and 2004’s Half-Life 2, The Orange Box is a greatest hits collection from respected developer (and creator of Steam) Valve.

Half-Life 2 began the trend of the modern, immerse, physics-based singleplayer campaign. It is huge, lengthy, and epic in scope and scale, taking you from alien-controlled City 17 to coastal highways and back again. It’s widely considered the greatest PC game of all time. The Orange Box also includes the two episodic sequels, which are just as good, if not better.

Portal invented the first-person puzzler, and the short first installment would have been remembered as remarkable if it wasn’t overshadowed by the even better (although much longer) followup.

The Orange Box also included multiplayer shooter Team Fortress 2, which, given its fall from grace, has since been made free, now funded entirely by selling virtual hats. I wish I was kidding.

A complete overhaul of the free 2011 Half-Life 2 mod, The Stanley Parable is pretty damn close to video game art. Despite offering a completely linear story, The Stanley Parable uses clever narration, level design, and self-doubt to obscure itself and draw awareness to the very notions of choice and freedom.

Despite offering no puzzles, challenges, or progression, it is quite replayable and quite engrossing. An interesting premise surprisingly well-executed leaves us with a gift of a game perfect to sit unsuspecting friends down in front of and confuse them.

Insanity is falling to the bottom of a well with only the guns strapped to your boots. In your descent to chunky, pixelated madness, discover just how slow your reflexes are.

Portal invented the first-person puzzler, and for a time it was good. Then, The Stanley Parable tempted the genre and, despite its individual greatness, critics hailed the end of an era as its brand of literary irony soon overcame its successors at the expense of good gameplay. But The Talos Principle has faced the same temptation and does both. The puzzles are excellently frustrating and difficult with a slow (perhaps too much so) learning curve. There are countless easter eggs and opportunities for exploration. The world is undeniably beautiful and scenic, and there is no time pressure to stop you from perusing it at your leisure. But the affair is ultimately soulless — although, there is perhaps a good reason internal to the story for this artificiality.

My one gripe is that Talos separates its story from its puzzles. Yes, the game has an overarching reason why you are a robot running around doing puzzles which is all well and good, but the unfolding of that story takes place exclusively through voiceover and text delivered rather statically through computer terminals.

If I were reading a book of only its story, my review would be glowing. If I were playing a game composed only of its puzzles, my review would be similarly positive. While both parts are not tarnished by the weak connection between them, I can only wish and wonder for the greatness that could have been if they were joined more wholly, took greater advantage of the uniqueness of the interactivity of video games.

While you can’t run this game on a single potato, perhaps your laptop (or a few potatoes wired together in series) would be enough to make its Greek, Egyptian, and Medieval ruins look good. That’s how smart the developers Croteam are at reusing assets.

I spent a ton of time on this game and it is very very good. I’m only critical because it falls ever-so short of greatness. It is definitely worth playing, though.

Although local-multiplayer only, Nidhogg has some of the fastest combat and tightest controls ever to hit PC. It feels like the Super Smash Bros. Melee of the Steam generation — just as accessible and easy to pick up, but with similar room for improvement. Make sure to play with some kind of gamepad.

Considering its predecessor 10000000 was already one of my favorite games, I judged the announcement of You Must Build A Boat as unnecessary. This was before I realized that 10000000 was just a demo, a simple gameplay mechanic for a larger game.

The trailer speaks for itself, although it doesn’t show the deep but uncomplicated RPG elements added to the boat-like overworld. The gameplay is surprisingly not repetitive, given that the RPG elements actually change the game, rather than just making you more powerful. The reward system is paced similarly well great and offers both accomplishment and loot, which can be difficult to balance.

The Long Dark is not only my game of the year, but already one of the top ten greatest games, period. And it’s just getting started.

Early Access titles on Steam are working demos that you can buy into early and watch as they develop into a full game. They are often plagued by moving goalposts, changing gameplay, or straight stagnation, leading to much criticism.

Yet The Long Dark has incrementally (and rapidly) improved its sandbox survival mode with complementary gameplay mechanics, reliable fixes, and community feedback. Its team of one have grown to a small studio focused solely on this game.