Hello folks. As you might have seen, The Steam summer sale is live. We all have our wishlists filled with games that we know through Giantbomb, youtube & Twitch. But what about those thousands of games with titles that sound like gibberish to 90% of us? There should be some gems there as well right? Let us work together in unearthing some of those games that hardly get talked about! Maybe you're deep into visual novels. Maybe you only play point & click adventure games. Whatever it is, Lets recommend eachother some obscure / unknown games!

• Dungeon of the Endless- €2,99 quasi-turn based rogue-like with tower defense mechanisms. Every door you open is equivalent to a turn. You use 'dust' to light up rooms. Enemies will only spawn in dark rooms. As you open more and more rooms, the amount of dark rooms on a floor will increase and more and more monsters will spawn. To deal with this, you can invest in turrets & use your characters to beat the enemies. This risk-reward struggle between opening doors for resources & having to deal with monster spawns makes every move significant. Many characters are available to unlock, and as they level up you get access to more abilities & find equipment.
• Odallus - The Dark Call: €3,99 A very solid 8 bit castlevania-like game. It looks good and plays well. A quick look at the screenshots will tell you if you would like it.
• DeadCore: € 2,49 This game has you jumping & dashing through the air in first person a lot. There's hardly any story in this, just a collection of challenges in surreal sci-fi environments. Great sense of speed & accomplishment while going through this game.
• Gabriel Knight 3- €3.89 For the adventure enthusiasts. It deals with the real life mysteries of Rennes-le-chateau regarding the holy grail, freemasons, temple of solomon & descendants of Jesus. Da Vinci Code stuff. I am aware that this game contains the infamous 'cat moustache' puzzle, which is often pointed towards as one of the reasons adventure games are bullshit. I recently played through the game and found that particular puzzle was not an issue and the game actually did a good job of signalling how the puzzle should be solved. I had more problems with Grim Fandango's puzzles personally. This game has an AMAZING vacation vibe that no other game quite does as well. You are staying in a hotel in France while a lot of other hotelguests are searching for the Holy Grail. getting to meet these characters and driving around France on your motorcycle is worth the few times that the puzzles get slightly too hard. Definitly check this out if you are looking for a mature adventure game with a Da Vinci Code-esque story!
• Beholder- €2,99 This game is all about you spying on your neighbors & reporting it to the government. It's somewhat similar in theme to Papers Please . The difference is that you're forming relationships with your neighbors over time, and get to decide if you help them or screw them over. People move in, they help you out when the going gets tough, and you help them out if you value them. But you need to be a good employee to the state as well. All while keeping your family healthy and satisfied. The problem with Beholder is that it requires quite a few playthroughs before you know what you need to focus on to get further in the game. But even if you never get to finish it, the mood, writing and decisions you have to make in this game make me think Papers Please fans would enjoy this.
• QP Shooting - Dangerous!! €2,39 Look, the writing in this is off the walls batshit insane. It's a shoot em up with anime characters instead of ships. That said, this game has some awesome stages, bosses and great music. It's not too hard, but not easy neither. Especially the Carnival stage's music is burned in my brains.

Have any fond memories of relatively unknown games you played? Let's highlight them!

I thought I was burned out with those 2D pixel indie games, but I decided to buy Momodora Reverie under Moonlight as it was in my wishlist for a while. It started off tedious but as I became more skillful and knowledgeable of enemy patterns it became really fun. I can't really say it's anything special, but it's a good time that doesn't overstay it's welcome.

Looking forward to finally playing Bayonetta, also got PUBG. H1Z1 is forever getting uninstalled.

EDIT: Totally missed the point of the thread

If you like the occasional tower defence game "Revenge of the Titans" is $4.99. Seems pretty fun with a decent progression system.

Bear With Me ($7.00) - One of the best unheard-of adventure games of last year was this quirky little traditional gem. You play as a young girl searching for her missing brother with her world-weary teddy bear PI best friend and a variety of other talking animals. The first episode (of three) doesn't do it a whole lot of favors, as it's narrow in scope and doesn't give you much of a taste of the intelligent, surprising route this story takes, but - sigh - bear with it. The humor is often hit-and-miss, but in such a way that it's endearing rather than grating, and the character development is so heartfelt I couldn't help falling in love with it.

Pendulo Adventure Pack ($7.00) - A collection of quirky, generally good-to-great point and click adventure games you probably haven't heard of, this one includes the Runaway trilogy (2 is genuinely great, 3 is quirky and goes to some fun places, 1 is mostly eh), the stylish The Next BIG Thing (which is sorely underrated both for its unusually punchy 40s style dialogue and unique classic monster flick visuals), and the too-short-but-still-good Yesterday, which veers towards Gabriel Knight territory in terms of its darkness and occult themes. If you're looking for a bundle of great adventure games, this is a fantastic collection of relatively unheard-of games.

The Blackwell Series ($1.50-$3.00) - Wadjet Eye makes my kind of adventure games, with unique characters and simple, classic point-and-clicking with a focus on character development and story. The Blackwell series and Technobabylon are their standouts, but since I think Blackwell is the more underappreciated of the two, it's the one I'll focus on here. It follows a lineage of woman in a family who can see the dead, namely a snarky ghost named Joey. This one holds a special place in my heart for creative reasons, as it helped inspire my own ghost-centric novels. Even more important than that to you, it's a breezy, intelligently designed adventure game series, and it's super cheap. Cannot recommend this one enough.

The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky ($10.00) - While I think Trails 2 is the apex of this trilogy of classic RPGs, start with Trails in the Sky 1 and work your way through the series as a whole. Estelle and Joshua may not set your world on fire in the first game, but trust me, by the time the second game rolls to its credits, Estelle becomes one of the all-time great video game RPG protagonists, even despite the anime trappings of her character. Sure, the series is nearly fifteen years old at this point, but classics are classics, and these RPGs are a must-play if you're looking for a great meaty RPG to tide you over.

@treetrunk said:

I played and beat it last year and have found it to be one of my favorite games in recent history. I think the look, tone, ambiance, music; basically everything outside of the already really solid core gameplay is just fantastic and on a completely different level than most games that are a 2d pixel metroidvania. I LOVE this game and was super excited for a friend of mine to pick it up and love it as well. Honestly, if it's not multi-player or the newest biggest AAA release I don't always get to fawn over a game with a friend. It's down to $4.99 on steam at the moment.

I'm picking up Shrouded in Sanity for $1.24. Creepy 2d action game ala bloodborne(and cthulu)in a few ways? It has a completely free fairly content heavy demo version on steam too. You can actually beat the game in the free version, but don't have access to additional story content/playable characters/newgame+. More of a shout out then a plug because I haven't really played it, but it IS very cheap/free and atleast looks great.

This thread is...almost difficult. What games would I recommend at cheap price points that aren't in the usual conversation? I mean...

BINARY DOMAIN IS $5.09. Do it for Big Bo! This game isn't perfect and you've also probably heard it around giantbomb, but if you haven't, this was a weird sci-fi third person shooter with robots that broke down really cool like and some fucked up ideas.

Lost winds 1 and 2 each for $2.49. I thought the first one was a really neat, pretty platformer with some interesting power usage. At this point, nearly 10 years after the first wiiware release, I don't know how well it'll stick out, but it was just an enjoyable time.

The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom $1.24. A criminally cheap, fun platformer from the old 360 days. It's based on a pretty tried and true platformer mechanic: Time manipulation. It wasn't novel in itself, Braid says hello, but it has a really neat aesthetic and just like Braid, was able to fluctuate and morph it's mechanics through out the entire game so it didn't get stale. It's short with a strong Silent Film aesthetic that for some reason I really like even though I don't have a connection to that kind of look normally.

Titan Quest for $3.99 is a real good diablo 2 clone. That's about all that needs to be said about it. Take the gameplay and general look of diablo 2, mash it into (mostly)greek mythology and then turn it into a pretty good game in it's own right. There is a new expansion for $9.99; I'll tell you I don't have any idea how it is since the original game came out 12 years ago. It seems well liked and much like a certain Angry Protagonist we all know, it too goes into norse mythology in the newest expansion.

And just to re-iterate @bigboss1911 and my Binary Domain talk, sega has some really cheap pc games up there as well as some of it's newer ports. Valkyria Chronicles, Vanquish and Bayonetta all for $6.49.

• Prime Movers - I thought the Quick Look was pretty cool and had some puzzles in it that my mind really wanted to tackle.
• Iconoclasts - This is a game I've been thinking about buying ever since I saw the Quick Look and I finally pulled the trigger on it. I like good sprite-based stuff that isn't another fucking roguelike so this seemed right up my alley.
• Ni-Oh Complete - I like Dark Souls. I heard this was like Dark Souls. My brother bought it and played it for a little while and the port seemed OK so I bought it.
• Metro Redux Bundle - This seems to have a lot of gameplay changes and improvements, especially for 2033, and the Metro Exodus demo got me pretty excited for more Metro. I never actually finished 2033 so hopefully I'll be able to get through it this time. And Last Light is a really good game.

Before the Echo ($0.99) is a fantastic rhythm-RPG with a really interesting story. It's maybe a bit too repetitive but the awesome soundtrack makes that go down a bit easier. It also leads into the sequel, There Came An Echo ($5.99), which is a (optional) voice-controlled tactical game. It may not play super great, but it has one of the craziest ends to a story I've ever seen. Definitely worth seeing.

Miasmata ($2.24), which was played on the site by Drew and Patrick many years ago, is also a relatively unknown gem for most people. You are dropped onto an island and have to track down ingredients to make a cure for a illness plaguing you while being chased by a monster. The game forces you to use triangulation to fill in your map and note waypoints and has an interesting momentum-based movement system unlike any other game I've played. It's got some rough edges, but I absolutely ADORE it nonetheless.

I would also recommend any of David Szymanski's indie horror games (Fingerbones, The Moon Silver, The Music Machine, and A Wolf in Autumn), which range in price from free to $2.49 right now. Despite being very small games, they are incredibly effective at getting under your skin and feature some truly memorable moments. The Music Machine is definitely the best of them, with a fascinating story premise, but they are all worth seeing, imo (A Wolf in Autumn being the only iffy one in the bunch).

Also, I just wanted to point out that Sang-Froid - Tales of Werewolves, a really neat tower-defense game (with a QL on the site!) is now apparently free and is certainly worth a try for no money at all. I remember loving it back in 2013, almost enough to put it on my Top 10 list.

I have a ton more I could add, but these are the ones that came to mind first!

This thread made me realize that Vinny should absolutely play Odallus on a stream, it seems right up his alley!

Stories Untold ($2.50), it's a unique horror text adventure wrapped around some fancy graphics. You spend most of your time playing a Zork style text adventure on a monitor in the game, but there are times where the environments would react to your actions in the text game. And in some parts you have to interact with those surrounding environments. The game is divided into 4 standalone chapters, but the whole game could be completed in under 5 hours. It's cheap and I recommend it, even if I find that the overall story of the game is kinda flat. You know what, just play the demo if you don't feel like spending the $2.50. It's the entire first episode and it's probably the highest point in the game.

I'm currently Building The List. Here's what I have so far:

Definitely Getting:

• Slay the Spire
• Subsurface Circular / Quarantine Circular
• The Witcher 3 Expansion pass
• CLANNAD side stories (I totally swear I'm going to get around to playing Clannad, seriously, trust me)
• 80 Days
• Ladykiller in a Bind

Maybe / Not Sure About:

• Dreamfall Chapters: The Final Cut: Despite knowing very little about this game aside from random comments Vinny has made over the years, I have a feeling I will like Dreamfall Chapters.
• Forgotton Anne: This game was recommended to me when I asked about some narrative adventure games in the vein of Life is Strange / Tacoma / What Remains of Edith Finch from 2018. This isn't necessarily what I was looking for, but the look intrigues me enough.
• Ni No Kuni II: My main hesitation is I would just rather play this on a couch, on my PS4.
• OCTAHEDRON: I literally found out about this game 2 minutes ago while browsing Steam, and hey this game seems neat!(?)
• Where the Water Tastes Like Wine: I.....I still have no idea what this game is. I've seen like 4 different trailers and can't tell you what kind of game it is or what you do.

I'm walking away with a handful of games, but it feels like I'm missing something. Maybe 2018 has just been a really slow year for me, but there's so many games it feels like there has to be something out there that I'm just forgetting about. However, browsing Steam and looking at the sales charts isn't pointing me towards the right direction.

PS. Has Steam been running bad for anyone else? I've been getting a lot of weird errors and searches that go nowhere ever since the sale started.

This might be the second sale in a row where I buy nothing. I have a big backlog to deal with, like everyone else probably, and there's even an unopened physical game waiting on my desk at home (Shadow of the Colossus).

@sparky_buzzsaw: When would you say that Trails in the Sky 1 really gets going? I hear amazing things about the series, but I picked the game up in 2014 and never really got hooked. Every year or so I put in another hour, but I'm not sure when the story really takes off. I might still be in the prologue or early in Chapter 1 (I just got a whip lady in my party, if that helps). Up to this point it's just been a well written but trope-filled JRPG with an interesting combat system.

Capsized ($2.49) is a fun 2D platformer and Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken ($.99!!!) & Rocketbirds 2: Evolution ($9.99, weirdly never on sale)

Looks to be an uneventful sale this year. It's cheaper to just keep track of your wishlist and wait for them to drop individually through the year for a cheaper price. I hate how they just do one sale for two weeks with no changes now, the flash sales and daily changes made it fun to check every day, now I look once and shrug.

Gives me an opportunity to hit more backlog games

@kodamun: Trails 1 doesn't particularly take off in any great way until the game is nearly finished. It's a very solid RPG but the story only reaches its best heights in the second game. My reasoning behind picking up the first rather than starting with the second is that Trails 2 is a direct continuation of that story in the first game and might be a touch confusing for players as you consistently run into characters from the previous game (you're visiting the same locales as the first, the game's only real bummer) and talk about events with no real context. I suppose a person could look up a story outline and jump to Trails 2, but I think some of the latter half of that game is worth experiencing, especially when its anime trappings give way to real character growth.

@nightriff:

When/Why did they do away with flash sales?

@bigboss1911: Want to say this is at least the 3rd sale without them. Idea is people can't check steam every few hours so they missed out on sales. I can see that but it kept me interested in the sale through the two weeks rather than a quick 5 to 10 minute look and saying no to everything like this year. Why I wished they at least changed the sales up every few days or something, idk. They used to do a 24 or 48 hour sale that brought back everything anyways at the very end.

@bigboss1911: I think it has to do with the steam refund system. Flash sales disappeared at the same time that rolled out.

My guess is they were worried that people would abuse the refund system to try to get a better price on flash sales (i.e. buy a game for 50% off refund it, buy the flash sale at 75% off).

Going to pick up Life Is Strange's prequel, I was tempted to get The Evil Within 2 but have heard some not so good things about the PC port.

I am so ambivalent about buying anything this year, I finally just purchased Black; the Fall just on impression and get it done with. It reminded me somewhat of Inside that I would give another game, sort of like it, a try. Plus an old man escaping a dismal world kind of appealed to me.

@slag: @nightriff: I just checked, they did away with them for the fall/holiday sales in 2015. Didn't realize it was almost three years ago! I also didn't realize refunds started the same year.

Time flies when you're buying games for cheap, eh?

EDIT: i guess i will just make this into a general recommendation to go get The Longest Journey bundle. it's a really good deal if you're looking for great story, not good action.

@clagnaught: just a quick note about dreamfall chapters, if you play it please watch the "the story so far" video. i'm pretty sure you can watch it from the menu in-game, but if it's not there just google it. this game is story-heavy and while i understand not wanting to go and play 15 or 20 year old games to catch up, at least watch the 5 minute video so you're not completely lost.

honestly i would urge you to play the previous 2 games. the first is a point and click adventure game that i think still holds up really well. the second is a 3rd person adventure game that is hard to go back to because of the controls/camera (there's also a bit of shitty combat, thankfully not too much though), but there is so much character appreciation you will be missing by not playing those games first. dreamfall chapters is really the culmination and closure of the story of all 3 games and i just think you won't appreciate it as much without playing all of them.

also i think there's a bundle on sale right now like $15 (US) or something like that you can get all three games. totally worth it.

@bladeofcreation: yeah, sure does

Dunno 'bout you, but my buying habits have changed a lot since then as a result. I buy a lot more on publisher weekends than the big season sales now and I also buy more through people like Humble than I did back when flash sales were king.

I have bought.. Nothing. So far. Its very weird.

I do keep looking at Bomber Crew as that has been in my wishlist for awhile. Its VR compatible? I don't even know what it is anymore or why exactly I wanted it. Looks neat though. Maybe not neat enough to buy.

So I'm kinda out of things to buy, even though my wishlist has about 10 things on it.

Since Steam changed to "every day has the same sales" I stopped caring as much, it was much more exciting when the deals felt limited.

If anybody enjoys hidden object games then you should absolutely lol at Hidden Folks. It's charming, it's fun, most of the scenes are a lot of fun (except for the desert, which was just a chore) and it is on sale for $3.99. The mouth sounds are surprisingly great. I expected to become annoyed by them after a while... But nope! Still love them.

After 20 hours I got all achievements. I don't know why I didn't like it at the beginning but it is actually really awesome, there's no grinding in the game just almost pure satisfaction.

Titan Quest looks like something I'd enjoy...

I just recently (this month) spent 50 hours in Evil Within 2 getting all achieves. It ran smooth for long periods and didn't crash once. The only thing that happened was once I sat in the chair for the projector (home/hub area of game) and it locked up, couldn't press anything except bring up the menu to exit the game and reload last save, so always save before you sit there.