I just go some Steam giftcards from a friend and want to put them to good use.
Also FYI my PC isn’t the most powerful in the world so I can’t play anything super high rez.
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u mentioned below that you like RPGs, so if in particular party-based, tactics RPG gameplay is ur jam, im gonna recommend some of my personal hits that are mostly indies that I’ve also rec’d in the past:
Creator of Another World - $13.29, Demo Available - More roguelite than roguelike, fairly relaxing difficulty; a power fantasy that essentially an ‘isekai’ actually made into a videogame that simulates most of a game world, with inspiration from the roguelike Elona. Made by one indie Japanese dev. Has basic visual modding.
Our Adventurer Guild - $10.49, Demo Available - Assume the role of a guildmaster who is responsible for hiring adventurers and controlling them in battle to complete quests. Presentation in art and text is amateurish imo, charmingly reminiscent of like, 2000s AdventureQuest; but party-building possibilities are vast and combat is tight. Made by one indie German dev. Has basic variable modding. Will have its one DLC coming out soonTM that rounds out some of the higher-level classes and introduces spears among other things.
Together in Battle - $19.99, Demo Available - Not on sale, but promoting it anyway because it just entered 1.0 nearly two months ago and I think it’s a v well polished indie RPG that’s being slept on. You assume the role of an arena team manager, hiring, training, and controlling them in fights, but also get involved in a political whodunit to fulfill your goals. The city of TIB, Kalkerapur, receives quite a bit of love and development in ways not shown in the settings of the prior two games. Made by one dev who used to make the Telepath RPG games back in the Flash era. Has custom campaign modding.
Stolen Realm - $7.99 - Procgen RPG with multiplayer capability in which every enemy and, in multiplayer, every one of the six party members can move and act simultaneously on their side’s turn. Has a mix-and-match skill system similar to what is found in the Divinity: Original Sin series, and approximates it in environmental interactions. Chaotic enough in base game, supposedly more so with its ‘Chaos Pack’ DLC. Warning that having a high number of visual effects on the actors and field will slow down your computer, as it did for my mid-high-tier gaming laptop. Made by an indie studio.
Horizon’s Gate - $9.99 - Sailing-based, exploration-and-trading-type RPG in 16-bit artstyle. Also has extensive modding capabilities and a small modding scene. Consider also its predecessor Alvora Tactics ($4.99) which is less developed, but is more of a focused, proc-gen dungeon crawler. Made by one dev, all of their games are consistent quality.
Wildermyth -$16.24 - Tactical RPG that’s very folklore- and storybook-themed in presentation, where one adventure can happen across generations of an adventuring party. The only project of an indie studio that announced it planned to dissolve(?) in some time after achieving its goals with this game. Extensive modding capabilities, small modding scene.
Hero’s Adventure: Road to Passion - $10.79 - Wuxia-genre tactical RPG with pixel graphics and isometric view. Moderate modding scene, but most of is in Mandarin.
My Time at Sandrock - $19.99 - Farming/building simulator and action RPG, easy difficulty, set in a desert town. Made by a moderate Chinese studio. Has small modding scene. The sequel, ‘My Time at Evershine’, is currently under dev.
Kenshi - $11.99 - Jank engine, jank visuals, bleak survival squad management game in which getting the shit beat out of your homies and crawling away to live another day is the standard gameplay loop. Two of the three regional powers are unrepentant slavers, and destroying them is hard but honest work. Made by a small indie studio. Extensive modding scene.
The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind -
$6.99Bethesda is part of Microsoft, which I believe is still on the BDS list, so consider pirating - Bethesda Games-type modding scene. Get a modlist through the program Wabbajack for either OpenMW or base engine, hit play, enjoy Bethesda’s worldbuilding at its peak.Crusader Kings III - $14.99 - Only Paradox game I’ve played. It’s a nice ruler- and dynasty-simulator. Large modding scene.
Shooters?
Strike Force Heroes - 13.99 - Remake of a Flash game title, a 2D arena shooter, good for mindless fun and short matches. Made by an indie studio.
XCOM 2 Collection - $8.10 - Pretty much the primary “shooter” tactical turn-based game. Extensive modding, moderate modding scene.
Jagged Alliance 3 - $22.49 - The other “shooter” tactical game that I liked, with a focus on contemporary small arms and extensive weapon modding capabilities as your gang of mercenaries rampage across a fictional French African state. There’s a mod in which you can play as the PLA (I haven’t tried yet). Moderate modding capabilities and small scene.
Gunsmith Simulator - $15.49 - You’re a gunsmith who fixes, upgrade, and recolors people’s request for guns, and can shoot them at the range. I’m somewhat disappointed there’s still no machine guns to dissect and customize, but it’s a small thing. Made by small Polish studio. Small modding capabilities.
Fursan al-Aqsa: The Knights of the Al-Aqsa Mosque - $5.09 - Qassam-Brigades, death-to-the-IDF simulator.
I back Hero’s Adventure: Road to Passion, a wonderful game, tonnes of content, and wonderful DLC. Get it.
My personal list, if it’s starred it means you can play as the communists.
Strategy
- Command & Conquer: Generals ⭐
- Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 ⭐
- Starcraft Brood War
- Call to Arms – Gates of Hell: Ostfront ⭐
- Men of War: Assault Squad 2 ⭐
- Chess (Lichess)
Shooter
- Hell Let Loose ⭐
- Rising Storm 2: Vietnam ⭐
- Star Wars: Battlefront 2 (Classic)
RPG
- TES: Skyrim
- TES: Oblivion
Starcraft is on the Blizzard platform (for free!), Lichess is online (and free!), everything else should be on Steam.
i got the division 2 for like 7 bucks and im having fun with it so far. its pretty mindless which im liking atm cause life is tiring lol.
One of those games (maybe both) deepthroats cops and the troops so fucking hard
yeah all these tom clancy games do. i just turn my brain off to enjoy it.
Cavern of Dreams, $5.19 - Short and sweet collectathon 3d platformer. I finished it in 8 hours and it doesn’t overstay its welcome. N64 visual style (you can disable the blur filter in settings if you hate it).
Death’s Door, $5 - Cute soulslike combat in an overhead isometric view, not too difficult. You play as a crow, a reaper of souls, tracking down the one soul who escaped from you. You may have to lower settings depending on how bad your gpu is.
Paradise Killer, $5 - A detective game in a world of (sexy) Gods. You have to identify suspects and build a case against them. There is no objectively “correct” culprit. There is also a beautiful 3d environment to explore with some collectables.
Tunic, $15 - Similar combat to death’s door but with the added element that progression is often gated not by items, but knowledge checks. You collect pages of a game manual for Tunic written in a language you can’t read. One of my absolute favorite games.
Sea of Stars, $22.74 - Very fun turn-based rpg that reminds me a lot of Chrono Trigger. I had 45 hours playtime and that’s before the 10 hour free DLC that just released. Timed QTE events for every attack and block a la the (Paper) Mario RPG series.
Rollerdrome, $7.50 - Rollerdrome is the perfect video game. Arcadey shooter on rollerskates with dodge rolls and also you have to do tony hawk style tricks to reload your guns. Unfortunately, Take Two “laid off” the entire team who made it, so consider pirating it instead of buying.
I loved Sea of Stars! Same studio did The Messenger and they have neat little tie-ins. Really felt like they took everything from the 16-bit action RPG genre and distilled out just the good stuff. Lovely game
I liked Death’s Door, very cute and it’s not a huge time sink, think you can beat it in a couple days.
The Messenger is a real gem of a game. Ninja Gaiden meets Metroid, lovely pixel art (should run on anything), a banging chiptune soundtrack, super tight gameplay, funny writing, and it’s currently 80% off. If you like platformers and metroidvanias you got to check it out.
Any of the persona games or metaphor
My game is very easy to run if you’re into retro stuff and super cheap, and I love it when comrades play it.
Otherwise Inscryption was a pretty neat time if you haven’t played it yet.
Know you were asking Steam specifically but the current free Epic game is neat. I add them to my Steam library sometimes. https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/sable
+1 to recommend Sable, especially for free! Basically it’s like if breath of the wild didn’t have combat and instead was about exploration and quests. You play as a young adult going on a coming of age quest in which you learn about the different professions you could choose. Set in a post apocalyptic world, but a wholesome one. You get to ride on an upgradable Star Wars pod racer.
Free on Epic, $8.74 on Steam.
Any genres you like?
A bit older, but still great IMHO: Sanctum 2 and its DLC go on sale for $3 every sale. I’ve sunk over 450 hours into this FPS TD hybrid. The DLC is worth getting as well as it doubles the content of the game.
Titanfall 2 is about $5 and offers a diverse and creative SP campaign with mixed soldier and mech combat. I’ve played it at least 5 times.
Mirror’s Edge is $7 with a robust parkour mechanic and alright, if not a little dated story. I’ve also played this at least 5 times.
For more casual offerings: A Short Hike, Alba, Firewatch, Smushi Come Home, Röki, Journey, Turnip Boy, Scanner Sombre, Deepest Sword, Yono, Snakey Pass, Baba is You
Other Games I’ve enjoyed: Portal 1&2, Full Metal Furies, Superhot, Borderlands 1&2, Mothergunship, Echo, High On Life, Crab Champions, Gunfire Reborn, Strange Planet, Hades, Hellblade Senua’s Sacrifice
A Hat in Time is a fun 3D platformer
Subnautica: survive in the ocean after a shipwreck… In spaaaaace!The following games are cheap (lower than 10 euros), not graphically demanding at all, and range from good to being masterpieces in my opinion:
10/10
- CrossCode
- Hollow Knight
- ZeroRanger
9/10
- Katamari Damacy Reroll
- Spelunky
- Terraria (with friends, 8/10 without)
- Rabi-Ribi (it has horny anime cringe, but it is an excellent metroidvania)
8/10
- Xanadu Next
- Copy Kitty
- Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen
- Pseudoregalia
- Rabbit & Steel (with friends)
- Hades
- Ys Origin
- Ys: The Oath in Felghana
- Void Stranger
- Portal & Portal 2
- Ori and the Will of Wisps (Ori 2)
7.5/10
- Grim Dawn
- Minishoot’ Adventures
- Ori and the Blind Forest
I’ll second Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen. I wish Dragon’s Dogma 2 ran better on lower-end systems/was less intense, though the character creator received a nice bump in quality from DD:DA
I like your style. I see somebody rate ZeroRanger 10/10, I know we’re cool.
I highly recommend Far Cry 2 and Call of Juarez: Gunslinger, which are a combined 5 eurodollars from where I sit because they both, in different ways, really actually use the fact that video games are an interactive medium to do something with it beyond having fun gameplay that unlocks the next cutscene
Brew Barons is like half arcade planer shooter half RPG, maybe it fits your tastes. It’s 10 eurodollars and is set in legally-not-porco-rosso-world. You definitely don’t play this for the story, but I found it quite charming.
the only far cry worth playing is the frist one
The first Far Cry is not worth playing today. It’s a standard-setting-tech-demo for the shooter genre. It was important in its time and genuinely a good game back then, not now.
Elden Ring is amazing and surprisingly light on the computer
RDR2 is one of the best action RPGs I’ve played
Hades was a lot of fun
Rogue Trader is a great RPG if you like the WH40k world
And of course Disco Elysium if you haven’t played it
And of course Disco Elysium if you haven’t played it
Are we still boycotting? If so you wouldn’t want to get it on Steam then
I don’t think it’s necessarily a boycott, but people should indeed just pirate it.
I think it can count. It’s not an organised boycott, but the devs have asked people to pirate it/not pay for it, and people seem to be following suit, so I’d say that counts as a boycott.
I’ve been enthralled by Valheim lately. It’s probably one of, it not the best of the open-world-survival-crafting-RPG genre.
And pretty easy to mod to boot, with a ton of mods ranging from extending what’s available in the game already (like adding all weapon types and magic from the meadows biome and above) to game changing systems like classes, abilities, and perks.
It feels like the middle point between Minecraft and Terraria, with a smooth progression curve with clear checkpoints to guide the player through the tech stages while offering some homesteading and down time activities.
It pretty much entirely replaced Minecraft and Terraria for me due to those reasons. Plus, building in Valheim is pretty satisfying. Much prefer having material limitations as opposed to the other two’s gravity defying builds.
Only wish it was a bit more optimized, because my builds tend to be tall and dense and the game really doesn’t like it. And modding could be handled better I guess, Zomboid took a page off of Rimworld’s approach to the workshop and Valheim could do that as well.
Valheim is definitely a game I loved, but man there is still a lot of jank to it that I just cannot stand to bear any longer. All the jank is bearable up until the mistlands and then I just cant deal with the floaty combat, dying destroying hours of skill grinding, inventory space being so limited, and the procedural generation putting some stuff in ridiculous places. All of it leads to pretty poor single player experience (at that point), where it feels like having other players with you is a downright necessity.
But as you stated mods do fix quite a lot of what is broken or should really just be in the game to begin with.
