It’s that time of the year again. You know the one. Numbers you’d previously shunned for being too high have suddenly gotten smaller, and purchases have shifted categories from impractical to impulsively justifiable. It’s the Steam Summer Sale 2024! There’s no rush, of course. It runs until the 11th of July. Still, to help you navigate the meatily chummed waters of Sales Lagoon, Horace has decided to reward our combined years of service with a crisp ten bob note each to spend on games. We’ve been bringing up the whole “getting paid” thing for ages, so this is a real win for us. Here’s how we’re all spending that tenner in the sale.
Brendan: A whole ten English pounds. Boy, oh boy. After some perverse price tag sniffing I found you can buy Dome Keeper, the “small, but perfectly formed tower defence game” for £7.50 and still have pennies left over to gamble against a sinister being with a pump-action shotgun in Buckshot Roulette.
Ed: Fantastic, ten squid that I can add to the Steam credit I earned from selling hundreds of CS:GO crates individually over the course of two grueling hours. That’ll go on Trepang 2, the game where you’re a guy with a gun and you mulch heads with bullets a la F.E.A.R.. It’s very Edders, in the sense that what you mostly do is violent and senseless. What a summer we’ll have.
Edwin: Got a selection of good things on sale, stranger! Specifically, things I’ve had my eye on but have been fearful about committing to for various reasons: Chinese RPG Tale Of Wuxia, which is apparently great despite some slightly rough English localisation, and ΔV: Rings of Saturn, which is also apparently great but hard as nails. I think that leaves me a few pennies over. Can I go over by a few pennies, Nic? Perhaps somebody else in this round-up can spend slightly less to compensate.
James: I got you, Edwin. Slightly less than a tenner will get you Portal-ish time bending puzzler The Entropy Centre, atmospheric (but non-violent) kaiju wrangler Titan Chaser, and Middle Earth: Shadow of War. Which unlike the first two, I haven’t played, but it’s 95% off, and for 95% off I’d buy an old, water-damaged, improperly fastened Pringles can. Full of bees.
Nic: Perpetually orc-pilled as I am, I’d have to grab Middle Earth: Shadow Of War for a cool 95% off, or less that 20% of the budget. It’s worth for the orc-characterising Nemesis System alone. Shadow Tactics: Blades Of The Shogun – Aiko’s Choice, a great standalone expansion for the obscenely good tactics series. That’s four quid left, so I reckon I’ll take a punt on Lamentum, a 2D pixel survival horror that’s been sitting on my wishlist for ages now.
Ollie: Fellas, look, this is ridiculous. You know how much you can buy with £10? You’d be set for life! No more games needed, ever! Here’s what I’d do, I’d buy The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (£2.49) and Middle-Earth: Shadow Of War (£1.74). That’s me already with more to play than I can fit into my day. But let’s casually triple that playtime with FTL (£1.74) and Sid Meier’s Pirates! (£1.49, an absolute steal). Ah, throw some XCOM 2 (£1.74) in there while we’re at it. Now where are we at? Hmm, £9.20. Tell you what, I’ll add Portal 2 (£0.85) for some good old co-op times. I’m over by 5p, but as luck would have it, I have a few quid in my Steam Wallet. In fact, with that being the case, hell, let’s buy Civilization VI (£2.49) too. Just one more turn!
Jeremy: I think I’d buy Chasing Static and Guard Duty, two games made by British indie dev Headware Games. I very much liked the Steam Next Fest demo of Hollowbody, Headware Games’ upcoming Silent Hill-inspired horror game, and feel compelled to check out their prior works now. That leaves me with some more money to burn, so I might as well grab Vampire Survivors (which I actually do not own) for a pithy £2.99 while I’m at it. Oh yeah, and do I see the incredibly obscure 1994 anthropomorphic animal adventure game Inherit the Earth: Quest for the Orb available for only £0.95? I’ll take that too, thanks!
Kiera: There is a truly fantastic spread in this year’s summer sale. If we’re talking value for money, you can get three games in one with the Mass Effect Legendary Edition for just £4.99. You’re paying less than a fiver to become an intergalactic love-machine, blue-tinted hero (or a psychopath with an iron-clad hatred for reporters depending on your preferences). If you’re a glutton for a good RPG and want to spend a measly £2.49 in return for hundreds of hours of quality playtime, stick The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt in your basket too. Heck, that leaves enough change left over to get the other two Witcher games as well. It will possibly take you months to complete all of these games, but the dulcet tones of Doug Cockle will surely carry you through.
Graham: Hi, this is definitely Graham typing. I wrote about some of my picks here, “including nunventure Indika and ballwhacker TopSpin 2k25, while train ’em up Sweet Transit is 50% down, Pacific Drive is 40% off, and Surmount is 33% discounted. Cor.” Horace gave me infinite money because I run things though. Cor.
Nic: It has been brought to my attention – by my own eyes, no less – that three of us have independently recommended the orc game. I was tempted to demand some different picks, but Ollie and James appeared out of nowhere while I was doing a sidequest with new metal face bits and spouted some dialogue uncannily cognisant of my previous ask to “just pick what you want!” So, orcs it is! But the orcs someone recommends to you are never as precious as the orcs you choose yourself, so what about you reader? Horace loves you, so he’s gifting you an imaginary tenner equivalent in your local currency. Let us know what you’re spending it on!