Thread by @spacetwinks

alright, now that steam is working for me, time for my usual steam sale rec thread

also, usual forewarning that i tend to focus on older or more obscure or weird games that might get passed over, which also means i repeat a lotta recs from previous years

so, let's get to it!

The Shivah ($1.49) - i rec this every sale, and this is no exception. a murder mystery featuring a down on his luck rabbi who has fallen into a suspicious, massive windfall he needs to get to the bottom of, while confronting his own past. store.steampowered.com/app/252370/The…

The Friends Of Ringo Ishikawa ($10.49) - the small-town open world feel of Shenmue or Deadly Premonition meets River City Ransom meets a high school delinquent having a quiet existential crisis. one of my top faves of last year. store.steampowered.com/app/846110/The…

if you wanna know more about my feelings on Friends of Ringo Ishikawa, you can read my giant bomb 2018 top 10 list. giantbomb.com/articles/colin…

if you wanna hear the Waypoint crew go on about Ringo, you can listen to this ep of their podcast vice.com/en_us/article/…

Pizza Express ($0.69, nice) - Cook, Serve, Delicious meets the strategy/business building of Pizza Tycoon and throws a story mode fulla furries on top with a bopping soundtrack. real good, real addictive. store.steampowered.com/app/375250/Piz…

Loom ($2.09) - i tend to rec a lot of point and clicks in my sales threads, cuz i love 'em and love exposing 'em to new audiences. Loom is a gorgeous classic from Lucasarts, with a music driven fantasy world and unique puzzle solving system. store.steampowered.com/app/32340/LOOM/

Anodyne ($2.09) - a Zelda-like game that starts as lighthearted parody and then gets really, REALLY fucking weird and unnerving. excellent atmospheric work to make everything feel 'off' as you get deeper into the game. store.steampowered.com/app/234900/Ano…

scuse me, 2.99, not 2.09. hope that 90 cent difference doesn't discourage ya, it's real good

Even The Ocean ($4.94) - a gorgeous action platformer from the creators of the Anodyne series, with a story that's not really about confronting evil, but what we do in the face of inevitability. store.steampowered.com/app/265470/Eve…

Diaries Of A Spaceport Janitor ($4.99) - the universe is full of space hopping heroes having incredible adventures. you clean their trash as a cursed skull screams at you. beautifully captures the lows and the rare highs of working a shit job. store.steampowered.com/app/436500/Dia…

i seriously cannot go on enough about how good and beautiful Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor is, it's absolutely worth your time

Pathologic Classic ($1.29) - so you've heard Pathologic 2 is excellent and incredibly weird! you might be wondering, does the same hold true of the first game? yes. solve a supernatural murder mystery that unfolds like a play in an unnerving small town. store.steampowered.com/app/384110/Pat…

King Of Dragon Pass ($3.59) - coming highly recommended from austin walker, KoDP is part RPG, part strategy game, part visual novel. manage a population, listen to (or ignore!) your advisors, and guide a winding fantasy story. store.steampowered.com/app/352220/Kin…

Cthulhu Mythos RPG - The Sleeping Girl Of The Miasma Sea ($4.19) - a horror RPG inspired by one of the original survival horror games, Sweet Home for the NES - but much easier to learn and beat, with lots of quality of life improvements. store.steampowered.com/app/938240/Cth…

The Last Express ($2.09) - one of the last games of the "golden age" of point and click adventures. solve a mystery and deal with political and personal intrigue - all as an ingame clock ticks down, with everyone on board living their own lives. store.steampowered.com/app/252710/The…

Sine Mora EX ($2.49) - depressed time traveling furries go through the inevitability of a shakespearean tragedy, all inside the wrapper of a side scrolling shooter, with an akira yamaoka soundtrack (!). switch to the original Hungarian voice acting, imo. store.steampowered.com/app/606730/Sin…

MEMENTO ($2.39) - a beautiful horror-adventure game built in RPGmaker. on a school trip to a museum on a small island, the memories of a war do not let themselves become so easily forgotten, and haunt the future yet. store.steampowered.com/app/437030/MEM…

X-Com UFO Defense ($1.24) - the original x-com, and quite different from its later reboot. while the new games lean towards smooth, fast combat, the original is more interested in slowly building panic, with atmosphere that feels inspired by "The Thing". store.steampowered.com/app/7760/XCOM_…

a warning though that the original x-com is capital H Hard. i don't say that as a 'git gud' thing, just like, 75 percent of your crew might get sniped from across the map by an unseen alien the moment you step out of the plane. that's supposed to happen.

Last Word ($1.99) - a great RPGmaker game, taking place in one building, in one night, set in a world where getting the last word in a conversation grants literal power over another - with dialog combat that plays out like a board game. store.steampowered.com/app/355530/Las…

Abyss Odyssey ($2.99) - a metroidvania set in 19th century santiago, chile, with utterly gorgeous art direction. procgen levels and combat that feels akin to Smash, but with traditional lifebars instead of knocking people off stage. store.steampowered.com/app/255070/Aby…

Anachronox (Just 97 cents!!!) - a point and click adventure and JRPG fusion in western sci-fi aesthetics, with a sense of humor that feels inspired by dry english comedies of the 80s and 90s. a diamond in the rough of the times. store.steampowered.com/app/242940/Ana…

okay that's enough recommendations for a lil while, i'll add to the thread again with more later

if you feel like throwing me some bones for sharing a buncha recs, i've got a $3 bundle sale of my own of 9 of my text games and stories on itchio

https://twitter.com/spacetwinks/status/1142452024233082880

or you can just throw cash at my ko-fi if you don't want anything at all in trade, either way ko-fi.com/spacetwinks

hokay, gotta buncha stuff done, thought up a buncha other games, now it's time for more steam summer sale recs

Raptor: Call of the Shadows ($1.49) - if you had a PC in the 90s, and if you ever once got ahold of a demo disc, you almost certainly played the shareware version of this vertical shooter. well now you can (and should) buy and play the full damn thing. store.steampowered.com/app/336060/Rap…

428: Shibuya Scramble ($14.99) - a live action dramedy VN that takes inspiration from 24. unravel an ever growing (and often ridiculous) conspiracy by playing through intertwined lives.

warning: a fair amount of shitty fat jokes, unfortunately. store.steampowered.com/app/648580/428…

also, bizarre but true spoiler warning: if you intend to buy and play Shibuya Scramble, do not watch or even look up information about the 2009 anime Canaan, as it will spoil a rather big part of the game.

i'm not kidding. this is absolutely true.

The Lion's Song Complete Collection ($4.39) - an episodic point and click adventure series set in 20th century austria, with you playing a different character every episode, each of their lives intertwining at the end. gorgeous pixel art. store.steampowered.com/sub/106294/

The Secret Of Monkey Island ($3.49) - if you've never played MI before, you're in for a treat. Guybrush Threepwood is a sweetheart, and a doofus, but he says he wants to be a bloodthirsty pirate. play with the classic graphics and never switch back. store.steampowered.com/app/32360/The_…

for the people who've never played MI, likely younger followers, it's hard to overstate what a huge influence Monkey Island is on me, and on the point and click genre as a whole. this game gets like the biggest endorsement i can think of, if you're on the fence.

(of the sequels, Curse of Monkey Island is the must have IMO, also $3.49, or you can get a bundle of all 4 for $10.48) store.steampowered.com/bundle/6588/Mo…

i'm just going to quote tweet myself on this one, because it's all still true, right down to the sale price

https://twitter.com/spacetwinks/status/1076629772564860928

The Witch's Isle ($2.99) - not on sale, but 1. it's great and 2. it's $2.99, c'mon. on an island where everyone has lost their memory, the witch that rules the island has given you an ultimatum - find her stolen urn by 4:00 am, or her curse will kill you. store.steampowered.com/app/701860/The…

realMyst ($8.99) - a lot of you were born after Myst came out, and i gotta tell you: Myst is still really fucking good and worth your time. solve puzzles on a strange island, and deal with the bickering between two brothers... who are trapped in books. store.steampowered.com/app/244430/rea…

Resonance ($2.99) - lot of you seemed interested in The Shivah up there; Resonance is published by the same company, Wadjet Eye, and is still my fave they've pubbed so far. a modern sci-fi thriller point and click, with an innovative "memory" system. store.steampowered.com/app/212050/Res…

and if you're a point and click adventure superfan the way i am, wadjet eye is hardly limited to The Shivah and Resonance, they've published a LOT of games in this genre. store.steampowered.com/developer/Wadj…

Heart & Slash ($2.24) -
a 3D action roguelite that takes aesthetic inspiration from Mega Man Legends, and gives you a ton of different weapons and items to unlock. store.steampowered.com/app/326840/Hea…

The Swapper ($2.24) - an eerie, isolating sci-fi puzzler where you clone yourself to fix problems while diving into the mysteries of an abandoned space station. beautiful, literally hand made environments. store.steampowered.com/app/231160/The…

Tacoma ($7.99) - speaking of solving mysteries on a space station... if you've somehow not played Tacoma yet, i promise you: it's absolutely worth it. play back the final recordings of a space station crew as you try to find out what happened to them. store.steampowered.com/app/343860/Tac…

Sam & Max Hit The Road ($2.09) - back to the "classic point and click" well, and i'll inform you now, prolly gonna be a lot of these. a cross country adventure trying to track down a loose bigfoot and tangling with a mean as hell country music star. store.steampowered.com/app/355170/Sam…

Nancy Drew (Varies) - listen. there are a lot of fucking nancy drew games. these are just a few. there are probably lists out there of the best ones. but it's hard to go wrong with them. generally better puzzles than most games, too. store.steampowered.com/developer/HeRI…

there's also a Nancy Drew Collection bundle with 20 games for $47.98, if you really wanna go all out. store.steampowered.com/sub/15482/

Master Spy ($0.99) - a challenging arcadey precision platformer that feels like it's taking inspiration from things like the Elevator Action series and the like. great soundtrack, too. store.steampowered.com/app/331190/Mas…

Wild Guns Reloaded ($7.49) - an update of Natsume's little known SNES gem of an action game, adding new content, like new levels, weapons, and two new characters. like Doris, who fucking rules. store.steampowered.com/app/585910/Wil…

The Silver Case ($7.99) - part of Suda51's "Kill The Past" thematic series, first released for the ps1, but didn't come stateside until 2016. part visual novel, part walking sim, and very much in the Killer7 vein of cryptic and strange. store.steampowered.com/app/476650/The…

The Fall ($1.99) - winner of Giant Bomb's "Best Story" in 2014, and still worth your time, especially at this price. a short, tight adventure game where you play as ARID, a suit AI doing everything they can to get the unconscious human inside to safety. store.steampowered.com/app/290770/The…

Quest for Glory 1-5 ($6.49) - for original fans! for new players curious about PC classics! for lovers of liontaurs? the sierra RPG/point and click adventure classics are all here. for the love of god, if you haven't played QfG before, play with a FAQ. store.steampowered.com/app/502750/Que…

real PC gaming classic hours

https://twitter.com/jdl_werewolf/status/889987460486320129

if you've been wanting to pick up a bunch of other Sierra point and click classics, they've got a bunch of those too

anything Steam doesn't have on this front, GOG probably does, like The Colonel's Bequest and others

personal recs of these: Police Quest 1-3 (do not play 4, which is by bastard Daryl F. Gates), Gabriel Knight 1 and 2 (do NOT get the remake of 1), and the King's Quest collection. if you want weird FMV shit exclusively, both Phantasmagorias.

okay that's enough recs for one day. hope i introduced y'all to some games you wouldn't have heard of otherwise (or games you haven't thought about in ages)

again, if you feel like throwing me some bones for the recs, got a ko-fi, thanks y'all ko-fi.com/spacetwinks

i'll probably toss on more recs here and there throughout the sale as i think of 'em/make time for 'em. i genuinely like pointing people towards weird and/or old stuff they wouldn't have heard about otherwise

heyyyy it's almost 6 pm on the east coast, who wants more steam sale recs

doesn't matter how you answer, here they come anyway

Shadowhand ($5.99) - a solitaire RPG (really!) set in 18th century england, where you are an aristocrat turned highwaywoman. fight and thieve and unveil corruption along the way - by playing a great modified form of solitaire. store.steampowered.com/app/427490/Sha…

you can also get the Superb Solitaire bundle, which collects Shadowhand with Regency Solitaire by the same developer for just an extra buck and four cents. Regency Solitaire is also good as hell. store.steampowered.com/bundle/6129/Su…

HEARTBEAT ($7.49) - for those of you digging fingers into your thighs while you wait for the next Pokemon, you'll want this. a very obviously Pokemon inspired upbeat RPG, with all that implies, including that JRPG staple: fishing. store.steampowered.com/app/984560/HEA…

Headlander ($5.99) - a comedy metroidvania inspired by '70s sci-fi, and developed by Double Fine. launch your head and attach it to an array of robot bodies to fight your way against a faux-utopia ruled by a machine. store.steampowered.com/app/340000/Hea…

Quadrilateral Cowboy ($9.99) - immersive stealth sim meets "actual" hacking gameplay, where you have to assemble instructions in command line with your high tech 256k RAM laptop for corporate espionage. store.steampowered.com/app/240440/Qua…

Hypnospace Outlaw ($15.99) - in an alternate universe 90s, you are a moderator for an online webhosting platform akin to Geocities and Tripod, and must hunt down and report TOS violations. funny, yes, but a lot more to it than you might think. store.steampowered.com/app/844590/Hyp…

killer7 ($12.99) - one of my favorite games of all time, so, i'm biased. suda51 delivers a blend of adventure game and FPS in a stylish, surreal, and incredibly cryptic story, having you switch bodies to solve puzzles and kill invisible monsters. store.steampowered.com/app/868520/kil…

VVVVVV ($2.49) - a lot of people have played this... but it's 9 years old, so maybe you haven't yet. a challenging platformer with a big world where you flip gravity to make your way through. great soundtrack, includes difficulty options like "no death". store.steampowered.com/app/70300/VVVV…

Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale ($4.99) - predecessor to games like Moonlighter, in Recettear you run an item shop and sell what you find on your dungeon crawls as you scramble to pay off your debt. you've gotta make your shop appealing to customers too! store.steampowered.com/app/70400/Rece…

SEGA Bass Fishing ($1.19) - cast as skillfully and as fast as you can to great and wildly inappropriate squealing guitar music in this port of the high intensity arcade fishing port, all for less than the cost of a single can of an energy drink. store.steampowered.com/app/71240/SEGA…

Yoku's Island Express ($9.99) - platforming meets pinball in this cute as fuck game, where you play an adorable beetle who is taking over as the postman for an island, but quickly have to solve much bigger problems than delivering the mail. store.steampowered.com/app/334940/Yok…

Strange Telephone ($3.99) - awakening in a strange world with a massive door before you, you must use a sentient telephone to dial your way into slices of other universes, and try to make your way home alive. yume nikki fans should check this out. store.steampowered.com/app/705290/Str…

Mouth Sweet (Pay What You Want) - oops not a steam game, but i don't care, it rules. a short, unnerving horror game taking place at a surreal temp job that does not care if you live or die, though they'll tell you they're like a family here. lovegames.itch.io/mouth-sweet

L.O.V.E. Games has other titles too, all pay what you want, all good as hell, check 'em out.

(there's also a short VN where you fuck Bowser) lovegames.itch.io

aaaand i think that's a good place to stop for today. hope i've shared some games with you you wouldn't have come across otherwise