steam summer sale selections

It’s here! The one time of the year in which I actually buy games, instead of keeping to my usual notorious seafaring ways. During this time, I usually buy games that I’ve had my eye on, ones with MASSIVE sales, or games that I’ve pirated and loved and want to show support for by purchasing after the fact. As this sale comes to a close, I want to share some of the games I've bought, and what I've been into as of late for gaming!

First up: puzzle games. I LOVE a good puzzle game – point and click, ciphers and word games, nonograms, mind benders, escape rooms, anything! I think they’re so fun, even if I’m not always the greatest at them LOL.

The first one on my list is a bundle of Poems and Codes and Prose and Codes. I pirated Poems and Codes a few months ago and was OBSESSED, so I was happy to buy not only the real deal, but also its companion game! It’s a cipher game, where you use sentence structure, syntax, and knowledge of time periods and context clues to piece together chunks of written works. When completed, it reveals a portion of a poem! I really enjoyed trying different combinations of letters (and reading them aloud for a laugh when they’re wrong), and then getting to recite the poems to myself afterward, to really get a feel for how it would be presented. There are some truly beautiful pieces in there, and I’m excited to keep chipping away at it over the coming months until I crack all of the ciphers!

Next is Proverbs, a digital cross-stitch using minesweeper rules to build a MASSIVE mega-mosaic depiction of Peter Bruegel the Elder's Netherlandish Proverbs. Such a cool concept, and the perfect game to just zone out to and uncover a painting showing people being people (fools at heart).

Once I complete Proverbs, I’ll move on to some of the other mega-mosaics in their series! They have quite a few, so it’ll be a challenge to chip away at each one until I get through all of them.

Next up are RPGs! I previously pirated Little Goody Two Shoes, and I absolutely loved it. Between the sapphic day cycle and minigames to the spooky nighttime puzzle cycles, this game was challenging, but rich with beautiful art and a deeply woven plot. While the main character Elise was kind of a brat (lol), she’s also… not unsympathetic. Her entire town others her at every turn and makes her feel less-than, except for her three friends (and love interests!). And all she wants is to have a better life for herself – riches, luxury, and a lavish life… but throughout the game, she has to decide what (or who) she’s willing to sacrifice to achieve her dreams.

I saw that there was a bundle of both this game, as well as its precursor, Pocket Mirror, and took the chance to download both at once officially! I’m so excited to play the original too, as it has the same art style, mixing both pixel art and detailed character art.

I also want to play Yuppie Psycho, which is a survival horror game about a new hire who has been tasked to hunt a witch who has been plaguing the company from the inside for years. It’s supposed to have witty dialog juxtaposed with some grotesque horror, which is definitely up my alley. A lot of people who enjoyed Pocket Mirror also really loved this one, so I’m hoping it has the same charm!

I have 3 other Steam games on my list, all of different genres!

The first is Hello Kitty Island Adventure, which I’ve been wanting to play for SO LONGGGGGG. Previously, it was restricted to only iOS, but it’s finally on other platforms! It’s so cute, and has all of the Sanrio characters, including my MAIN MAN, KEROPPI <3. It even has Ian’s favorite character (who isn’t really his favorite, he just doesn’t care enough to really pick one), Big Challenges! He’s the least popular, and least known Sanrio character, even staying shrouded in mystery in the game. But it does make me happy that both Ian and I picked green characters.

Next is the award-winning rogue-like dungeon crawler, Hades! I’ve heard SUCH good things, and the character art is beautiful, so I’m excited to try it out! I’ve gotten used to rogue-likes from playing games like Ship of Fools, so I feel like I’ll be able to settle into the gameplay loop pretty easily. And the soundtrack was done by Darren Korb, whose music I know from the game Bastion – I’m hoping it’s the same kinda vibe, because I used to listen to that soundtrack while reading fanfics.

And the final one out of the miscellaneous games is Crypt of the Necrodancer! Another rogue-like, this game is all about moving to the rhythm to attack and avoid undead enemies. While there’s plenty of good music in the game, they also give the option to upload your own MP3s, which will be really fun! Although, I can see from the Steam store page that they have Hatsune Miku tracks, so I doubt I’ll get bored with the options they have to offer.

My poor wallet lol! Between all of these games, plus the new Tamagotchi game coming out for the Switch, I’ll definitely be busy this summer! Hopefully you will be too, and you'll try out some of the games I mentioned. :)

-C 💖