Kingdom Come: Deliverance - $8.29 CAD (80% off)

Probably my favourite ARPG. You play as a peasant with no skill, and that actually translates in game. If you've ever rolled your eyes at games where you effortless smash waves upon waves of enemies, this game is for you. Beating even the lowliest grunt can be quite challenging, forcing you to play in ways other than "beat everything up".

The neat thing is the story is not only based on real life events, but all the towns exist (still to this day in the Czech Republic), the geography is super accurate (relative distnace, rivers, ridges, etc) and even the buildings are modelled off the real things (some are still standing, or you can still see their ruins).

This game ticked so many boxes for me, and is a steal at $8

Fury Unleashed 2,92€ instead of 19,50€.

Metroidvania with roguelike elements and metaprogression. Graphics are timeless (the game plays inside of a comic book, which is a nice change), very tight gameplay, tons of weapons and cool bosses.

Smooth working 2-Player-Coop!

Minishoot' Adventures $11.99 (20% off)

Isometric Zelda / Metroidvania / bullet hell with a lot of accessibility features and neat art where you're a lil spaceship guy. Has a demo to see if it's your jam. Already beat it twice, would really love for them to make DLC or a sequel.

Jupiter Hell, 8,39€ instead of 20,99€.

Spiritual successor to DoomRL. a turnbased roguelike that doesn't feel turnbased, with smooth animation and fast gameplay. 3 different classes with a lot of gamechanging perks, tons of guns and heaps of demons, what else could someone want?

Celeste $1.99 (90% off, new all-time low)

Hard but fair precision platformer by an expert of platformer design. Excellent controls, deep platforming mechanics, and a cathartic story about internal and external struggles.

Tunic $14.99 (50% off, new all-time low)

A little guy in a green tunic picks up a sword and goes on an adventure, but the game is in an unknown language and you only have a few pages of the manual. It's like a metroidvania but your progress is based on knowledge.

Inscryption $7.99 (60% off, new all-time low)

You find an old, abandoned video game and load it up. It's an atmospheric, spooky card game, hiding layers of secrets for you to discover. The less you know before starting the game, the better your experience will be.

Ultimate Chicken Horse $5.24 (65% off, matching the all-time low)

Design platformer levels with your friends, then race them to the end, locally or online. Points are only awarded if someone died, so make the level extra dangerous!

Just picked up Bloons 6, (~$1, 90% off) for those who like tower defense games. Lots of unlockable content and metaprogression, if that's your jam.

The Witcher 3 - Wild Hunt ~~$39.99~~ $3.99 (90% off)

If you've somehow managed to avoid Witcher until now, it's a dark medieval fantasy, 3rd person, open world RPG based on ~~Norse~~ Slavic mythology. Lots of political intrigue, choices that actually impact outcomes in game. Fantastic voice acting, story, soundtrack, and combat/gameplay mechanics. This is one of the best games on the market - if you don't already have it, now's the time! There are also two DLCs that are each the size and scope of an entire standalone game - don't miss those!

Also available DRM free on GOG for the same price.

(shoutout to @Klystron@sh.itjust.works for GOG intel)

Gato Roboto $1.99 (75% off, matching the all-time low)

Polished metroidvania with great monochrome pixel art. You are a cat piloting a robot suit. It only lasts a few hours, but they're hours well spent.

hackmud ~~$19.99~~ $14.99 (25% off)

If you're into scripting or hacking you should check this game out. It's an interesting twist on the Multi-User Dungeon genre. The game presents mostly as a command-line interface where your goal is to seek out targets to pwn for money/points. NPC targets will have vulnerabilities you need to find and exploit in order to expose a hackable part. Once found you engage hackermode where you'll have a timelimit to break the target's security (mostly through bruteforce cracking). The game allows you to write short scripts in JavaScript to automate searching for vulnerabilities and cracking security.

Being Multi-User, there are other users online doing what you're doing and you're free to chat with them and exchange scripts. You're also free to write malicious scripts that will steal money/points from others who don't check scripts before running them!

The part I found cool was that the game mirrors IRL hacking much closer than other hacking games. You'll often need to submit incorrect data to NPC targets to get an error message that will contain hints about where to go next. Ex. A webpage has "News" and "About Us" sections. You can request a section that doesn't exist to get an error message that shows all acceptable sections: "News", "About Us", or "Employees". You've found a hidden section! Using scripts to send a bunch of mal-formed data at a target and then analyzing which ones generate an exploitable error is part of real-life security testing.

Subnautica ~~$29.99~~ $9.89 (67% off)

Sci-fi survival builder: you're on a massive spacecraft that ends up crash landing on an ocean planet; your goal is to figure out wtf happened and find a way off the planet. This game is 80% feel-good tropical diving simulator; and 20% thalasaphobic deepsea horror. This has become one of my go-to "idk what to play" games that I keep returning to for a nice digital tropical vacation... with a dash of fleeing in terror from, uh... spoilers. No really though, if you don't already know this game's story, DO NOT start looking up videos and posts etc about it - just buy it and dive in.

Hypnospace Outlaw $4.79 (a bizarre 76% off, new all-time low)

Explore a remarkably authentic simulation of the 1999 World Wide Web as a moderator of a Geocities-like website hub. Rather than just being a joke about the corny retro graphics, it's a heartfelt funeral for that era of the internet.

Disco Elysium is 90% off. ~~$54.49~~ $4.54 (that's in Canadian, not sure about the US price exactly.)

I honestly couldn't even tell you what it's about, but it's one of my favourite games ever. You can die from reading a book that's too sad and if you do it right, you can smell communism.

This War of Mine: Complete Edition ~~£26.93~~ £3.91 (85% off)

In my opinion one of the greatest games but also one of the saddest. If you already own the game then I highly recommend all the DLC as they all bring some interesting scenarios to the game.

Wildermyth is a lovely combination of storytelling and xcom-style combat, with a genealogy system and chances for your heroes (and their descendants) to reappear in future games.

Satisfactory ~~$29.99~~ $14.99 (50% off)

Sci-fi, you're dropped down to a lush alien planet to do what humans do best: strip all of its natural resources! Combat is limited, but boils down to fighting off wild animals - the main gist of the game is building and optimizing things like miners/conveyor belts/smeltors/assemblers/etc to automate the pillaging of the environment with increasing efficiency... which admittedly sounds more like work than play, but this title caught me a bit off guard with how fun and - true to its name - satisfying it is play.

Well now there is a dedicated post. Yours. 😄

Valheim ~~$19.99~~ $9.99 (50% off)

You're a viking that died and you find yourself in a purgatory called "Valheim" to prove you're worthy of Valhalla. Another survival builder - with a somehow charming combination of really bad graphics paired with really good lighting. The combat is kinda clunky, but the other elements of this game make up for it. Well worth $10!! Don't forget to turn your music on before summoning a boss.

Trombone Champ 60% off

Trombone Champ is the world's first trombone-based rhythm music game. Unlike most music games, you can freely play any note at any time. You're not just following along with the music, you're actually playing the music!

Shattered Pixel Dungeon, ~~9.99 USD~~ 6.69 USD

It's a turn-based traditional roguelike + dungeon crawler, i.e. there are no in-game permanent upgrades to make the characters stronger, and only you the player get "stronger" as you become more knowledgeable. If you are into that kind of game, this is absolutely one of the best I've played!

The developer Evan has been continuously updating the game for the past decade, with a new, sixth playable hero scheduled to release later this year. The game is also free and open source, so you can even play the full game for free. I bought the Steam version (and has sunk 100+ hrs into it) because it's so rare for me nowadays to find a game I don't get tired of after a handful of hours. (Not saying short games are necessarily bad though, some of my faves are very short too.)

Also, check out the official pixeldungeon@lemmy.world!