Steam Sales. They are enjoyable events, and always terrifying for my bank balance! I always picture my bank account crying whenever a big gaming sale turns up. It certainly spent a while protesting when I paid for my Steam Deck!
I have many different projects in the works. I’ve got plenty of indie titles to write about, with impression reviews of My Time at Sandrock, Captain of Industry, Ultimate Epic Battle Simulator 2, and Yaengard still to come. I’ll be continuing a long series about my experiences with the Steam Deck, and I also plan to continue my Indie Corner series. There are also plans to do a gigantic series exploring Bullfrog Productions and Lionhead games, as I’ve been sucked into playing Fable again. Plenty of ideas, not enough time!
Those are the short-term plans. I was talking to a good friend of mine over the weekend about ideas and they said: “You know how you pick up so many games, most of them I’ve never heard about in my life? Why don’t you write a little about them?”
What a good idea! I usually stick to a strict budget plan in Steam sales these days. With my library being as it is, I don’t buy as much as I used to, but I can never turn down the opportunity to pick up some cool stuff to tinker with. I kept a £30 budget for this sale, and to try and find obscure games I otherwise wouldn’t try out.
I do what I always do when a sale happens: I make a long list of games I would like to pick up, with the budget I have in mind, and then I pick from that list. I decided on picking up three games from the sale this time. These won’t be reviews or even impressions, because I’ve barely played any of these, but I have booted up all four and given them a try, so at least I can pretend I know what I’m talking about! So sit back, grab some snacks and enjoy my little rambles.
Erannorth Chronicles
The first pick is this weird blend of an open-world RPG and a trading card game. If you picture Magic the Gathering and Battle Brothers mixed in a blender, you get this game. I’ve been meaning to pick up Erannorth Chronicles for a long time, and with the game 50% off in the sale, I decided it was time to pick it up.
There’s a lot to digest in this game, and so far I can’t help but feel a bit overwhelmed. There’s a big, chunky open world to explore and quests to complete, thousands of cards with an almost unlimited number of decks to sandbox and experiment with, and plenty of mechanics to get stuck into. It’s not a game you can just pick up and play from the start. One of the reasons I loved Monster Train and Tainted Grail so much is that they are fairly simple to dig into; easy to learn but hard to master.
Erannorth isn’t easy to learn, but I’m looking forward to the challenge. There’s a gigantic game in here to sink my teeth into, and I will surely write up an impressions review once I’ve played it further.
Pit People
Next up was Pit People: which I picked up for £6.81. It’s a game I haven’t heard of much until I found it while browsing for hidden gems. It’s a wacky, open-ended turn-based combat game. Come to think of it, most of the games I bought in this sale meet the RTS/TBS genre. Guess I’ve been in the mood for those lately.
Booting the game up, I’m treated to some delightful music and narration which made me burst out laughing. Like Erannorth, there’s a lot to digest here. It’s the first game in a while which made me laugh so early on. It kicks off with a little piece of the story: a hapless father tries to protect his potato son from a group of bandits while being abused by the narrator god; all done with great cartoon graphics. The combat feels simple, tight-knit, and enjoyable on the eyes.
I’ve only just gotten to the arena stage in the tutorial mode, so when I say I’m barely into the game, I mean it. As of writing this, I have barely half an hour played. The visual design is bright and fun, the combat is very fast, and I’m rather enjoying the narration and dialogue. It’s slapstick, entertaining and the voice actor does a great job. I’m surprised I didn’t hear much about Pit People until now, but I’m happy I bought it. It looks like a game I can sink a lot of time into, and they made Castle Crashers. That’s some solid pedigree right there.
Rusted Warfare – RTS
Unlike the others, I have played this game before! This was on mobile so I knew what I was getting into when I picked it up in the sale. I always like picking up the better mobile games when they go on sale as something simple to play when I just need a quick distraction or something to do on my commute. When I saw it on Steam in the sale for £2.30 odd, I decided to double-dip. It’s a great little game and I recommend it to anyone who wants a little, chill RTS title to play when they need to unwind.
Rusted Warfare has plenty of little things to enjoy: a surprisingly chunky RTS with retro graphics, plenty of skirmish maps, mod support, and lots of units. It’s bigger than I expected, and for a mobile game, it transforms well to playing on a computer. I’ve put about ten hours into it on the mobile, so I knew what I was getting into when I picked it up on Steam. Real-Time Strategy games are few and far between in the present day, which is unfortunate. There are still great ones like Age of Empires and Starcraft, as well as strange RPG-RTS blends such as the Spellforce franchise, but there aren’t many new games. They are hard to do well, but Rusted Warfare is one of the better ones.
With its modifiability, easy graphics, large amounts of content, and sheer number of options, it is a great little budget title.
Conclusion
This is a smaller article than I usually do, but I wanted to get something out on the Steam Sale. There’s always a goldmine of hidden gems and cool games under the radar, which is one of the reasons I write about games!
I’m not sure when I’ll be back next, but I’ll probably return with another Indie Corner episode. In the meantime, be safe, and I’ll be back soon!