It’s that time of year again, and although I primarily enjoy the two major yearly Steam sales for the opportunity to send (deeply discounted) presents to my friends, I do also tend to spoil myself rotten. Since my husband and I mostly don’t do gifts for Christmas or our birthdays (both of which are close to the holiday season), we do tend to get a little splurgey on whatever fun stuff catches our eyes this time of year.
On the first day of the sale, I check out all the stuff on my wish list that’s marked down and try to prioritize. As per usual, I find myself debating whether I’d rather pick up some pricier titles with some real meat to them, or if I want to pick up a whole mess of smaller indie games. This year, I decided to make two lists of similar cost, and then turned those into a graphic to really look at my options.
Even throwing a couple of somewhat higher-priced titles onto the “cheap stuff” side, I was surprised that picking my top three “big” games actually would cost just a smidgen more than buying all fourteen titles on the right.
Although the graphic makes it look like this is an absolute binary choice, it’s absolutely not. In reality, it’s much more likely I’ll grab one from the left, and four or five from the right, and call it a sale. After I’m done with all my gift purchases, of course. In fact, between making this graphic and posting this blog, I can no longer just go for the three games on the left, since I’ve been hit by the Steam Sale Santa and gifted Outer Wilds as an early birthday present!
Are you planning any purchases this year during the Steam Winter sale? Or are you side-eyeing your backlog and making the choice to hold off on new games?
Nerd Girl Thoughts 
I’m seriously considering Greedfall and Spellforce III. I’d love to give The Outer Worlds a try, but first person viewpoints give me a headache. (Quite literally.) The Beginner’s Guide is also attracting my interest, but I’m not sure if I’ll pull the trigger.
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I finally bought Torchlight III, knowing full well it doesn’t have good reviews. But I figured that a very light ARPG would be what I need right now. I only played the very beginning which I already knew from the beta phase, so there’s been no surprise so far.
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I wish I had restraint to consider and write more about my Steam catalog! I grabbed Yakuza: Like a Dragon and Kiwami 2 to round out my Yakuza titles on Steam, and then grabbed Control (I have the base game on Epic, but it would have cost more to get the DLC on Epic than to just buy the Complete edition on Steam, which is a weakspot for EGS). So far that’s been it and probably will remain it since I’m still dumping too many hours into WoW.
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Logic dictates that I need zero new games, as I am also putting a lot of time into WoW, but in a year with limited opportunities for joy, I am ignoring logic & letting myself buy stuff.
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It’s Christmas 2020. As long as it doesn’t hurt anything or anyone else, I would spoil myself rotten. Got $22 worth of small indie games in the Steam cart already. The bigger stuff I’m still debating due to the time commitment factor and the chances of winding up in next year’s Humble Bundle, but small stuff I can taste test during the holidays is a definite yes.
Here’s to surviving the year and hoping 2021 is better.
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I have Disco Elysium and Outer Wilds on my maybe list, too. The real issue is would I ever get the time to play them? Really, the price isn’t the key factor. It would make more sense to buy one of them when I know I’m ready to play it and pay whatever it costs at that time. Always my issue with sales of any kind – if I buy it, will I use it? And the answer is usually probably not.
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The main driving factor for me with Disco Elysian is the fact it’s getting updates in the near-ish future, so I’m expecting less sales once that happens. That’s probably the only definite on my list right now.
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I just made a post as well on this topic and have been looking forward to spending *some* money on a few titles once I know how much I’ll have for the entirety of January.
I’m sure that I’ll buy Yakuza 0 and some other titles, including Ni no Kuni and the Space Christmas Bundle that can be bought on the Humble Store as that includes Moons of Madness and Tacoma as well as some gifts for friends. Honestly, I was thinking about preordering Humankind but I may actually wait until my birthday and see what some of the reviews are like. I mean, I’m sure I’ll like it but at the same time, it’s going to be a new game and may have bugs on release and maybe it’ll get reduced as well by the time that I’ve actually played the other Endless Games… Alas, I think I’ll pass on that and instead settle for games that are cheaper.
As far as your list is concerned, I know that Outer Wilds is a great game that I can heavily recommend. I spend about 24 hours to get through the campaign… and I think I’m going to spend even more time to get some of the achievements that are left there as well as potentially play through the story again or practice speedruns or whatever… could be fun. 😀
I heard great things about Disco Ellysium – and judging from the 20-40 hour average playtime, it seems to be worth it… and well, Planet Zoo is basically a game that you could spend years on if you really wanted to… so I feel like the left side is quite nice… but Firewatch is a great title, too…
and well, I’m a sucker for God Sims, so honestly, that’s a rough choice.
I think the mix between the two sides might be just fine though. You’ll be fine 😀 Will you make a post on what you went for? 🙂
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Oh, on or around the 6th, I’ll do a post about what I picked up over this time period. I’ve already gotten a few great gifts (including Outer Wilds!) and that’s helping me whittle down my shopping list.
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Oh, that’s what you meant up there! 😀 I didn’t quite get whether or not you already got it or not lol.
Well, certainly Outer Wilds is a great pick-up – and since you now already have it, you don’t need to pick it up, meaning you have more money available for other pick-ups 😀
Looking forward to the post!
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