The Steam Summer Sale is expected to start on Thursday, June 25 and run through July 9.

I really should have sat down with my wish list prior to playing a whole mess of games during the Steam Games Festival because now, most of the games I’m really jazzed about aren’t coming out for months and months!

Still, I’m eager to pick up a handful of new titles, and I’m really going to try to convince myself to go for quality over quantity during this sale.

So what am I planning to buy?

The Splurge

Disco Elysium

Purchasing Price Point $29.99 or less

I really regretted not picking this one up the last time it was on sale. However, I have no idea if I’m actually going to enjoy it, so considering it’s likely to be my big splurge title of the sale, it’s critical that I try it out inside the return window. I almost never spend over $20 on a game, but more and more, I really feel the need to make my purchases count because it’s not like I don’t have huge library to fall back on.

There’s actually not too many games on my wish list that have a regular price much over $20, but other games in contention for being my splurge title this time around were Heavenworld, Dawn of Man, Megaquarium, and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy. With a good enough discount, I still may pick up any of these, but historically, none of them have reached my desired price point during sales.

Smaller Purchases

Normally, I’d be spending the days leading up to one of the big Steam sales picking through my wish list, debating the likelihood of future Humble Choice or other bundle inclusion, and figuring out what I’m most likely to play right away. This time, I’m finding myself pretty stumped.

I expect I’ll pick up an Early Access title or two which drop in price enough during the sale that I feel I’ll get my money’s worth, even if a completed product never manifests. I’ll grab a title or two with an insane discount and mixed to bad reviews (or even more telling, nearly no reviews at all). I’ll likely round out my purchases with an inexpensive puzzle game, something small and super casual, something I’ve played in the past but no longer have access to, and an insanely cheap “completely your collection” that might hold my interest for an hour or so.

This was not the shopping list I planned to talk about, but probably far more realistic.

Gifting

Although there are a lot of genres I rarely if ever play, I like to think I have a pretty good handle on what is good, what is not so good, and what one might like based on other games they’ve enjoyed. One of my favorite parts of these big sales is running around, finding the perfect game for friends.

Sometimes, I buy something from their wish list, but mostly? I send gifts that I really think the recipient will enjoy. I won’t say I’ve always been 100% successful. Most years, someone gets a copy of Psychonauts, and someone else gets a copy of Ghost Master, because those are two games that have made me really happy in the past, and I like the idea of sharing a bit of that with someone else.

It seems like every major Steam sale, there are more and more folks lamenting the glory days gone by, and sure, the cessation of things like flash sales mean the prices don’t dip quite as low for the AA and AAA games. However, more and more, I am feeling as if the future of games isn’t in those titles, but the deep back catalogs and independent developers. Where I find myself conflicted is in my desire to get the best bargain and also to give not just lip service, but actual support to the little guys in game development.

I plan to enjoy this semi-annual event, but I am also looking towards the future of actually ponying up full price for the upcoming games I’m most excited about.

I don’t think I ever realized how many gaming expos existed until they all had to go digital due to Covid-19. Today, I received an email from Utomik to let me know about two more upcoming expos that they’re collaborating with.

Indigo (Dutch Game Garden) – June 22 through July 3

For the duration of Indigo 2020, 26 games will be available to play on Utomik, including Dreamscaper, Welcome to Beacon Pines, and Eloquence.

It’s not clear whether these will just be demos, or full games (although I fully expect they will be alpha / beta releases if so), but the games will be available to play for the duration of the event.

If you already have an active Utomik subscription, you don’t need to do anything. If you have never used Utomik, a seven day trial is available. If you’ve used Utomik in the past, but have a currently inactive account, you can use the code INDIGO20 to get 7 free days, during which you can play the Indigo 2020 games, as well as anything else in Utomik’s library.

BitSummit Gaiden – June 26 through July 11

Most of the BitSummit Gaiden 2020 content will be taking place on Twitch and Discord on June 27th and 28th, but they are also making a whole bunch of games available to play on Utomik for a two week period, including Mystic Pillars, Neversong, and Nanotale: Typing Chronicles.

Just like with Indigo, it’s not clear if these are full games or demos, but there’s a lot of things available to check out. Again, this is included with an active sub, and your can reactivate with code Gaiden20 for 7 days of playtime.

I personally think a lot of folks are sleeping on Utomik in general, so their willingness to work with these gaming expos seem like a win-win situation. The expos get to use the already built infrastructure to spotlight some new independent games, and Utomik may attract some folks who might not have otherwise checked them out.

I’ve been sorely tempted by Space Haven since it released into Early Access last week. Reviews thusfar are pretty stellar for a game still in Alpha, it looks like a game I would love, and I’ve been craving a great new base building experience.

Instead of making an impulse purchase, I decided to instead muddle through my library to see what else might scratch that itch, and I realized that I’ve picked up several games that – at least at a glance – are pretty similar and played almost none of them.

Meeple Station came out of Early Access in April of this year, but it’s been sitting in my library far far longer. I initally backed the Kickstarter for this one (along with the long-delayed Starmancer), but when the campaign failed to make its goals, I instead picked it up on Humble for $15.29 back in January of 2019. While the reviews on this one aren’t nearly as good, it does have the advantage of being something I already own.

Going even further back (but looking no less similar) is The Spatials: Galactology, a game I received for free for purchasing its predecessor The Spatials back in 2016. I confess to not being wild about the first game, so I figured I’d wait until full release of the sequel, but um, that happened in April of 2018, and the few meager hours Steam shows for it were spent idling for cards.

Those are just the most visually similar examples. I also own an unplayed copy of Oxygen Not Included, and a bunch of other colony sims and base builders in various settings that I’ve never touched. That’s in addition to Rimworld, which I played obsessively for over 200 hours, and the classic space station colony sim, Space Colony, which I have now purchased three separate times.

Putting aside for a moment how bad I am at actually playing the things I buy, I can’t imagine that I’m the only one who keeps searching for what basically amounts to the same game over and over. Sure, the details are different, but I expect the play style and process behind all of these titles is pretty similar. This one I can clearly trace back to its roots – the hours upon hours I put into Space Colony when it was fresh and new.

Is there any game you keep buying different iterations of?

I will admit, I am spoiled for choice with my gaming library, but that’s not always a good thing. I frequently spend more time poking around looking for something to play next than actually playing anything. So I’m always intrigued by sites that claim to be able to help me decide what to play.

Enter GamesGraph – you link your Steam account, set a couple of quick preferences, and it’ll point out games in your library you should consider playing next.

There are 6 questions that you can use to set your personal preferences. I tend to take reviews into consideration, but occasionally really enjoy games with awful reviews, so I set that just a bit above neutral. I care nothing for popularity or playing the newest thing, so I set those two really low. I nudged the slider for favorite genre loyalty down a notch, and favorite graphic styles all the way down, so my preference page looks like this.

Once I had GamesGraph linked to my (public) Steam profile, it imported all the games in my library directly to my backlog, as well as making note of my wishlist. Jumping to my backlog to take a look at its recommendations, this was my top ten.

Interesting, but other than setting my preferences, I hadn’t really given it much to work with, so these initial recommendations seem to be mostly reliant on reviews and popularity, and none of them have particularly high confidence scores. However, as soon as I rated the first game in my library that I had played in the past (in this case, Rimworld), my top 10 changed pretty significantly.

There are multiple ways to sort your backlog, and I found sorting by time played was the easiest way to find a good sized chunk of games I have played enough to feel comfortable rating. Your most played games will be shown at the top, and it doesn’t seem like a reverse sort is possible at this time, nor can you easily skip to later pages.

Rating a game is simple, but also, a little weird. If you have something in your library you don’t want to show, you can click on “Remove and Forget” and it’ll be like it was never there. However, if you want a game to continue to be eligible for recommendation, you need to check the box for “Will Replay” and you need to do that before choosing a rating. Once you click on one of the colored boxes to give a rating, the game immediately will jump to your library. You can go there and edit your rating (and at that point, select things like “Will Replay”), but if you know you’re likely to replay something, clicking that box before making a selection is simpler.

The more games I gave opinions on, the more information the algorithm had to draw on, and the better the confidence scores became.

GamesGraph is still in beta, and there are still a lot of things it doesn’t do. For example, you cannot rate games you own on other platforms, nor will it recommend them. If it could draw things you owned on other launchers, or even allow you to add them manually, I think it would be insanely useful, both for tracking owned titles and choosing what to dive into next.

They have, however, recently added the ability to allow the engine to recommend any free to play game on Steam, but that is turned off by default. You can also allow it to recommend games you indicated you would replay, as well as games on your wishlist, both of which are also off by default.

I am definitely planning to play around with GamesGraph some more – the more time I put into rating and marking off games I am unlikely to ever return to, the better results I expect I’ll get from it. If nothing else, it gives me something new to play around with when I can’t decide what to play.

While I’m still not sure exactly what’s wrong with my PC, in an attempt to minimize frustration, I decided to figure out what I might want to play that probably won’t result in a whole bunch of random crashes. I figured the best way to go about that is to look for some games that will run on machines significantly less beefy than mine is supposed to be.

And, of course, get that a nice little boost of happiness that comes from buying stuff.

Humble is currently running their spring sale, through May 21st, and with my extra discount from being a Humble Choice subscriber, some of the prices were way too good to pass up. My intention was primarily to only pick up games I could play right now, but I grabbed Lake Ridden anyway, even though its system requirements may be a little steeper than what I can necessarily handle at the moment.

My other two pickups were perfect for my current situation. Shortest Trip to Earth is practically being given away, so I was willing to take the risk that I might find the difficulty and RNG annoying. I expect to dabble in it when I don’t have a lot of a time to put in.

My other purchase – Din’s Legacy – was still a little more than I usually spend on a whim, but the combination of it’s bargain basement system requirements and the fact that I’ve been obsessively collecting Soldak games for awhile made the choice easy for me. Each new title they release adds a new, really interesting mechanic, and this time, it’s mutation.

As you level up, you get both random effects added to different abilities, as well as mutation points, which you can use to grab random abilities from other classes. I’m pretty sure this will make every single character notably different, and since everything is also procedurally generated and dynamic, the replayability here is off the charts.

There are 39 base classes (although the majority of them need to be unlocked through game play), and I expect that, like its predecessor Din’s Curse, this game is going to eat up a whole lot of my time. I put over three hours into it on day one, and I don’t even feel like I’ve really gotten started yet.

Of course, I’d still like to poke away at things already in my library.

The first bit of good news is that – again, just going off of system requirements – I should still be able to play Distortions for #MusicGameMay, and now that I’ve finally knocked out getting BfA flying in World of Warcraft, I plan to start that up in the next few days.

I’m optimistic that I will still be able to participate in the Long Live the Queen! blogger succession game of Civilization VI, but I expect my intention of learning more about the game on my own time is probably off the table for the time being. I should be able to get through 10 turns without locking up my system (especially if I shut down everything else and turn down the graphics a bit), but I’m not entirely sure I want to try to play for extended periods.

A few other things I’ve downloaded from my library to play around with are Saint’s Row 2, RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 / OpenRTC 2, Rocwood Academy, Mutazione, and the Framed Collection.

I don’t expect that having to go somewhat low-spec for awhile is going to be too awful – rather, I feel like it might pull me towards spending time with both some older titles and some less graphically intensive indie games I’ve been picking up along the way.