The Solomon Code

The nature of digital marketplaces is an intriguing puzzle. On the one hand, they make consuming media easier and more convenient than ever, providing you with far more information than you could ever possibly get off the back of a gaming CD. On the other hand, they also enable addiction by direct-beaming sales to you in the comfort of your own home.

The Steam Summer Sale is a time-honored sale, as digital marketplaces go, far predating Steam’s many other sales like the Christmas sale and the Spring Sale and the Wholesome Games sale. It’s no longer the once-a-year chance to get blockbuster games at truly scandalous prices (perhaps it never was), but it’s still always an exciting time for gamers to add more games to their backlog and save for a rainy day. And, relatedly, for gamers to swap recommendations about their surprise discoveries of the year, the games that haven’t attracted much buzz but are well worth their time. It’s an oddly bonding experience.

The sale’s been on for about two weeks, but it’ll be on for another five days. So before it closes, here are my recommendations of games from the last year that I haven’t heard a lot about, but which I think are very worth the price that they’re currently being offered for.

Book of Hours (30% off) 17.49$

30% may not seem like much of a deal, but for how engaging the game is and for how many hours it’ll take, it’s excellent value. Wouldn’t think a library sim from the makers of Cultist Simulator would be so engaging, but there you are–this game has single-handedly eaten a lot of my summer break.

Though set in the same universe as Cultist Simulator, and following similar card-based mechanics, Book of Hours avoids several of the major pitfalls of the previous game by being more forgiving as well as more visually appealing than its predecessor. 50 hours in and I have not died once, despite some initial fumbling at the very start. And the massive library you have to explore, with its many beautiful, haunted, rooms, gives a clear feeling of progression to the game, something the previous game lacked sorely.

(I should note, both because I know it will concern certain people close to me and also because I know I was initially puzzled about it, that neither Cultist Simulator or Book of Hours have anything to do with religion. They are both of them essentially time-management card-games set in a fantasy world. They have most in common with HP Lovecraft’s mythos, but carve a sufficiently distinct identity.)

It’s a fascinating game, and has actually lead me to some reflections on the appeal of books as well as “insider knowledge” organizations, that I might write up some time soon. After I finish the game and have spare time, anyway.

Terraformers (60% off) 7.99

I like space. Is it obvious? And things about colonizing Mars. Have I mentioned that? I got into this because a friend recommended it after I bought the board game Terraforming Mars in a bout of enthusiasm after reading The Martian by Andy Weir.

As games go, Terraformers is a pretty basic resource allocation game. It makes a big deal about being super hard, but it’s not, particularly. The pictures of big Martian cities are cool to see, and the wide variety of buildings you can make are intriguing, as well as the multiple paths to victory, even if all those victories end with the exact same screen.

It’s not a groundbreaking game, but also, it’s not a bank-breaking price. 7.99 is very reasonable, especially if you’re a nerd who likes fantasizing about colonizing other planets.

Planet Crafter (45% off) 13.49$

On the subject of me liking space, and planets, and terraforming red planets, there’s Planet Crafter, a game where you, a hapless ex-con astronaut dumped on a barren rock by a self-serving corporation, but survive deadly temperatures and general lack of oxygen long enough to farm minerals and scavenge space ships so you can build the necessary machines to form an atmosphere and biosphere for your newfound home.

It’s not the only game with this premise (oddly enough, I bounced totally off the much more well-known Satisfactorio), but it’s a beautiful game, with vast vistas and sprawling mountains, and an environment that goes from an angry orange to a more welcoming green as you add plants and even animals to the environments. The story is a little threadbare in parts, particularly on the expansion planet, but it’s enough to keep you going and invested. And its devs are constantly adding new material now–new buildings, new plants, even the ability to go to other moons in the solar system. It’s a wonderful game. Play it if you haven’t.

Dungeons of Hinterberg (60% off) 9.19$

I’m cheating a bit here, as Dungeons was definitely talked about in certain circles. It has a beautiful art style all its own, and a compelling premise–Magical dungeons open up in the Swiss Alps and tourists begin swarming into a sleepy village so they can hunt the monsters in the dungeon for fun.

Ultimately, I found the story a bit lacking, mostly because it ditches any attempt to build a larger mythology in hopes of making a point about the environmental impact of tourism. It could have been interesting if the game genuinely engaged with European and Slavic folk legend, instead of just using them as set dressing for its colorful modernist tale. Also several of the characters are hard to get a feel for, and despite the fact that you can choose dialogue options, it’s clear that your choices don’t really matter.

But it’s a fun, chill game that very much is doing its own thing and is quite successful at it. It feels like a quicker, lower-stakes version of Persona, and at 9.19 it’s an absolute steal.

Legend of Tianding (70% off) 5.99

I played the demo to this ages ago, and the game itself slightly more recently. Again, it’s not a groundbreaking game–in many ways it’s a straightforward platformer with an art style halfway between anime and Western. The hero thief Tianding must fight back against the villainous Japanese colonizers on the streets of Taipei, trading off a wide variety of weapons and using some vaguely supernatural abilities.

Mostly I found this game interesting for its depiction of the unique culture of Taiwan, which even in the game’s narrative operates uneasily in a space not quite Chinese, not quite Japanese. Tianding is an actual historical figure in the country, a sort of Robin Hood figure during the Japanese occupation. It was interesting in that context to play the game with an eye toward what a “hero” means in Taiwan (though of course making generalizations off a single game would be foolhardy).

More generally, the game is solid, if a bit repetitive. The enemies are not clever and more exhausting than anything, but the levels are fun to play through, and the different weapons you can use in the game keep things fresh and interesting. It’s certainly worthwhile for anyone interested in Taiwanese culture, and probably even for fans of platformers in general.

Dragon Age Veilguard (50% off, 29.99)

I am again cheating. Half of this list feels like it’s cheating in one way or another. Dragon Age: Veilguard was a AAA game from the makers of Mass Effect, and it’s release was one of the biggest events of the year. Until it bombed, and didn’t bring in the numbers wanted, because… well, that’s complex. The point is it’s not “hidden.”

It’s also not, if I’m honest, much of a “gem.” It’s more colorful and more sanitized than previous Dragon Age games, the combat is more simplistic, the world feels more like magical sci-fi than fantasy, and a solid half of the characters are uninteresting.

Despite all this, Veilguard is worth thirty dollars, and is worth at least one playthrough, particularly to fans of the franchise who were desperately curious about the truth of the elven gods and the Blight. This game is rich with revealed lore about the nature of the intricate world Bioware initially made all those years ago, and the payoff to those closely-kept secrets is itself fascinating, though not perhaps well-integrated.

Also, while the combat is simplistic, it is still interesting and smooth. The enemies tended to be very predictable, but they were fun to fight and beat up. It’s a solid game on it’s own merits, with all the polish that comes from being a AAA game. It just isn’t the epic a lot of people were hoping for.

But it doesn’t need to be, for thirty dollars. Give it a go.

Honorable Mentions

Those are my recommendations. I should throw out a word too for Tactical Breach Wizards, which I’ve been told is good but haven’t played yet, and Lynked: Banner of the Spark, a clone of Megaman that a friend recommended (and I bought), but which I haven’t really gotten to love yet. Also the infamous Regency Solitaire game, the budget romance card game that I hate to love, has a sequel out, so that might be fun. Oh who am I kidding. It’s fun, I played it. Also the word manipulation game The Plucky Squire, a game I deeply wanted to love but simply wasn’t able to connect with.

It is downright disspiriting, sometimes, how many great games there are out there to play. I already know I can’t read every great book; I’ve given up on watching every great tv show; and I never really planned on playing every great video game. But still it’s amazing how many there are.

So go play some.