I’ll back up June. I was “that’s pretty nice” on Undertale but wasn’t nearly as positive on it as its fandom was. I loved Inscryption. It’s not meta like Undertale, but it does have occasional fourth wall breaks, which is part of its game-within-a-game fiction.

So true

Yes, Maddy is trans. This is both from word of god and a hint in the background of a piece of art in-game.

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!

Assault Android Cactus $4.99 (75% off, matching the all-time low)

Slick arcade-style twin-stick shooter with a pumpin’ soundtrack. Clear out arenas full of robots, build up combos, and go for a high score. A large roster of characters offer a wide variety of playstyles. There’s also 4-player local co-op.

Overcooked! 2 $6.24 (75% off, matching the all-time low)

Chaotic co-op cooking, local or online. Complete restaurant orders quickly in increasingly absurd scenarios. Cook in a haunted kitchen, above a mineshaft, in the middle of the highway, or on a burning hot air balloon that crashes into another restaurant! This is the kind of game that people joke will ruin friendships.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Some offline-friendly FPS games.

• Half-Life 1 and 2
• Borderlands 2 and 3
• Dusk
• SEUM: Speedrunners from Hell

First-person puzzle games (other than Portal 1 and 2, which you’ve heard about enough already):

• Once you’re done both Portals, check out community-made mod campaigns!
  • Portal: Revolution is a prequel to Portal 2 that introduces a few new mechanics.
  • Portal Stories: Mel has pretty much zero new mechanics but cranks up the difficulty.
• Viewfinder
• The Witness

I don’t see Corn Kidz 64 on that list.

Depends on your definition of “new” and “must-have”.

• Grapple Dog 75% off — momentum-based grappling hook platformer with a very funky soundtrack and Nitrome-style 2D art (spoiler: the dev was a Nitrome artist)
• Cobalt Core 25% off — deckbuilding in space! There’s an actual plot with an interesting cast of characters. The board game-style positioning mechanic was what sold me on the game.
• Cassette Beasts 40% off — creature collector with an identity that isn’t just “indie Pokémon”. Cool worldbuilding, heartfelt story, grown-up mechanics, and imaginative monster designs that avoid the “animal + element” formula.

The 2015 Monster Summer Sale was particularly memorable for me thanks to the music. I downloaded it and still listen to it! Ultimately, though, I’m glad Steam doesn’t have tie-in minigames and flash deals anymore, since it was tedious to have to metagame them for the best value.

My friends and I planned to drive to a certain spot out of town to view it, but at the last minute, we decided to drive in the opposite direction and stop wherever looked good. That ended up paying off, since our original spot got completely overcast!

Hi! Hi! What the fuck? AAAAHHH

AAAHH

Personally, I consider “retro graphics” to specifically mean the graphics evoke the look of an old game system, as opposed to just having “lo-fi” art. So I’d say that Celeste has great pixel art, but it’s not retro graphics, since it doesn’t remind me of any old console’s look. In addition to the games others have mentioned, I’ll point out these ones.

• Nintendo 64 — Corn Kidz 64
• Game Boy Color — Mina the Hollower
• Game Boy Advance — Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo
• Commodore 64 — VVVVVV
• Mid-late 90s PC — Hypnospace Outlaw

Indie games using retro graphics is nothing new. The ratio of effort vs looks is pretty good. The solo dev of Cave Story (released 2004) said that was why he went for that aesthetic.

Joke’s on you. Slay the Spire is having a sequel!

I’ve been maintaining a log in my own Mastodon thread. I’ll summarize from yesterday:

• Push The Cat with WASD is reverse sokoban with interesting story/gameplay integration, but I find the puzzles unsatisfying.
• Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo is a stylish callback to colourful GBA adventures. It zooms out to show the GBA when you’re idle! Wishlisted.
• Stardust Demon triggers my Cave Story neurons and the 3D FMVs are a very cool aesthetic choice. It needs a little more polish to be great.
• NanoApostle is a very hard boss rush with deadly but well-telegraphed attacks. The range of visual intensity in the art is impressively huge.
• The Rise is a precision platformer about jumping, dashing, and going up. It’s competently produced, but I don’t see anything novel about it.
• Waltz & Jam is a very cute top-down adventure with interesting characters. It’s a lot more forgiving than Tunic. Wishlisted.
• What the Car? Extremely silly. Wishlisted.