alright, it's time once again for a game sale rec thread! this will be covering ground from the steam, GOG, and itchio sales. as ever, i focus primarily on more obscure, niche, weirder games. lots of recs of older games too for modern gens who might not have tried 'em.

onwards!

Umurangi Generation - ($11.24) - my 2020 GOTY. a first person photography game in the "shitty future" of tauranga aotearoa. take pics, complete bounties, and pay attention. the best environmental storytelling i've ever seen in a game. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1223500/Umurangi_Generation/

i also HIGHLY recommend you pick up the Macro DLC ($7.49), which adds new tools, and new levels, including a heartstopping ending. the base game is already complete, but the DLC makes it complete-r, if you get me. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1435580/Umurangi_Generation_Macro/

The Flower Collectors ($11.99) - it's 1977 in barcelona. you are an ex-cop who uses a wheelchair - and have witnessed a murder. partnering with a young journalist, you must scan the streets to find truth. Rear Window's ideas turned into game mechanics! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1034750/The_Flower_Collectors/

Shadowhand ($7.49) - a great modified and hypercharged form of solitare combines with RPG battle mechanics to bring you the tale of aristocrat turned highwayman Cornelia Darkmoor. cut through deceit - by playing solitare for huge combos to do big damage! https://store.steampowered.com/app/427490/Shadowhand_RPG_Card_Game/

Paratopic ($3.01) - short PS1 styled horror, with an atmosphere that feels feverish. like sweat rolling down your neck, or the uncomfortable churn of stomach acid that makes the world feel dizzy. https://store.steampowered.com/app/897030/Paratopic/

Trackless ($6.99) - warmly strange with style to spare, Trackless combines old school text adventure parsers with Myst puzzle solving in a freeroam world. you are a seeker, completing trials to see The Object - whatever The Object might be. you don't know. https://store.steampowered.com/app/586660/Trackless/

Pizza Express ($0.69, nice) - blending Cook, Serve, Delicious and Pizza Tycoon, combining fast paced pizza assembly with restaurant management sim, with a story mode thrown on top! build your own menu, advertise your pizzeria, and don't mess up the order! https://store.steampowered.com/app/375250/Pizza_Express/

Where The Waters Tastes Like Wine ($4.99) - travel depression-era america hearing, telling, re-telling stories, dropping them like seeds to see how they change and grow... to pay off your gambling debt to a wolf who beat you at cards and took your flesh. https://store.steampowered.com/app/447120/Where_the_Water_Tastes_Like_Wine/

The Friends Of Ringo Ishikawa ($7.49) - river city ransom meets shenmue's small town open world exploration with a constantly ticking clock, centering around a teen delinquent having a quiet, moody existential crisis in their last year of high school. https://store.steampowered.com/app/846110/The_friends_of_Ringo_Ishikawa/

Haunted Cities volume 4 ($PWYW!) - the latest work from Kitty Horrorshow. 4 short experimental games, with horror that builds up slowly like atmospheric pressure around your skull, taking its time in squeezing the life out of you. https://kittyhorrorshow.itch.io/haunted-cities-v4

Bug Fables: The Everlasting Spring ($14.99) - do you like the Paper Mario games? yes? okay, great.

do you like bugs? yes? at least indifferent? okay. great.

buy this immediately. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1082710/Bug_Fables_The_Everlasting_Sapling/

10S ($2.50) - wander an alien landscape. battle monsters. fight your way through bullet hells by playing tennis. https://owch.itch.io/10s 

Hypnospace Outlaw ($13.99) - a personal fave. it's 1999: you are a mod for a geocities-esque webspace - one accessed exclusively as people sleep. funny as hell, deeply sincere and vulnerable, with gameplay that's like "Where Online Is Carmen Sandiego?" https://store.steampowered.com/app/844590/Hypnospace_Outlaw/

Treachery In Beatdown City ($11.99) - a semi-turn based beat 'em up that has expertly studied, dissected, and reassembled what makes beat 'em ups great to build one of the best combat systems i've ever played. fight somebody! https://store.steampowered.com/app/762180/Treachery_in_Beatdown_City/

Marenian Tavern Story ($11.99) - a combination of casual restaurant sim and fantasy RPG! gather ingredients and recipes, cook fresh dishes, and assemble a menu to bring customers to your tavern! hunt monsters not for weapons, but for great meals! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1024400/Marenian_Tavern_Story_Patty_and_the_Hungry_God/

Starship Titanic ($2.39) - by Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy creator Douglas Adams, this comedy adventure uses a highly ambitious text parser system to have you solve the mysteries of the titular cruise ship, and try to guide it safely back to earth. https://store.steampowered.com/app/467290/Starship_Titanic/

Sunless Skies ($8.49) - captain a steam powered space train, working to survive travel from one port to the next while cosmic horrors tap on the glass of reality itself, and on your cabin window. sail the stars. betray your queen. MURDER A SUN. https://store.steampowered.com/app/596970/SUNLESS_SKIES/

Mouth Sweet ($PWYW!) - in this horror title, you're the newest underpaid temp at C.C. & C. as if it's not enough to steal your name and make you fulfill bizarre tasks, invisible monsters wander the halls - and the boss doesn't care if you live or die. https://lovegames.itch.io/mouth-sweet 

Caves of Qud ($13.49) - wildly creative roguelike that feels like morrowind in how you can use its systems to approach its world in all new ways, on top of things like "doors can be sentient" and "evil AU of yourself hunts you across time is a stat trait" https://store.steampowered.com/app/333640/Caves_of_Qud/

alright, that'll do for tonight! i'll have more sales recs tomorrow, and all the way until the sales end - usually i get close to 100 recs or so with each big sale.

if you wanna throw me some bones for the curation, i do have a ko-fi! enjoy video games! https://ko-fi.com/spacetwinks 

on twitter on a friday night? i have no judgments about your lifestyle especially given the circumstances. who wants some more lunar new year game sale recs, here they come

The Itchio New Year Sale Bundle ($7.00) - six games for seven bucks - including Baba Is You and Frog Fractions! but i want to give a little extra focus to Frog Detective 2 and 10 Beautiful Postcards there... https://itch.io/b/793/lunar-new-year-itchio-selects-bundle

Frog Detective 2: The Case of the Invisible Wizard - a short (just about an hour+), funny, and charming as hell detective game - great for an afternoon where you just wanna mellow out and have a good, fun time. i'd also recommend picking up the first game for the same reasons

and 10 Beautiful Postcards is a personal favorite - by catamites, the creator of classics like Space Funeral and Goblet Grotto, comes an exploration game unlike pretty much anything else out there. a massive world and worlds within worlds of hotels and hotels in hotels.

The Lion's Song ($3.99) - this episodic point and click is set in 20th century Austria, with beautiful pixel art accompanying tender, taut vignettes of slices of humanity, tying them all back together at the end. https://store.steampowered.com/sub/106294/ 

Neo Cab ($8.99) - Lina is the very last human cab driver in Los Ojos. one of her friends has disappeared, and the only way she'll find out why is by talking to her passengers - while trying to keep her 5 star rating up so she doesn't lose her job. https://store.steampowered.com/app/794540/Neo_Cab/

Later Alligator ($10.79) - part VN, part mini game collection, charming as hell. protect young pat in this lively animated mystery having you solve a conspiracy that could tear apart alligator new york city! features a great soundtrack by 2 mello! https://store.steampowered.com/app/966320/Later_Alligator/

Anodyne 1 + 2 ($20.23) - 1 takes inspo from 2D zeldas, 2 more from 3D N64 ones. both very hard to forget. the first starts as affectionate riffs and turns into something that feels like catharsis by puking. the second feels like birthing your own fate. https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/11556/Anodyne_Franchise_Bundle/

Marginalia ($2.88) - a letter from a missing friend beckons you to the isolated valley of Kestlebrook. while you walk through these woods and carry yourself away from civilization, you'll find yourself wondering not only where you are, but when. https://connor-sherlock.itch.io/marginalia 

Shadowrun: Dragonfall ($3.74) - one of my fave RPGs of all time. a tightly paced cyberpunk-fantasy RPG where an easy job goes wrong and drops you into the middle of a conspiracy that could destroy the anarchist flux-state of berlin. https://store.steampowered.com/app/300550/Shadowrun_Dragonfall__Directors_Cut/

a little extra to sell you on Dragonfall - it has Eiger, a combat hardened sniper troll, and Glory, a razor girl decked out deep in old chrome. they're great. if you treat them - or others - like you casually would NPCs in other games, you'll get burned for it. it rules.

Raging Loop ($19.49) - a horror VN set in rural Japan, taking heavy inspiration from Werewolf/Mafia style games. haruaki fusashi has gotten lost in a mist covered settlement, just as people are starting to die - and the killer could be any of them. https://store.steampowered.com/app/648100/Raging_Loop/

killer7 ($7.99) - suda51's very first stateside released title and still nothing quite like it. control the psychic collective of assassins known as the smith syndicate to take down "Heaven Smile" in a truly surreal, dreamlike world that explains little. https://store.steampowered.com/app/868520/killer7/

it's hard to convey how incredibly and enrapturingly strange killer7 can get through screenshots alone, and honestly even this cutscene won't quite do it, but, uh - it might help.

Heaven Will Be Mine ($7.49) - queer romance + mecha anime smashed into the shitposting, sliding into dms internet as we know it. fight and/or make out as 1 of 3 mecha pilot girls in a struggle that could redefine war - and the concept of Gravity - itself. https://store.steampowered.com/app/836450/Heaven_Will_Be_Mine/

Stories Untold ($2.49) - a great way for retro-curious modern gamers who wanna get into old interactive fiction, this anthology of horror stories takes those old parser interfaces and wraps them around 3D environments for you to puzzle and sweat over. https://store.steampowered.com/app/558420/Stories_Untold/

The Secret Of Monkey Island ($3.49) - a wildly influential point and click comedy. guybrush threepwood wants to be a mighty pirate - too bad 1. he's a total dweeb and 2. ghost pirate lechuck will kill him dead. switch to the original graphics IMMEDIATELY https://store.steampowered.com/app/32360/The_Secret_of_Monkey_Island_Special_Edition/

if you want to play Monkey Island with the original graphics AND the new voice acting, some nice people have made it possible to do that in SCUMMVM. http://www.gratissaugen.de/ultimatetalkies/monkey1.html

LOOM ($2.09) - an underrated part of Lucasarts' point and click adventure catalog, this is a fantasy musical adventure where you cast spells via music, like using the ocarina in zelda. fairy tale inspired but has great lore of its own. https://store.steampowered.com/app/32340/LOOM/ 

Dead Function ($PWYW!) - a short RPG taking inspo from Mother 3, walking it down the intersection of where creepy, goofy, and funny meet. play Lil Brick, a psychically gifted kid using his powers to work on clearing out the haunts in the graveyard. https://kill-idol.itch.io/dead-function 

MEMENTO ($1.19) - short yet slow burning horror where bright, beautiful skies and blue oceans offer no safety. a school trip to a musuem that is home to the echoes and spirits of war - they have become restless, and refuse to let themselves be forgotten. https://store.steampowered.com/app/437030/MEMENTO/

Spark The Electric Jester ($3.99) - retro platforming inspired by kirby! and inspired by mega man! and inspired by sonic the hedgehog! stirs them all together in a pot to make a great fast paced title. https://store.steampowered.com/app/601810/Spark_the_Electric_Jester/

White Day: A Labyrinth Named School ($10.49) - hee-min lee has snuck into school after hours to leave a gift for the girl he pines for. but restless spirits are bubbling underneath the floorboards and in the hallways that will trap him in an ethereal maze. https://store.steampowered.com/app/466130/White_Day_A_Labyrinth_Named_School/

Jazzpunk ($3.74) - a comedy adventure set in a VERY alternate cold war. take your fisher-price toy self around and solve (?) mysteries (???) to do... things? (?????) equally bizarre and memorable. kind of like a (more) surreal lego island. https://store.steampowered.com/app/250260/Jazzpunk_Directors_Cut/

Yoku's Island Express ($3.99) - a pinball driven metroidvania, featuring you as the cutest dung beetle in the world, delivering mail all over mokumana island! launch yourself all over, help others, deliver the mail, and save the island itself! https://store.steampowered.com/app/334940/Yokus_Island_Express/

alright, gonna take a lil break here for now - probably gonna be back later tonight with more recs, and if not then, then definitely tomorrow! enjoy, hope you found something unexpected to love!