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Yep it's that time of year again, starting today and going on until July 13. There's even a deal to get a Steam Deck at 20% off.

Post what your haul this year is and what you'd recommend. I'll make another post later with what I opted to grab.

For these sales I place a self-imposed budget of around 100-120$ with a few categories in mind. One or possibly two high profile/new releases, some fairly older games from a few years back, and whatever $$$ remaining on either very old,obscure,or indie games.

So far:
Like a Dragon Ishin
Amnesia The Bunker (not on sale, but I really wanted to pick it up anyways).
Mass Effect Legendary Edition
Unsighted

I got roughly 30$ left without knowing what to spend it on. I was thinking No More Heroes 1 & 2, but the pc ports are evidently subpar.

Coincidentally, and sorry for going off-thread, but I am doing a little give-away on the Just for fun forums. There's a few hours left until the deadline, but feel free the join.

Right now I'm looking at a lot of the rootin' tootin' boom shootin' games. Civvie may have broken his Boom Shoot Toob but I'm in the process of rerouting it to my place.

Dread Templar is one I played the demo for years ago and really enjoyed, and it's gotten its full release recently so that's very high on my list of games to grab. I'm also certain I'll grab Ultrakill and some other games like Supplice and White Hell. They are still in Early Access, but with the exception of Wrath: Aeon of Ruin (a game that got stuck in an unintentional development hell due to problems behind the scenes, something that the devs have acknowledged and are trying to rectify by providing regular bi-weekly updates after going nearly an entire year without updating people and multiple delays) most of the Early Access games I've supported have turned out awesome in the end (three good examples being Nightmare Reaper, Hedon, and HROT).

Also because I already bought Haydee 1 years ago because "fuck it I wanna play the unashamedly horny robot game" I'm probably gonna nab Haydee 2 while it's half off for the hell of it. Also I recently got hooked on FNAF again thanks to the upcoming movie and I haven't played Security Breach so again "fuck it, might as well get it now" (hopefully they've patched most of the bugs I recall seeing around launch).

I pretty much already have everything I want

I picked up three games this sale: Gunvolt 2, Disgaea 5, and Scarlet Maiden(pornographic sidescrolling roguelite with a cute artstyle, still in early access). This is pretty much all I'm allowing myself to get.

I've been wanting to play Gunvolt 2 since its announcement way back when, having loved the first one; unfortunately, my 3DS had broken down by that point(I'm going to say from overuse). Though I did play the spin-off, Luminous Avenger iX, on my Switch. Finally picking it up and I can confirm that it is still very fun. The addition of Copen, the rival character from the first game, as a second playable character with his own campaign really sells this game as a sequel; hell, I think I enjoy playing him more than Gunvolt himself, with his high-speed air-dash-based combat. Highly considering getting Luminous Avenger iX 2, even though I know Copen has been significantly nerfed in that game and doesn't play the same.

I wouldn't normally pick up a porn game because, appealing as porn is, porn is usually their main focus and thus the gameplay tends to be boring; I decided to try Scarlet Maiden because I like the pixelated artstyle, and it's rather unique in that it seems to be roguelite first, porn second; the lewd animations don't have "climaxes", are extremely brief, and tied to the gameplay elements, like getting spanked by a nun in the hub to access your skill tree--I am not joking. All in all, it reminds of Rogue Legacy, strangely enough; not as engaging, mind; it's overall lacking in variety. But it is still in early access; they just added the final boss and ending sequence recently, apparently, and that update says that they're now working on adding more things based on feedback before it comes out of early access. Highly considering refunding this so I can get Luminous Avenger iX 2 instead. This is the second and last time I'll ever pick up a game in early access.

Disgaea 5 is a game that I've refunded once before. Disgaea itself is a series that I've tried to get into several times across the 2010's, but just never managed to. Recently though, I thought that maybe I was trying to play it the wrong way; maybe I wasn't supposed to be heavily invested in strategies, tactics, stats, character builds, and whatnot; maybe the presence of ludicrous numbers had misled me into thinking it was a highly-strategic game, even more so than Fire Emblem; maybe I should just forget all that and have fun instead, not caring about team composition or formation or any other tactical decisions and just go unga bunga; maybe then I'll get into it. Anyways, I haven't played it again yet, but we'll see. Still busy with Gunvolt 2 and thinking about whether or not I should get Luminous Avenger iX 2.

Gave myself a €20 budget, got a pretty good haul:

Bunch of old Popcap games (Bejeweled, Chuzzle , Peggle, Zuma)

Boneraiser Minions

latest Vampire Survivors DLC

Donut County

Bridge Constructor Portal

Day of the Tentacle

Please Don't Touch Anything

I'm a real sucker for the golden oldies and the indies. Quality stuff for little money.
I even got €1,50 to spare with this whole list. Wonder what I'll spend it on…

What I got:
The Chronicles of Nyanya
Self Shot
Suzerain
Star Wars™: Episode I Racer™
Carrion
FIND ALL 3: Travel
ToriDori

Keeping it very small since I want to finish my backlog. Most of these I'll play soon or (genuinely) soonish.

So far I've only played Self Shot and FIND ALL 3. Find all is just more of the series so I'm happy there. Self Shot is….well, I paid 44 cents for it. Definitely got what I paid for. I could stand to refund it I guess but the boss battle I'm at is alright so I suppose I'll continue. Not really worth the effort considering the price anyways.

Gonna put my recommendations in a separate post later since I'll probably elaborate at least a bit.

Ok, I'd like to get this out now while the summer sale is still around (and, y'know, assuming KYM is done giving us server error messages.)

My recommendations:

-The House in Fata Morgana – A visual novel. This game is a feel trip. The artstyle is beautiful, the music slaps and the story is compelling. You'll experience a whirlwind of emotions as you progress through this. Personally, what gained my initial attention is the description.

A gothic suspense tale set in a cursed mansion. "The House in Fata Morgana" is a full-length visual novel spanning nearly a millennium that deals in tragedy, human nature, and insanity.

If there's a single thing you look at on steam from this list, Fata Morgana should be it. It's vital you go in blind though. Don't spoil yourself.

-Karryn's Prison – An H-RPG where you must subjugate and manage a prison. As Sugary Salt talked a bit about, many games have hentai with a side of very minimal or generic gameplay. Karryn's Prision is not like that. Now, I haven't delved too deeply into hentai games. But this game delivers on both gameplay and h-content. The devs make it obvious they wanted the gameplay itself to be an enjoyable experience. In fact, I'd go so far as to say gameplay is integral to the porn. Both are high quality.

-LiEat – An RPG about a Lie eating dragon. LiEat is actually a short trilogy bundled together. The game makes good use of brief cinematics to supplement traditional rpg storytelling. I liked that.
Everything Miwashiba does is good but overall I liked LiEat the most.

-One Way Heroics – A roguelite where you can only move forward. I like this game because it has a standard RPG feel. Sort of makes me forget I'm playing a roguelite. Which is good because I'm not a big fan of them.

-Reventure – I guess you could describe this as a puzzle platformer (?). Honestly, I'm not sure. One review described it as zelda-esque. Another says it's a metroidvania. I don't think either descriptions are necessarily wrong.

Basically, it's a light hearted game where there's 100 endings and you need to find them all. Word of advice though: Pace yourself. Don't try to speed run the game over a weekend because you'll just burn out.

-Styx:Master of Shadows – Don't have much to say since I don't play many stealth games. It has solid gameplay but you can tell it's made by an indie team in other areas.

-FIND ALL – A relaxing little object finding series. Like Styx, I bought this because I wanted to dip my toes into the genre. It's nice and cheap. Games are pretty short though.

Sort of lost steam as far as elaborating goes but these are also great and 100% worth checking out
-OneShot – An adventure game where you take on the role of a person guiding the MC through the story.
-The Talos Principle – Philosophical puzzle game.
-Totally Accurate Battle Simulator (T.A.B.S) – A simulation/strategy game

With the sale closing in a few more days, I'd like to chip in some relatively cheap recommendations of my own.

Momodora Reverie Under the Moonlight: A cute, but deceptively difficult Souls-like Metroidvania. A great game I feel fell under the radar and for 4$USD its a steal. It's getting a sequel, Moonlit Farewell, so now is great time to give it a go.

Unsighted: I picked this one up in ongoing sale and I had a lot of fun with it, another Metroidvania hybrid, but egging off old-school Zelda games instead. Well worth the 10$USD.

Planetarian: Without getting too much into spoilers, its story concerns the post-apocalypse, androids, and a planetarium I've only ever read a handful of VN's, but this one stuck with me for being short & sweet and awfully melancholy. For 4.50$USD, you'll breeze through it in about 4 hours and left reeling for several days after.

Already purchased DRG and Wee Tanks. Life is gonna be good this summer.

I grabbed most of what I mentioned in my last post but I'm actually sorta debating on if I really wanna grab stuff like White Hell and Supplice right now or just wait until they're closer to leaving Early Access. Even so I ended up still grabbing a couple games that are still in that Early Access period just because they were part of bundles with some other games I wanted, like I did finally grab Ultrakill (a funny thing about this one is by buying the "New Blood FPS bundle" I got it for even more off of its regular sale price because I already owned DUSK and Amid Evil), Blood West came as part of a bundle with Elderborn (though Blood West does have a set 1.0 release for December), Viscerafest came as part of a bundle with Dread Templar and Forgive Me Father (and that latter game has a sequel on the way), and Incision was a little extra off as part of a bundle with Nightmare Reaper, another game I already own. Yep my 30-something ass is knee deep in the boom shoots (though Blood West is also an immersive sim).

I also ended up getting Postal 4 and Brain Damaged so I've completed my Postal collection [shoots at the smartass who will inevitably go "what about Postal 3?"].

Welp, the sale is over.

So I actually got two more games (and refunded Scarlet Maiden): Luminous Avenger iX 2 and Blaster Master Zero 3.

Haven't played BMZ3 yet, but LAiX 2…man, where do I start with LAiX 2?
Sometimes I like to say "have the devs even played their own series?" when a sequel turns out to be bad in comparison to their good predecessors by way of being so different; LAiX 2 feels like they have played their own series but decided to ignore that anyway. It's not a bad game, it's still pretty fun if a tad easy(not counting the secret Hard Mode which is just what-the-hell levels of difficulty spike), it's just…baffling.

To end this year's summer sale, I got a foil trading card from LAiX 2 that sold for just enough to buy another game, but I neglected to make sure of when the sale was actually going to end, and so it ended while I was still thinking about what to buy last.

BMZ3 is a great game if you liked the first 2 games, it combines the best of 1 and 2 and has a great ending.

Nice! It's been two years since I played them, so I was thinking of starting from 1 again before moving to 3. Maybe I'll even complete 2's Kanna Raising Simulator.