GAME RECOMMENDATIONS

This is a page listing my game recommendations, specifically ones that are on sale during the 2023 Steam Summer Sale. I thought this would be more organized than a discord message.

They're separated into odd categories just because, and I'll write descriptions and stuff to try and make this easy to skim to find something you might like. And so you can skip the shooter section if you aren't a shooter person.

Did you know: All bundles on Steam are given an ADDITIONAL discount if you already own a game it contains?

HIGHEST RECOMMENDATIONS: games that may have made me cry and if you play them I will talk to you about them for hours

The Beginner's Guide

Writer and game developer Davey Wreden guides you through a series of interesting and abstract games and levels by an old friend of his named Coda.

It's about an hour and 20 minutes and takes no skill to play. You just take in the environments and listen and think. Wreden asks: What can we tell about a person based on their games?
Hypnospace Outlaw

You like Y2K aesthetics? This is the game. It's 1999, in an alternate history where we go on computers in our dreams. You're an enforcer on the biggest platform: Hypnospace.

As a moderator, you're assigned cases and investigate rule-breakers online, reporting violations and stuff. Witness a hundred tiny stories all playing out, and one big one.
Doki Doki Literature Club Plus

Okay, you probably know what DDLC is already. And everything that happens. If you don't, oh my god hurry up play it before you get spoiled. But still...

This includes a lot of cute new content and also a lot of really interesting story that recontextualizes the original DDLC completely. And it's also still DDLC.

It's not just the original game that made me put this in here. Plus' extra content is seriously good.

GAMES WHERE YOU SHOOT STUFF in decreasing order from "many thoughts head full" about their stories to "you shoot things and it's fun"

SUPERHOT series

Did you know SUPERHOT isn't a VR game? The second SUPERHOT game is a VR game, but that's SUPERHOT VR, the minor spinoff and my least favorite of the 3.

Time only moves when you move. The world is white. The enemies are red. Weapons are black. Your fists are also weapons. It's the most innovative shooter I've played in years

I recommend just the original SUPERHOT and the sequel MIND CONTROL DELETE. Their stories are awesome and underappreciated. No embed here,
here's a link to the bundle of those games.
ULTRAKILL

It's the boomer shooter everyone's talking about. MANKIND IS DEAD. BLOOD IS FUEL. HELL IS FULL. Play as the ultimate killing machine, with no stakes in its world, driven purely by a programmed desire to continue its existence by refueling... with blood. There's an awesome story and my favorite part is that the protagonist does not have the capacity to care or even show a lack of caring.

The gameplay builds on itself like crazy. It's not just a shooter, it's a character action game like Devil May Cry or Bayonetta. The gun combos are insane. The developer has taste. One of my most played games ever.
Valve Complete Pack

It has every Half-Life game. It has the Portal games. That alone is enough to make that low price tag insane... But you get EVERYTHING.

Hell, you don't even need to touch anything else, but you have it and it's so cheap, why not. I hear Left 4 Dead is a good series and it still keeps an active playerbase.

Well, I should write descriptions for HL and Portal, just in case. In Half-Life, play as Gordon Freeman and have the original worst day at work ever in gaming. Run, Think, Shoot, Live. Try to escape the Black Mesa Research Facility during the end of the world.

In Portal, you wake up in a mysterious lab and are made to solve puzzles with the Portal Device. The first one has hilarious dark humor, the sequel takes a different approach and is timelessly way funnier.

Once again, I can't make embeds of packs quickly, here's a link.
Black Mesa

This is a fan remake of Half-Life, made over the course of YEARS. Are you interested in Half-Life, but aren't happy playing slightly janky pre-2000s boomer shooters?

Well, suit yourself, I'm perfectly happy, but if you're that person then this game is a great substitute. Or play both eventually.
DUSK

From the same publisher as ULTRAKILL, New Blood Interactive, and the same developer as IRON LUNG, DUSK is like if Id Software's 1996 game Quake took place in Pennsylvania.

To elaborate it in non-nerd terms: It's a fast shooter that looks like it's old, it takes place in a town in Pennsylvania walled off from the public and controlled by a mysterious cult, and they have no chance at stopping you.
PREY (2017)

Explore and fight through a massive space station after an alien incident claims a ton of lives. Figure out who to trust and what to believe.

If you're new to large-scale immersive sims like this, maybe play on an easier difficulty. This is a long one but so cool. It flopped on launch because the publisher forced them to name it after a totally unrelated 2006 first person shooter.
The Modern DOOM games

The old ones are also good if you like old shooters but I'm specifically listing the modern ones here just because. It's DOOM, fight demons as a big angry guy who loves humanity and hates oppression and talking.

There's the 2016 DOOM that begun the reboot (though all DOOM games but 3 are canon and released in chronological order!), DOOM Eternal from 2020, and Eternal's DLC that released afterwards. The plot gets good and then I start hating it. But it's DOOM. Story isn't the priority, it goes hard. Two embeds here, but search for the DOOM franchise bundle if you also want the older games with these and save more money.

MISCELLANEOUS

Teardown

You run a freelance demolition company. Times are hard, how about taking some less than legal jobs?

Take money from rich people to go and break other rich people's stuff and steal their top secret information. It's high quality physics-based voxel destruction. Pretty challenging, too.
The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe

I mentioned Davey Wreden earlier, this is what he's most known for. This is the 2022 remake with a ton of new content.

It's a choose your own adventure comedy where a disembodied narrator tells a story that you act out... Or you can disobey him.
Yakuza / Like a Dragon (series)

This is the only non-steam thing on this list. The first 6 games in this series are a bit over 30 dollars on GOG.com right now which is insane. These games are like, 20 hours long each.
Here's a link to them, no embed here.

Really fun 3D beat-em-ups about Kazuma Kiryu, the shredded and unexpectedly emotionally intelligent Yakuza who gets in to all kinds of trouble. Each game has a central mystery. I've been told people don't play them for the plot but man I totally do. Play in chronological order, which is just the numerical order where the first game is 0.
Not for Broadcast

A Live Action Full Motion Video comedy/political thriller where you control the headlines. By chance, you've become the editor of the National Nightly News in a country that never says its name but is clearly England. Use your power over public perception as you see fit, editing the news live for TV.

Switch between cameras to keep the audience's attention on the right thing, censor profanity, pick what advertisements to play, and even more mechanics added on later.

The gameplay loop sometimes feels like a Five Nights at Freddy's game without the horror.
POPGOES Arcade

Hey, speaking of Five Nights at Freddy's, this one only has a LITTLE bit of horror! It's a 6 hour RPG. The mechanics really get interesting in the second half, the first half is simple fun. The base game and second half, the included Machinist expansion, both have some really cool secrets.

I don't usually like RPGs but I played this to completion.
Yoiyami Dancers

This is a Touhou Project fangame. It takes the usual bullet hell gameplay and combines rhythm with it, which is good since the source work is so well-known for music. The art is so cute...

None of the actual Touhou games are on sale so I didn't list any. You should try those too.
Psychonauts

Double Fine's 2005 3D action platformer! Go to psychic summer camp, train and learn new abilities, become a psychonaut.

This one has really fun writing and puzzles. It has the feeling of something I would have watched on Cartoon Network years ago. There's a super recent sequel that's also on sale, not listed because I've yet to play it and just mentioned it here.
FAITH

It's published by New Blood Interactive again! This time it's a super retro horror game. The story is really good, it plays simple but does a lot with it.

"On September 21, 1986, two priests arrived at the Martin Family home in rural Connecticut to investigate an apparent case of demonic possession. Only two people would leave the house alive."
Scribblenauts Unlimited

I played so much of this whole series. Here's the one that's on Steam, which stands pretty well on its own.

Help people out and solve puzzles with a magic notebook that creates whatever you can write into it. This is the first game to make me wonder how it was ever made, but once you enter that line of thought you realize it's a miracle any video game gets made ever.

VR GAMES (Steam only)

Vertigo Franchise Bundle

This is 2 games. Vertigo 2 is the greatest VR game of all time, and the first one, Vertigo Remastered, is pretty awesome too. They're mainly inspired by Half-Life but have stories that go way differently, aside from the hostile aliens in a research facility thing.

The developer has said he's interested in porting these to the PS5 for the PSVR2, but he's said Quest versions will never happen.
Here's a link to them, no embed here either. It may be cheaper to buy them on sale individually as this includes a ton of soundtracks, I haven't checked.
Amid Evil VR

One last New Blood Interactive game: This is a VR port of their Heretic/Hexen-like boomer shooter Amid Evil. You could just get that if you want but I'm specifically plugging the VR version here because it's the fastest of these VR shooters.

I don't really care for dark fantasy worlds but it's just a fun game.
BONEWORKS

This is also Half-Life inspired, but it leans super hard into the physics. It's about corporate espionage in a Virtual Reality operating system and MMO.

The story is interesting but holds itself back, the developers at Stress Level Zero might be allergic to storytelling that goes any deeper... But it's good to play and a VR classic. I recommend it over the sequel, BONELAB, because this one has an actual campaign. It plays great and the ending of the story really did get a good reaction out of me, but some people don't even notice the game HAS story.

GAME RECOMMENDATIONS

This is a page listing my game recommendations, specifically ones that are on sale during the 2023 Steam Summer Sale. I thought this would be more organized than a discord message.

They're separated into odd categories just because, and I'll write descriptions and stuff to try and make this easy to skim to find something you might like. And so you can skip the shooter section if you aren't a shooter person.

Did you know: All bundles on Steam are given an ADDITIONAL discount if you already own a game it contains?

HIGHEST RECOMMENDATIONS: games that may have made me cry and if you play them I will talk to you about them for hours

The Beginner's Guide

Writer and game developer Davey Wreden guides you through a series of interesting and abstract games and levels by an old friend of his named Coda.

It's about an hour and 20 minutes and takes no skill to play. You just take in the environments and listen and think. Wreden asks: What can we tell about a person based on their games?

Hypnospace Outlaw

You like Y2K aesthetics? This is the game. It's 1999, in an alternate history where we go on computers in our dreams. You're an enforcer on the biggest platform: Hypnospace.

As a moderator, you're assigned cases and investigate rule-breakers online, reporting violations and stuff. Witness a hundred tiny stories all playing out, and one big one.

Doki Doki Literature Club Plus

Okay, you probably know what DDLC is already. And everything that happens. If you don't, oh my god hurry up play it before you get spoiled. But still...

This includes a lot of cute new content and also a lot of really interesting story that recontextualizes the original DDLC completely. And it's also still DDLC.

It's not just the original game that made me put this in here. Plus' extra content is seriously good.

GAMES WHERE YOU SHOOT STUFF in decreasing order from "many thoughts head full" about their stories to "you shoot things and it's fun"

SUPERHOT series

Did you know SUPERHOT isn't a VR game? The second SUPERHOT game is a VR game, but that's SUPERHOT VR, the minor spinoff and my least favorite of the 3.

Time only moves when you move. The world is white. The enemies are red. Weapons are black. Your fists are also weapons. It's the most innovative shooter I've played in years

I recommend just the original SUPERHOT and the sequel MIND CONTROL DELETE. Their stories are awesome and underappreciated. No embed here, here's a link to the bundle of those games.

here's a link to the bundle of those games.

ULTRAKILL

The gameplay builds on itself like crazy. It's not just a shooter, it's a character action game like Devil May Cry or Bayonetta. The gun combos are insane. The developer has taste. One of my most played games ever.

Valve Complete Pack

It has every Half-Life game. It has the Portal games. That alone is enough to make that low price tag insane... But you get EVERYTHING.

Hell, you don't even need to touch anything else, but you have it and it's so cheap, why not. I hear Left 4 Dead is a good series and it still keeps an active playerbase.

Well, I should write descriptions for HL and Portal, just in case. In Half-Life, play as Gordon Freeman and have the original worst day at work ever in gaming. Run, Think, Shoot, Live. Try to escape the Black Mesa Research Facility during the end of the world.

In Portal, you wake up in a mysterious lab and are made to solve puzzles with the Portal Device. The first one has hilarious dark humor, the sequel takes a different approach and is timelessly way funnier.

Once again, I can't make embeds of packs quickly, here's a link.

Black Mesa

This is a fan remake of Half-Life, made over the course of YEARS. Are you interested in Half-Life, but aren't happy playing slightly janky pre-2000s boomer shooters?

Well, suit yourself, I'm perfectly happy, but if you're that person then this game is a great substitute. Or play both eventually.

DUSK

From the same publisher as ULTRAKILL, New Blood Interactive, and the same developer as IRON LUNG, DUSK is like if Id Software's 1996 game Quake took place in Pennsylvania.

To elaborate it in non-nerd terms: It's a fast shooter that looks like it's old, it takes place in a town in Pennsylvania walled off from the public and controlled by a mysterious cult, and they have no chance at stopping you.

PREY (2017)

Explore and fight through a massive space station after an alien incident claims a ton of lives. Figure out who to trust and what to believe.

If you're new to large-scale immersive sims like this, maybe play on an easier difficulty. This is a long one but so cool. It flopped on launch because the publisher forced them to name it after a totally unrelated 2006 first person shooter.

The Modern DOOM games

The old ones are also good if you like old shooters but I'm specifically listing the modern ones here just because. It's DOOM, fight demons as a big angry guy who loves humanity and hates oppression and talking.

MISCELLANEOUS

Teardown

You run a freelance demolition company. Times are hard, how about taking some less than legal jobs?

Take money from rich people to go and break other rich people's stuff and steal their top secret information. It's high quality physics-based voxel destruction. Pretty challenging, too.

The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe

I mentioned Davey Wreden earlier, this is what he's most known for. This is the 2022 remake with a ton of new content.

It's a choose your own adventure comedy where a disembodied narrator tells a story that you act out... Or you can disobey him.

Yakuza / Like a Dragon (series)

This is the only non-steam thing on this list. The first 6 games in this series are a bit over 30 dollars on GOG.com right now which is insane. These games are like, 20 hours long each.

Here's a link to them, no embed here.

Not for Broadcast

Switch between cameras to keep the audience's attention on the right thing, censor profanity, pick what advertisements to play, and even more mechanics added on later.

The gameplay loop sometimes feels like a Five Nights at Freddy's game without the horror.

POPGOES Arcade

Hey, speaking of Five Nights at Freddy's, this one only has a LITTLE bit of horror! It's a 6 hour RPG. The mechanics really get interesting in the second half, the first half is simple fun. The base game and second half, the included Machinist expansion, both have some really cool secrets.

I don't usually like RPGs but I played this to completion.

Yoiyami Dancers

This is a Touhou Project fangame. It takes the usual bullet hell gameplay and combines rhythm with it, which is good since the source work is so well-known for music. The art is so cute...

None of the actual Touhou games are on sale so I didn't list any. You should try those too.

Psychonauts

Double Fine's 2005 3D action platformer! Go to psychic summer camp, train and learn new abilities, become a psychonaut.

This one has really fun writing and puzzles. It has the feeling of something I would have watched on Cartoon Network years ago. There's a super recent sequel that's also on sale, not listed because I've yet to play it and just mentioned it here.

FAITH

It's published by New Blood Interactive again! This time it's a super retro horror game. The story is really good, it plays simple but does a lot with it.

"On September 21, 1986, two priests arrived at the Martin Family home in rural Connecticut to investigate an apparent case of demonic possession. Only two people would leave the house alive."

Scribblenauts Unlimited

I played so much of this whole series. Here's the one that's on Steam, which stands pretty well on its own.

Help people out and solve puzzles with a magic notebook that creates whatever you can write into it. This is the first game to make me wonder how it was ever made, but once you enter that line of thought you realize it's a miracle any video game gets made ever.

VR GAMES (Steam only)

Vertigo Franchise Bundle

This is 2 games. Vertigo 2 is the greatest VR game of all time, and the first one, Vertigo Remastered, is pretty awesome too. They're mainly inspired by Half-Life but have stories that go way differently, aside from the hostile aliens in a research facility thing.

The developer has said he's interested in porting these to the PS5 for the PSVR2, but he's said Quest versions will never happen.

Here's a link to them, no embed here either. It may be cheaper to buy them on sale individually as this includes a ton of soundtracks, I haven't checked.

Amid Evil VR

One last New Blood Interactive game: This is a VR port of their Heretic/Hexen-like boomer shooter Amid Evil. You could just get that if you want but I'm specifically plugging the VR version here because it's the fastest of these VR shooters.

I don't really care for dark fantasy worlds but it's just a fun game.

BONEWORKS

This is also Half-Life inspired, but it leans super hard into the physics. It's about corporate espionage in a Virtual Reality operating system and MMO.

I recommend just the original SUPERHOT and the sequel MIND CONTROL DELETE. Their stories are awesome and underappreciated. No embed here,
here's a link to the bundle of those games.