Steam Holiday Seal 2015 |OT| This isn't the account you're looking for

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Dusk Golem said:
Here's one game I'm going to copy and paste things I previously wrote to try to get some people to try this severely underlooked quality game:

-----

Here's a game I'm currently playing on Steam that is way too overlooked for its own good: 



Why Am I Dead At Sea

I'm about 3 hours in right now, and it's been getting very gripping. This game obviously has some Earthbound inspiration, but to explain it briefly, you're a ghost on a ship who is brought to consciousness by a spiritually gifted passenger on the ship to help prevent some sort of terrible occurrence that he senses is approaching the residents of the ship. You can possess people, but only if you know them well and reach a level of understanding how they work. Come to completely understand a person, and you can take full control of them. Each person you possess has a different personality obviously and recognition/relationship with others to allow different dialogue stuff to talk about, but each also has a special ability, ranging from being able to see what's in peoples pockets to being able to tell the tone of the voice someone's voice is in for a line of dialogue (okay, aggravated, hiding something, etc.). Even your spirit self has a special ability to peek into the mindscapes and thoughts of others (which is actually done in a pretty cool way). Featuring multiple endings and branching story possibilities, the game has enjoyable characters, an interesting and twisting story, and actually delivers many unexpected feelings of a range of emotions throughout, and has a really good soundtrack.

And yet it's barely gotten over 1,000 in sales and most don't even know it exists. Deserves WAY more attention.

Here's some screens:

ss_5d592b958958bf262bd23011fc7c36c0f00a6474.1920x1080.jpg

ss_9c43bdbedf4806f1af43adcbc58d6c66d5a3cd7c.600x338.jpg

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Well, you got me to buy it. Pretty excited to play it!
 
toddhunter said:
The discovery system is much better these days. Steam just recommended me 10 games because "they are on sale". Without that I wouldn't have much idea which games were on sale during this period of every game being on sale.
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I love that along with "It's in your discovery queue because it's popular". Do my gaming habits on Steam suggest that I like popular things? Nope, they show these to everyone.

Not to mention that people's queues can get "stuck" if they include items that aren't available in their region.

Like I said, they could have (and I was hoping they would) use this as a possibility to open up new storefront features and expanded functionality, just like they did last year with gems - another feature that's sat stagnant for a year.

Stumpokapow said:
I really assumed when they said they were dropping dailies that they were going to have something like personalized discounts, or at least personalized front pages. Imagine instead of having 12 featured games (none of which had featured discounts), they had 3 featured games, then 3 games from your wishlist, then 3 games their discovery algorithm thought you'd like, then 3 games your friends play but you don't. Then they rotated every day. For the GAF hardcore who mine steamdb and use ES and the wishlist and are constantly buying hundreds of games that's not super useful, but I still think it'd be more useful for the average user. And then if you add personalized featured discounts to the mix, that'd be great.

The other idea I had was something using coupons. Imagine if instead of having one standard discount and one featured discount, they had one standard discount, but each game submitted a "targeted custom acquisition discount". A few hundred thousand coupons per game, distributed to users using discovery data to target them. So maybe you get a coupon for Dragon Quest Heroes, and I get a coupon for Squarecells. Which is a way of making it like Dragon Quest Heroes had a featured discount for you, and Squarecells had a featured discount for me.

Okay, now to elaborate; the gamification element could come from that people could trade coupons to get the games they want (of course they might be tempted to buy the games they have coupons for, first)... and a way to really encourage people to spend money would be that if they use up all their coupons without trading, they get more coupons. That's a process that benefits everyone from users looking to buy a single game all the way up to JaseC powerusers. You could even randomize the coupon value a bit, so say if the regular sale price was 40% off and the coupon price was 66% off, you could also generate 50% and 60% coupons. The uncertainty would probably increase sales.

I'm really surprised that given the data they have they go with such a boring approach. I wonder what it is they are seeing that we aren't. Maybe it's the incoming Steam hardware influx that's tying up staff time.
Click to expand...

At first, something like this was what I thought too. For some foolish reason I got excited about it until the Autumn sale happened and left us all scratching our heads.

I think Steam has finally gotten big enough that they have the power to stand up to the larger game publishers and do something unique like the Valve we once knew and loved. Instead we get a sale where everything is on sale but with a pretty comparative mediocre discount across the board which basically tells us that Valve doesn't care about making this very interesting.
 
Honestly I found it much more interesting to keep scrolling the front page, you scan through a lot more games that way and I actually found a bunch of games like Concrete Jungle, The Next Penelope and Empire TV Tycoon to add to the wishlist to buy before the sale is over. Meanwhile, the discovery queue is all "HEY SO DO YOU LIKE ARK SURVIVAL EVOLVED BECAUSE A LOT OF OTHER PEOPLE LIKE IT MAYBE YOU WOULD LIKE IT TOO."
 
Dusk Golem said:
Here's one game I'm going to copy and paste things I previously wrote to try to get some people to try this severely underlooked quality game:

-----

Here's a game I'm currently playing on Steam that is way too overlooked for its own good: 



Why Am I Dead At Sea

I'm about 3 hours in right now, and it's been getting very gripping. This game obviously has some Earthbound inspiration, but to explain it briefly, you're a ghost on a ship who is brought to consciousness by a spiritually gifted passenger on the ship to help prevent some sort of terrible occurrence that he senses is approaching the residents of the ship. You can possess people, but only if you know them well and reach a level of understanding how they work. Come to completely understand a person, and you can take full control of them. Each person you possess has a different personality obviously and recognition/relationship with others to allow different dialogue stuff to talk about, but each also has a special ability, ranging from being able to see what's in peoples pockets to being able to tell the tone of the voice someone's voice is in for a line of dialogue (okay, aggravated, hiding something, etc.). Even your spirit self has a special ability to peek into the mindscapes and thoughts of others (which is actually done in a pretty cool way). Featuring multiple endings and branching story possibilities, the game has enjoyable characters, an interesting and twisting story, and actually delivers many unexpected feelings of a range of emotions throughout, and has a really good soundtrack.

And yet it's barely gotten over 1,000 in sales and most don't even know it exists. Deserves WAY more attention.

Here's some screens:

ss_5d592b958958bf262bd23011fc7c36c0f00a6474.1920x1080.jpg

ss_9c43bdbedf4806f1af43adcbc58d6c66d5a3cd7c.600x338.jpg

ss_69365d599f60a8c7027e4cb7b265f0a52755ed7a.600x338.jpg

ss_8b176666e56ec736a9bc9699318e5cfc9281369a.600x338.jpg
Click to expand...
Bought.
 
I keep checking Community for the Steam thread. Silly me. Back like the old days.

So far there are only a couple cheapo games that have my interest. Nothing super engaging.
 
Dusk Golem said:
Here's one game I'm going to copy and paste things I previously wrote to try to get some people to try this severely underlooked quality game:

-----

Here's a game I'm currently playing on Steam that is way too overlooked for its own good: 



Why Am I Dead At Sea

I'm about 3 hours in right now, and it's been getting very gripping. This game obviously has some Earthbound inspiration, but to explain it briefly, you're a ghost on a ship who is brought to consciousness by a spiritually gifted passenger on the ship to help prevent some sort of terrible occurrence that he senses is approaching the residents of the ship. You can possess people, but only if you know them well and reach a level of understanding how they work. Come to completely understand a person, and you can take full control of them. Each person you possess has a different personality obviously and recognition/relationship with others to allow different dialogue stuff to talk about, but each also has a special ability, ranging from being able to see what's in peoples pockets to being able to tell the tone of the voice someone's voice is in for a line of dialogue (okay, aggravated, hiding something, etc.). Even your spirit self has a special ability to peek into the mindscapes and thoughts of others (which is actually done in a pretty cool way). Featuring multiple endings and branching story possibilities, the game has enjoyable characters, an interesting and twisting story, and actually delivers many unexpected feelings of a range of emotions throughout, and has a really good soundtrack.

And yet it's barely gotten over 1,000 in sales and most don't even know it exists. Deserves WAY more attention.

Here's some screens:

ss_5d592b958958bf262bd23011fc7c36c0f00a6474.1920x1080.jpg

ss_9c43bdbedf4806f1af43adcbc58d6c66d5a3cd7c.600x338.jpg

ss_69365d599f60a8c7027e4cb7b265f0a52755ed7a.600x338.jpg

ss_8b176666e56ec736a9bc9699318e5cfc9281369a.600x338.jpg
Click to expand...

Thanks for this. The art style definitely reminds me of Earthbound. Bought.
 
Sch1sm said:
God bless < 2h refunds? Took me a bit to get into it. What part are you at?



I'm in the same boat. Even my own wishlist isn't looking attractive right now.
Click to expand...

i just fought
the cow person

Tagyhag said:
It takes an hour or two for it to pick up.
Click to expand...

pantsattack said:
People say it takes a couple hours to get going, and it ends in 5+.
Click to expand...

i guess since i'm still in the grace period i'll give it a bit more before i try refunding
 
Thanks for the tips on RCT guys - going to buy the complete pack. I knew I wanted 1 or 2, but I was more curious if 3 was actually decent. Since it's not as bad as I may have thought, having the full set will be fun!
 
prices for games I want still have about the same discounts, but gives me a chance to pick up some of the games I've missed last sale

that's it basically

all in all still some new games to play over the holidays and will keep an eye on other deals
 
At least with the absence of dailies/flash, I can slowly and carefully organize my spreadsheet for gifting. No need to buy quick in anticipation of no further interesting dailies/flash.
 
Blitzhex said:
I've played all star wars games except force unleashed.
Should I buy Force Unleashed 1 or 2? Or both?
Click to expand...

Just buy the first. It's nothing special but still a fun game if you like Star Wars.
The second is not very good and only like 3-4 hours long. Would not recommend this.
 
Focused on picking up Mushihimesama ($10) and Transistor ($4), with a side of Gundemonium Bundle for two more bucks.

Likely to pick up some other stuff as the sale continues.
 
One thing I'd love to see in Steam's search is to view DLC only for games you own (also just the discounted ones). Sometimes it might be hard to remember which games you own that have DLC, or you don't want to clutter the wish list.

Maybe this is already possible and I'm overlooking something...
 
Alucrid said:
i just fought
the cow person

i guess since i'm still in the grace period i'll give it a bit more before i try refunding
Click to expand...

Once you leave The Ruins is when it picks up. Depends on your humour, though, I feel. It's ultra quirky.

-MD- said:
I usually only click add to wishlist if I actually wanna play the game.
Click to expand...

It's not that I don't want to play them. It's just that I don't have the excitement I once did, and they aren't necessarily must grab now titles. I've cut mine significantly recently, though. Down from 129 to just 14 now.
 
First Holiday steam sale and this is my haul so far:

BorderLands 2 $5
Transistor $4
DuckTales: Remastered $4
Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons $1
XCOM: Enemy Unknown $7
Ori and the Blind Forest $11

Only partially played BL2 from this list.
Any idea if I can use my PS4 controller for these games?
 
After dismissing the game for yet another average indie game with bland visuals, I was always surprised by people praising Undertale. Even as I was reading this thread people are constantly returning back to it. So I did what I usually never do, and go against my hunch of not liking a game. I bought it fully expecting to have buyer remorse afterwards. My only question is...

Why, in Lord's name, is this game so wonderful? Like, where did this come from? I don't even know, the feels are real. It took me 5 minutes to get used to the visuals and from that point on I cannot put it down.

Also bought Witcher 2. Dunno why since the combat system in the first game annoyed me but I'll give the series another go.
 
Kickz said:
First Holiday steam sale and this is my haul so far:

BorderLands 2 $5
Transistor $4
DuckTales: Remastered $4
Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons $1
XCOM: Enemy Unknown $7
Ori and the Blind Forest $11

Only partially played BL2 from this list.
Any idea if I can use my PS4 controller for these games?
Click to expand...

You'll need a program called DS4Windows, but all of those will let you use the controller just fine.

E: Just to clarify, they all have full controller support. Not even partial. Full.
 
Durante said:
Ok, next guess: I guess enough people have already commented on how crazy cheap Pillars of Eternity is and that you should buy it?
Click to expand...
If you meant Shadowrun trilogy, then yes, but the Shadowrun trilogy. Buy BG1/2 Enhanced and Icewind Dale Enhanced followed up by Trails in the Sky FC (TitS). Then you can buy Divinity OS EE and then one should buy PoE.
 
So I'm not driving, sitting in the car. I want to sell people on a few horror games deserving of attention, but on mobile. I'll have a more extensive list later, but here's a few horror recommendations I have. Sorry for this list not being prettied up, a later day I'll do a more thorough and prettied list!

Some Horror Game Recommendations:

Into The Gloom ($1.19): http://store.steampowered.com/app/342350/
Simplistic style, but very oppressive puzzle-horror game. The atmosphere is incrediably tense as the fame builds up a strange but interesting take. The puzzles are tough but fun. Game has multiple endings and some good scare scenes, makes you think and challenging.

Kholat ($9.99): http://store.steampowered.com/app/343710/
A very unusual horror walking simulator game. Featuring voice acting from one of the Lord of the Rings actors and a vocal song from Mary Elizabeth McGlynn of Silent Hill fame, you go into some snowy Russian mountains with little more than a compass and a map looking for answers to some mysterious deaths (basically a big reference to the Dyatlov Pass incident). In an open world, you venture the snowy hostile terrain to coordinates you have written down and find and trigger strange events. A very interesting walking simulator type game different than any other I've played, some great scenes, and beautiful scenery, along with an interesting story.

Lakeview Cabin Collection ($6.69): http://store.steampowered.com/app/361990/
This game is GREAT. Stylized like series of slasher horror movie sequels, it's an episodic horror-comedy game where you do what you want. In a variety of slasher horror scenarios and some pretty big diversity in main objectives, you are free to mess around to your hearts content, ir try to survive and win the over-the-top scenarios you find yourself in. You can drink until you're disoriented and vomiting and then slip on your vomit. You can fall off a building and break your leg, then use your broken off leg to beat your friends to death. You can streak naked and dose the ground with gasoline and then set yourself on fire to go charging at the killer. The survival element is tough and some plotting, planning, and puzzle solving come to play as you survive everything from chainsaw maniacs, death traps, killer strippers, and more. It's silly, tense, dumb, yet challenging, but most of all, fun. Also has multiple endings per episode and unlockables per episode. A do-what-you-want slasher-horror game.

The Last Door
Season 1 ($1.99): http://store.steampowered.com/app/284390/
Season 2 (3.99): http://store.steampowered.com/app/402530/
A fantastic episodic point'n'click horro series inspired by the works of Edgar Poe and Lovecraft. A man goes to visit a friend upon receiving a strange letter from him, only to find the friend dead. From here, he gets wrapped up in horrific descent into a nightmare involving his past, present, and future. Very good, good story, music, characters, horro elements, and a nicely done episodic structure. Final episode of the second season (which is the final overall episode) is close to release.

Pathologic HD Remaster ($8.44): http://store.steampowered.com/app/384110/
Cult classic game with an updated translation, textures, and performance. With a fantastic atmosphere in a strange surreal town, you have 14 days to survivw and get by, possibly save other people, and explore the depths of a town cursed with a deadly plague, ridden with all sorts of quirky characters and corruption, littered with oddities from an impossible structure that hosts a society of children to districts named after body parts. It's a bit slow and not for everyone, but there is no other game quite like it, and one of the oddest yet deepest games you may ever play. There's a re-imagined remake coming in the future that's basically a different game, the original is worth experiencing. Long game, too.

-----
Just a few released more recently on dsiscount, so many more I'll list later.
 
Grief.exe said:
What are some niche 2015 GOTY candidates that I can pick up?
Click to expand...

7cqRosi.jpg


Hacknet ($6.69)

Hacknet is an immersive, terminal-based hacking simulator for PC. Dive down a rabbit hoIe as you follow the instructions of a recently deceased hacker, whose death may not have been the accident the media reports. Using old school command prompts and real hacking processes, you’ll solve the mystery with minimal hand-holding and a rich world full of secrets to explore.

Quick Review:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWfYrUDf8Bc&feature=youtu.be&t=3s
 
StereoVsn said:
If you meant Shadowrun trilogy, then yes, but the Shadowrun trilogy. Buy BG1/2 Enhanced and Icewind Dale Enhanced followed up by Trails in the Sky FC (TitS). Then you can buy Divinity OS EE and then one should buy PoE.
Click to expand...
No, skip those enhanced editions. Don't throw money after games you should have played in the late 90s / early 00s, support new development in the best genre.
 
Yeahhhh, the sales are pretty underwhelming.

It's also hitting me once again how much the Australian dollar has fallen, making everything much more expensive even when they have been discounted. >_< Gone are the glory days, lol.
 
I don't really like this sale at all. It feels dull.

And to make matters worse, a few games I was looking forward to but are not even discounted, like south park (i know, i should have gotten it during the autumn sale).

I hope they add more games or discounts tomorrow, if not I wish they hit their lowest sales ever. I don't lie this at all...
 
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