Reflections on a Steam Sale (Winter 2025)
Just a few items I picked up during this Winter Sale. Sadly, there's no real stand-outs, but as the games industry caters to a different demographic these days, what can I do?
First, the good news! Well, at least for me. I’m buying fewer games, which is something my wallet appreciates. Now the “bad” news, which I put in quotes because “bad” is a matter of perspective: the reason I’m buying fewer games is because I’m not really jazzed by what the games industry is deploying to the field. We are in or are sliding in to an era of lobby shooters and PvPvE games. Souls-likes still appear with anticipated frequency. We’re getting a steady firehose of Eastern imports. I cannot put my finger on any new titles that speak to me, personally. I still have the urge to play video games, but I’m just not feelin’ it , ya feel? I’m also sorry to report that most of the few games I did pick up aren’t knocking my socks off either. So why not?
This year I got Worshippers of Cthulhu, and The Sinking City Remastered, and now this one? I’m sensing a theme for 2025 here. I really like grand strategy games like the Europa Universalis or Crusader Kings series, and SotFG is aiming to be kind of like that, but instead of forging a dynasty, I’m running network of cultists dedicated to eliminating humanity in a bid to usher in a new age of the Old Gods. Fascinating! This title wants to mimic Paradox’s Clausewitz game engine so bad, and it’s at least evident that the developers tried to do so, but the whole effort is missing the little flourishes and visual punch that Clausewitz offers. It’s kind of sad because I think the UI gets in the way of what is actually a pretty solid “board game” mechanic which sees players fielding dark agents to undermine regions, villages, and cities to influence the population and their rulers in the game of a chosen horrific patron entity. I hate to throw this under the bus just on account of the UI, but UI matters so much in a grand strategy title that it’s hard not to knock SotFG for pulling up short in that department.
Whoops…I forgot to add Cyclopean: The Great Abyss to the list of eldrich horror-themed games for this year. In this one, we wake up in The Great Abyss (natch), which is based on the Lovecraft story “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath”. It starts out in the Overworld which is played very much like Ye Olden Ultima games and allows for some pixel-bangin’ combat (move into your target, spam “Attack”, hope not to die first) and conversation with the residents thereof. Then it’s down into the dungeons which are rendered in the style of Ye Olden Eye of the Beholder games, with turn-based movement and isometric viewports. Sadly, it’s mainly a party of one (me) and I have died a lot in the demo I played back in one of the Next Fests. As you can tell from the screenshot above (not mine), it has one of those trendy CRT retro looks to it, but it’s something that can be altered if that’s not your vibe.
This one kind of hurts my heart because in a different world this would have been a killer game. It was originally released in 2020 as a cross-platform title, and I don’t think it got the love from either the public or the devs that the concept deserves. I started with the shell of a space ship, and from there I was asked to build it out by tacking on new modules for things like refineries, shuttle bays, hydroponic labs, and clone facilities. Every addition to the ship is “physicalized”, meaning that where a module is added on the hull is where I’d have to walk to in FPS mode, so planning related modules for proximity is a good idea…hard, but a good idea. Next, I had to scan the system I started in to find resources to auto-harvest. In order to get the really good stuff, though, I have to take shuttles to the planet with or without NPC clone backup, manually harvest materials, and fight off all kinds of aliens who may or may not hitch a ride back to the mothership. Then it’s off to another star system to exploit more resources, expand the ship, and possibly fulfil some kind of overarching narrative purpose? I’m not sure, because as a single player game it’s a hard-sell for me to skulk about my NPC-populated ship and wonder what things would be like if I had a real crew. Probably like No Man’s Sky or Jump Space or something, both of which I owned already.
If there’s a winner in this batch, it’s Whisper of the House. We play as a newly arrived stevedore-slash-home decorator who is hired by town residents to unpack their crap one item at a time to use in decorating their houses and shops. Starting out, aesthetic decisions are all subjective, but over time the game unlocks other modes such as “instructional mode” (put all bottles in the bookcase on the left) or even NPC guided mode (put items inside their outlines). In between jobs, I can decorate my own flat using items from NPC gifts or from items found by exploring the town. In keeping with my 2025 theme, though, there seems to be some kind of supernatural bent to the whole thing; early on, I was asked to clean up the home lab of an alchemist who mysteriously vanished in the middle of a ritual, and there are anomalies throughout the town to investigate. This is a nice, calming game where there are no wrong answers.
No one is more surprised about this one than I am, considering my feelings about Star Wars, but it’s Star Wars Adjacent, which I don’t mind. I haven’t gotten too far but at the last save point I was starting a mission which was promising to be about 90% sneaking around, and that’s something I’ve never been good at. Most of the systems in this one seem to be “just OK”. Combat is not terrible. Sections that take place in space aren’t terrible. Conversations aren’t terrible. Stealth isn’t terrible, really. The UI menu elements are big and bold, which always makes me feel like the devs are compensating for a lack of actual depth , but that might just be a “me” thing. The worst part is the slicing mini-game, which has me clicking the mouse on a beat, and while it’s not terrible , it brings a light layer of frustration on occasion. The one bennie that Ubi has in their corner, though, is that the world is freakin gorgeous and feels alive where appropriate. It’s got good atmosphere, maybe a passible story, OK characters, and it was on deep, deep discount so I figured why not.
This isn’t really a game, of course, but since I am current with all of the X4 DLC, I threw this on the pile yesterday. X4’s little “packs” have been including a new ship, a new starting story to allow us to get said ship in the game, maybe a new mission arc, and some new sectors. At about $7USD it’s kind of a no brainer to expand one the largest, more in-depth space games out right now that I have a love-hate relationship with.