merry xmas (GOG/Steam direct download weekly specials)

oh shit that's me! What are the chances.

some sort of puzzle in the steam sale

https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/3yu53d/steam_winter_sale_arg_confirmed_opening_any_steam/

uh oh.

https://www.reddit.com/r/steamsaledetectives/

You get the feeling Valve's been prepping this one for years and has happily burrowed as deep as possible just to see what people will find.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/3yyju8/how_to_get_the_red_herring_steam_badge_holiday/

i can't get it to work though

ok got it in chrome. make sure you type SEARCH in caps and press enter

got it in Firefox, too

Last couple of hours of the sale. My haul:

Lucasarts Adventure Bundle (felt nostalgic, it's Loom, The Dig + the two Indy games)
Rock Boshers DX: Director's Cut
Goat Simulator: GoatZ (still haven't even played the base game, but what the hell it was $1 and change)
Roundabout (the FMVs and generally gameplay look suitably wacky)
Downwell (looks to scratch the same itch as Super House of Dead Ninjas)
Undertale (My concession to internet hype)

i grabbed renowned explorers - fantastic

Thanks, hadn't seen the Lucasarts bundle.

Bought a few other things earlier in the sale (Monkey Island reissues, Escape Goat 1 & 2, and some other cheapies) but just went "what the hell" and bought 4 platform games including Out There Somewhere in a 43 pence bundle. I know nothing about any of them but Steam showed me OTS in one of my daily "queues" and the description looked kind of up my platform-puzzling street so eh.

(I have no idea what 43p is for American viewers, like 60 cents or so?)

Good choice with Escape Goat, I really liked that one

Friend of a friend created Escape Goat, and I thought both strange and tickling when it blew up later.

I love both Escape Goats btw!

I tried to continue the cloven-hooved theme with Divide By Sheep but not enjoying that one so much. Also played Goat Simulator and Goats on a Bridge this Christmas, though both had been in my Steam inventory unplayed for a while. Truly this is my winter of goaty video games.

My haul:

Hacknet
Uplink
SW: Republic Commando
Evopollution
Sunless Sea (more like a card game + SM's Pirates! than I'd expected)
Windward (SM's Pirates! updated)
Rebel Galaxy
Deus Ex: Invisible War
Toy Soldiers: Complete (the earlier WWI/Cold War collection)
Grow Home
Invisible Inc.
Dead State
Remember Me
Freedom Force & its sequel
Data Hacker: Initiation(I'm a sucker for cyberpunk)

Thinking about grabbing Cities: Skylines + the nighttime DLC or Tales from the Borderlands or SOMA. Stuff that's popped up on a lot of GOTY lists. No real big AAA/open world titles since I'm letting some time pass after 2 months of obsessive Fallout marathoning.

And we'll see if Anno 2250 winds up being worthwhile or not.

invisible inc is v good

I remember when Dead State was first announced and was interested in what they could do. Managing survivor interactions inside a Fallout 2 engine worked on by ex-Black Isle/Troika guys, but damn did this thing not nearly progress to the level I thought it would

I wasn't sure if that was the same project from years back. It looks really busted.

my steam sale hual:

Life Is Strange ep. 2-5
Gods Will Be Watching
LISA
Her Story
Cibele
South Park: The Stick of Truth
The Beginner's Guide
Beseige
Goat Simulator
Invisible, Inc.
Out of the Park Baseball '16
The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky
Fractal
Super Time Force Ultra
Frozen Cortex
Downwell
Massive Chalice (gift received)
Dying Light (gift received)

In addition to a few games I bought before the sale, because fuck it:
Undertale

a few games = one game oops

oh yeah, frozen cortex. that looked really cool. post how it is after u get to it?

will do!

Undertale
King's Quest Chapter 1
LISA
In Between -- some sort of platformer that looked interesting

I bought more on GOG -- 2 old Star Trek games, Cyberia, Duke Nukem 1+2, Duke Pinball.

I debated getting Undertale but dithered and now the sale has finished... it's still not too ridiculously expensive, is it worth getting?

shit, i forgot to buy those old Trek games. wanted to play 25th Anniversary. next time...

everyone is going crazy for undertale so i figure £5/$8 is worth giving it a go - gonna start it tonight

Just bought the Squeenix Humble Bundle 3 minutes before shutdown. I have a problem

I picked up Dying Light in the Steam sale since there were so many good reviews of it; unfortunately I guess it's been long enough since Mirror's Edge that I forgot that first-person parkour is a terrible idea for games. so instead I just keep playing Road Redemption and BoI. also been trying out Tallowmere which is a pretty fun side-scrolling roguelike; it is fun and charming enough that I will forgive its platforming jankiness and pretend it's a latter-day Faxanadu.

the Xbone Elite controllers to use as my primary Steam controller also finally showed up and jesus christ this thing is flawless. the weight is perfect, the finish is perfect, the travel distance on the buttons & triggers is unilaterally perfect, I love the paddles even though they currently require futzing around in the settings to use correctly, and the d-pad (the real one, not the ridiculous silver disc thing it ships with installed) is at least as good as the other two contenders for best d-pad of the generation (namely the ones on the Gamevice and the Wii U's Gamepad). if you are the type of person disposed to spend Too Much Money on things like earphones/buds and also plays video games, this is absolutely worth the asking price; I haven't found one single thing to complain about so far.

I do wish I'd used a regular-sized case when I built my HTPC rather than a compact one so that I could fit a video card that'd let me run an Oculus so that I could play Elite in 3D, but I guess my wallet is pretty grateful on that front

Humble FMV bundle - $5

7th Guest
11th Hour
every Tex Murphy game
Her Story
Roundabout
a new game called Missing

I bought Her Story and Roundabout in the last two sales, yr welcome everybody

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-01-15-david-bowie-featuring-adventure-omikron-the-nomad-soul-is-free-this-week

David Cage's first game. Seems to be UK only.

couldn't get it to work in the US
keep forgetting to buy that every steam sale. maybe next time

US link: https://store.na.square-enix.com/product/281956/omikron-the-nomad-soul-pc-download

it's a Steam key fyi

Ooops, yeah, forgot that was a UK link.

Anyhow, new bundle:

https://www.humblebundle.com/

Firaxis sale. No SimGolf, unfortunately.

Crossposted to the Witcher thread but the Witcher 2 is free on xbox 360 at the moment, I won't link to it because it's different for different regions but it's searchable at xbox.com. Also playable on Xbox One via back compatibility. You'll need to grab it soon though, think it expires in a few days.

mac friendly humble bundle this week:
frozen synapse, frozen cortex, lux delux, shattered planet
beat the average: the last federation, reassembly
pay $15: chaos reborn and big pharma

all mac compatible and i think the only one i already own is frozen synapse

yeah I am stoked about that, might even buy the $15 v, but if only I had the time to play them! I think I'd like to play all of them, had big pharma on my steam wishlist for a while now.

Kinda wished I'd bought in on the Humble Monthly this time, it was pretty good:

Alien: Isolation
Broken Age
Dropsy
Penarium
Titan Souls
Volume

I might try to grab some of these from a Steam forum in pieces, but eh, the hoarding is becoming a nuisance. I need to actually play these games in my library!
Still kinda hate their secret monthly business model though. Also, Steam is running a Lunar (Chinese) New Year sale.

btw lol @ 1)Broken Age being bundled again 2)did i really kickstart that game? and 3)i still haven't played it anyway

the doc is better than the game.
the main humble bundle has grow home for $1 (as well as a shooty game and a uplay-only game)

Sega giving away some free games as part of a promotion. Just add the Make War Not Love 3 package to your account and you get some old Genesis games, Jet Set Radio and Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit.
http://store.steampowered.com/sale/makewarnotlove3

Humble Monthly seems to be secretly almost all available for mac but they're hedging their bets about guaranteeing it and waiting until after it streets isn't an option...

anyone want keys for knights of the old republic and sequel?

Someone take those, so good

Humble Monthly pretty decent again with Wasteland 2 and I Am Bread this month.
South Park/This War Of Mine doesn't sound bad, though i assume the rest of the games will suck

Talos Principle down 75% off this weekend.

Anyone want Contraption Maker?

Sure, I'll take those KOTOR keys if no-one else wants them - never played them even though everyone rants about how great they are!

If like me you've got an inexplicable soft spot for bad early cd-rom fmv, Return to Zork is cheap on gog at the moment. Zork Nemesis too, if you fancy a not too bad myst-like (also with a fair bit of fmv).