Summary
Seasonal game sales are always a big deal onplatforms like Steamand GOG. Thousands of games are marked down, sometimes with truly outrageous discounts. Your paycheck comes in. In a haze, you buy every game that looks good, eager to devour everything you may get your grubby little hands on.
Except…you don’t. The sale ends, and you’re leftwith a backlogof games that will take you months, if not years, to play. You’ll probably never finish it anyway since new games are being released all the time to capture your attention. Here are some of the biggest offenders sitting in your backlog right now.
9Bastion
Bastion was one of the first titles made by Supergiant Games,developers of Hadesand Transistor. It’s an atmospheric and somewhat lonely action-adventure title with a fantastic narrator who calls attention to your every action as you fight your way through different environs.
Supposedly, the story is very deep and moving. We wouldn’t know because we’ve never played it. It sits in our library, taunting us like vegetables sitting unused in the crisp drawer of your fridge. Why won’t you partake when you know it’s good for you? Oh well, we’ll just watch a playthrough on YouTube.
8Hatoful Boyfriend
Do you like birds? Do you like dating sims? Like fried chicken and waffles, these seemingly disparate elements combine seamlessly in Hatoful Boyfriend. In this visual novel by Moa, you may date all the birds you’ve ever wanted to date. If you’ve never wanted to date a pigeon, you are lying to yourself, and you know it.
The game gets very intense very quickly. Sometimes, the pigeons will murder you, and sometimes, you’ll come back as a ghost to solve the mystery of your own murder. Hatoful Boyfriend goes on sale fairly regularly, along with its Christmas spinoff, Holiday Star. But be honest, you haven’t played this game since it first came out.
7Plague Inc: Evolved
This one is just a victim of history. Plague, Inc. is a perfectly good strategy game where you play as a disease, slowly evolving with more and deadlier symptoms in your quest to conquer the globe. You’re racing against a ticking clock as the scientists of the world attempt to come up with a vaccine to stop the outbreak.
you’re able to probably figure out why no one wants to play this at the moment. The game had a great community for a while, but enthusiasm waneddue to the COVID-19 pandemic. Suddenly, the concept of playing as a disease doesn’t sound so appealing. Plague, Inc. is a great game, but the premise has aged like milk.
Octodad: Dadliest Catch is an adorable game about a father hiding a terrible secret from his family. Despite the fact that he (totally) looks like a regular dad, the titular character is an octopus in disguise. His wife and children don’t know the truth. We have several questions, but tragically, none of them are ever answered.
You’ll notice that this game is tagged with “intentionally awkward controls” on Steam. That’s because you play through the entire game with all the grace of an octopus on land. The game loses its appeal quickly when you realize you’ll be spending your entire playthrough with these controls. You could refund it, but it’s just so damn charming. You’ll get back to it. Eventually.
5The Sims 3
The Sims is one ofthe most iconic video game seriesof all time. With quirky humor, some of the best LGBTQ representation in gaming, an expansive life sim, one of the biggest modding communities in the world, and the ability to seduce Death himself, it’s no wonder why millions are drawn to this game.
The Sims 3 has a much more detailed customization system than other titles in the series, and its open-world mechanic makes it a cult favorite in the community. But the game is also one of the biggest resource hogs out there. This is all in addition to the fact that everyone who plays The Sims will only do so for a few weeks at a time before refusing to touch the game for months.
4Fear And Hunger
A few things will happen when you first start playing Fear and Hunger. You’ll create a character, decide on a few details in their backstory, and begin the game outside the titular dungeon. You will then proceed to either be eaten by dogs or brutalized by big-dicked ogres. If you’re particularly unlucky, you’ll also be thrown into the Blood Pit, where you will lose all your limbs and die.
Take the creator’s content warnings seriously.If you’re absolutely sure this is not the game for you, congratulations on your honesty. For the rest of you, this game has been compared to a turn-based Dark Souls, but this comparison is incorrect because Dark Souls is at least somewhat fair. This game will forever sit in your backlog, calling you a weenie.
3Goat Simulator
Admit it; you bought this years ago when big-name Youtubers gave it attention. To this day, Goat Simulator still goes on sale every now and again. Sure, it’s cheap, and the wacky physics are funny for a couple of hours at best. But you could probably have more fun with Garry’s Mod, which you also probably already own.
Goat Simulator, by and large, was a game made to dick around with physics and make silly memes. That’s all well and good, but you can accomplish the same thing with a larger community in plenty of other games these days. We, as a society, have moved past the need for Goat Simulator.
2The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Skyrim released in 2011 to critical acclaim and immediately made a huge splash on the gaming world. It has countless mods and a thriving community. To this day, people are still playing it, and to this day, it still regularly goes on sale on Steam.
Except when we said “people,” that probably didn’t include you. Maybe you missed out on Skyrim when it first released. Maybe you never played it, but pretend that you did, just so people think you’re normal. Either way, other games have your attention now, and you’re never picking this one up again.
1Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines
Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines is an excellent RPG based on one of the most iconic TTRPGs of all time. If you ever had a mall goth phase,or were otherwise an edgy teendevouring YA paranormal romance novels, this game is for you. There are tons of mods to enhance your gaming experience. You’ll probably need them, too, since the game is buggy as hell.
We recommend you buy this game on GOG rather than Steam, since the GOG version comes with a bugfix mod auto-installed.
Despite the game’s great voice acting and quirky storyline, its biggest fans don’t play it as often as they probably should. It’s even a running joke to say you’re finally reinstalling the game again after Caine-knows-how-many years. Just go at your own pace. You have all the time in the world to savor eternity.
