Looking for something to purchase during the Steam Summer Sale? Below are 10 or so of my top picks (in no particular order)…
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In our review of the game last year, I said Mount & Blade: Warband was one of the first RPGs “I can play as a Christian without a serious weight on my conscience.” It remains my Game of the Year for 2014.
Normal Price: $19.99 USD
Discounted Price: $3.99 USD (80% off)
Featuring intense boss battles and an evocative minimalistic art style, David. is one of the best examples in gaming that a title featuring explicit Christian messages can be entertaining to players–regardless of their faith.
Normal Price: $1.99 USD
Discounted Price: $1.33 USD (20% off)
Cook, Serve, Delicious quickly descends into finger-numbing, button-mashing brilliance, tasking players with managing a restaurant and serving its evolving clientele in real time. Since release (and our original review), the game has been further refined with improved art, local multiplayer/co-op, and Weekly Challenges (upping an already-sizable replay value).
Normal Price: $9.99 USD
Discounted Price: $2.49 USD (75% off)
Guns of Icarus Online
Guns of Icarus Online is an exceptional multiplayer shooter where players fight together in massive steampunk airships to keep afloat and destroy the competition.
Normal Price: $14.99 USD
Discounted Price: $3.74 USD (75% off)
Normal Price: $9.99 USD
Discounted Price: $4.99 USD (50% off)
Influent is a charming vocabulary memorization tool that manages to be both educational and fun. The number of details the developer packed into the single, simple apartment you’re placed in is pretty surprising as well.
Nearly a year after completing it, FRACT OSC has stuck in my memory. It’s one of the most cohesive, mentally satisfying and incredible open world experiences I’ve ever had, and FRACT OSC remains one of the few titles I wish I could experience for the first time.
Normal Price: $14.99 USD
Discounted Price: $3.74 USD (75% off)
Valkyria Chronicles
Valkyria Chronicles is a breath of fresh air as far as JRPGs go. It eschews magic in favor of a world analogous to that of WWII Europe, and rarely oversexualizes its extensive cast of female characters (a huge contrast to typical anime-styled games). The unique tactical combat and wide range of activities/customizations mean that after almost 20 hours, I still feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface of this wonderful game.
There are several potential concerns, depending on your perspective (scattered profanity, LGBT characters, a religion in the game centered on an ancient race of powerful humans known as the Valkyrur…). However, considering the relative severity of these factors and other titles in the genre, I personally recommend it highly.
Normal Price: $19.99 USD
Discounted Price: $4.99 USD (75% off)
Octodad: Dadliest Catch is the heartwarming adventure of an octopus–sorry, normal human–who happens to be a loving father and husband. It’s unique, quite often hilarious due to the physics-based gameplay, and relentlessly adorable even at the most serious of times.
Normal Price: $14.99 USD
Discounted Price: $7.49 USD (50% off)
Robot Roller-Derby Disco Dodgeball
Robot Roller-Derby Disco Dodgeball is a non-violent shooter with a huge dose of personality and a high skill ceiling. It’s designed to be played over and over again, and the fast, addictive flow of the game definitely facilitates that.
Normal Price: $14.99 USD
Discounted Price: $7.49 USD (50% off)
The Marvellous Miss Take
One of the most criminally-underappreciated independent games I’ve had the fortune to cover, The Marvellous Miss Take, flips the typical morality of a heist game on its head. Players slink their way across levels as 3 unique characters (each with their own differing playstyle) to retrieve artifacts stolen from the protagonist by a greedy businessman.
Since it can be played using only the mouse, The Marvellous Miss Take also happens to be significantly more accessible to the uninitiated than similar titles in the genre.
Normal Price: $14.99 USD
Discounted Price: $6.79 USD (66% off)
Honorable Mentions
Windward
Windward is a surprisingly relaxing title where you can trade, explore, and blow things to pieces while sailing through beautiful tropical environments.
Normal Price: $14.99 USD
Discounted Price: $9.74 USD (35% off)
RUNNING WITH RIFLES
RUNNING WITH RIFLES‘ cartoony facade masks an incredibly tactical and thoughtful top-down shooter (with a subversively “naughty” sense of humor).
Normal Price: $14.99 USD
Discounted Price: $9.89 USD (34% off)
Lemma is another title by a Christian developer–this time, without an explicit Christian focus. Setting players loose in an imaginative dreamscape with an easy-to-grasp parkour system, it’s a thrilling, non-linear, non-combative FPS that truly soars.
Normal Price: $14.99 USD
Discounted Price: $11.99 USD (20% off)
Nancy Drew: Alibi in Ashes
For newcomers to the long-running Nancy Drew adventure game franchise, Alibi in Ashes remains a perfect introduction to its world and one of the best titles in the series.
Normal Price: $6.99 USD
Discounted Price: $3.49 USD (50% off)
Video Games and the Bible 
Mount and Blade is a curious game. The graphics aren’t great, and the sound’s not very good either, but the swordplay is just so much fun and redeems everything Especially on-line.
The RPG part always left me confused, you are completely free to do what you want, and if you don’t set a goal for yourself you may be at a loss on how to proceed. It is truly a sandbox. I pretty much exclusively played it on-line, where there’s no RPG aspects, just battles.
The game has seen many spinoffs which are worth keeping an eye on. Napoleonic Wars is really interesting, but exclusively multiplayer, and requires you to join a team and play by their rules.
There are pirate, viking, and even football hooligan spinoffs around. The latter involves policemen riding on top of their cars, because the game doesn’t support vehicles, only horses.
Quite agree with what you’ve said! By several counts, it SHOULD have been a weird game people ignored, but it wasn’t–it’s fantastic. Glad I had the chance to review it, and for your comment. 🙂
–Nelson