Free Games Galore: Steam Summer Sale 2016 Edition

As mentioned in Monday's post, I felt I exhibited an excellent amount of self restraint in not buying anything during this most recent Steam Summer Sale, which I think is the first time I haven't bought anything since I started using Steam back in September 2011.  I did however participate in the Exploring of My Queue in order to acquire the trading cards associated with the Summer Sale.  Actually, I did spent sort-of-money in that I used $0.09 from selling back duplicate cards, so I guess it's not 100% true that I didn't spend any money, but I didn't spend any money on any games, I guess that's where the distinction is.

What I did discover while going through no less than 36 games each day was a number of Free to Play/Start games, and while there is a whole category for these, I rarely actively look through those lists.  So during the last week, I actually installed 12 games and I'm going to talk about them, but only superficially as I have yet to play any of them.  I may actually come back with full on articles about some of these, or it may be that this is the only time I feel compelled to write anything about these titles.

So let's do this alphabetically because it just looks better that way.

ArcheBlade.  This anime inspired online mulitplayer fighting game. . . I can't think of why I picked this one up.  I'm very picky when it comes to online games, let alone multiplayer games, I think it was just because it was free and didn't require much disc space to install.

Black Rose.  You only have a flashlight (presumably) in an abandoned funeral home that's supposedly haunted.  Damn yes!

Close Your Eyes.  This game looks like an RPG with painted/drawn backgrounds that apparently gets all weird and creepy.  I like the concept, but I could easily see this game becoming either very bad or too full of itself in all of its esoteric weirdness.  I'll give it a try though.

Cupid: A Free To Play Visual Novel.  I like period piece games, and I love gothic themed stories and since I'm not typically one for the genre of "visual novels," I'm not out-rightly against playing them either.  And since this one was free, why not.  Also the ESRB rated the game M and it would be a change of pace to play an M rated game that isn't rated as such due to the frequency of exploding organs and gangrenous fleshy bits (although there'll apparently be some partially nude fleshy bits).

Endless Sky.  This game looks to be an Asteroid inspired sci-fi exploration game, and I'm okay with that description.

Legionwood 1: Tale of the Two Swords.  I have the second game in this series (Legionwood 2: Rise of the Eternal's Realm) and I figured that having the first game in the series wouldn't be a bad way to start off a story.

Medusa's Labyrinth.  This is an first person horror set in Greece, presumably dealing with Medusa's labyrinth, but that title could just be a misdirection, but I'm okay with that.  I do love me a well made horror game. 

NekoPaLive.  I'm not actually sure which letters to capitalize in that title.  I just thought that this game looked too ridiculous not to try it out and write a review about.  There may or may not be (but most likely will be) shame whenever I decide to give this game a try.  And now that I think about it, I'm not even sure what genre this game is and that's actually kind of intriguing, it's like going into a movie and only knowing the title, which still doesn't tell you anything about what you're about to experience.

The Night Cafe.  Even though this game is labeled as being Vive and Oculus Rift ready, it didn't say that it could not be played without a VR headset so I decided I would give this game/walking-sim a try.  Exploring van  Gogh's paintings from the inside sounds like it could either be very cool, or horrifyingly terrifying.  Now if someone came out with the same premise, but with Bosch paintings, that'd be the stuff of nightmares, and it would be great!

One Thousand Lies.  I don't even know what a "kinetic novel" is but it's apparently part of the visual novel genre, or it may not be, maybe that's the difference, that one's "visual" and one's "kinetic."  But not only was the game free, but the soundtrack is free too, so I thought if the game/story is really bad, maybe the music would turn out not to be half bad and perhaps rather catchy.  Worst case scenario is that they're both crap and I lost part of an afternoon.

Radiator 2.  From what a cursory search led me to find out, there is no Radiator 1.  Plus, this screenshot left me very amused and confused as to if this game is a parody of itself, or if it is a legitimate event in the game.  Plus!, one of the tags says "Family Friendly," and I am typically not naive enough to believe that that was put there by the developer and is more than likely a trolls attempt to have an eight year old child play the game because it is, after all, labeled as "Family Friendly."

Transmissions: Element 120.  A free-to-play (as is everything on this list) Half-Life mod-ish game set in the Half-Life universe.  I haven't decided yet if I want to finish Half-Life 2 before trying this game out as I feel that based on the description alone, it might just be a multi-hour love letter to that universe that I apparently didn't fall for as hard as the rest of civilized civilization.

So this is the list for freeness that I acquired instead of spending money on games.  They all may have been a huge mistake from which I will be wasting a good portion of my summer when I could have been playing another round in Vertiginous Golf, which by the way, is a really fun mini-golfing game with some wonderfully dark undertones.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

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