The Alien Breed Trilogy is free to claim at GoG.com for the next 40 hours or so

Age of Empires IV is free to play on Steam thru the weekend, and 40% off


EDIT: Sorry I missed this somehow, but Midnight Suns is also free to play for about 20 more hours and discounted.

Destiny 2 Free to play through the weekend on Steam

Free weekend of F1-Manager 22 on Steam

Figment, a musicial action adventure game is currently free to claim at GoG.com

some great bundles on humble bundle. The puzzle one is fantastic.

There is also a huge one to support the turkey syria earthquake for $30

Total War: Warhammer and Dead by Daylight are free to play on Steam thru the weekend


EDIT: Also Frostpunk and Warhammer Vermintide 2

For the next 20 hours or so Wolcen is $10 at Fanatical

Fanatical (if you signup for their newsletter and link your Steam account) has a free game to claim:




Chenso Club-a weird anime influenced platformer where only these girls can save the world from Aliens. Looks like a platformer

Steam Spring Sale has started so expect a lot of sales on your wishlist items

Gog.com has the game Lorelai, an action adventure horror game, free to claim

I've been following the various City of Heroes "spiritual successors" that have been out, and one of them, Ship of Heroes, has made one its goalposts-an official Steam store page and news that will be out by the end of the year.


They put out a new trailer with in-game action to mark the occasion:


Ship of Heroes Gameplay Trailer - YouTube

The Big four for me, not all Steam, but..

OOTP24/MLB The Show 23 (Releases tomorrow)

Showgunners/Age of Wonders 4 (Both May 2nd). Showgunners used to be called Homicidal All-Stars, it's XCOM meets Smash TV.

If that was the best gameplay they could put together to make this trailer, that game's not going to be too good. The first 30 seconds is just a cluster of characters waiving their arms around and you couldn't even tell who they were fighting.

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is 90% off or $4 through the weekend on Steam.


And they are having a sale on Digital tabletop games this weekend-a lot of good sales on board game conversions and others.

Another free one to claim at GoG.com and this one looks a little weird: It's Neurodeck:Psychological Deckbuilder. It has elements of Slay The Spire, and then weirdness where you meditate and choose personality traists that alter your gameplay as your explore your mind's subconscious maze and defeat the monsters in your mind. Yep weird.

I have been enjoying Aces and Adventures a poker-based deckbuilding RPG which seems like it might appeal to this crowd.

Alwa's Awakening, a Metroidvania platformer adventure game is free to claim at Gog.Com about the next 15 hours

Free Weekend of Across the Obelisk-a co-op RPG deckbuilder on Steam I've had my eye on for a while, is free to play thru the weekend. Golf with your Friends is also free to play

Another freebie over at GoG.com to claim. This one is Deep Sky Derelicts

Sega just released the most elaborate April Fool's Joke ever...

and it's a real game

I know who did it

This popped when in my YT feed. It looks interesting. Early access $30 and overwhelming Very Positive on Steam.

I've watched a couple of streamers play Stranded: Alien Dawn, who've all enjoyed it. Looks like it could be a game I could get into. It's on my wishlist to keep an eye on.

you got that right...

so like I played it all the way through. I warn you...the action parts are terrible.
The murder mystery/visual novel. starts slow but gets more fun once things start happening and is really cute. But it is interrupted at each turn by an isometric 3D UNSAVABLE sonic action sequence of collecting rings and avoiding things that hit you to make you drop rings and gaps that make you die and start over and if you fail...you keep having to do it anyway with no skipping it.

And...no save... so you have to keep going.

It wasn't as bad until the ending sequence made you do like 12 of these action sequences IN A ROW (WITH NO SAVING)
with increased difficulty and increased ring count goal...

omg i hate my face.
:banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead:

FYI


I've been playing it a little, still in the beginner area. Looking to dive much deeper once 1.0 is out.

Get your Masters fix in and play PGA Tour 2K23 for free this weekend and for you non-sports game lovers, Elder Scrolls Online is also free to play this weekend

Grrrr...if I play it for free, I'm going to buy it. I was planning on spending the weekend with MLB the Show, but I have sort of an itch to play a golf game.

Sent from my SM-S916U using Tapatalk

Then I'm happy to have scratched your itch of a sort :)

PGA 2K23 is trying to steal EA Sports Golf's thunder.

There is Golf Thunder???

Humble Bundle with a Paradox Build Your own Bundle where you get a bigger discount for each game you buy. Starts at 3 games. A Good time to get those DLC's and such for Stellaris and other Paradox games:


https://www.humblebundle.com/store/p...m_medium=email

Do you see an expiration / end date for this?

I do not, their regular bundles can last up to a month, but when I check individual Stellaris dlcs that are on sale in the bundle it says they are on sale for 6 more days,

I played a ton of Stellaris early on, but haven't played or kept up with the DLCs for past 3 years or so. The late game performance hit really sucked. There's been a lot of changes and not sure I want to spend the time & effort to get back into it.

Just looked. It doesn't have the 2 most recent DLCs. Guess I'll have to wait for another sale

The DLC's add a lot to the game-so if you don't have the ones they do have on sale, still a good time to get them. The Species packs are more hit or miss for me-think I only have one.



The good news is that Paradox games are almost always on sale somewhere, often 50% off, so you can check around to see if you can get a good deal somewhere,

Tried it today. Unimpressed.

Today is last day to get the base game free. I'll add it to my queue as a maybe play.

The complete bundle is $45.

I bought that a few years ago. It's a pretty decent game.

Wartales 1.0 came out of EA last week and I've been playing quite a bit. There were some changes from the last build that I spent 40+ hours beating up on 3 regions but nothing too significant. I just restarted my game with 1.0.

The battles are turn based & fun, but it is RPG-lite. Where something like BG is 70-30 RPG, I'd says Wartales is 30-70 and the RPG that does exist isn't that robust. There needs to be much more variability and random events in addition to the fixed story line encounters. I need more for it to be re-playable like XCom.

Overall, I enjoyed the game. Definitely worth the $20 or $25 I spent on it. Shiro seems to have supported the fan based pretty well during EA. I'm sure there'll be more DLCs and additional QoL stuff from feedback.

BG3 (and Starfield) can't come soon enough!

Wasteland 3 is $9 at Fanatical for about the next 48 hours.

Great game!

Roll Player, digital adaptation of a very good board game for all of us D&D geeks, has left Early access on Steam, but not on sale yet.

Meanwhile, another stretch of HOI4 grinding and I'm now at 836 hours, all thanks to GeForce Now and this thread.

I imagine 900 is possible as I still haven't done a Greece playthrough yet (ever) but to crack 1,000 may require a new DLC

Jon I'm happy you are getting such enjoyment from HOI,


And in equally? enjoyable news, Turbo Golf Racing is free to play this weekend. Yes you too can race a flying car around a golf course, and I think blow stuff up too!

Age of Wonders 4 sponsored streams have started-quill18 has one, and Potato McWhisky another.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McXW...ist=WL&index=3

Humankind with maybe an all time low of $10 on Steam right now

Also at maybe an all time low on Steam-$8 is Marvel Avengers

The game has now released, and just about every YouTuber I watch is playing it.

I was disappointed to see they did not make a campaign for AOW 4. I know they have these story like events but previews say the factions play similarly.

Well this is a Paragon game, so there will be countless updates and DLC's in the future. Would not surprise me to see one of them be a campaign.

If you mean Paradox, it's only published by them. They didn't develop it. So it might not be 500 DLC's to make a complete game.

paragon,paradox whatever :)

Bethesda seems to have messed up (pooped) with the Redfall launch.

Wasn't really on my list to play. Will see how the patches work out and wait for the $70 price to drop.

Redfall sounds exactly like I expected. You take a talented developer and pressure them to go outside their area of expertise and make a multi-player game that has enough single player elements to hopefully not alienate the fanbase they've built over their last few releases. You end up with a bad game that doesn't do anything well and unfortunately the developer usually gets blamed for these mistakes and bleed talent to other studios.

Multi-player games can be great and have their place, but it's hard to believe publishers haven't figured out that there's nothing worse than trying to shoehorn multi-player into single player experiences. The success rate of these games should scare anyone away.

With Redfall not being good I guess that begs the question what if Starfield sucks too? Those are the two new IP AAA Microsoft games being released this year. Microsoft really needs to figure out how to get the studios it owns to release good games. The constant miss after miss has one thing in common and it's Microsoft.

At this point I'm not sure why anyone would expect anything other than a botch from Bethesda.

We're 8 years from the last time something wasn't a clusterfuck, and that's if you were okay with FO4.

Otherwise it's 13 years back to Skyrim.

Showgunners review

Take XCom style game play. Add the Running Man kill or be killed dystopia, and shake vigorously.. and..

Add in a couple of plot twists including the death of one of your teammates in a way you can't stop, that isn't really signposted, and a bit of Death Race 2000 (the David Carradine original) reason your character is in this lethal game show

It's not going to have a TON of replay value, unless I want to try different builds, go for 100% in finding optional battle areas/loot crates/autographs to sign, but it's definitely worth $30.

I've run into a variety of enemies so far (all dolled up appropriately) in the in-universe game show "Homicidal All-Stars" (which this game used to be named)

SCUM: The base unit type. Give a death row convict a gun, and tell them if they kill the "challenger" they get their sentence commuted. Not quite mooks, but mid game, you'll be one-shotting them.
RONIN: Give SCUM a katana, and a tendency to unsheath it and look menacing (before you fill them with lead)
MUERTA: Her hits can poison you, or heal other Scum. Annoying
DRONE MONK: Summons Attack Drones. The Attack Drones can do some serious damage, but the Drone Monks themselves can die in two-three hits, and when they die the drones go with them. Focus Fire, but not super dangerous.
OGRE: Give a SCUM a perfectly balanced amount of steroids and battle drugs. They hit hard, and can regenerate. Don't let them get close.

Your "Challengers"/Heroes, with a bit of spoiler information:

Scarlett: The Main Character.

Marty: A returning former champion.

Tybalt: A former hacker trying to commute his sentence in HAS. Able to use holographics to change his appearance and that of others. One of his abilities swaps visages with an enemy, meaning the enemy will treat Tybalt as a friendly, and the enemy he swapped visages with as someone to be shot.

Warden:

Most of the game is set in two modes, Exploration (where you search for additional loot, deal with traps, puzzles and the like) and combat. Great set-piece battles (for example, you fight in an old train station. During the battle, trains will rush through the tracks, killing anyone on them. Thankfully, you get a one turn warning, the baddies don't (or don't care))

The game is crying out for Create-a-Challenger and Create-a-Episode modes where you build areas and combat. It does have Twitch Mode, where streamers can play the game, and their chat can help or hinder them. Made for streaming. Not a $60 game, but it's only $30 (26.99 on release for a couple weeks), and definitely worth that.

Note: I'm sure there will be other enemy types and possibly other characters to help you.

Oooh, this sounds fun, thanks for the post SirFozzie!

Thanks for the information on Showgunners. Thinking about giving Hard West II a try - A western turn based game. Reviews are pretty good.

I will give you a strong recommend on Hardwest 2, very well done and some unique mechanics.

Showgunners update

Got a couple new allies in Showgunners, the young CEO of a major arms corporation (who resembles Overwatch's Zarya), and an across-the-board sniper who can delete bad guys, but is not useful up close .Sad thing is you can only have two people in exploration and ambush missions, and three in combat arenas.

Oh, and funny moment, the game's music has a stinger that basically rips off the "Da-da-da, da-da-da" bit from SportsCenter.

I half expect Scott Van Pelt to pop up on the screen and say "Tonight, after Homicidal All-Stars, we go into the best highlights and kills from tonight's action, and a bad beat when a Challenger hits a tripwire on their way out of the arena. Again, KillCenter, After Homicidal All-Stars"

dola: Also, two phrases I never thought would go together: "Rogue-like" "Hockey Game" Tape2Tape is out. Aracde-ish hockey with rogue-like elements as you go through a run.

Also: If anyone wants a 14 day trial pass to Xbox PC Game Pass, let me know.

If you have been waiting for a Star Wars game sale, you might want to look around today, May 4 be with you Day :)

Is there any good Star Wars games? Any I have tried since KOTOR have been let downs.

Fallen order is really good and jedi survivor is outstanding but needs some patching. Story-wise they're incredible and stand up to the best mainstream lore entries. Cal Kestis grows into one of the most likeable characters in the Star Wars universe IMO.

Gameplay wise they can be difficult since it's a mix of Souls-like gamelay with a sprinkle of God of War.

Squadrons is solid, if a bit generic.

I played a bit of Kotor, but not bring a Star Wars fan, it didn't grab me.

I bought Fallen Order and returned it. I'm not good at that kind of game. Squadrons was majorly disappointing. To me gameplay>>>story every time. When you have a bunch of cut-screens were you sit around and watch stuff happen, I'm immediately turned off.

Beyond the setting, that style of play is among my favorite. Turn based, or turn based-ish. I need games that don't require me to push button fast.

Me too

As FOF players, we're used to thinking about our moves. So when I play an FPS, I think "Hey, there's a bad guy, I should shoot him. I'm going to aim for ... and I'm dead".

Also doesn't help that many of us are long past the age 25 peak of FPS gaming.

And in some cases (like me) ... loooooong past.

I've thought many times that it's actually to my advantage against "normal" players in something like Fortnite though. Since I know my limitations far too well, I play most situations differently than probably 95% of the people they run into. Basically, I don't do anything they expect and sometimes that results in what I figure are victories that inspire rage quits lol

Started Redfall with my son despite the reviews because we aren’t gonna let some negative people on the internet stand in the way of a good time.
Anyway the game isn’t terrible so far, but having the game on the Series X and my PC in the same room at the same time….it’s jarring how bad it runs on Xbox. He’s getting less than half my frames and quite a bit of stuttering and slowdown. It’s just a much smoother experience for me so far.

Darkest Dungeon II has been released on Steam. Its quite different in setting, still very dark but you travel through the world now instead of staying at a manor. Events, encounters, and dungeons along the way

so it's what Diablo 2 was to diablo 1

This is a big wowser. The publisher of Destiny 2 has won a RICO case on a cheat software maker and every site that hosted the software. Pretty big judgement.

Hey, Twitter, and especially my #LitigationDisasterTourists, gather round. B/cwhile DM is focusing in on the court finding that selling videogame cheats is criminal copyright infringement and RICO, I'd like to tell you about something different. The CFAA, and @KathrynTewson https://t.co/ONfpFO0CNZ

— Akiva Cohen (@AkivaMCohen) May 9, 2023

Good snag, I sent that along to Will. He loves a creative use of RICO so he'll enjoy this I'm sure.

claim Hotshot Racing for free at Fanatical

Crusaders Kings 3 is free to play on Steam thru the weekend. Also having a big Paradox publisher sale too!

Anyone playing Age of Wonder 4? I'm enjoying it so far. It is a super deep and very customizable game that still is not hard to play.

Tape to Tape is eating all of my time.

Hockey? Check.
Roguelike? Check.
Throwing your stick and clobbering the ref? CHECK.

The gameplay is where it's at, and it's so much fun, very NHL 95 ish

Can you play effectively with the keyboard or is a joy stick really needed?

It's do-able, but a controller makes all the difference

Just noticed that Xenonauts 2 has a Q2 2023 release date. I'm assuming this is EA release.

Serious concerns about this as Xenonauts has been in development for a long time and forums don't seem very active.

Hoping to be pleasantly surprised.

I guess I don't understand that cheater software case. What is the harm? Are these, like, cheat codes so you can bypass hard parts or otherwise win the games? Or are these cracks?

In the latest case, the dev sold hacks that were used in online play.

edit to add: I believe that's true in both cases where Bungie won judgements this week, nearly $7m in one, nearly $17m in the other ... plus significant precedent by getting their RICO claim agreed to. We may finally start seeing these p.o.s. do prison time.

Destiny 2 is a MMO with PVP so cheating has a negative impact on the entire user base. MMO cheats are usually secondary software that runs at the same time as the game to bypass code which allow you do things like see enemy players through walls or aim hacks recognize players and immediately targets them when they come on screen, and can go as far as allowing players to just shoot through walls.

Right. Destiny 2 is free-to-play, so these cheats help players steal directly from the creators by allowing people to gain whatever currency the game uses to purchase in-game items. They are stealing money by artificial "grinding" these tokens.

Aaaaaaaaaaahhhh, now I understand. Definitely harm. Thanks for explaining!

Tom Clancy's the Division 2 is free to play thru the weekend on Steam

From the makers of Monster Train, Inkbound is now in Early Access:


Inkbound on Steam

I'm close to finishing up my 5th region in Wartales. Good game and worth the <$30 that I spent on it since late early access. But it's become repetitive and not holding my interest. It needs more ... variability. I'll let it sit until more stuff comes out before resuming.

Thinking about buying BG3 which is due to be released in Aug. I know I'll get it eventually but 3 months is a little long to be playing EA for me.

Starfield is supposedly out Sep 6. There is a Starfield Direct event on Jun 6 so we'll know more.

Haven't seen anyone else mention it but Jagged Alliance 3 is scheduled for Jul 14. The demo gameplay looks promising.

I'll wait for the Memorial Day sales to make a decision on next game. Meanwhile, XCom WOTC and Civ 6 to bide my time.

Hue, a puzzle game where you adjust the color to advance, is free to claim on Steam thru the weekend

Nookrium found and played a new game just come out of early access on Steam: Archmage Rises. You start by totally randomising the world, its people, its history. Then you are born, and you get choices for your life until you suddenly get the gift of magic power. You can choose which magic realm to specialize in, then go to mage school for 3 years where you meet three other students just starting their studies.



They become your friends, potential allies, lovers, rivals or enemies. Then after three years of study you are kicked out of school to adventure on your own. You end up in a totally random town where you can build relationships, get quests, jobs, etc whatever you want, including just ignoring the town and going your own way. Combat is turn based, you have spells and weapons to fight with. And every time you start a new game its all new. I'm certainly intrigued by it. There's a Steam link to on Nookrium's play through of the game here:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijdW...ist=WL&index=4

Disappointed no Steam sale this Memorial Day or at least not the ones on my wishlist.

Also Homeworld 3 has been pushed to 2024 (no surprise).

Probably just about 3 weeks to the summer sale, yeah?

Jan 23 - Jan 30, 2023: Base Builder Fest
Feb 20 - Feb 27, 2023: Mystery Fest
Mar 16 - Mar 23, 2023: Steam Spring Sale
Apr 24 - May 1, 2023: Puzzle Fest
May 15 - May 22, 2023: Sports Fest
Jun 29 - Jul 13, 2023: Steam Summer Sale
Jul 24 - Jul 31, 2023: Stealth Fest
Aug 7 - Aug 14, 2023: Visual Novel Fest
Aug 28 - Sep 4, 2023: Strategy Fest
Sep 25 - Oct 2, 2023: SHMUP Fest
Oct 26 - Nov 2, 2023: Scream Fest (Halloween)
Nov 21 - Nov 28, 2023: Steam Autumn Sale
Dec 21, 2023 - Jan 4, 2024: Steam Winter Sale

Thanks both for the schedule

not to mention flash sales. steam is like a furniture store nowadays that"goes out of business"