Steam Winter Sale hidden gems: 15 games to pick up before the sale ends

by Arthur · January 4, 2023

2022 was one absurd good year for games. Maybe not so much on the AAA blockbuster front, but every single month of the year smaller studios brought a swarm of fascinating new things to play, only to be driven from our minds by the next wave time and time again.

With the Winter Steam sale in its final days, here’s a grab bag of discounted indie gems that have almost certainly flown under your radar. All were released in 2022 and have garnered far fewer user reviews than I feel they deserve. Think you’ve seen it all this year, or do you want to surprise someone with something completely out of left field? Take a look at these.

Price: $20.39/£18.82 (32% off) | Developer: Deskworks Co., Ltd

I can hardly believe this was launched to zero fanfare. A childhood pencil sketch and papercraft JRPG adventure with ever-changing game mechanics, genres and art styles without ever leaving your school desk. It is beautiful to look at and endlessly creative. I challenge you not to smile constantly. My only complaint is that it’s relatively short at only 6-7 hours, but every second of it is packed with fun and childish imagination, as Kerry wrote about at PC Gamer (opens in a new tab).

Price: $7.99/£6.19 (40% off) | Developer: Foolish Mortals game

A brilliantly clever asymmetric turn-based tactics puzzle game. Part Into The Breach, part board game, giant monsters stomp around the map, systematically smashing the nearest buildings. With their movements (mostly) predictable, slow them down with tanks, planes and mechs while you research scientific solutions, or go for a quick military victory. Boasting a long campaign, some genuinely fun writing, and both comic and FMV silliness to wrap up the action.

Price: $4.99/£3.59 (50% off)| Developer: Ithiro Sumi

Before Elden Ring and before Dark Souls, there was King’s Field, FromSoftware’s influential first-person dungeon crawler series. Devil Spire aims to recapture the feel of the classic games, but restructured as a highly replayable roguelike. With multiple unlockable modes, plenty of secrets, and a complex crafting system, this one has a slightly immersive sim spirit beneath its crunchy PSX-adjacent aesthetic. One of those games that gets better as you master it.

Price: $14.99/£11.99 (25% off) |Developer: MindThunk

One of the most interesting immersive sims I’ve played, a bit like Prey (2017) spliced with the 80s puzzle game Paradroid. Playing as a disembodied and deathless mind in a very British retro future, you can freely jump between robot bodies and everything else mechanical in the area, opening up some mind-blowingly creative solutions to problems and giving it huge replay value. Some of the achievements (like completing the game without unlocking the jump/climb button) sound impossible, suggesting immense depth.

Price: $15.92, £12.39 (20% off) | Developer: Sakuba metal works

A quiet nightmarish point-and-click adventure with some light survival elements, full of unpleasant images and ideas. A strange biomechanical creature explores a world on literal rails, struggling to maintain fading consciousness and understand its own nature. Originally released in 1999 exclusively in Japan, this translated remake cleans up the troubling art, adds some quality-of-life features, and restores some cut content, but the core remains deeply retro.

Table of Contents

FixFox (opens in a new tab)

Price: $7.49/£5.69 (50% off) | Developer: Neat

A relaxing, non-violent open world adventure about being a traveling space engineer. More story driven than I expected and lighter on the puzzles than I would have liked, but deeply charming and often funny. Explore strange new places, use a delightful physical interface to fix gadgets with your backpack of random junk and befriend lots of strange robots. It’s not a short game either. Expect it to eat a solid twelve hours of your life once it has its hooks in you.

Price: $5.39/£3.71 (40% off) | Developer: HON Team

It wouldn’t be a recommendation list from me if I didn’t include at least one GZdoom powered FPS. Hands Of Necromancy is instant nostalgic fun for fans of Heretic and Hexen as you explore non-linear mazes and blast wizards and monsters with an assortment of magic. By separating this from the inspirations, you gradually unlock Metroid-esque transformation spells that open up new paths and levels, as well as giving you some fun new attack options.

Price: $16.99/£13.16 (15% off) | Developer: Neotro Inc

An offbeat and beautiful twin-stick shmup set in a child’s nightmare, you’ll battle nasty vegetables, yappy dogs and mean schoolmates. It’s easy to get through the short stages that loop; just collect enough shiny soul fragments. Mastery comes through intentionally pulling things out as the difficulty increases, chasing scores and survival times. Long for a shmup, with lots of gear loading options, branching routes and obviously gorgeous art.

Cosmos 9 (opens in a new tab)

Price: $12.00/£8.53 (61% off) | Developer: Several

A bundle of nine small sci-fi puzzles from nine different developers. Sold separately, but much cheaper if you buy the whole set. All the games are single-seating snacks, from about 30 minutes to a couple of hours, and vary in complexity and depth. From short narrative experiment Frequency Dissonance, to personal favorites Triga (a triangle-grid block puzzle with hidden objectives) and Linelith (a bit like The Witness, but you’re also one of the puzzle pieces). I’ll admit that I’m a fan of this smaller game themed anthology style. See also: The Dread X Collections.

Price: $12.49/£11.24 (50% off) | Developer: Bitmap Bureau

TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge may have been 2022’s most nostalgic brawler, but Final Vendetta is the most arcade-authentic. A single playthrough will take you a quick half hour, although getting through the higher difficulty levels without continues will take much longer. With chunky and smoothly animated SNK-esque sprites, a retro British techno soundtrack (matching its run-down London setting) and combat that’s 80% Final Fight, 20% Streets Of Rage.

Price: $7.49/£5.69 (50% off)| Developer: Yokaicade

A light and fun mech turn-based tactics roguelike. A bit looser and more knockout than Into The Breach, but more forgiving of imperfection. The fun tactical twist here is overheating, which can be equal parts blessing and curse. High heat means more damage but more vulnerability, and maxing out a mech’s heat pulls all enemies towards that one target. Explore an FTL-style map between battles and unlock more pilots and gear between races.

Atama (opens in a new tab)

Price: $11.99 /£9.29 (40% off) | Developer: Team Zutsuu

This year has been great for horror games of all kinds, but Atama is a particularly deep cut, riffing on the largely forgotten Siren series. Stealth-focused horror where you can “hack” into the sight of the monsters and learn their patrol routes through their own eyes. Atama puts a surreal Junji Ito-esque spin on it by letting you avoid bizarrely expressive large floating heads as they patrol a strange dream-like abandoned village. Beyond that, I don’t want to spoil.

Price: $9.74/£7.71 (25% off)| Developer: no days shall erase you

Recently launched into Early Access, Deadeye Deepfake Simulacrum is another hacking-centric immersive sim, but with a fake structure (including procedurally generated weapons with funky names), an abstract 2D aesthetic, command-line network infiltration, and a gleefully dark sense of humor. Once you get some cyber powers, missions can get weird and fast.

Sephonie (opens in a new tab)

Price: $17.99/£14.99 (40% off) | Developer: Analgesic productions

Analgesic Productions is a deliberately low-key indie studio that makes soft and weird games like Anodyne 2, but it still hurts to see Sephonie lost in the 2022 rush. A contemplative and non-violent but challenging parkour platformer about a trio of scientists exploring a living psychic island. Introspective prose is woven between complex navigation problems and a surprising number of block-placing puzzle minigames.

Price: $14.99/£12.59 (40% off) | Developer: Firepunchd Games UG

This was a strange year for VR games. Lots of smaller indie releases, some amazing VR mods and even a new headset (Pico 4), but little support from major publishers. Goggle owners could be forgiven for missing out on Tentacular, a construction-focused comedy game about being a clumsy, colossal, yet friendly kraken trying to help the relatively small human inhabitants of a sunny island chain. Frequent giggle-inducing fun, and great for VR newbies.