For Christmas this year, I asked for a Steam card. They had them in our local supermarket in two denominations: £20 and £30. I thought I might be lucky and get the thirty quid one.
On Christmas morning, one of the presents under the tree was a small packet. I was sure it was a Steam card but it felt pretty thick.
It should have. There were seven cards inside. In total they added up to £120.
I was not as immediately thrilled as I should have been. My reaction was closer to shock. I'd been thinking that with £30, in the sale I'd have been able to grab two or three good games from my wishlist. Or I could have put it towards one of the more expensive games I wanted but hadn't even bothered to wishlist because of the price. It would take a big chunk off the sale tag on one of those, for sure.
With over a hundred pounds to spend, though, choice paralysis set in. When you can buy anything on your wishlist and still have plenty left over, where do you start? I mean, no-one spends over a hundred pounds on video games, do they?
Then I had a clever idea. I added just two of the cards to my Steam wallet: £30 in all. Exactly what I'd been hoping for. That level of choice, I could handle .
And I'd been right about £30 being enough for a little spending spree. As you can see from the dates on the image above, I bought six games on December 25th, which as some of you may recall was Christmas Day. No hanging about, there!
All six together came to just under the thirty pounds. One, I only bought because it was so cheap. It seemed rude not to. Another wasn't on my wishlist at all, I just happened to spot it while I was browsing and remembered it from when I played the demo.
Those were impulse purchases. The super-cheap game was Spire Horizon Online. £0.67 in the sale. Might as well be free. To be fair, it's only £3.39 full price and it's often on sale for less than a pound. I've managed to resist it up to now but I didn't have money in my Steam wallet those other times.
The other reckless buy was Dustborn. I was browsing the "Under £4" titles and it jumped out at me. I remembered it as something I'd played in a Next Fest and enjoyed. It was £2.49 (90% off.) and I had it in the basket before I thought to wonder why it wasn't on my wishlist.
Looking back at the "microreview" I wrote back when I played the demo, it seems I meant to wishlist it but somehow never did. I must have forgotten. Never mind. I own it now.
The four games I picked up that I had remembered to put on the list were Sovereign Syndicate, Penny Larceny Gig Economy Supervillain, Cat Detective Albert Wilde and Brok the Investigator. The links go to my reviews of the demos. I did play the Penny larceny demo, too, but apparently I never reviewed it, presumably because that wasn't during Next Fest.
All four were at least half-price in the sale and none of them was very expensive to begin with. They also all had the benefit of being games I do genuinely want to play for fun, not just because I might get a few blog posts out of them. When I'll find the time to have that fun is another matter but at least the intention is there.
That was my Christmas Day shopping done but I still had a little over £90 left in the game bank. Not to mention another Steam card of unspecified value (But most likely £30.) I know my friend is holding on to until we meet up because I asked her not post it to me.
No hurry, though. The sale doesn't end until 5 January. I gave myself a few days to think about it and I had a chat with Mrs. Bhagpuss as well. She advised me to get something I otherwise wouldn't spend the money on, what with my super-power being the ability to get more pleasure from not buying myself things than from actually getting them.
That seemed like good advice so today I added the rest of the cards to my Steam wallet and started spending.
It's harder than it looks, isn't it?
I thought very hard about Pantheon and Erenshor but again the discounts were small and both are games that would require a considerable amount more time than I'm likely to be willing to give them. Those two didn't even make it into the basket this time but they stay on the wishlist, unlike several others I removed.
The games I culled all had substantial discounts but it still wasn't enough even to get them into the basket for further consideration. It seemed like time they went. I figure if I won't buy something even at half-price, with money that's not even real money, there's no point pretending I want it any more.
Two games that were never on the wishlist to begin with did make it into the basket for a while. Cyberpunk 2077 is on sale at 65% off. I thought I always wanted to play that but couldn't because my PC wouldn't run it and anyway it was too expensive. After due consideration, it seems neither of those excuses holds up.
I probably should do a full post about this but it appears my experiment with replacing my old PC with something that cost about a quarter of what a good gaming rig should run has paid off. When I was thinking abut getting Cyberpunk 2077, I went to Can You Run It? to check if I could. And I can. In fact, I can run 99% of the Top 100 games there, many of them at Recommended rather than Minimum spec.
With proof of capacity and a massive price cut, why didn't I buy the game? Because I took a good look at the screenshots and the description and realized I didn't actually like either the look or the sound of it all that much. I think the main reason I wanted to play it was because of how very, very good the anime series was but the game doesn't look as if it would be very much like that.
I think I need to do a bit more research. I still have a few days to make up my mind. I'd say it's fifty-fifty whether I'll get it or not.
Which is why, in the end I managed to spend almost £40 on one game, Baldur's Gate 3. There's no danger of me not playing that one, although I'm going to have to clear some SSD space before I can start.
It was always the game I was planning on buying this Christmas. If they did boxes any more I'd have had it under the tree. I've been very patient, waiting for the price to come down, but it's clear now that isn't going to happen, or at least not quickly. The current 20% discount is the largest cut I've seen so far so it seemed like the time had come.
Also, as I mentioned in another post, Mrs Bhagpuss has expressed an interest in playing BG3. If I don't get around to it right away, maybe she can log into my account and play it. (Sometimes it feels like we learned absolutely nothing from illegally sharing accounts in EverQuest, back in the day...)
Slay The Spire, the eighth and so far final game I bought, was another impulse buy and another giveaway at 90% off. I can't honestly say I ever particularly wanted to play it but I've read so many reports of how great it is and it does look like something I might enjoy, so for £1.99, why not?
That leaves me with a little more than £50 in the wallet but it's not like it'll go off. I'll wait a while and see what comes up. The big sales aren't the only time games get discounted, after all and there are at least half a dozen as-yet unpublished titles on my wishlist, ones that might come out this year, games I'd consider buying at full price.
The other issue is that I did actually buy a few games on Steam last year and I haven't played all of those yet. I don't have any problems never playing games I get for free but it seems like I should at least take a look at the ones I paid money for before buying more.
There are four other games in the image at the top of the post as well as the ones I've mentioned. Two of those, Ashes of Creation and Stein's;Gate, I have played a little. AoC I've written about here. I like it well enough but not so well I'd rather play it than all the other MMORPGs I could be playing. Stein's;Gate I found unexpectedly boring. Steam says I played for 38 minutes but I can tell you it felt a lot longer...
Of the other two, I can't even remember what Beyond Two Souls is or how I came to own it. Road 96 I bought at deep discount after reading Tyler's review, which made it sound like exactly my sort of thing. Whether it really is or not, I can't say because I have yet to find the time to take a look at it.
Anyway, those are the games I've got lined up for the coming months. No doubt my experiences with some or all of them will turn up here.
Eventually.
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