Games to Look Forward to: My Haul From the Steam Winter Sale
2025 has not just taken the wind out of my gaming sails, but ripped the entire mast off the ship. In letting my gaming habits deteriorate throughout the past two years, opening up Steam has felt like an unused muscle where I’m trying to lift the same amount of weight as I used to be able to. Hell, when I received my Playstation year-end recap for 2025, I laughed because there was only one game I played in the entire year: Death Stranding 2: On the Beach.
With Steam, luckily, I have put quite a bit more time into the platform. I won’t bore you with the numbers, but this past year I at least played the following: Metaphor: ReFantazio, Thought Experiment Simulator, In Stars and Time, OMORI, Slay the Spire, Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, Star Wars: Jedi Survivor, Neva, Balatro, Dordogne, Dave the Diver, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, What Remains of Edith Finch (replay), Marvel Rivals, and Roger, Desktop Survivors 98, Life is Strange: Double Exposure, Hollow Knight: Silksong (I predictably bailed after 15 hours), Bad End Theater, Slay The Princess – The Pristine Cut, this game will end in 205 clicks., Afterlove EP, Split Fiction, Fretless – The Wrath of Riffson, and UNBEATABLE.
Phew, that was a lot to type up. But as you can see, the year hasn’t been totally hopeless and irredeemable from my gaming perspective. I’m not going to try and count past year’s completion list, or in Silksong’s rare case, a game I played a chunk of but hated, for instance. However, I have an incredibly strong suspicion that if I did decide to go back and count, I’d be deeply disappointed at how precipitous the dropoff has been since that time.
Something I’m going to try and do more of in 2026 is to play more games. There are so many projects I’m working on right now that are almost finished, like a poetry book, video game book, some musical EPs, etc. As these dominoes finally fall, I want to steer that extra time and attention back into playing games. I miss being an active part of our broader gaming community, but I’ve only really paid attention to it this year around the time Clair Obscur released. I also miss being able to feel on top of the industry. I still listen to weekly gaming podcasts and YouTube shows, but that’s simply not the same as playing them.
So with that in mind, I’m going to talk about some of the games I just picked up on the annual Steam Winter Sale. If for nothing else, to keep myself accountable, so that hopefully, the pace at which I finish and write about games increases.
UNBEATABLE
UNBEATABLE is a rhythm adventure where music is illegal and you do crimes. Follow the story of Beat and her band on the run, in a narrative experience full of big emotions powered by arcade-flawless rhythm gameplay.
I grew up on rhythm games like the Guitar Hero and Dance Dance Revolution franchises, so as soon as I played the demo for UNBEATABLE back when the demo dropped a few years ago, I, and many of my friends, became hooked. In fact, it used to be a points-incentive on my Twitch channel that regular viewers could redeem a few of these demo songs at the end of my stream once I wrapped up the main game. This game is, for a rhythm game, surprisingly inventive in places, and the anime art style evokesFLCL, for those who are familiar with the legendary anime. It’s also a very anti-police game thus far, a theme I will certainly explore in the inevitable full article on this game.
Hades II
Battle beyond the Underworld using dark sorcery to take on the Titan of Time in this bewitching sequel to the award-winning rogue-like dungeon crawler.
The original Hades is one of the best games I’ve ever played – we’re talking about 75 hours of gameplay without even considering my time with it on the Switch. I would say Hades II was a day one pickup, but since the game released in Early Access, it fell off my radar since I wanted to wait for the whole thing. By the time the 1.0 version released, I was busy doing other things; suddenly, it was on sale, so it worked out after all. Once I finish the two games I’m working on, it’s Hades II time, baby.
Death Come True
Everything rides on your choices in this new wave interactive movie game. Experience a thrilling science fiction mystery in full-length live-action format—from genius creator of the “Danganronpa” series, Kazutaka Kodaka!
Anyone who used to follow my Twitch streams will remember the month-long Danganronpa and Danganronpa II streams. But what you may have forgotten is the eventful “trash streams,” in which I would pull a bunch of niche games, including a ton of FMV games. I am a sucker for FMV, adventure-style, choice-based games. And Death Come True seems to be exactly that.
Sword and Fairy 7
An action RPG based on Chinese art style, as the 7th lineal sequel of this series, it earns a lot of anticipations. Better gaming experience than any of its previous episode will be brought to all the players.
The singular thing I know about Sword and Fairy 7 is that Alex Battaglia of Digital Foundry called it, at the time, perhaps the best technical showcase that you could find to push your graphics card. I couldn’t tell you from the Steam bio above what this game is about, but it feels incredibly indebted to the Final Fantasy lineage, if I had to guess, yet set in some middle ages Eastern asian culture. I would say Chinese culture, perhaps, since I believe SoftStarlight, the developers, are themselves a Chinese studio. But I guess the only way to find out is by diving in soon.
Dreams of Desire: Definitive Edition
Dreams of Desire: Definitive Edition is an Adult Visual Novel about power, corruption and mystery where your choices really matter until the very end. What you will find is steaming hot sex with a variety of stunning women, loveable characters, multiple endings and an intriguing story.
Who doesn’t love a steamy sex game from time to time? The screenshot above is literally the only one I felt could pass as potentially appropriate, having not played it yet. I only share that I picked this NSFW game up for two primary reasons: (1) though this game clearly takes a male perspective to sex, the trailer presents itself almost as a horror game, plus its choose-year-own adventure format intrigues me – it sounds like there’s actual gameplay here unlike most visual novels, for instance; and (2) our culture reinforces unnecessary sex shame, and I think being transparent about your desires helps erase some of that stigma.
7 Days to End with You
To know a language, know the world, and finally know you.
The brevity of this bio caught my attention, as well as the art style – a sort of pixellated anime. This game evokes an almost Heaven’s Vault energy when I watch the trailer. Taking place over 7 days, it seems you work through both a language and the character’s main emotional state. I love games that involve translation, but games that evoke feelings from you, the player? Even better.
Armored Core VI Fires of Rubicon
A new action game based on the concept of the ARMORED CORE series that uses the knowledge gained from FromSoftware’s recent action game development.
I grew up watching mecha anime when I stayed up late at my dad’s house. Though never my favorite genre, the shows were always visual spectacles with intense drama. Armored Core VI looks like if you took one of those anime and went for realism in an uncannily believable manner. Aesthetically, Armored Core VI reminds me of the opening levels to NieR: Automata, my favorite game of all time, so color me intrigued. I’ve wanted to play this game for a while – the combat looks sparkly, the movement looks fluid, and the trailers I’ve seen make me deeply curious about what the story entails. I’m a bit scared that it was developed by FromSoftware, of Dark Souls fame – just thinking of potential difficulty – but I’m willing to brave it to try something that looks so satisfying from a nostalgia and gameplay perspective.
Lost Records: Bloom & Rage
Embark on a new narrative journey by the creators of Life is Strange. Film your summer of 1995 and create memories of a lifetime with your new friends. 27 years later, confront the dark secrets that made you all promise to never speak again after that fateful summer.
Though they don’t always deliver perfect results, DONTNOD, developers of the Life is Strange series, always knows what’s going to get me interested in seeing a story through. In this case, a throwback to the 90s featuring a female protagonist, queer characters, choices that matter, and a story that’s built around a series of musicians. These are things that I can relate to quite a bit; it would be as we say, a “Flora Game.” I’ll almost certainly report back with a full article on this one.
Time Flies
Time Flies is a little adventure about our limited time in this world.
Again, indies killing it over here with the brief hooks. I remember when Time Flies was announced. It’s an absurd premise where you play as a mischievous fly who makes statues kiss, scratches records, tickles feet, knocks things off the bookshelf, etc. Think Untitled Goose Game but with a distinctly MS Paint styled series of animated pixel art. It seems like a short but cheeky title that will, at the very least, put a smile on my face on the next occasion that I need one.
Arctic Eggs
Eggs: perfection in two parts. The simple whites. The sublime yolk. Each the lesser without its partner. Chorus and verse. A symphony of flavor. The catchy tune reminding us of warm baths and late-night movies. The elevator music to whatever lies beyond.
I could not tell you how this ended up on my wishlist apart from Critical Reflex being the publisher, perhaps. But watching the brief trailer and viewing the strange assortment of screenshots, some with military members holding machine guns in full gear, others holding out a breakfast skillet with a cigarette or bullets in it, my interest is piqued. Not to mention, get a load of these genre tags for Arctic Eggs: Cooking, Physics, Surreal, Sci-fi, Atmospheric, Crime – just to name a few. I am bewildered by this game’s presentation and concept. And don’t worry, I’ll be cooking up some eggs when the time comes to play it.
Final Thoughts for the Steam Winter Sale: 2025
And that’s basically a wrap on my pickups for this year’s Steam sale, absenting one hentai visual novel where I could not find a single SFW screenshot on the Steam page. Despite what I said about shedding off internalized sexual stigma and shame, I don’t think putting such images on Epilogue is a move we want to make, so I left it off the list. But anything by Cherry Kiss Games probably falls into this category.
My goal for 2026, as far as gaming is concerned, is not to get through my backlog, as I have vainly suggested in the past. With about 950 games in my library, not to mention unplayed PS5 titles, that is an impossible and potentially neverending effort. I will, however, try and hold myself accountable to these games from this year’s Steam Winter Sale. That, at the very least, I believe I will find the rhythm and motivation to work through. No timeline on that, necessarily, just something I want to accomplish.
The blessing and a curse of being an oft-invited podcast guest and co-host is that I routinely get derailed for a month working through something for an upcoming episode. So the challenge I’m setting myself regarding the Winter Sale is still an uphill battle. I’m also still itching to play things like Date Everything! and Mouthwashing, amongst other installed games from 2025’s unfinished backlog. With any luck, 2026’ll be a heck of a year. I look forward to sharing my thoughts when the time comes.
My final thought is that I am timing this article to when there is still one weekend left to pick the above games up while they are still significantly discounted. If any of these games intrigued you, I think it would make future articles from me a fair bit more compelling, personally. By now, however, I expect many of your wallets are empty. But who knows, maybe you have that cool aunt who slipped $100 in your pocket during holiday dinner. In any case, make sure to join our Discord if you’d like to share your own Winter sale pickups.
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