Five Games Under A Fiver You Should Buy In The Steam Sale

Hope you like management, survival and or role playing games ...

Yes yes, I know I said "no gaming posts unless they're in my How I became a Gamer series" but, there's only five days left of the Steam Sale. Maybe you've got a buck or two going spare and you don't know what to buy. Well, I'm not going to tell you what to buy. I'm going to tell you about the games in the sale that I already own and what you might like about them! Please note, I'm English so I'm showing the prices in pound sterling. Finding the price in whatever your currency is, is just a Google away!

Startopia

Price £0.99

Great for people who like management games and quirky British comedy

I bought Startopia a few years ago when I spotted it in the Steam sale. Reading through the Steam reviews it sounded like a game I could totally get along with. It's set on an empty space station in which you build facilities to get various alien species to come for a visit. You can then employ these aliens to do jobs depending on their race. There is also a robust trading and combat system. The best bit of this game in my opinion, apart from the funky retro graphics, is the narration from the Virtual Artificial Lifeform (or VAL for short) performed by William Franklyn. VAL, guides you through the tutorial in a deadpan manner. He tells you when things are going wrong and is frequently funny. Aside from the nine levels of campaign scenarios there is also a customisable sandbox mode. Honestly, for ninety nine pence you'd be mad not to buy it.

Sacred Gold

Price £1.39

Great for people who like Hack n Slash Games with substance. Think Diablo meets World of Warcraft and you're maybe halfway there.

Sacred Gold came out in 2004. I have no idea how I missed it. Ah no, I've just realised, 2004 was the year I started playing World of Warcraft. Anyway. Sacred Gold is another one of the steam sale bargains I bagged some time ago. Hack N Slash? Check. RPG? Check. Open World? Check. And it was this last one that got me. I love a good open world. The game has eight premade characters who all play in different ways and start in different area's of the map. The beginning quests lead you to the first town then it's time to go out on your own.

This game is massive, so massive there are horses to buy, which you ride, yourself. There are many types of enemies to defeat ranging from bears and bands of bandits to nasty orcsies and the smelly undead. There also are a massive amount of quests, some which require the murder of some poor defenceless man-eating bears others which ask you to deliver potions to the other side of the map. And the items! Omigosh, this game is so huge and so complex (and totally works on Windows 10 with a little tweaking) if you love RPG's at all, this one should be in your collection.

Gnomoria

Price £3.73

Great for people who like to be punished for the smallest mistake. This game is seriously hardcore.

Have you ever wanted to play Dwarf Fortress but found you couldn't get past the slightly clunky interface and lack of actual graphics. Well Gnomoria is for you my friend. In Gnomoria you are charged with the care of nine Gnomes to start out with. Each Gnome has it's own name and preferred job and will just stand around doing nothing if you let them. So you start carving out a home for them underground, or in the side of a mountain or even building some basic mud huts. You mine through 100 layers of dirt and stone encountering gemstones and precious metals, and beetles and skeletons. You can set up combat squads to patrol the area around your base in case goblins come calling. Or you can just play with no enemies at all - if you don't use mods this is nigh on impossible. Yup, this game is fully moddable to.

Before I go any further I have to tell you that the solo developer of this game (a guy called Robobob) has disappeared from the internet meaning that the game as it stands now will not be updated ever again. BUT, and it's a big but hence the capitals, this game is finished. I've had this game since Early Access, my library record says I've played it for 439 hours and I've never regretted buying it. This is the third most played game in my collection. As far as I know, the other people who supported this project at the beginning writing mods for the game are still writing them. This game is loved and maybe, if I can convince you all to buy it, Robobob will come back and finish what he started.

Forsaken Isle

Price £3.67 (Early Access)

Good for people who like pirates and pixels

Forsaken Isle is one of those games that I can sink hours into. It was last updated around six months ago but it was a fairly substantial game prior to that. It's one of those run around randomly generated map and kill things games. It also has farming and building and cooking and trading. Yup, it's a survival game. You play as your own personally customised pirate running around a few different biomes on the surface level and slowly but surely making your way underground. There are chests to find scattered across the isle filled with useful items and food - you have to eat or you die of starvation - and once they are empty you can scoop it up and take it home to your base. There's no map screen so as you are travelling around the isle finding ways of not getting lost is essential. There's a day and night cycle where ghastly spirits and skeleton pirates come at night to try and get you. This game is fun, plain and simple, even if it never gets updated again, in the state it's in it's worth it.

Legend of Grimrock

Price £4.39

Good for people who long for something like Dungeon Master or D&D: Eye of the Beholder

I bought this ages ago but only recently started playing it. I recently started playing it after having rediscovered the freeware/abandonware sites. I downloaded Dungeon Master 2, Dungeonhack and Elder Scrolls: Arena and then forgot them all when I remembered I had this game. Legend of Grimrock is fantastic. It has hundreds of secrets to uncover, masses of evil minions to defeat, snail slices galore to feed your team. And, you a first person, move one space at a time, dungeon crawler, boy is it pretty. There are teleport clouds of sparkly dust which form part of the many puzzles that are found as you make your way through the dungeon. The walls are well textured so it's obvious, when you're looking for them, if there's a secret button to press. It's pretty hard, I'm not gonna lie, you can't just stand and hack away and the enemies, you have to trick them into trapping themselves to open doors, or keep on your toes because one more Ogre charge and your Mage will be dead. Then, once you've completed the thirteen giant levels the game comes with you can head on into the workshop and download maps other people have made. If you like a game with a bit of inventory management and lots of character (I challenge you not to jump when a Spider jump at your face) this game might just be for you.

Well that's the end of my Five for Under a Fiver Post. Do you also already own all these games? Have you been considering one for a while and I've made you decide to dive in? Do you just want to know where to get the free dos games I mentioned? Tell me in the comments. Thanks for reading. TTFN x

Edited to add a proper picture as my first pic. Apparently my brain is more fried than I thought. x