All games listed are purchasable through Steam.
Grow Home
Grow Home is a very simple game. You play as a tiny robot stranded on an alien planet who needs to guide a monstrous plant back to its spaceship. Okay, maybe it’s not so simple, but it sure is fun to play.
What makes Grow Home so amazing is its internal unity. The gameplay, visual style and writing all unite under the same theme: growth. The core mechanic of the game is to climb, which can be tricky at first. The left and right mouse buttons are bound to your robot’s left and right hands. It takes some getting used to before you’re moving the camera, using the WASD keys and alternating between mouse clicks all in coordination with each other. But once you get it down, you start ascending the Star Plant with relative ease. When you get that down, the game starts introducing new mechanics. You have to start climbing at 90 degree angles and soon after, you’re traversing across cave ceilings. Most of the time you’re guiding plant buds into floating crystal islands to feed the Star Plant. The game keeps you busy with winding paths that seem to only function as a means to getting higher up in the game. Then you get to the end. When you look back from atop your sprawling tower of branching paths, those simple polygon graphics take on a kind of chaotic beauty.
Grow Home is a two hour game available for $3.99, and it’s worth every penny. On sale it can get as low as $1.50.
Snow
This multiplayer skiing game may look pretty rough around the edges, but it has a lot of potential. The game is still in development, but the portion I’ve played has been pretty enjoyable. It captures a kind of ridiculous version of skiing that I haven’t seen since the Wii game “We Ski.” Rather than a sports game centered around tricks, Snow is more of an exploration game on skis. You’re given a massive mountain with four faces and lots of terrain. By no means are you restricted to groomed runs and set paths. The game encourages you to go off the beaten track and explore. There are terrain parks, lodges, valleys, crevices, massive cliffs, forests, a castle and even a quarry. All that’s missing is a cave to explore.
It’s also just flat-out fun in its slightly broken state. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve spawned on a player in midair and caused them to crash or front-flip off a cliff, bounce off a rock and do another flip before landing. It’s a pretty good game, especially considering it’s free-to-play.
Darkest Dungeon
“Steel yourself and remember there can be no bravery without madness.” This dungeon crawler is one of the most brutal, unforgiving games I’ve ever played. The horrors of the hamlet are made real as you watch heroes that you’ve put hours into training get picked off one by one, all thanks to unlucky encounters with the monstrosities that plague your estate. The tired, somber narration compliments how draining the actual gameplay can be.
Yet the most exciting and intense turn-arounds can happen when, for a moment, luck is on your side — when the battle sudden sways in your direction thanks to a lucky strike or dodge. Sudden developments like these can make or break your run.
Ultimately, the game says it best: “Darkest Dungeon is about making the most of a bad situation.” Darkest Dungeon can be 30+ hour long game if you let it. It’s best to be played in doses of no longer than an hour. It’s available for $24.99.