I'm trying to find some recommendations for more laid-back, relaxed games. Something than can be worked on over time. I'm thinking stuff like Stardew Valley, games where there's no time limits hanging over your head, super fast-paced keyboard mashing, that kind of stuff. I'm burned out on action games at the moment, so I've been looking into colony sims and the like where you mostly build stuff, farm, explore, etc. Some minor combat like Stardew Valley is fine. Bonus if it has online co-op.

My only caveat is I only use PC (Steam), I don't own any consoles except for a PS4 I haven't used in at least two years. Thanks!

EDIT: One game I came across that I've kind of enjoyed which is fairly laid-back is Arcade Paradise. You play someone whose father gives ownership of a run-down laundromat which you gradually convert into an arcade. You have to take care of the place and make money by doing laundry (initially), cleaning up trash and making sure the toilet works. However, you can also play with all the arcade machines and each one has a unique game, plus you can withdraw money from the machines as part of your income. It's a fun time-waster.

November's Humble Choice is now available with the following eight Steam games:

Does anyone have experience with any of the games and, if so, would you recommend them? Is there anything in here that you're particularly excited to play?

The new Forza Motorsport has released to the masses as of today, and has been available to those who paid extra for premium upgrades and the like for about a week. I got it via Xbox Gamepass and played about an hour of it this morning, and so far it feels like a nice return to form for the series, which hasn't seen a new non-Horizon edition since Forza Motorsport 7 in 2017.

That game had some baggage with the card system/gambling mechanics, and I'm glad to see none of that thus far in the new Forza Motorsport - which, you may have noticed, has dropped the number. There's a feeling that Microsoft/Turn 10 may be aiming to make this something of a long-term platform play rather than just another game in the series.

I'm enjoying it so far, and after playing Forza Horizon 4 and 5 a lot since FM7 came out, I'm glad to have the return to more traditional circuit racing, and absolutely do not miss the supremely annoying voiced characters from those games.

The thing I most immediately noticed upon playing the game (besides the graphics, which are a real showcase for the Xbox Series X or a sufficiently beefy PC) is the new upgrade/tuning system, which requires you to actually spend time driving a specific car in order to unlock the various upgrade parts for it. You earn car points for doing things like clean racing and fast lap times, which you can then spend on upgrade parts between races. The game keeps calling those CP, which makes me think that nobody at Turn 10 has spent any time on the internet. An unfortunate acronym...

I'm curious to know what everyone's opinion on this game is. I know a lot of the audience is turned off by the more sim-like/boring nature of the Forza Motorsport games versus the arcade fantasy for the Horizon games, but I'm very much on the FM side of that divide.

October's Humble Choice is now available with the following eight Steam games:

Does anyone have experience with any of the games and, if so, would you recommend them? Is there anything in here that you're particularly excited to play?

September's Humble Choice is now available with the following eight Steam games:

Does anyone have experience with any of the games and, if so, would you recommend them? Is there anything in here that you're particularly excited to play?

Developer:

• Team Reptile (Megabyte Punch, Lethal League, Lethal League Blaze)

Platforms:

• Steam, GOG, Nintendo Switch (August 18)
• PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Xbox One (September 1)

Trailers:

• Official Release Trailer
• Official Special Trailer

Reviews:

• OpenCritic page

Description:

Team Reptile brings you Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, a future world from the mind of Dion Koster where self-styled graffiti crews equipped with personal boostpacks are battling each other for control of the streets. Start your own cypher and dance, paint graffiti, collect beats, combo your tricks and face off with the cops to stake your claim to the sprawling metropolis of New Amsterdam.

(What the official description won’t say is that this game is an unofficial love letter to Jet Set Radio on the Dreamcast and Jet Set Radio Future on the Xbox. Hideki Naganuma even contributed new songs to the soundtrack.)

August's Humble Choice is now available with the following eight Steam games:

*Both games that are marked as unsupported on Steam Deck on Steam itself are reported as working on Linux on ProtonDB.

Does anyone have experience with any of the games and, if so, would you recommend them? Is there anything in here that you're particularly excited to play?

July's Humble Choice is now available with the following eight Steam games:

Does anyone have experience with any of the games and, if so, would you recommend them? Is there anything in here that you're particularly excited to play?

Since the minimum and recommended specs for Starfield have come out, I've been budgeting to do a big upgrade on my PC with an AMD 6800 xt and a fancy new 1 TB SSD (which is the first game I've ever seen that requires an SSD) just so I can run the game in all it's space epicness.

What was the game that you were so excited for that you made the jump to upgrade your PC to the next gen of hardware? New or old!

For every big Steam sale r/gamedealsmeta does a Hidden Gems topic which is always one of my favorites to browse through. Given that the July 1 reddit fallout is upcoming though, I figure it's worth trying to roll our own version here too.

The purpose of this thread is for game discovery: surfacing games that are hard to find about elsewhere. As such, try to recommend things that are less well-known.

For general game recommendations of all popularities, use this thread. For general Steam Sale discussion, use this thread.

Suddenly, inventory mostly works. NPCs sit on chairs (!!!) but also move and fight worth a damn. There's less lag. The game hasn't crashed for me 2 days in a row! I've run more missions than I ever have!

It can't last, right? I just jinxed it?

My Lenovo laptop and Dell desktop have subpar specs on them, so playing a AAA game from the last decade is out of the question. They struggle to run Team Fortress 2, BioShock, and Minecraft at 30 FPS, but 1990's boomer shooters and some indie titles play fairly smoothly. Here are some of the games that they can run:

• Doom (1993 to Final)
• Quake (1-3)
• Deus Ex (2000)
• Max Payne 2
• Half-Life 2 and its episodes
• Portal series
• Batman: Arkham City
• Celeste
• Hue
• The Stanley Parable
• Borderlands 2

Any suggested games would be greatly appreciated.