7 Must-Play Games To Grab During Steam’s Women’s Day Sale

If you’ve been eagerly awaiting Princess Peach: Showtime! for the sole reason that Swordfighter Peach exists, then you should be playing En Garde! The fencing adventure stars a dashingbisexual swordswoman who fights her way through enemies with the use of her sword as well as environmental hazards like boxes and jugs. The colorful Pixar-like aesthetic and delightful combat make for a swashbuckling good time.

This is ostensibly a chill puzzle game centered around organizing different living spaces. Every stage of Unpacking gives you a home of some sort, be it a college dorm or a multi-room apartment, and asks you to unpack belongings in moving boxes into the limited space of every room. But on a deeper level, the game is telling a story about a woman growing up and going through the stages of life. By paying attention to the new living spaces, new or lost items, and signs of other people she’s cohabitating with, you get a picture of the life being lived. It’s a touching story centered around an endlessly satisfying puzzle game.

Call of the Sea is a pulp adventure in the best way possible. Stunning exotic locales, 40’s fashion, and a Lovecraftian puzzle to unravel. Arriving on a beautiful but dangerous island full of mystery, you undertake an adventure to unravel cosmic horrors beyond your understanding. The puzzles of Call of the Sea are just challenging enough to keep you engaged without leaving you frustrated, and they’re expertly woven in with the game’s twisting narrative.

Love—like comedy—has always been one of the more difficult subjects for video games to tackle well. And while there are games that have done love and relationships well, they are few and far between. Haven belongs on that short list. Centered around lovers Yu and Kay, the game is a slice-of-life story throughout which you learn to love the main couple in all of their flawed glory. While the game’s third-person exploration sections are fairly unexciting, the story is what shines. Haven also lets players choose the gender of Yu and Kay, meaning this can be a story depicting any kind of love.

If you don’t slay the princess, the world will end. At least that’s what Slay the Princess’ narrator tells you when you start the game. What unfolds as you choose to follow or refuse this command is a visual novel unlike any other. Uncovering the many layers of the game’s narrative is a rewarding experience thanks to how reactive it is, offering up numerous options and permutations to every encounter. On top of that, the game ties its many threads together into a poignant narrative about life, death, and transformation.

The indie horror game scene has been delivering incredible experiences in spades of late. One particular subgenre that is thriving is the PlayStation 1-inspired horror game, which honors the way that console’s hardware limitations often contributed to the unsettling aesthetic and vibe of the iconic horror games it was known for. The best of these retro-inspired horror games is Signalis, a cosmic sci-fi story about an android searching for her lost lover. It has all the expected gameplay mechanics like inventory management and over-complicated puzzles, but takes place in a truly original environment that you can’t help but explore every corner of, even if you know something scary is waiting for you.

The shutdown of an online service always means the loss of an entire community. Videoverse puts players in the midst of one such shutdown, taking place in the last days of an online forum for the fictional Kinmoku Shark game console. Through commenting, moderating, and even video-chatting with other wayward users on the dying console, Videoverse tells a story about making connections even in the digital endtimes. In a real-world landscape where entire games and social sites always seem on the verge of collapse, Videoverse is a story that hits close to home.

Of course you don’t have to stop at just seven games. Keep perusing the sale and you’re sure to find even more titles worth your time and money.