If you’re a regular Steam user, then you’ve likely dipped your toes into the indie scene on more than a few occasions. Even if you’ve only skimmed the surface of what indie games have to offer, a Steam Summer Sale is the perfect time to dive in and take a risk on a weird idea from a developer you’ve never heard of before.
To help you out, we’ve created this list of the best indie games on sale in the 2024 Steam Summer Sale, so you can try out something new.
- 50% off
- Find Phantom Abyss on Steam
This pulse-pounding action platformer is an experience like no other. You must rush your way through increasingly dangerous temples with all the classic traps you can imagine, straight out of an Indiana Jones film. To top that off, your main tool is a trusty whip which you can use to grapple around levels. It has some of the smoothest platforming you’ve ever seen and every run is more satisfying than the last.
Wildermyth
- 30% off
- Find Wildermyth on Steam
Rather than taking one group of heroes for a single adventure, in Wildermyth, you take them through campaigns that can span multiple lifetimes. You’ll gather your adventuring party, and over the many chapters of their adventure, they’ll fall in love, have kids, recruit newcomers to the party, and potentially even become old enough to retire if the journey lasts long enough.
What’s more, characters from one campaign can appear in future campaigns to further their legend, upgrading them even further. This comes packed on top of robust squad-based tactics gameplay and procedural storytelling mechanics.
- 50% off
- Find Unpacking on Steam
A breakout indie hit from a few years ago, Unpacking uses very simple mechanics and a relatively short runtime to tell a surprisingly effective story of a person’s life. It tells this story by having you reorganize their stuff every time they move house throughout their life, from their childhood bedroom all the way to their “forever home” with their loving partner. It may not sound like much, but if you haven’t tried it you’re in for a heartwarming treat.
Cobalt Core
- 25% off
- Find Cobalt Core on Steam
Any game that uses FTL: Faster Than Light as a mechanical base is a game I can get along with, and Cobalt Core takes that style of space-faring combat into a much more careful turn-based system. Rather than worrying about systems on your ship, the entire battle takes place on a grid-system and it’s your job to protect sections of your ship while lining up your weaponry with your enemy’s weak points.
There Is No Game is a wonderful blend of a hilarious comedy game that satirizes many different gaming genres and business practices, while still being a very clever puzzle game along the way. From the moment you boot it up and the narrator insists that you close the game and leave, you’ll be constantly battling to even play the thing through great writing and even better point-and-click puzzle design.
Coin Pusher Casino
I admit this is an incredibly niche concept, but it’s been my greatest addiction as of late, and I know there are a handful of people out there who will appreciate this as much as me. This game is a video game version of the coin pusher machines you find in arcades, only the lack of restrictions in the digital space (and lack of requirement to constantly pay real money) mean you can have all kinds of weird and wonderful machines with colorful prizes to be won.
- 90% off
- Find Celeste on Steam
Celeste is a huge indie hit and one that you’ve likely already heard of. Even if you balked at it up until now, a 90% discount and $2 price tag has got to be enough to tempt you into giving it a go. Its platforming may be very challenging, but it’s surprisingly good at driving you to push forward with an expertly crafted difficulty curve and compelling narrative.
Balatro
- 10% off
- Find Balatro on Steam
10% off may not be that big a discount, but we promise you, Balatro is still very much worth it. This game focused on poker-hands and deck-building with ridiculous levels of optimization will tickle all the right areas of your brain as the numbers slowly get bigger. It strikes the perfect balance of a very simple concept that leads to some of the most complex synergistic deck-building you’ll ever see.
- 60% off
- Find Inscryption on Steam
Inscryption took the indie world by storm a few years ago and it’s easy to see why. On the surface, it is a brilliantly crafted deck-building card-battler that feels genuinely unique compared to the rest of the genre. When you dive deeper, you get a meta-narrative with constant twists and turns that is always one step ahead of where you think it’s going in a truly unforgettable experience.
The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe
2013’s The Stanely Parable was one of the first games to play around with a meta-narrative and unreliable narrator, something it did to perfection. It still stands as one of the funniest games ever made, but the more recently released Ultra Deluxe edition goes above and beyond. It more than doubles the amount of content from the original game with even more fantastic satire about the state of the game’s industry, as well as much simpler yet equally hilarious jokes.
