The Steam Lunar Sale is on now, and along with the usual smörgåsbord of discounts, Valve's offering $5 off your first purchase of $30 or more. If you save up 15,000 tokens, you can get $5 off of yet another purchase—but, of course, you have to buy games to earn tokens, so that $5 off comes at the cost of spending far more than $5. That's what Steam sales are all about: Spending more than you meant to, even though you're supposed to be saving money.
Truthfully, though, you don't have to chase Valve's carrot to grab something good, and you can use that complimentary $5 off if there are any recent games on your mind. We dug around and picked out our favorite games on sale, including one that'll put that extra discount to use—see those below, and let us know what you recommend, or plan to pick up, in the comments.
Hitman 2 - $37.79/£28.34 (37% off)
Hitman 2 has come down to $37.79 before, but with the extra $5 off your first purchase of $30 or more, you can bring the total down to $32.79, almost half off the usual $60. Oh, and we love Hitman 2.
Sniper Elite 4 - $11.99/£7.99 (80% off)
Shooting Nazis in the nuts never gets old. In his review, Tyler said it's "a hearty improvement on Sniper Elite 3 that embraces freeform play, gets better in co-op, and most importantly lets us shoot things from very far away."
Super Mega Baseball 2 - $14.99/£11.89 (50% off)
It's almost baseball season again, so it's a great time to grab SMB2 at a discount. While a bit cartoony it's still the best on-field baseball game on PC, with loads of team and player customization options and solid online play.
Warhammer: Vermintide 2 - $18/£12.79 (60% off)
Our Best Co-op Game 2018 remains a favourite of the PC Gamer UK team. We've finished all of it, including DLC, and we're enjoying getting stuck in to the higher difficulty settings.
Frostpunk - $17.99/£14.99 (40% off)
Grim, challenging, stylish, and completely addicting, Frostpunk is part survival game, part city management sim, and one of our favorites from 2018.
Civilization 6 - $14.99/£14.99 (70% off)
With Civ 6's Gathering Storm DLC inbound this month, it's not a bad time to grab the base game, which we consider to be one of the most rewarding and challenging 4X games around.
Divinity: Original Sin 2 - $29.24/£19.49 (35% off)
Our favorite game of 2017 is once again at its lowest price. Original Sin 2 is a great solo RPG, especially if you enjoy turn-based combat, but also shines as a cooperative experience.
Valve Complete Pack - $12.68/£9.27 (91% off)
There's a good chance you own some or all of these games, but if for some reason you've never played Portal or Left 4 Dead 2, you can get all of Valve's games for the price of a San Francisco sandwich.
Assassin's Creed Odyssey - $30/£25 (50% off)
Odyssey is also $30 on Uplay, but if you'd rather buy last year's parkour assassination RPG-thing from Steam, you can now do so at the same price. Unfortunately, since Odyssey is technically $29.99 and not a full $30, the extra $5 off doesn't apply. Dumb.
Tangledeep - $9.74/£7.14 (35% off)
There’s got to be at least one new roguelike released on Steam every week, but Tangledeep is among the best to emerge during the last few years. It’s staunchly old school—the movement and combat is turn-based and the grind can be real, but you can recruit a frog as a pet. It’s gorgeous too, and if you’re averse to permadeath there’s a mode that turns it into a more forgiving adventure game.
