Like many of you, we here at Twinstiq were in the drunken haze that is the lead up to the yearly “Steam Summer Sale”. Our mission came from the brass: find the best deals on games we want and buy crap we didn’t know we wanted. Buy with extreme prejudice, until the rogue Gaben was silenced. We spent over a week on that green river, pursuing the hearts of darkness that were those sales. Here is what we learned in the jungle and what we can never leave behind (more horror after the break):

Wasteland 2 was the original goal, but I became lost along the way. The weirdness that is Euro Truck Simulator 2, Hatoful Boyfriend, BattleBlock Theater and The Stanley Parable were too much to resist. The other choices were games I wanted to play and Evil Pumpkin I wanted for my yearly Halloween gaming marathon.Trish: I was a tad distraught when I noticed that most of the first three days of sales were games that I had never heard of, that or if I had heard of them had absolutely no intention of buying. The game itself that was created to have people get involved to unlock milestone sales was almost pointless because on the first night one of the milestones wasn't even hit. To make that even more annoying you could literally hit play, attack once and never go back into it again because of the auto targeting system and the fact that you had 1000 people playing in the same game you really never had to do any work.

A couple of the games like ARK and Stranded Deep hit the main page but weren't actually on sale to their full extent. Apparently each game was only supposed to be 10%-15% off but were put in at the full mark down price instead. So, when those games were featured on the front page, people were discouraged and passed over these games thinking they weren't getting any better of a deal. It took searching the forums to figure out why these games didn't take another couple percents off until some mods posted about the accidental full discount.

I ended up purchasing Age of Empires II and Dino-D-Day 4-pack. In total I spent only 5 bucks because every time the sales rolled over I literally just sighed and went on my merry way.

My fiancé ended up grabbing me Vampires: The Masquerade and Prison Architect on the very last day because they were 5 bucks piece and I was disappointed in Stranded Deep's price so he thought he'd be a nice guy.

John: I bought La Mulana, Dustforce, Fallout 3, Gauntlet, and Nidhogg. I enjoyed La Mulana enough that I bought the WiiWare version. That sale price was not enough for how much time I'll spend in that game. Nidhogg is uninstalled now because I'd like to keep my friendships. It won't be played again. I just bought the Dustforce soundtrack and now I don't need the game installed anymore to listen. Gauntlet needs friends badly. I shouldn't have bought Fallout 3. That was just dumb. I believe they are all still eligible for return. I should probably do that (he did).

Dr. S: I Started off cheap with How to Survive and Dino D-Day. Both games I don’t really care about, but my collection is still missing them.
Continued with a Verdun 4-pack, my most expensive purchase during this sale. Let’s see if we can get a Twinstiq MP session going sometime, if not, I will give them away. It’s a fun WW1 shooter, nothing special however.
Wings! Remastered Edition was on my wishlist since release. It’s really just a prettier version of the classic. Fun, but very basic.
Hexcells Infinite, the 3rd in the Hexcells series. Great mix of Sudoku and Minesweeper.
Enforcer: Police Crime Action. Don’t ask me. Looked fun for a video.
Age of Wonders III, since my mortal enemy (not really) Earnest Cavalli talked it up.
Blade Symphony 2 Pack, for a video, maybe.
The Long Dark. Looks interesting enough. So does Cortex Command and The Detail.
And last: This War of Mine. Not much to say about it. Seems to be a must have. No idea when I get to it however.

The big question remains though: What did you do in the Summer Sales of '15? Let us know in the comments!