David’s 2025 Steam Summer Sale Recommendations

To quote my favorite weather app about my hometown’s usual temperatures this summer: “I’m not saying it’s hot outside, but two Hobbits just threw a ring into my backyard.” That can only mean that this year’s Steam Summer Sale is now bearing down upon us, albeit to a slightly less extreme degree than the sun has been bearing down upon my bedroom window since early May. I won’t let the heat stop me from continuing my favorite biannual tradition, though. I shall now recommend a list of games that will keep me occupied as I take refuge in a freezer until November. Let’s begin!

Trash Goblin | Discount: 33% | Sale Price (USD): $13.39

As the old saying goes, “One man’s trash is another goblin’s treasure.” In Trash Goblin, you’ll pick off solid debris from interesting artifacts found in the garbage, give said artifacts a good cleaning, and then sell them to curious customers for a tidy profit. To my delight, Trash Goblin puts particularly huge emphasis on both accessibility and being cozy and relaxing to play. Trash Goblin imposes “a gentle limit” on how much you can do during each in-game day. However, there’s nothing to stress over because prospective customers won’t get impatient and leave. There are also no possible failure states.

You’re allowed and encouraged to play Trash Goblin at your own preferred pace. You can use the profits you make from selling your wares to buy upgrades on various fronts: You can purchase new tools to help you go about your work and expand the types of work you can do. You can acquire a coffee pot whose contents allow you to get more work done during each in-game day. You can also customize your living space however you like by, for example, adding new wallpaper and changing how your bedclothes look. Again, though, the intent is for you to play however you prefer.

Motordoom | Discount: 30% | Sale Price (USD): $9.79

Have you played any of the old-school Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater games from several console generations ago? If so, have you ever wondered what similar gameplay would be like if you rode a motorbike instead of a skateboard and had to fight demons in addition to completing long lists of secondary objectives? Maybe that was just a “me” thing. Well, Motordoom is here to provide the answer to that question anyway. The “Doom” portion of Motordoom’s title is there for a reason: Its core gameplay loop will expect you to rip and tear through demons while also performing spectacular motorbike tricks.

In each stage of Motordoom, you’ll have objectives like reaching certain high scores within a time limit, collecting carefully-placed letters that spell out “MOTOR,” and retrieving a written contract with the Devil. The catch is that you can’t focus entirely on those goals while motorbiking because hordes of demons will try and stop you. That’s why your chosen character is armed and ready to slay Hell’s armies en masse. Motordoom is definitely one of my new favorite “mindless fun” games, though the fact that it frequently paints major religions in a rather negative light may be a turn-off for some players.

Potion Permit | Discount: 60% | Sale Price (USD): $7.99

In Potion Permit, you play as a Chemist sent by the local Medical Association to the small town of Moonbury Island. Moonbury Island’s mayor has requested your presence because his daughter has come down with a strange illness that the local witch doctor can’t seem to treat. It isn’t until after you arrive on Moonbury Island that you learn the shocking truth: Years ago, another Chemist from the same Medical Association somehow managed to cause an accident severe enough to render most of Moonbury Island’s native plants extinct. Thus, the townsfolk conclude that you’ve come to do even more harm.

This is why a large portion of Potion Permit’s core gameplay loop centers around you using your medical skills to prove to Moonbury Island’s residents that not all Chemists are as dangerously incompetent as the one who caused that accident. As you treat the townsfolk when they fall ill, they’ll gradually begin to trust you and even want to befriend you. The more this happens, the more freedom you’ll be given to explore Moonbury Island in search of new medicinal potion reagents. If you want to learn more about Potion Permit, I’d humbly suggest that you check out my review.

Heat Signature | Discount: 75% | Sale Price (USD): $3.74

I would (only somewhat facetiously) describe Heat Signature as a delightfully funny, heavily randomly-generated, spaceship-breaking-and-entering, galaxy-liberating simulator. I know that doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, but don’t let that distract you from checking out Heat Signature. You start Heat Signature by choosing a character with a randomly-generated starting kit and equally random quirks. You then keep playing as that character until they either complete their personal ultimate goal and retire, or get killed or captured. When any of those things happen, you will simply choose a new character and do it all again.

You can venture into space on missions that range wildly in terms of difficulty, objectives, and payouts. When you find your target spaceship, you dock your pod with its airlock to gain entrance, then go about attending to whatever objectives you have on that mission. You might have to assassinate an important target, rescue a captured friend, or recover a valuable item from the ship’s cargo, for example. Completing missions without getting killed or captured gets you closer to both reaching your character’s ultimate personal goal and liberating the entire galaxy from the control of an unnamed evil empire.

RetroMania Wrestling [Honorable Mention] | Not Discounted | Price (USD): $29.99

My recommendation lists like this usually include at least one game that has a particularly specific niche. I think RetroMania Wrestling might fit that bill this time around. I have tons of nostalgic memories of watching professional wrestling from early childhood into late adolescence. Almost everything about RetroMania Wrestling – its roster of real-world licensed wrestlers, its arcade-like controls, its fantastic pixel art style, and much more – combines to form a game that’s right up my alley. If you have even a passing interest in professional wrestling video games, I’d suggest you pick this one up even though it’s (somehow) not discounted.

RetroMania Wrestling is really simple and intuitive for just about anyone to pick up and play. Its controls are straightforward, which helps to make its in-match “momentum” system easy to understand and use. You can play RetroMania Wrestling in local co-op with up to 7 friends, though there’s still plenty to pique your interest if you want to play solo. RetroMania Wrestling currently features 17 real-world playable wrestlers, “with more to come,” according to its developers. These include names like the Legion of Doom (aka the Road Warriors), the Blue World Order, Tommy Dreamer, Colt Cabana, and more.

Endless Space 2 | Discount: 75% | Sale Price (USD): $9.99 (or $24.01 for the Definitive Edition with all DLC, which I also highly recommend)

Endless Space 2 is a 4X strategy title developed by Amplitude Studios, who you might know as the developers of Humankind. Endless Space 2 features what are likely considered “usual” win conditions in 4X games, such as the Science Victory and the Score Victory. If you’re more accustomed to the Civilization franchise like I am, though, Endless Space 2’s distinctions between its “Conquest Victory” and “Supremacy Victory” might number among a list of things that could trip you up at first. Thankfully, Endless Space 2’s tutorials have prepared answers to just about everything that could confuse beginners and adept 4X players alike.

As is common in 4X strategy titles, Endless Space 2 features plenty of factions that are well-suited to certain victory conditions. Do you want to hide in your home corner of a galaxy and focus on scientific research? Try the Sophons. Do you want to play as a race of peace-loving, talking trees with Scottish accents? The Unfallen will cater to your specific desires. Do you want to ensure that space is no longer “the one place that hasn’t been corrupted by capitalism“? The United Empire and the Lumeris (aka “the fish Mafia”) might both be right up your alley.

Mechabellum | Discount: 20% | Sale Price (USD): $11.99

Mechabellum is a tactical, mech-centered auto-battler published by Dreamhaven. You might know that Dreamhaven is a game development and publishing studio founded in 2020 by Mike Morhaime, co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment. Two things sold me on Mechabellum, namely Dreamhaven’s role as its publisher and the fact that it was presented to me as looking “like Command & Conquer with mechs.” In each round of Mechabellum, you have to use your limited resources to spawn certain types of mech units. Ideally, the selection of units you unlock will be able to both effectively counter your opponent’s units and then proceed to destroy your enemy’s base.

My favorite example of a unit in Mechabellum is the Vulcan, a mech that uses huge flamethrowers to counter swarms of small enemy units. I don’t know what it is about watching enemy swarm units run headlong into my Vulcan’s flame jets that gives me such enjoyment, but that sight certainly hasn’t gotten old yet. If you decide to check out Mechabellum, I’m sure you’ll quickly find your favorite combinations of mechs as well. What’s more, I’ve found Mechabellum’s tutorials to be helpful since this kind of game isn’t exactly my main area of expertise.

Republic of Pirates | Discount: 35% | Sale Price (USD): $16.24

Put simply, Republic of Pirates is a city-builder set during the golden age of piracy wherein you’re tasked with constructing safe havens for all sorts of scalawags and scurvy dogs. You’ll start by building things like housing for your construction workers, sawmills to process cut-down trees for new buildings, docks where incoming pirates can disembark and repair their ships, as well as alcohol distilleries and brothels to keep up morale. All work and no play makes Captain Jack a dull boy, after all. You’ll also need roads to connect everything, so I hope you’re better at building efficient road networks than I am.

You’ll typically have at least one ship at your disposal that you can send around the map to scavenge for treasure and building materials. While your ships are out searching for plunder, you might encounter enemy pirate ships that you’ll have to fight off. You only want the settlements you build to be discovered by factions of pirates who were on good terms with your character’s late father, which means you’ll have to fight to keep everyone else away from your shores. All I can say in closing is as follows: “Yar-har, fiddle dee dee, building cities for pirates is alright with me!”

Nimrods [Early Access] | Discount: 20% | Sale Price (USD): $7.99

The word “Nimrods” by itself doesn’t suggest much about what sort of game this is. That is unless you use its full title, Nimrods: Guncraft Survivor. I think the still-ongoing popularity of “Vampire Survivors-like” games has ensured that we all know by now what the presence of the word “survivor” in Nimrods’ title conveys: You’ll be expected to fight off waves of enemies for as long as possible before dying, and you’ll get to craft some unique guns to help you do it. You start each run by picking from a selection of gun types you’ve unlocked so far.

Then, once you’re dropped into combat, you’ll get the chance to upgrade your chosen gun in a huge variety of ways each time you kill enough enemies to level up. You might want to increase the damage each of your bullets deals, speed up the process of reloading your gun, or even do something zany like attaching a flamethrower to your gun’s under-barrel. When you die, you can’t reuse the same gun that you were just using in any future runs. However, you can either sell that gun for upgrade currency or give it to your drone buddy, who faithfully fights by your side.

Voltaire: The Vegan Vampire | Discount: 55% | Sale Price (USD): $8.99

In this title, you play as the titular vampire who’s decided that biting human necks and draining their vital fluids for nourishment isn’t his “cup of blood,” if you will. Voltaire instead turns to veganism, which promptly gets him kicked out of his father Dracula’s home. Voltaire takes up residence in a nearby graveyard, upon which his Uncles Frank and Stein have set up a house for him. By day, you’ll need to help him cultivate the soil outside his new home and plant many different types of crops. You can also forage for materials and build new, useful structures during the day.

The real excitement begins at nightfall, though: that’s when the souls of humans cursed by Dracula invade your farmstead and attempt to destroy your crops. You’ll have to fend them off by building defensive structures, placing traps in advance wherever you think enemies might try to enter, and using Voltaire’s own vampiric powers to send these fiends back from whence they came. Then, when the sun rises once more, you can safely go back to farming and crafting until you decide it’s time to rest in your coffin until nighttime. I guess all that farming and fighting leaves little time for Voltaire to write Candide, though.

There you have it, folks! Before I retreat back to my “Freezing Fortress of Solitude” for the rest of the summer, I’d be interested to know about any game recommendations you have that I might not have included here. As is tradition, please feel free to let me know about any of your personal game recommendations for this year’s Summer Sale in this article’s comments. I’m already thinking of candidates for my next suggestion list. Rest assured that I’ll have another recommendation roundup ready when this year’s Steam Winter Sale arrives, assuming neither my residence nor my entire hometown has melted by then.