The Steam summer sale is in full swing and it’s always nice to add a few new games to the collection. As per usual, Steam does two major sales out of the year. One in summer and another in winter for all your holiday, gift giving needs. As the sale goes on, more and more games go on even bigger sales called flash sales. These flash sales are for a limited time but the price cut is steep. So from June 11th-20th, keep a keen eye out and you might find one for the right price. Yet, the sale itself isn’t all that Steam offers.
With each sale, there is some kind of achievement system to promote sales and ultimately some badge to tell all your friends and gaming acquaintances that you participated. In the past, this has been a checklist of things to do like commenting on a friend’s profile or writing a game review. Eventually this was abandoned for the card system. How that works is by voting and buying games, you get cards that combine into the coveted badge. For any of you who play any kind of collectable card game, you’ll know all to well that a booster pack never has what you’re looking for. So, you keep going, hoping the last card you need drops before the sale ends and maybe buy the last few you’re missing the last day for ten cents a pop and make the level one badge to try and do it over again for level two. Yeah, I’m not really a fan.
This year, there are still cards, still the coveted badge, and still a card reward for every ten dollars your spend. What’s new is Steam’s monster game. The idea is you play, unlock special sales for the next day by completing objectives, and get cards as you play. If only it was that simple. Steam has taken inspiration from the mindless click games you can get on your phone. Never come across these? I think you’re better for it. It’s wave after wave of enemies with a base attack that goes off every second or so. Want to attack more? You have to tap your screen, or in this case, click. You attack as fast as you click, kill the monster, get a new wave. You can buy power ups to help versus the increasingly difficult monsters but, at the end of the day, it all comes down to how much and how fast you click.
From this, you should be able to get cards as you play up to a limited drop about per day. Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite work that way. In my experience, you can click your heart out playing and only get a dislocated shoulder by day’s end. The most I’ve gotten is two cards then get nothing else only to see I have four to six drops left in the day. If you’re someone who just plays for the rush of getting coins and buying power ups, you’re also out of luck. There has been too many occasions that a coin drop buff has been used, I click as fast and as furiously as my shoulder will allow, only to see my coin hoard reach it’s new total and then vanish by way of leg taxing my earnings. What am I doing it for if I can’t even get the little rewards let alone keep them in order to buy my next power up and keep the game going?
The only benefit I’ve encountered is the sales it unlocks. For clicking so many times in a day, community wide, up to three games are unlocked for sale. Each day there are three objectives with three milestones in each objective. Kill so many bosses, so many join the game, use so many items, etc. unlocks up to nine specials sales that may be akin or greater to the flash sales. The only problem is you have to play the mindless clicking game that’s sure to give you carpal tunnel.
In all honesty, I like how it used to be. A winter sale a few years back, you just had to get special achievements in certain games that happened to be on sale that day. Buy games, play the ones you buy, get the achievement and you earn your badge. It was simpler and made far more sense than to play a monotonous game that doesn’t work half the time to only buy your collectable cards for real money. I can only hope this isn’t a trend that follows into the winter sale this year. Now to back to watching E3 while I ice my shoulder.
