Steam Autumn Sale highlights to get you started

Aka the Black Friday Steam sale

Right on cue (thanks for the advance notice, Valve!), the Steam Autumn Sale started today and it’ll continue running until 10:00 a.m. Pacific on Wednesday, December 1.

Nowadays, with Steam really leaning into personalized recommendations, it’s a storefront where you’re usually better served with diligent wishlist upkeep. (Says the guy who basically never wishlists anything, even cool games he’s bound to forget about.) All the same, I like to throw out any ideas I can, and here are some deals that stood out to me.

Steam Autumn Sale 2021 recommendations

• A Hat in Time ($14.99)
• Back 4 Blood ($41.99)
• Biomutant ($29.99)
• Borderlands 3 ($14.99)
• Cruelty Squad ($15.99)
• Dark Souls: Remastered ($19.99)
• Days Gone ($29.99)
• Death Stranding ($17.99)
• Death’s Door ($14.99)
• Deathloop ($29.99)
• Disco Elysium – The Final Cut ($19.99)
• Don’t Starve Together ($5.09)
• F1 2021 ($29.99)
• Ghostrunner ($11.99)
• Guilty Gear Strive ($38.99)
• Gunfire Reborn ($14.99)
• Half-Life: Alyx ($29.99)
• Halo: The Master Chief Collection ($19.99)
• Horizon Zero Dawn Complete Edition ($24.99)
• Hot Wheels Unleashed ($34.99)
• Hunt: Showdown ($19.99)
• Inscryption ($15.99)
• It Takes Two ($24.79)
• Life is Strange: True Colors ($38.99)
• Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy ($38.99)
• Mass Effect Legendary Edition ($34.79)
• New World ($29.99)
• Nioh 2 – The Complete Edition ($34.99)
• No Man’s Sky ($29.99)
• Noita ($10.99)
• Outer Wilds ($14.99)
• Outer Wilds – Echoes of the Eye ($11.99)
• Outriders ($19.79)
• Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous ($42.49)
• Persona 5 Strikers ($35.99)
• Planet Zoo ($13.49)
• Potion Craft: Alchemist Simulator ($11.99)
• PowerWash Simulator ($16.99)
• Psychonauts 2 ($41.99)
• Resident Evil 2 ($15.99)
• Resident Evil 3 ($17.99)
• Resident Evil Village ($29.99)
• Risk of Rain 2 ($14.99)
• Sable ($16.74)
• Satisfactory ($20.99)
• Sea of Thieves ($23.99)
• Sid Meier’s Civilization VI ($8.99)
• Slay the Spire ($9.99)
• Stardew Valley ($8.99)
• Subnautica: Below Zero ($22.49)
• Tales of Arise ($44.99)
• Terraria ($4.99)
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition ($13.19)
• The Forest ($7.99)
• The Jackbox Party Pack 8 ($23.99)
• The Yakuza Bundle ($24.72)
• Valheim ($15.99)
• Wildermyth ($18.74)
• Yakuza Remastered Collection ($30.12)

Please hurl your best niche and/or under-the-radar picks you’ve got in the comments!

My favorite “I’m glad I waited for a Black Friday sale” game so far has been Deathloop, which really hooked me even as someone who has struggled to click with Dishonored before. I kept putting it off thinking the positive buzz wouldn’t necessarily apply to me, yet I ended up binging the game in a weekend. It’s, uh, not that short! But I loved its vibe.

If the timing isn’t right, or your wishlisted games aren’t quite hitting the prices you have in mind, there’s one more major Steam sale — the Winter Sale — slated for December 22.

You may also want to poke your head into the Steam Awards. The nomination process is now open to the public, with categories ranging from Game of the Year, to Labor of Love, to Best Soundtrack, and there’s even a Sit Back And Relax Award — don’t mind if I do!