An ongoing Steam sale celebrating some of the best turn-based strategy games along with tactical RPGs, roguelikes, deck builders, city builders, 4X games, grand strategy games, puzzlers, and even more that fall under the wider spectrum of turn-based games is a fantastic celebration of one of the styles most traditionally associated with PC gaming. But you’d be forgiven for missing it, as it’s almost completely hidden on the Steam store page without some careful digging.
The Steam Turn-Based Fest runs December 8-12 and is aimed at any games where you, well, take turns. This includes anything from the chill vibes of countryside city-building game Dorfromantik to alien-blasting XCOM-like Phoenix Point and the cosmic horror of recently released roguelike deckbuilder Nadir, a gloriously grim collision of the mechanics of Slay the Spire and the thematic overtones of Darkest Dungeon. The event ranges from bigger titles to indies you might never have heard of, and encompasses a huge spectrum of genres as indicated above.
If this particular Steam sale comes as news to you, you’re not alone. A popular thread highlighting the event on the general Games Reddit page has received thousands of upvotes, with the top comment remarking, “I am the target audience for this festival but would not have known about it if not for your direct link, OP [referencing the thread’s author]. My love to you.” Others share similar sentiment, saying that they aren’t able to locate the sale anywhere on the front page of Steam, where you might expect such an event to be showcased.
Of course, with The Game Awards 2022 taking place on November 8-9, that was always going to take the priority slot on Steam’s front page – along with any associated deals and awards, including Valve’s TGA 2022 Steam Deck giveaway. However, now that the dust has settled, it’s still incredibly difficult to discover that such an event is happening.
At the time of writing, it seems the best way to track down the Steam Turn-Based Fest manually for those browsing the store is to head to the ‘new and noteworthy’ section along the top bar and click on ‘special offers.’ From there, you should find it listed under the special events section, though it can be easily lost among news of individual publisher or series sales.
The sale event is part of a wider initiative by the team behind genre fan group TurnBasedThursday, who are also running a dedicated website for the event featuring almost 300 different games along with showcases aimed at highlighting some of the most exciting games and content creators that are part of the turn-based game scene.
It’s a little surprising that Valve hasn’t featured such a large-scale, cross-genre sale as this anywhere on its front page – I haven’t been able to spot it anywhere across the regular feature slots or special offer bar that scrolls on the Steam homepage. There aren’t any other major sales or events happening at the moment either, which might otherwise have been given priority. Still, if this all sounds appealing to you then at least now you know.
If you’ve ever wondered where to find your SteamID or check whether someone has been VAC banned, we’ve got you covered. Meanwhile, the ever-growing Steam player count record shows that PC gaming continues to go from strength to strength. If even sales are a bit rich for you at the moment, our picks of the best free PC games should give you plenty of options that won’t cost a penny.