August 2024 – Ms. Bella's World

4–6 minutes

There are thousands of games out in the wild nowadays. From old classics like Doom to the latest hits like Black Myth: Wukong, gamers have a wide variety of genres and games to choose from. This abundance is enough to make even the fattest wallet groan in despair. However, with a little patience and research, you’re likely to find a plethora of games on sale at any given time.

For me, finding deals is both a necessity and a fun side quest. With rare exceptions, I never pay full price for my games. Here’s a list of places I go to find out what’s on sale:

Steam – The first place I always check is Steam. There’s almost always a sale running. Currently it’s the Steam Rhythm Fest, ending tomorrow (Aug. 26th 2024 @ 7am EST), with games like BPM:Bullets Per Minute going for 75% off right now.

If you go into the New & Noteworthy section of Steam, you can also find Special Offers and Sale Events there. With the sheer number of games on the platform and the constant rollout of new sales, Steam is a must-have in the arsenal of cheap game hunters.
Humble Bundle – Humble Bundle is my second go to for finding cheap games. Between the constantly rotating bundles offered to the monthly Humble Choice, you’ll fill up your catalog of games pretty quick! Among the current bundles is a full collection of Resident Evil games for $30 and a Capcom Summer 2024 bundle with a selection of 12 games for $30.

It’s worth noting that Humble Bundles often include not just games, but books and software as well

August’s Humble Choice includes games like Sifu, High on Life, and Gotham Knights for a low monthly subscription (for me that’s $12 a month USD, but prices may vary as I have a legacy Humble Choice subscription).

Finally there is their store, where you can filter by On Sale to see what treasures you can find. Currently, I see that Valheim is 60% off, Deep Rock Galactic is 74% off, amd No Man’s Sky is 68% off.

With the wide variety of bundles and sales, it’s no wonder that Humble is the second place I head when I want to save money!
GOG (Good Old Games) – GOG is the next place I check, and it has the distinction of offering older titles and DRM-free games. This one is particularly good for gamers like me, who’ve been playing for decades and have old classics on CDs but no way to use them anymore. Not only do they provide a variety of games, but they also test them, fix bugs, and apply patches to make sure these older games can run on newer computers. For the most part, they do.

A quick search shows me that most of the old Hitman games are 90% off right now, Darkest Dungeon is 85% off ($3.74 USD), and Steel Rising – Bastille Edition is 80% off ($11.99 USD).

GOG also has its own launcher, similar to Steam, with the added feature of linking to Steam, EA, and Epic so you can see an extended view of your games in one place.

Finally, GOG periodically gives away games. These are almost always much older titles, but usually games that were good back in their time. It can be a fun way to fill up your library and try (or replay) old games.

Between the variety of games and their promise of DRM-free experiences, this is a must in my list.
Fanatical – Fourth in my list, Fanatical is a great way to find cheap games for your library. Featuring bundles, similar to Humble, Fanatical provides a wide array of games, software, and books for you to peruse. One of their current bundles is the Diamond Collection: RPG and Fantasy Edition, where you can select from as few as 3 games for $5.00 each all the way up to 7+ games from $4.50 each. Games in this bundle include Kingdom Come Deliverance, Steel Rising, and Fallout 76.

If you’re feeling particularly lucky, they have mystery bundles available where, for a small price, you get a number of randomized keys for different games. These could be anything from small, unheard of indie games to AAA titles. One of their current offerings is a VIP Mystery Bundle of 3 keys for $4.99. Think of these as the loot boxes of buying games—you don’t know what you’ll get, but whatever it is, it’ll be cheap. And hey, if you don’t like them, you can pass the keys off to someone who might.

They even feature a section for Upcoming Games, where you can see what’s coming out and perhaps preorder them for a small discount, usually ranging between 12 – 15% off.
Green Man Gaming – Last on my list is Green Man Gaming, the newest addition to my collection and, admittedly, the one I’ve used the least so far. I initially used this site to get old Sims 3 expansion packs for incredibly cheap, and I’ve stuck around to see what other sales they offer.

Currently, they have the Mafia: Trilogy pack for 78% off ($13.05 USD), although that’s still a tiny bit more expensive than Steam is offering it right now. Going to their Value Vault section, you’ll find their best deals at the moment, making sorting for cheap games easy and efficient.

They also reward you for buying with them via XP, and each tier of their XP program unlocks more deals and rewards, including exclusive offers, free games and vouchers, and store credit and key giveaways. I haven’t gotten that far with them yet, so I can’t speak to the quality of the rewards, but it’s there.

So there they are, the sites I use to find the best deals on my video games. Do you have a site you use that I didn’t list? Leave a comment below.

Until next time, bye for now!

3–4 minutes

As a gamer, I’m always watching Steam, looking for titles that have the potential to be fun and interesting. If it appears to have a good story, an open world to explore, or interesting characters, it goes on my list. Bonus points if it’s an RPG or survival game.

And while there are a number of titles inhabiting my wishlist at this point, some of which I’m definitely looking forward to, the one title I’m looking forward to the most isn’t a game – it’s a mod for a game that’s been around for 18 years. This game had it all – a fun story told through quests and lore found around the world, a wide world to explore and discover, and fun gameplay with both melee and magic. It also had its share of bugs, glitches, mediocre graphics and more, mostly mitigated by the modding community.

That game I refer to is Oblivion. And the mod, scheduled to release in 2025 for free, is Skyblivion.

Created by a team of volunteers under the group ‘The Elder Scrolls Renewal‘, this project to port Oblivion into the Skyrim engine began in 2012. The lead developer, Zilav had created what the team refers to now as version 0.1, nothing more than a tech demo. It was missing most of the content and very buggy, but the promise was there.

The introduction of a new member of the team, Monocleus, saw the flicker of life grow into a small flame as he began fleshing out the technical end of the mod. And by 2014, they’d managed to provide for others a stable base game to develop.

Over the years, the group has grown to 85 volunteers, all working on various aspects of the mod. Everything has been meticulously recreated and, in some cases, improved by the passionate team of fans.

Among the things a player can expect are –

The quests from Oblivion (obviously)
All of the big and small DLC for Oblivion
Settings, including landscapes and towns, re-rendered in 3D. All of it has been recreated from the ground up to match the appearance of Skyrim
Custom content courtesy of the Skyblivion Dev team
Combat, including underwater combat
And so much more

Now, one must note that while the mod is free, there are still requirements. You must own a legitimate copy of Oblivion and Skyrim SE in order for the mod to work. And the FAQ states that if you can run Skyrim on medium settings then you should be able to handle Skyblivion too.

This has been a passion project 13 years in the making and the progress of it can be seen on both the Skyblivion website as well as their Project Lead’s YouTube channel – Rebelzize.

I stumbled across the mod in late 2022, after looking for mods to improve the appearance and gameplay of Oblivion. Once I saw what they were doing, I was determined that I’d wait to finish playing the game until I could get my hands on this mod. To date, I have yet to complete Oblivion, despite finding the story fascinating.

The suspense is killing me!

And this isn’t the only project in works by the ‘The Elder Scrolls Renewal’. There are also two versions of Morrowind mods being developed –

Morrowblivion – Morrowind in the Oblivion engine
Skywind – Morrowind in the Skyrim engine

You can imagine which of those I’m looking forward to!

2025 looks to be a great year for fans of Oblivion and, I for one, will be counting down the days until Skyblivion is released and I can once again enter the world of Tamriel to stop the Daedra from taking over Cyrodiil.

What do you think? Have you played Oblivion and will you play Skyblivion when it releases? Leave a comment.

And, until next time, bye for now!