One of my favorite series is super cheap on Steam right now: $31 gets you 2 Metroidvanias, 2 XCOM-like strategy games, a city builder, and a clever deckbuilding RPG

Here's a great deal I always recommend whenever it comes up: the entire SteamWorld series is cheap on Steam right now as part of publisher Thunderful's big sale, meaning $31.11 can get you a whole lot of very different but visually unified games featuring steampunk robots.

The SteamWorld series feels a bit like the spinoff games to titans like Mario or Zelda – all unified by a similar cast and theme, but totally distinct in their genre and mechanics, and pretty much universally good if not great. It's an anthology guided by cute little robots, basically, and it's been some of my comfiest comfort food for years. Here's the full list of games in this discounted SteamWorld essentials bundle:

If I had to recommend just three games of this lot, it would be SteamWorld Dig 2 (my personal favorite of the series), SteamWorld Heist, and SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech. They're all criminally cheap, and strong examples of their genres. That said, all of these games are worth a look, and doubly so with a discount. The only one missing is the SteamWorld that started it all: the Nintendo DSi game SteamWorld Tower Defense. 

The only perfect video game is finally a JRPG thanks to a new indie channeling a 31-year-old cult classic SNES Tetris game that never left Japan .

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