// PC GAMER — GAMING
I picked out 31 must-play games going for $5 or less in the Steam Summer Sale
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Steam is an elephant, and we are all trying to describe it blindfolded. To bring order to this economic chaos, I have curated a list of must-play games—indies, cult hits, no brainer classics, all ones I like personally—that are $5 or cheaper in the 2026 Summer Sale.
Five bucks is my threshold for "not a big deal," and unless the economy is even worse than I thought, it's likely yours too. If you got everything on this list together, it would be about $100 total, which is none too shabby for 31 games.
The start of modern Larian. I'm more bullish about its comedic tone and lighter story than a lot of other RPG fans, but no one can deny that it's still got genre-leading turn-based combat, even as the studio has only improved on its own work.
No, not Divinity: Original Sin 2. Despite some of the worst self-inflicted SEO out there, Divinity 2 is well-worth revisiting to this day. It's a relic of a different time, when Larian was following BioWare's lead rather than setting its own pace, resulting in something that visually calls to mind Dragon Age: Origins, but plays more like, I dunno, Jade Empire? That attempt at console-ization does make it a bit more approachable than Larian's other pre-Original Sin work these days.
Notable as perhaps the purest expression of Larian's vision for RPGs before the first Original Sin, Divine Divinity arrived at the tail end of the CRPG's late '90s golden age. Even at this early stage, you can still enjoy the studio's unique sensibility, and it's an important text for anyone with an interest in the history of RPGs.
A deranged, cruel, and irresistible RPG. Wrath of the Righteous and Rogue Trader are perhaps better introductions to Owlcat's work, but Kingmaker still got its hooks into me. I'm not a huge fan of this one's DLC, and honestly recommend skipping it unless you really gotta optimize your builds, so there's no sleight of hand to that $3.59 number.
One of my favorite games of the 2020s, a vexing RPG with one of the deepest class systems I've ever seen, as well as some truly aggravating encounters. Still somehow a gentler and easier to grasp entry point than Kingmaker, by my reckoning. Unlike Kingmaker, I highly recommend the DLCs, even if it brings us over $5. Please don't tell anyone.
Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened at all.
Copy and paste environments, annoying enemies, a truncated development, and the best script BioWare's ever done. The studio was always better at characters than plot, so trading the hero's journey for something that felt more like three seasons of a TV show was a masterstroke. We may never see its like again.