It is, tragically, summer. That means you have to preserve as much money as possible to spend on ice cubes, platoons of fans, air conditioning, and the energy cost that comes from opening the door on your freezer and lying your head on the life-giving ice within.
Not a lot of cash left for videogames, then. Fortunately, Fanatical is out here with a bunch of build-your-own bundles. Those are the ones where you pick out a selection of games from the ones on offer, with each new milestone (three games, then five, and so on) reducing the price of each game individually.
The Prestige Collection Bundle
Link: Fanatical | Tiers: 2 games @ $7.50 each, 3+ games @ $7.25 each, 5+ games @ $7 each
When I think 'prestige,' I think of two things. The first: that movie where Hugh Jackman is a wizard who is also a clone? Maybe? I fell asleep.
The second: games you could conceivably call 'darlings' of one kind or another, which is precisely the kind Fanatical has arrayed here. It makes it a tad hard to whittle down recommendations—you could probably find someone to passionately argue the merits of every game here—but I think I've nailed it.
First up, I recommend picking up Intravenous 2, a top-down stealth shooter with some earthy, imsim-y undertones that will appeal to anyone who loves systemically screwing with NPCs. Think a slower, tactics-heavy blend of Streets of Rogue and Hotline Miami—plus a slightly scary level of deep gun customisation—and you're not far [[link]] off.
Then, clean [[link]] your palate with Viewfinder, a brain-bending puzzle game that delights in screwing with your sense of space. It's honestly a little hard to describe, but the crux is that you're using your magic camera to alter the levels you're in by turning 2D pictures into 3D objects in a way that I've never seen done in a videogame before. It looks incredible, the central gimmick is great, and the puzzles are pitch-perfect. An obvious second choice.
After that, I recommend rounding things off with a little Broken Sword – Shadow of the Templars: Reforged, the remastered version of the very first Broken Sword game from 1996, which has you solving puzzles across Europe on the trail of, [[link]] uh, the Templars. It's right there in the name.. This is a point-and-click classic, a bonafide puzzle paragon that still holds up today, especially with the remaster's 4K pretty-fications and polished-up audio.
Just those three will cost you $7.50 (£7.50) each, or $22.50 (£22.50) in total. If you wanna max your savings, though, the PC Gamer braintrust is positive on both Sovereign Syndicate and Distant Worlds 2: the first is a steampunk (but good) CRPG that our Jody scored 80% in his Sovereign Syndicate review, while the latter is a complex and simulation-heavy 4X game that sunk its teeth into PCG strategy czar Fraser Brown back in 2022. With five games in your basket, the price per game comes down to $7 (£7) a pop.
The Fanatical Favourites Bundle
Link: Fanatical | Tiers: 2 games @ $3 each, 3+ games @ $2.65 each, 5+ games @ $2.40 each
It's hot, but it could be worse: you could be trapped in a hopeless war against the forces of chaos in a dying authoritarian space-empire presided over by the artificially preserved corpse of a living god, kept alive by an uncountable number of human sacrifices every single day.
So, you know. Think about that.
If it's not obvious, this is the bundle where I tell you to buy some Warhammer games. Namely, you should pick up Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus, which I spent literal minutes of my life trying to think of a way to describe that wasn't just 'it's Warhammer XCOM,' before settling on telling you it's Warhammer XCOM. And boy, it's a good one, too. Our Warhammer 40k: Mechanicus review scored it 81%, praising it for its old-fashioned tactical fun and exploring an oft-neglected corner of the sprawling Warhammer lore.
You should also grab the Warhammer 40,000: Battlesector & Battlestar Galactica Deadlock Double Pack, which canny readers will note is actually two games rather than one. Battlesector is another strategy winner that does a very admirable job porting the oh-so-crunchy tabletop game to the confines of our monitors, and that our Jody said "shows how a Warhammer game should be done." Deadlock, meanwhile, is a wonderful BG-themed disaster sim: a turn-based strategy that Len Hafer praised for capture "the feeling of s*** constantly hitting every single fan." If that doesn't appeal, you and I are very different people.
A mere two games (well, three, but one is a single entry in the bundle) is enough to reduce their individual prices to $3 (£3), but if you wanna bump it down even more (and want something that couldn't be further from the grimdark of 40k if it tried), I say chuck in Human Fall Flat, which is like if you took the wonky movement physics of a Gang Beasts and put them in a platformer. That knocks things down to $2.65 (£2.65) each.
The Point and Click Bundle
Link: Fanatical | Tiers: 3 games @ $1.65 each, 5+ games @ $1.60 each, 7+ games @ $1.45 each
Much as I'd like to tell you to buy Broken Sword again, the crown jewel of the lineup here is Norco, which Alexis Ong scored a whopping 94% in PCG's Norco review. It's a beautiful and beautifully written game set in the industrial wreckage of a strange(r than usual) South Lousiania. It's sure to appeal if you're the same kind of Disco Elysium-headed sicko that I am, and guaranteed to make you at least a bit sad or your money back (you won't actually get your money back; I don't think I can promise that).
Then, I'd recommend adding in The Darkside Detective two-fer, a point-and-click in the old Lucasarts vein that has you investigating supernatural goings-on as a detective named Francis McQueen (no relation to The Great Escape guy or the animated car). It's good old-school fun, and will appeal to anyone out there who's just sitting around waiting for Ron Gilbert to make another game.
Then, well, you could chuck in another five Broken Sword games—can't go wrong there—but I have a soft spot for Mutazione, a "mutant soap opera" point and click that puts you in the middle of a small town in the aftermath of a meteor strike, its human denizens replaced by quite amiable mutants. Sadly, it's likely to be the last game we see from dev Die Gute Fabrik for some time—it announced it had halted production due to lack of funding in February last year. Mutazione is a great game to go out on, though.
With three games in your cart, it's a mere $1.65 a game. Chuck in the Broken Sword quad-pack (which counts as one game) and Broken Sword 5, and that comes down to $1.60. Not bad for literal hours of pointing and clicking.