The holiday season is here, and that means holiday activities, family time, and, most importantly, the Steam Winter Sale. With discounts on everything from massive open-world RPGs to pixel platformers, it can be challenging to limit yourself to just a few games. While I’m an advocate of spending money on 2024 releases, if you want to maximize your bang for your buck, you can also pick up a solid group of slightly older (but still amazing) PC games. For example, now you can get more than 10 copies Fallout: New Vegas for the price of one STALKER 2.
Your starting point for selling on Steam should always be to check your wishlist, but if you’re looking for something modern (or want to make sure you don’t miss out on an obvious bargain), I found the 33 best PC games for $10 or less.
The complete edition of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt for $10
The Witcher 3’s massive open world, compelling characters, and meaningful approach to player decision-making raised the bar for RPGs in 2015. After unveiling The Witcher 4 at The Game Awards, what better time to play (or replay) one of the greatest RPGs of all time? Especially now that the Complete Edition, which includes the base game and all DLCs, is only $9.99.
More RPG games under $10:
If you’re looking for a narrative-driven RPG, I highly recommend Disco Elysium, which is also under $10. Other RPGs with deep discounts include Bethesda games like Fallout 4, Fallout: New Vegas, and (of course) Skyrim. Meanwhile, Baldur’s Gate 3 fans who want more turn-based combat can purchase one of Larian’s older games, Divinity: Original Sin, for just $3.99.
40% off Stardew Valley
Stardew Valley
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Leave your office job to inherit your grandfather’s farm and support rebuild (or reclaim) the local town in Stardew Valley. IGN re-reviewed Stardew Valley after the farming game received a huge update, and ended up giving it one of the few 10/10 game reviews in all of 2024. Considering Stardew was somehow my most played game on Steam and Nintendo Switch, I thought. We must agree that “Masterpiece” is a fair assessment.
More cozy games under $10:
Cozy Grove, which I think is more like Animal Crossing than Stardew, is on sale for less than $5. If you’re the type of person who likes to organize, I recommend Unpacking, and Spiritfarer takes the management game genre to the afterlife.
DOOM Eternal for $10
DOOM eternal
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The DOOM series has been a staple of the FPS genre, and one of the best DOOM games of the state-of-the-art era has dropped in price to under $10. In IGN’s 9/10 review of DOOM Eternal, Ryan McCaffrey highlights the game’s satisfying difficulty level: “This perfect improvement on the already excellent 2016 reboot makes an unspoken contract with you: if you can keep up, the game will keep up.”
More FPS games under $10:
For more single-player shooters, you can purchase six Halo games for $10 as part of the Master Chief Collection. Multiplayer shooters like Siege and Battlefield 2042 also cost less than $10 for now.
50% discount on Hollow Knight
Hollow Knight
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Hollow Knight is one of the most satisfying games I’ve ever had, and also the closest I’ve come to throwing my Switch at the wall in frustration (that’s a positive, by the way). According to IGN’s September 10 review: “The world of Hallownest is fascinating and affluent, full of stories you can discover on your own, and built with branching paths that offer a ridiculous amount of choice in how you explore it. ” Now you can find out why there are always tons of comments asking for a release date for Silksong for only $8.
More platformers under $10:
Like Hollow Knight, Celeste isn’t afraid to challenge the player, and the additional “B-sides” in each level raise the stakes even for veteran platformers. I recommend Little Nightmares to any horror fan, and its 2020 sequel Ori offers some particularly creative puzzles.
Civilization VI for $2.99
Civilization by Sid Meier VI
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With the release of Civ VII just a few months away, most of Sid Meier’s series is on sale. While I prefer Civ V’s map mechanics, in my experience Civ VI is better optimized for setting up multiplayer lobbies. Convince your friends to chip in a few bucks and you can all engage in an empire-building marathon that will most likely end in some form of betrayal.
More strategy and simulation games under $10:
Most Total War games and DLC are on sale, though one of the best deals is the base game Warhammer for $6. And if you’ve ever wanted to travel across Europe for $5, now you can (thanks to Euro Truck Simulator 2).
75% off overcooked 2
Overcooked 2
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If you’re looking for something cheap that you can convince your friends to buy and play with you, look no further than Overcooked 2. The cooperative cooking game allows up to four players to jump into a campaign that, with its arcade-style levels and silly physics, will likely result in screams. However, as described in IGN’s review of Overcooked 2, this “crazy and inventive cooperative game… has the ability to turn frustration into charm.”
More co-op games under $10:
For larger groups, I also recommend For the King and Castle Crashers. It Takes Two is one of the best two-player co-op games, and only one person needs to buy it, courtesy of Hazelight Studio”Friend Pass” And of course, Portal 2, at just $2, will always be a co-op classic.
