Steam Charts: A New Hope Edition

Actually ten games!

Feature by John Walker Co-founder

Published on May 29, 2018

Please sit down. Make sure you have a friend with you, or available on the telephone. Plunkbat isn't at number one. Somehow, it's something even more boring. But the rest of the charts are a splendid sight! No GTA, no CS:GO, no Witcher 3, no Skyrim!

This is still most annoying. So reliant am I that Plunkbat is going to be at number one every week that the template I cut and paste in each week to write this already has it in place. But for the second time this year, and the second time ever since I started writing this a year ago, it is not. I HAVE A SYSTEM!

10. Assassin's Creed Oranges

A 40% discount over the weekend explains this minor reappearance for ancient Egypt. Now it's back to its utterly outrageous £50. I lament this. I lament that the PC's previous lock at £30-£40 for AAA games seems to have finally broken, with publishers matching the cost of console equivalents.

Console prices had always been historically higher because of the tithe they have to pay Microsoft/Sony/Sega/Nintendo for the pleasure of releasing a boxed copy on their system, whereas there was no one to be strong-armed by when releasing a boxed copy for the open environs of the PC. (Despite Microsoft's repeated and hilariously inept attempts to do so.) Now, with the all-powerful Steam in complete control of the market, that wunderland has disappeared, with Steam's 30% gouge of the proceeds likely leading to big publishers hiking their prices to recoup the perceived loss. Yay Steam!

9. Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege

Here comes Siege to talk to you, and you know you shouldn't feel bad about this, but you can't help feeling the weight of wondering how you're going to get through the lingering pauses for the next fifteen minutes.

8. The Forest

I went back to The Forest last week, as promised, and found it is still the same daft, superb, broken, and terrifying game it was in early access.

I'm extremely disappointed by how much it still feels like an early access game. So many messy systems, buggy interfaces, and glitchy issues. Yet it's still a compelling experience, that manages to combine ludicrous survival crafting with some properly surprising elements of horror.

7. Stellaris: Distant Stars Story Pack

Remember when we were all, "DLC IS THE DEATH OF PC GAMES!" and screaming about how devs were deliberately holding back part of a finished game to release it as DLC a month later? I mean, we were right to be doing that, because it was gross. But it's still instructive to recall how the outrages of yesterday quickly become so forgotten.

This isn't that sort of DLC at all, obviously. This is the sort we used to call an Expansion Pack, back in the Very Olden Days, which adds a whole new region to the game, and tweaks the bits that were already there. Adding in L-Gates and an L-Cluster has seen enough interest that just the DLC pack alone has sold enough to chart, which is quite the thing really.

6. Conan Exiles

The story of Conan is a lot like my childhood, in which I exclusively pushed a giant wheel around in circles until I was Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Arnie is 70 now. I find this a fact that just doesn't fit into my understanding of the universe. Like comic book characters, Arnie shouldn't age. He should always be in his early 40s, I think, somewhere between Predator and Terminator 2 age, and anything else is frankly unacceptable.

I imagine Conan Exiles is fine.

5. Wizard Of Legend

Well, congrats to Contingent99! A little pixel roguelite that has stuck to the middle of the charts two weeks running. That almost never happens. Dominic really likes the game, with some reservations, and I still wish I had infinity time so I could give this and every other game like it a play.

I call for a government-sanctioned obligatory week off, where everyone gets a chosen week to catch up on everything they wish they had time for, and no one else is allowed to tell them that they have to use that week to get the fence painted, or go on holiday, or whatever other ghastly obligations might hang over them. I DEMAND IT NOW.

4. House Flipper

Two weeks in the top of the charts. I officially do not understand human beings.

3. Raft

Humans, I forgive you. Raft is so splendid, and I'm delighted to see this Itch favourite doing so well in its first week in early access. I loved it back then, and I'm pleased to report I love it even more now.

Once this rubbish is finished I'm going straight back to my floating kingdom for as long as I can get away with playing it until bossman Graham notices.

2. Plunkbat

I hardly know how to cope when this happens. It's supposed to be one of the universe's constants. What if the speed of light just decides to change to 30mph? Anyway, we still need a song to cope withthis. And to make matters weirder, I'd already decided it was going to be this lullaby from CBeebies' favourite, Boj.

The reason being, I am completely absorbed by the thought about what life-long obsessive fans of Jason Donovan - the sorts that were fans in their teens and creepily haven't grown out of it - do with his now singing pre-school songs on a cartoon. Do they have posters of Boj's dad on their walls, and go on pilgrimages to Giggly Park in West Midlands Safari Park? (A place perhaps best known for the telling off my son got after he decided to run away and hide in it when he was told it was time to go home.) I NEED ANSWERS! Or sleep. Precious sleep. Under the giggly moon.