Here's 22 good games that cost $1 or less in the 2024 winter game sales

The winter sales are upon us once more: that yearly festival wherein we all unite in the warmth and splendor of substantial discounts. As always, we've put together our roundup of the , but I'm here to provide for [[link]] a different sort of salesgoer—the kind of dealseeker who wants the absolute most game for the absolute minimum cost. Like, say, a dollar or less.

For those of you seeking to stuff your game library's stockings while spending as little as possible, I've assembled a [[link]] list of excellent games currently on sale for up to—but no more than—$0.99 USD.

My goal here was to offer a broad sampler platter of gameplay flavors from different genres and eras: from puzzles to hack-and-slash RPGs to unsettling walking simulators. If you're craving a specific kind of game but want the cheapest possible scratch for that itch, or if you just want to try something new with a very low entry cost, you'll hopefully find something below.

Steam

• — Developer Terry Cavanagh—who also created VVVVVV and the excellent Dicey Dungeons—calls Super Hexagon "a minimal action game." That's not inaccurate, but I might be more inclined to call it "a prolonged, rhythm-based panic attack." But like, in a good way.
• — All the optimizational thrills of a factory automation game without any superfluous luxuries like "sprites" or "3D models." Just you, your assembly lines, and an infinitely-expanding map to work with.
• — You are falling down a procedurally-generated well in search of treasure, and your boots are guns.
• — If Asteroids had a few more decades in the oven. A bucket of upgrades and unlockables dumped over a classic arcade space shooter.
• — Psychedelic turn-based RPG with digitized claymation graphics. Upsetting. Inscrutable. Pretty neat.
• — You can fly through procedural mountainscapes in a wingsuit for less than sixty cents. That should say enough.
• — It's unclear whether we'll ever get a new Deus Ex, so why not go in the other direction? To quote a Steam reviewer: "Incredible how well this game has held up over time. It's not a game, it's a prophecy."
• — While we're talking classic immersive sims, we can't forget our old friend Garrett. Thief's unscripted stealth gameplay felt like a revelation in 1998, and it still hasn't quite been equalled more than 25 years later.
• — Physics-based bridge assembly meets pseudophysics portal puzzles. An unexpected pairing back in 2017, but one that's proven so perfect that it should've been obvious.
• — Take my advice. Convince a friend to drop a dollar on this, and spend a few hours playing some of the best coop RTS skirmishes the two of you could share.
• — Before Baldur's Gate 3, there was Divinity: Original Sin. Before Divinity: Original Sin, there was Divine Divinity. Trace Swen Vincke's endless journey to with Larian's inaugural hack-and-slash RPG.
• — A turn-based, loot-heavy mech tactics roguelike with a huge variety of viable builds and strategies. The lovely terminal-inspired interface is just a bonus.
• — Arcadey space shooter with a roguelike spin. An affordable place to act out your TIE pilot and X-Wing fighter fantasies in procedurally-generated levels.

Itch.io

• — An experimental twin-stick shooter taking place in multiple windows on your screen. Shoot the edges of your own shrinking window to resize it while enemies attack from windows of their own.
• — A 2D brawler/platformer encouraging you to rip the legbones from skeletons as improvised weaponry.
• — A monochrome choose-your-own psychological horror adventure. Listed features include "crush someone's skull, suffer from hypothermia, transcend your [[link]] mortal frame."
• — Imagine tennis. Now imagine that tennis was a bullet hell action game.
• — A surreal walking sim in two acts, in which you'll roam procedural dreamscapes: through purple glades, beneath unfathomable spires of industry, and across a gentle hillside.

GOG

• — The 2005 shooter that was brave enough to ask, "What if a spec ops shooter was kinda spooky?" Includes both expansion packs.
• — Compilation of the original Worms and its Reinforcements expansion. Delicately aim your arsenal of weapons, only to accidentally obliterate yourself and a sizable chunk of the map.
• — Even if you've played plenty of 40K, you might've missed the 2003 FPS putting you into the digitigrade hooves of Tau fire warrior Shas'la Kais. Not exactly a classic, but maybe worth playing if only for the novelty of being on the receiving end of bolter fire for once.
• — Sam Barlow's police footage FMV murder mystery.