Steam Summer Sale 2021: The 4 Indie Games I'd Buy First

The Steam Summer Sale is officially on, and PC players on the hunt for a deal have a lot of options to pick from. Steam is home to tens of thousands of games, and many of us are probably guilty of making impulse purchases during these sales that end doing nothing but sitting in our backlogs unplayed. It's understandable – after all, learning the ropes in a new game can be an intimidating, time-intensive thing. If you have a problem with buying games only to let them rot in your backlog, worry not, as this list contains games that bring the fun almost as soon as you start them up.

If you're a rhythm game fan and you missed Just Shapes & Beats when it launched back in 2018, this is the perfect time to buy it. Just Shapes & Beats is a simplistic-yet-beautiful rhythm game where you play as a shape trying to avoid other shapes as they pulse and move to the beat of an excellent soundtrack. It's one of those "easy to learn, difficult to master games" that offers instant action but takes a fair amount of practice to excel at.

Just Shapes & Beats definitely isn't the game to buy if you're looking for a relaxing time; this game can really get intense in spots, as it borrows elements from the bullet hell genre and often fills the screen with projectiles you'll need to avoid. There will be some levels you'll try dozens of times before you clear them, but the music is so good that you won't care about having to start from the beginning of a stage or going back to a checkpoint. Just Shapes & Beats is on sale for $14.99 in the Steam Summer Sale.

If Just Shapes & Beats is an intense affair that will test your reaction time constantly, Refunct might just be its polar opposite. It can't really be described as difficult, and you'll likely finish it in just an hour or two. That doesn't mean it isn't worth buying, though, and at $0.74 during the sale, it's a game that everyone can afford.

Refunct is just a game about platforming. That's it. You can run and jump off walls and slide on the ground, but there are no enemies to fight or side quests to complete in Refunct. Despite the simplicity, Refunct is a soothing game that's perfect if you want to slow down and just take things easy for a bit. It's also fairly easy and a lot of fun to complete all of Refunct's achievements, but a word to those who are pursuing 100% completion: Do the speedrun challenges without looking up routes online, because it's a lot more rewarding if you figure out the routing on your own.

Superflight and Refunct have a lot in common. They're both indie games made by small developers, they're both easy to pick up and play, they're both fairly casual experiences, and they're both $0.74 in the Steam Summer Sale. Another dirt cheap game, Superflight is a title that I think everyone should own. In Superflight, you get to fly around procedurally generated maps in a wingsuit, increasing your score by doing daring things like flying through small gaps.

That's all there is to it, but there's a surprising amount of addicting challenge to this game. It's a game you can dive into the moment you buy it, and I think that's precisely what you should do. It's also perfect for those times where you want to relax or when you know you want to play something but don't have anything specific in mind.

Jamestown is a game that I've loved for many years, so it's a little strange to me that it's never received more attention. Set in 17-century British colonial Mars – yes, you read that right – Jamestown is a shoot 'em up game that can be enjoyed even if you're a complete shoot 'em up noob.

Jamestown+ is a remaster of the original game that adds new stages and new ships along with various optimizations and improvements. It has beautiful artwork, a great soundtrack, engaging gameplay, and an interesting (if weird) story, so at $8.99, it's a solid buy even if you may not normally go for shoot 'em ups.