Dig through a pile of indie deals in the Itch.io Holiday Sale

Holiday sales are now ticking away at all the usual places: Steam, Epic, Origin, Ubisoft, Microsoft. And also over at indie storefront Itch.io, which is offering an array of "Holiday Picks" for 2019, and also a bunch of games that just happen to be on sale now.

One thing about Itch.io sales is that they generally don't have the bells and whistles, or basic organization, of those on the bigger sites. It's kind of like the MySpace of digital storefronts: It works, it's fine, but that layout is from a whole different era. It makes the sale more difficult to browse than it should be, which is a shame because there's some good stuff here. Such as:

Towerfall: Ascension - $7.50 (50 percent off)
Chuchel - $3 (70 percent off)
Pilgrims - $4 (15 percent off)
A Mortician's Tale - $4.50 (50 percent off)
Mini Metro - $5 (50 percent off)
Sokobond - $2.50 (75 percent off)
Rusty Lake - $4.50 (50 percent off, it's a bundle and you can buy the games individually if you prefer, but really you should play them all)

Itch.io isn't going to offer the same sort of blockbusters as Steam or EGS (obviously) but it's a great site to go digging through for offbeat or experimental stuff. And you never know what you'll stumble across. I got pulled into the Rusty Lake series a few years ago via the very cheap Rusty Lake Hotel, and it's become one of my favorite super-bizarre puzzle-adventure series.

Itch.io's Holiday Sale ends on January 2.

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.