And here we are. Thirteen days later, probably weighed down with a few more games and a few dollars lighter. It’s been really heartening to see tiny indie productions sitting in the top 5 sellers on Steam alongside mega-budget giants these past few weeks. It’s good to see PC gaming going back to it’s roots, at least in part. I guess there really is room for innovation in both design and business model, and this sale has been ample proof. Here’s the last of the indie lineups. Time to put your chips down on the last Steam bargains of 2011.

Daily Deals

75% off – Bit Trip Runner & Bit Trip Beat

Ultra-minimalist musical action in these two rhythm games. While the Wii is playing host to the impressive Bit Trip Complete disc (all six games in the series with major expansions each), this is definitely a fair price for the two PC incarnations to date. Runner is a fairly basic auto-scrolling evasion game in the spirit of Canabalt, but synched to the beat of the chiptune soundtrack. Beat is equally basic, taking Pong as it’s design template but rather than competing against a rival paddle, you’re constantly bombarded by balls which you’ll be bouncing back to the beat of the track.

50% off – Rochard

John reviewed this a while back, and had plenty of praise for it. A physics-driven platform shooter where you play as a surly space-trucker voiced by John. St. John, a man notable for his redundancies, his redundancies and being the voice of Duke Nukem, but don’t hold that against him. By all accounts this is a very solid game, although it could have possibly done with a little more Metroid and a little less focus on the crate-throwing.

75% off – Hoard

A fun little arcade game, this. Fly around a 2D map as a dragon, torch towns, abduct princesses and loot gold. It really shines against other human players, with the winner of each match being decided by who has the biggest treasure trove to perch on by the end of the round. Not played nearly as much of it as I would have liked, but it does seem like a polished, replayable little thing from what I have tried.

75% off – Magicka

I liked this one even when it was new. Since then, it has been polished, patched, expanded, patched, expanded again, patched, refined and patched even more. I think they’ve even fixed most of the bugs, but don’t be surprised if there’s another patch or two in the near future. This is probably the most fun I’ve had in a co-op game this year. It’s one of those games where the enemies become almost a secondary threat compared to your friends, as friendly fire abounds and a continual cycle of revenge and backstabbing results in a slapstick comedy. It’s a decent game in singleplayer, but bring a friend or three (local or online) for the real fun.

As always with this particular sale, the previous day’s deals are still available for another 3-4 hours at the time of writing.

Challenges

Just another day or two to complete these festive challenges and hoard your coupons for use in the sales over the next couple of months. Of course, those of you with a few pieces of coal sloshing about in your inventories will get into the big end-of-year prize draw. Of course, the chances of actually winning are probably worse than in the lottery, but it’s still worth a shot, huh? The last wave of indie achievement challenges can be found in Trine, Hoard, Bit Trip Beat & Magicka. The Magicka one (smash 100 frozen enemies) is particularly easy if you get the Lovecraft-parodying expansion ‘The Stars Are Left’, as there’s a weapon that freezes your foes available right from the start.

As this is the last day of new sales, and tomorrow looks to be an ‘encore’ day of notable bestsellers, now’s the time to assemble yourself a ‘best of the rest’ shopping list, ready to buy tomorrow. Any games you’ve had your eye on that never became daily deals? If you’ve got some money to hand, now’s the time to snap them up. So, outside of the regular hits, what have you been looking out for this sale? Comment below, and I might assemble some of the best recommendations in an article after tomorrow’s update. But for now, best wishes and may you have a happy new year!