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Valve’s little experimental sale is «a crash course in a confusing (sub) genre.»
Valve’s latest experiment with Steam’s hubs is Going Rogue: A Festival of Persistence, featuring sales and discounts aplenty on roguelikes and their many adjacent, well-blended genres. You know, roguelikes, roguelites, soulslikes, and metroidvanias. The event will last for a week, from May 2-9.
Headlining the festival are genre staples like Dead Cells, Hades, and a sale on soulsy games Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. That’s alongside newer entries like the roguelike pachinko-goblin of Peglin and the metroidvania of intrepid Haiku, the Robot.
It’s an interesting experiment from Valve, one aimed at tackling Steam’s biggest issue: discovering games you want to play in or related to the genres you like. Giving people central locations to browse from that hold not just the genre they’re looking for, but related genres they may like, might go a long way towards alleviating that issue—especially when those genre pages have the sorts of tabs like New & Trending, Top Sellers, and Top Rated that this one has.
You get to the Going Rogue hub from the categories tab on Steam, floating out beyond the big main genre hubs. It’s an extension of Steam Labs Experiment 13 launched late last year. You can read more about the thinking behind the festival, and a bit of a crash course on the genres, on the Steam blog.
Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he’s not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.
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