Steam’s Party-Based RPG Fest is on right now and ends on September 21. Valve’s own pitch is “the more the merrier”: games where you run a whole squad instead of one hero, level them up, and throw them at something bigger than any of them. The fest page is a wall of discounts and demos, and like every Steam fest it is sorted by whoever paid for the front row.
This list ignores all of that. It is the ten best-rated games on sale in the fest, according to the people who bought them. Some are big names you already know. Some are small games that cost less than a sandwich and have better reviews than anything on the front page.
We usually stick to indie games here, and this is one of the few times I am breaking that. Baldur’s Gate 3 and Divinity: Original Sin 2 are on the list because they belong on it, and pretending they are not on sale would be silly. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a special case. It came from a small first-time studio and won Best Independent Game and Best Debut Indie at The Game Awards 2025, on top of Game of the Year. Whether you call it indie or not, it is good enough to be here.
Two things before the list. I have not sat down with all ten of these, and I am not going to pretend I have. The numbers here are Steam’s, the descriptions are the developers’ and the players’, and where I have an opinion it is about the deal, not the game. And the result surprised me: a $3.49 game about catching beetles beats Baldur’s Gate 3. Not by much, but it does.
Prices are US dollars as of September 18. Steam adjusts regional prices, so yours may differ a little.
Kabuto Park is the best-reviewed game in the whole fest
99.5% positive from 4,628 reviews. I checked it three times because it did not look real.
Doot’s tiny bug collection game is exactly what the store page says: enjoy summer in a park, catch the cutest beetles, train them, and win the Summer Beetle Battles Championship. Battles are turn-based and play out on a picnic table. Upgrading your net and gear lets you find rarer, stronger and shinier bugs. It is a short, self-contained thing, and the reviews read like people who paid five dollars and got exactly what they wanted, which is rarer than it should be.
At $3.49 during the fest it costs less than the coffee you would drink while playing it. The genre tag is doing a lot of work to call this a party RPG, but the team-building is there, and the number at the top is the number at the top.
Super Lesbian Animal RPG is a 16-bit healer story
Melody has decided to become a healer. That is the whole setup of ponett’s solo-made turn-based RPG, and the developer describes it as a classic-inspired game about love, anxiety, and fighting funny-looking monsters in dungeons.
98.9% positive from 1,948 reviews. Out since December 2022, so it has had plenty of time for the honeymoon reviews to wear off, and they have not. What keeps it high on a list like this is that nobody reviewing it seems to have been sold something else. It is a SNES-shaped RPG with a queer cast and a lot of dialogue, and the people who want that appear to be very happy.
Half price at $7.49. The one thing I would say: if you skip dialogue in RPGs, this is not your fest pick.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is 30% off, and that is its floor
858,052 reviews. 96.8% positive. Nothing else in this fest is within a factor of three of that review count, and the score still holds up at that scale, which is the actual achievement here.
You know what this is. Larian’s Dungeons and Dragons RPG, a party of four, turn-based combat, and a story that reacts to more choices than most games bother to track. The store blurb calls it a tale of fellowship and betrayal, survival and sacrifice, and the lure of absolute power, and three years of players broadly agree.
The deal is the boring part. $41.99 is 30% off, and that matches the lowest price the game has hit on official stores so far. It has never gone deeper. So this is not a sale to wait out; if you have been holding for a price drop, this is the price.
Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling is the Paper Mario that Nintendo stopped making
The second bug game in the top four, which tells you something about who leaves Steam reviews.
Moonsprout Games built a turn-based RPG in the style of the early Paper Mario games: three party members, Vi, Kabbu and Leif, timed button presses on attacks and blocks, and a papercraft world called Bugaria to explore. You combine the team’s abilities to solve puzzles outside of combat too. It came out in November 2019 and sits at 97.1% positive from 6,047 reviews.
60% off at $7.99, which is the best discount in the top five. If the Kabuto Park entry above made you want a proper thirty-hour RPG instead of a snack, this is the one.
Divinity: Original Sin 2 is the deal of the fest
If you only read one entry, read this one. $11.24 for a game that 206,060 people rated 95.6% positive is the best value on the whole sale page, and it is not close.
This is Larian’s game before Baldur’s Gate 3, and it is where most of the ideas came from. A party of up to four, deep turn-based combat where the environment is a weapon (oil and fire, water and lightning, and so on), and a story with the odd hook that only one of your party gets to become a god. The Definitive Edition is the version on sale, so it includes the reworked final act and every update since 2018.
75% off. Its normal price is $44.99. If you liked BG3 and never played this, the argument for skipping it at eleven dollars is hard to make.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has the smallest discount here
278,650 reviews, 95.2% positive, and only 20% off. That is the tension with this entry.
Sandfall Interactive’s turn-based RPG with real-time dodges and parries came out in April 2025 and collected awards through the rest of the year. The premise is the part people remember: a Paintress wakes every year and paints a number, and everyone of that age dies. You lead the expedition sent to stop her at 33. The Belle Epoque France look is the other part people remember.
$39.99 is the fest price. Other outlets reported 30% off earlier in the week, but the store shows 20% as I write this. Either way it is the weakest discount in the top ten, and the only reason it is on the list is that the game underneath it is that well liked.
Touhou Artificial Dream in Arcadia is a first-person dungeon crawler in disguise
The one on this list you have probably never heard of.
Bar Holographic Otaku describes it as an old-school Touhou dungeon RPG, and old-school means first-person grid movement, a party of recruited monsters, and turn-based menu combat in the style of the early Shin Megami Tensei games. It runs at a deliberately tiny resolution, 768 by 672, which is why the screenshot below is smaller than the others. That is the game, not a mistake.
96.3% positive from 1,242 reviews. $6.99 during the fest. You do not need to know anything about Touhou to play it, though people who do will get more of the jokes.
LISA: The Painful is twelve years old and still 95% positive
Released December 2014. 15,177 reviews. 95.4% positive. Games that age this well usually had something to say.
Dingaling Productions’ store description is one line: “the miserable journey of a broken man.” It is a side-scrolling RPG set after every woman on Earth has disappeared, where you build a party from the strange men you meet and lose them permanently to bad choices, gambling, and a drug that makes you stronger and worse. The combat is turn-based with combo inputs. The tone is a joke and a tragedy at the same time and it does not care if you are ready for that.
$10.99 at 45% off. Not a game for a relaxing week, which is probably why it is not higher on a list that a beetle game leads.
Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter is the first time this series has been affordable to start
Nihon Falcom’s Trails series is famous for two things: a story that runs across a dozen games, and being expensive to get into. This remake of the first one, released September 2025, is half price at $29.99 during the fest.
It rebuilds the 2004 original with new visuals and a reworked field-and-battle system, following Estelle and Joshua as they train as Bracers and stumble into a conspiracy in the Liberl Kingdom. 95.3% positive from 4,967 reviews, and the Japanese release of the same game scores even higher.
The sequel, 2nd Chapter, came out two days ago and is only 10% off. If you want to know whether the series is for you, this is the cheap way to find out.
Final Fantasy, the first one, at $7.19
Yes, the original. The 1987 game, in Square Enix’s Pixel Remaster form from 2021, with redrawn sprites, a rearranged soundtrack, and quality-of-life options like turning off random encounters and boosting experience gain.
8,743 reviews, 95.1% positive, which is higher than any of the other five Pixel Remasters in the same sale. I suspect that is because the first game is the simplest: pick four jobs at the start, walk to the next crystal, hit things. Nothing to be disappointed by.
40% off at $7.19. The rest of the Pixel Remaster line is on sale at the same discount, and all of them are rated well; the first one just happens to be rated best.
The ones that just missed
A few games landed just outside the ten and deserve a line.
Dawnsbury Days, a Pathfinder 2e tactics game, is at 98.3% positive from a smaller crowd of 976 reviews, and it is $2.24 during the fest. Master Healer Kale with useless party came out in July, sits at 95.5%, and is $3.99. Wildermyth (94.7%, $16.24) and Cassette Beasts (94.0%, $5.99) both have tens of thousands of reviews and both missed by less than a point.
And the biggest discount in the fest is not in the top ten at all. Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous Enhanced Edition is 80% off at $9.99, but 83.5% positive from 44,277 reviews puts it well down the table. A lot of people love it. A lot of people also hit the bugs and the bloat, and the score reflects that.
The demos, since it is also a demo fest
Half of the fest page is playtests and demos for games that are not out yet, and I have not played those either. Turn Based Lovers, who cover this genre full time, published their ten picks on September 15. Three from that list stood out to me on paper:
- Starfinder: Afterlight, a science-fantasy CRPG built on Paizo’s tabletop rules with a three-action combat system, from Epictellers Entertainment.
- Blood Sword, an adaptation of the 1980s gamebooks with a party of four and hex-based tactical fights, from Prime Games.
- Zodiac Legion, a stronghold-and-expedition tactics game with destructible terrain and the option to raise your dead as necromancers, from Studio Draconis.
All three have downloadable demos on the fest page. Free is free.
What to actually buy
Add it up and the story of this fest is that the best games in it are mostly old and mostly cheap. Divinity 2, Bug Fables and Kabuto Park together cost $22.72, which is less than either of the two headline games. The headline games are still worth having; they are just not on sale in any way that matters, and BG3 at least is at the lowest it has ever been.
If you want one recommendation, it is Divinity: Original Sin 2 at $11.24. If you want one surprise, it is that a beetle game is the best-reviewed thing on the page.
The fest ends September 21. Steam prices snap back at 10am Pacific.
Buy before Monday
- Divinity: Original Sin 2
- Bug Fables
- Kabuto Park
The three deals on this list that are actually deals. Together they cost less than one Expedition 33. $11.24 + $7.99 + $3.49, all out now.
Pay full-ish price
- Baldur's Gate 3
- Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Small discounts on the two biggest games here. BG3 at 30% off matches its lowest price so far, so waiting for better is a gamble. $41.99 and $39.99 during the fest.
Try the free demos instead
- Starfinder: Afterlight
- Blood Sword
- Zodiac Legion
The fest is also a demo dump. These three come recommended by Turn Based Lovers and cost nothing to find out. Free demos, full releases still ahead.
