Steam Game Festivals are one of my favorite new additions to the platform. Every so often, they’ll gather a group of released and unreleased games that are tied together by some common theme and carve out a little area of the Steam Store for them, then show off demos/livestreams of those games and sometimes even have sales. The festival going on right now until Monday the 23rd at 10 AM PST is particularly near and dear to my heart: The Latinx Games Festival. As you might have guessed, the common theme for this games is that they were developed or are being developed by Latinx developers. As a Latino game writer, you can imagine my excitement. There are several games here, so let me help narrow it down a little and focus on the games that have already come out.
Notable Steam Latinx Games Festival Games
The majority of the games listed here are “coming soon”, which is not surprising since these game festivals often feature upcoming games and since the vast majority of games currently out there were made by non-Latinx people. While it would be nice to have more games out there already, it’s also nice to see that the future is so bright. However, there are still a number of cool games on there that you can buy and play right now! The list of games that I decided to buy myself is:
- Lamplight City: An old school-style detective adventure game.
- Mulaka: A 3D action-adventure game about the history of the Tarahumara people.
- Neon City Riders: A top-down action RPG that feels like the first two Grand Theft Auto games (that is, the 2D games).
- Pato Box: An extremely unique-looking game where you’re a boxing duck fighting the system.
- VA-11 Hall-A (on itch.io, since you get a free Steam key too): A visual novel about a bartender and her customers; the most popular game here.
Gaming Gifts For You And Your Friends
With Black Friday(/Cyber Monday, since I guess we have to pretend like that’s a thing now) coming up, a lot of people have been stressing the importance of shopping at local businesses for gifts, which is of course a great idea. However, I think we should extend that idea to also buying from indie creators, local or not (and that way you don’t have to worry about shipping!). This festival is a great way to find some new games you might not have otherwise heard of to buy for yourself or your friends. Even if you’ve already bought all your holiday gifts, there are a lot of yet-to-be-released games you can check out and add to your wishlist for the future. Anyways, happy browsing!
