I will not lie to you, gentle reader. When I first laid eyes on Secret Door's Sunderfolk, while lurking to the rear of a gaggle of journomancers at a preview event last week, I let out an ostentatious sigh. Fortunately, I still mask up to preview events, and am thus free to adopt all kinds of snotty facial expressions without being set upon by burly PRs and shoved into the minifridge for later disposal. To sum it up, Sunderfolk is a hex and turn-based 2-4 player digital boardgame with fantasy animal characters and deckbuilding elements, reminiscent of Gloomhaven. Conceived during the pandemic lockdowns as a way to "bring back game night", but without the traditional 30-minute unboxing ritual, it's played on the big screen but controlled using a dedicated smartphone app, with players stroking and swiping to move characters and play cards.
We've all used a Steam Deck, so we all know how poor the battery life can be when playing a more graphically extensive game like God of War: Ragnarok, or Cyberpunk 2077. Here's the trick, you need a good power bank to accompany your portable PC adventures.
I’m told that if I do one more Prime Big Deal Days post, they’ll take off the metal clamps holding my eyelids open, and won’t put them back on until Black Friday next month. Result! So here’s a little after-dinner mint of a PC gaming hardware bargain: JSAUX’s Steam Deck thumbstick covers, which come packaged with some stick-on decals for £8 / $8. Both 20% off, they be, leaving a price so low I have real hope you’ll forgive me using the phrase "stocking stuffer" in October.
I always like to balance the inherent cynicism and general corporate awfulness of covering events like Prime Big Deal Days by focusing recommendations on hardware I genuinely like, and ideally, what I actually own. Partly hence the G515 Lightspeed TKL keyboard post from yesterday. And here’s another: the sleek-lookin', sharp-recordin' Logitech StreamCam, which is down from £139 to £70 in the UK and down from $170 to $100 in the US.
Would it be fair to say that we sometimes overlook SATA SSDs? With NVMe drives forming our future and mechanical hard disks increasingly consigned to the past, the 2.5in form factor is just kind of... there. In all of its middle groundedness.
Which is harsh, because they can provide heaps of capacity at relatively attainable prices, as the Crucial BX500 is currently demonstrating. Per Prime Big Deal Days, Amazon UK is running the 2TB version for just £92 (34% off) as well as 4TB for £178 (41% off). Meanwhile, Amazon US is lopping 43% off the 1GB model, bringing it down to $54, with the 4TB model shedding 13% to reach $210.
It’s easy to think of your PC’s RAM as something that just needs to be enough>, rather than a powerhouse like the graphics card or CPU. Easy for me, anyway, until testing out the Silent Hill 2 remake this past week served up a reality check: modern games need a lot of memory, and in SH2’s case, might not even get past the Steam launcher if they decide you’re lacking in it. As penance, I’ve found some DDR5 RAM deals in the Prime Big Deal Days sales that should set any modern rig for years and years of... well, games launching properly, I suppose.
As such, while 16GB is the bare minimum you can get away with, I’d recommend 32GB to be safe. For pure value, check out Crucial’s DDR5 Pro set, which I've been using in my own testing setup for a while: it’s down from £140 to £80 on Amazon UK, and down from $150 to $81 on Amazon US. But the single best deal here, I reckon, is Corsair’s Vengeance RGB kit, which the US site has slashed from $130 to $100. That’s the same price as the non-RGB equivalent kit while also being faster, at 6400MHz to 6000MHz. Us UK folk can also get a similar set for £101, down from £147, though that’s set at 6000MHz.
Few gaming headsets weave together top sound quality, sustained comfort, and clean mic input as deftly as the Logitech G Pro X Wireless. As such, it usually costs a bundle, but with Prime Big Deal Days administering some cuts, it’s going cheaper right now. A lot> cheaper: on Amazon UK, it’s down to £110, a full 50% off the RRP. Amazon US, meanwhile, has it down from $230 to $130.
A few months ago, Broken Sword creator Charles Cecil walked out of the office of Revolution Software and onto the Shambles, the Diagon Alley-esque street that has survived since York’s days as a medieval trade hub. He closed the door behind him, somewhat grumpily - he’d had to work late, and it was already past eight o’clock. Then a voice piped up behind him.
"And one day, when you get older, you will play Broken Sword," said a young woman to her toddler. "This is where Revolution are based."
Cecil had stumbled across an annual pilgrimage to the site where British point-and-click adventures are made. From the sounds of it, this young woman was not alone in making the journey. Cecil registered Revolution’s office address on Google a year ago - and received an email to say that 40,000 people have checked it out since.
"We’re incredibly blessed to have a really positive and lovely collection of people who want us to succeed and love the games that we write," Cecil says. "We love our interaction with them."
These might read like the words of a good community manager, rather than a man expressing a deeply-held sentiment. Yet Cecil does not take his relationship with Revolution’s fans for granted. At times in his long career, he has lost touch with his audience. And at others, he’s feared they might turn their back on him.
For the record, I still think it’s easier and safer to go with a microSD for your Steam Deck storage needs, and with good Prime Big Deal Days savings on two of the best – the Samsung Pro Plus and the SanDisk Ultra – that opinion remains unbudged. Still, you know what they say: when you’re holding a tiny screwdriver, everything starts to look like a tiny screw. So I understand if the call to replace the Deck’s internal SSD, or indeed that of your Asus ROG Ally, proves too strong.
In which case, have a look at the Crucial P310, which I added to our best SSDs list just last week, and is currently joining in the Prime sale frivolities. Specifically, the 1TB model has been slashed from £128 to £70 on Amazon UK, while it’s the 2TB version that gets a US discount, dropping from $265 to $168.
Amazon’s latest Prime Big Deal Days has entered its final day – of deals – so capacity-deprived gaming handheld owners still have a few hours to grab themselves a cheap microSD card upgrade. And if space is the sole concern, it’s hard to get more substantial than the 1.5TB SanDisk Ultra. Never mind how the header pic shows a 64GB card, the much more desirable 1.5TB version is down from £149 to £100 on Amazon UK and from $150 to $89 on Amazon US. Both of those are very fine bargains indeed, for a card that dwarfs even the biggest SSD options of the Steam Deck and Asus ROG Ally families.