Steam Summer Sale: Don”t miss out on these 8 open-world games under 20 euros

The big Steam Sale is coming to an end. Our editorial team recommends 8 Open Worlds at the end, which are definitely worth buying at a reduced price.

For a short time you can still get thousands of games at very low prices during the Steam Summer Sale. Our editorial team has now gone through the discounts once again to recommend eight Open Worlds for less than 20 euros.

We”ll spare you the preliminaries and get right to it!

Mafia: Definitive Edition

The Mafia series is often misunderstood as a slightly more serious GTA clone with old-timers, yet it was never about giving Rockstar”s gangster blockbuster a classic Mafia touch. The first part in particular does not use its open game world Lost Heaven as a perfectly simulated playground in which you go around the houses in a suit and extort protection money or shoot up hostile families at your whim.
Instead, the open world serves as a stage for one of the most intense gangster stories ever told in the form of a video game. This was already true of the original from 2002 and the remake brings this grandiose narrative into the modern age. Narratively, hardly anything is adapted, and if it is, then at most to deepen the relationships to certain characters in a comprehensible way.

Of course, as a veteran you might mourn the Paulie of 2002 a little – but on the other hand he was almost too close to Joe Pesci. But if you can let go of such reservations or don”t know the original at all, you”ll experience a truly rousing adventure that skilfully disenchants the glorified respectable Mafia fantasy and confronts you with the hard-to-digest criminal reality.

Project Zomboid

I have never spent a single minute in my life in Project Zomboid and yet I love the game. Because although I am really not too big a fan of survival, I can understand the fascination with it – the main thing is that I don t have to play it myself. That”s why I”ve been following Project Zomboid primarily as a silent observer: There are countless videos on YouTube that report on the adventures in the zombie apocalypse of this Early Access title.

This is also where the really creative and active community – in the truest sense of the word – comes into play. Project Zomboid is already quite complex in itself and relies on a portion of realism that should not be underestimated. In Project Zomboid, for example, the player only sees what is in the field of vision of the character. You can certainly imagine the difficulties this brings in a world where the undead swarm around every corner.

Few games also hit the definition of sandbox on the head as well as Project Zomboid. Players really have a lot of options here as they try to – well – survive in a world full of the living dead. Maybe I”ll finally take the chance to try my hand at Project Zomboid myself in the current Steam sale and see where I end up in the open game world. It”s about damn time.

Slime Rancher 2

Colourful, colourful, Slime Rancher! In the second part, developer Monomi Park remains true to the proven principle of a colourful, lively game world with cute slimes of all kinds. You collect them from all corners of the open world and bring them to your ranch, fatten them up in enclosures with their favourite food and then sell their … remains, the so-called plorts, for a lot of money.

Slime Rancher 2 is still in Early Access, but already offers enough content for a lot of relaxed, happy hours of play, where you can enjoy the sweet squeaking of your Slimes, enjoy the great and detailed world or become the most capitalistic of all Slime farmers – depending on what you enjoy the most.

It”s really child- and beginner-friendly if you switch off in the options that wild Slimes can turn into the sinister Tarr mutations that want to get at you. Regardless of whether you experience Slime Rancher solo or as a family activity, Part 2 is the clearly smoother and more diverse successor, which has noticeably learned from some of the corners and edges of its predecessor. If you want to try it out without obligation, you can also find Slime Rancher 2 in Xbox GamePass.

Pathologic 2

If you”re anything like me, then you”re tired of typical open-world time-suckers like pointless collecting tasks and pure icon-crawling. If you”re also into games that play a bit like heatstroke in the current weather, then I”ve got an insider tip for you!

I have a hard time describing Pathologic 2  However, the role-playing-survival mix is one of the most exciting and unusual open-world games I have ever experienced. Despite somewhat clunky controls and sometimes fluffed-up dialogue, the role-playing game is bursting with atmosphere and regularly sends a shiver down my spine.

Pathologic 2 is not for everyone. It”s a very dark game that doesn”t shy away from difficult subject matter. The survival aspect doesn”t give you anything, you have to constantly weigh up what is more important to you: your own safety, completing quests or the lives of others? Rarely have I felt so free and yet at the same time so constricted in an open world.

If you want to give this unusual game a chance, now is the perfect time! Pathologic 2 costs just less than a trip to the cinema and is guaranteed to keep you busy for a long time! By the way, don”t worry about the 2 in the title, Pathologic 2 is a remake of the first part and not a direct sequel. 

I”m very wary of recommending Far Cry 6 to anyone without reservations because the story is so bad, the characters so unlikable, that my toes curl up just thinking about all those wind-up doll hipsters.

I don”t know what”s going wrong in Ubisoft”s story department, but no one has put a good sentence on paper there in a very long time. Or the paper is always used by the executives to roll cigarettes afterwards and that”s why it gets lost, I don”t know.

Either way, Far Cry 6 is no gem. Lousy story, formulaic open world, cognitively limited AI … but still, yes, the thing is fun. The Cuban game world Yara looks beautiful in parts, the shoot-outs are fun and the sandbox of brute shooter shoot-outs, sneak-ins and crash-boom vehicle action is rarely found in other games.

I don”t think Far Cry 6 is worth paying full price for, but if you”re in the mood for a really entertaining open world with assault rifles, SMGs and wild chaos, the sixth part is currently cheaper than ever on Steam. And for 15 euros, I can overlook the quirks.

7 Days to Die

Whoever was a big fan of the zombie series The Walking Dead and the block sandbox Minecraft around 2014, like me, might have stumbled across 7 Days to Die sooner or later. Because the title from indie developer The Fun Pimps simply takes these two basic ideas and combines them into an ingenious survival crafting game with tower defence elements.

Like in Minecraft, you mine various blocks in a fully destructible environment and craft your defences from them. The whole thing is enriched by a survival-typical hunger and thirst mechanic, various weapons and character abilities. Every seven days, the game lives up to its name and sends a massive zombie horde after you. The friendly undead are particularly treacherous at night and destroy your buildings.

Since its launch almost ten years ago, a lot has changed in 7 Days to Die. The visuals, which were still very rudimentary back then, have improved noticeably over the years. In addition to a fixed story map for all players, you also have the option of generating your own map.

You shouldn”t expect a finished game, though, because even after 10 years, 7 Days to Die is still in Early Access. Nevertheless, it already offers hundreds of hours of gameplay. And even if The Walking Dead no longer holds the same appeal for you as it once did, 7 Days to Die is still worth a playthrough.

Zero Sievert

It doesn”t always have to be the elaborate 3D open world with NextGen graphics and ray tracing to create proper atmosphere. Sometimes the little things bring the most joy. The best example of this is Zero Sievert, a thrilling survival shooter from a top-down perspective with … well, let”s put it kindly and say: with minimalistic graphics.

You explore a randomly generated Eastern European-style wasteland, encounter grotesquely mutated animals or marauding bandits, craft better equipment and complete quests for NPCs. It sounds like a minimalist S.T.A.L.K.E.R., but from above, and it also plays like one.

But don”t let the simple graphics fool you: Zero Sievert”s simulation is realistic and merciless! The hero is usually dead after one or two hits (and stays dead), the smallest sounds are often the only indicator of approaching danger and rare resources must always be used sparingly.

In return, however, Zero Sievert rewards us for our patience with a wealth of tactical options (there are hundreds of options for weapon crafting, a skill tree, and so on), a lot of post-apocalyptic atmosphere and a certain pride in our chest when we finally build the cooking station in our home base. As I said, it”s often the little things.

Subnautica

I ve never quite finished Subnautica to my shame, but the survival game is still one of my favourite open-world experiences. There is something about the very idea of sending us to a planet almost completely covered by water to survive. Beyond that, though, Subnautica is also superbly implemented: survival mechanics and progression always remain motivating throughout the course of the game.

After the crash of our spaceship, our goal here is to escape from an alien planet. To do this, we collect resources, craft new tools, submarines and bases and penetrate further and further into the deep sea. For there are not only valuable and urgently needed raw materials hiding there, but also the secrets of the planet, which we get to the bottom of.

However, exploring the world is also becoming increasingly dangerous. We have to take care of our oxygen supply, build more safe bases and, last but not least, watch out for the sometimes gigantic alien creatures that want to eat us for breakfast. For 10 euros you get a comprehensive and nerve-racking survival adventure in a class of its own!

Is there something for you in our recommendations, and will you buy it with the current offer? Or do you have an open-world recommendation of your own that you”d like to share with us? Feel free to post it in the comments!