Steam

LISA: The Painful.

It's gone up in price with the Definitive Edition, guess it's grown a lot in popularity.

This is a postapocalyptic RPG done in RPG Maker with excellent storytelling and the weirdest weapons and attack patterns I ever experienced. You can attack enemies with your own stench or even frighten them by telling them ghost stories.

I've felt more for the pixelated companions in this game than I've ever felt in a AAA game. It's so full of humour and despair, playing through this is such an emotional rollercoaster.

I'm not ashamed to have cried

Not on Steam, but Boomerang Fu was one of the best game I purchased for ~$3. Probably my most played game on Switch.

I think I bought Glyph for pretty cheap on the Switch. I loved it so much I bought it full price on Steam shortly after

I didn't buy it for $0.99 but it has been on sale for that much in the past: N++ is an incredible platformer, excellent value at full price: https://store.steampowered.com/app/230270/N_NPLUSPLUS/

I'm up to about 70 hours with Tametsi. I'm almost done the 100 main puzzles, but I haven't touched the 60 bonus puzzles. Considering it cost me ~1000 won (78 US cents) that's got to be some kind of cost-per-hour-of-entertainment record for me. Not counting things I got for free.

It's a small game that people rarely ever heard of but https://store.steampowered.com/app/406150/Refunct/ Refunct is simple and awesome in its movement mechanics.

Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion, Spiritfairer, Slay the Spire

These were all free to me through gamepass or Amazon. Went with fairly recent ones

Gnomoria $3.99 and got about 300 hours out of it. It was a game that took a lot of inspiration from Dwarf Fortress but had 'graphics.' The dev stepped away a while ago but pretty sure everyone that bought it got their $$ worth.

Can't remember what i paid but was cheap, beat invaders, pretty awesome space invaders like arcade game, fun addictive game play, good music and sound effects, good visuals. Blast through fleets of enemies, skill up, and compete for daily and weekly high-scores. 32 hours played so far and is perfect for the Steam Deck.

Transport Tycoon, got a copy off a friend then brought the Delux version when it released and now play the free open source version OpenTTD.

Fallout 3. I had a big lull in gaming where I played some on Xbox and ps2, but not much on those either because I started working (at like 15 years old) and my PC could no longer handle games. So I missed out on that when it came out. And New Vegas. Well after a few years and after moving to a place that had broadband, I had the money for a new PC. FO3 goty happened to be on sale on steam. I grabbed it for super cheap and just become so engrossed. I don't think I had played a modern open world game like that ever at that point. And it had such a fun interactive story where choices had consequences. I blew the shit out of a whole town with a nuke not realizing how it would impact things. Now it is my favorite type of game. Grabbed New Vegas on sale shortly after and got to continue the experience. All for super cheap.

I bought Left 4 Dead 2 for $5 and I kinda feel bad about it in hindsight

Downwell

The Beginners Guide. $10, 2 hours long, and one of the most personal and profound pieces of media I have ever experienced.

Insurgency Source was on sale for 1.99 one time and I picked up a bunch of copies for my friends and I. Ended up clocking close to a thousand hours on that game and spent years playing off and on

Ultima IV: free on GOG, one of the greatest games ever made that still holds up today (though irritating in certain ways, the core game is pure gold).

I got Days Gone for $12. Didn't play it for 6 months, then when I finally did it was the only game I played until I beat it, and it's not a short game

I don't like open world games anymore. I don't stick to one game ever and I don't usually bother with games over 25 hours but holy shit. Such an amazing game

It's taking everything I have to just not start a new game + immediately

The Captain

Got it for free during an Epic giveaway and was blown away. LucasArts point and click style with massive replayability

I am having fun playing defense grid: the awakening. It was $5 in a recent steam sale.

Undertale

SNKRX for me. Minute to minute gameplay is very simple -- all you do is steer your train of dots left and right around a small arena, but the depth of strategy and the skill cap is surprising. I got many hours out of it. Also there is a mobile version!

I hope you're not referring specifically to Wheat Thresher-vania. I'm reminded of what that Dead or Alive guy said about Dynasty Warriors... "Yes, there are tons of onscreen characters, but they're all dumb as toast. You're just lopping off dozens of cabbage heads."

There's just something mechanical and hands-off about Vampire Survivor that I don't like. It's playable? But rarely did I experience anything I would call fun. It was more of an unhealthy compulsion than anything, like picking at a scab.

KOTOR. Bought it in 2012 for 2.24€ during a steam sale, not only I'm still playing it to this day, but its plethora of technical issues pushed me to learn new things about how linux works internally.

Deadlight, from Tequila Works. I bought it for less than $3 on a whim (might have even been $1) during a Steam Sale on the last day, because "Why not" I thought. Then I actually gave it a shot, and it turned out to be really good. Especially surprising since I don't normally like side scroller puzzles with action elements. The difficulty was just right, and the forgiving checkpoints did away with the usual frustrations I have with games like this.