Sweden has given the gaming world everything from blocky survival sensations and grand strategy obsessions to wonderfully strange indie games that could only have been conceived during one particularly long Scandinavian winter.
Now, the Games Made in Sweden Steam Sale is celebrating the country’s developers with discounts across a huge collection of Swedish-made games.
Hosted by the Swedish Games Industry, the sale covers everything from atmospheric adventures and frantic action games to cosy farming sims and smaller indie oddities begging to be discovered.
With so many discounted games competing for space in your Steam library, we have picked out five Games Made in Sweden deals that deserve a closer look.
Lightyear Frontier
Price: R155 marked down from R259
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Farming games are already dangerously good at swallowing entire weekends, but Lightyear Frontier improves the formula by putting you behind the controls of a massive agricultural mech.
After landing on a beautiful alien planet, you will build an interstellar homestead, cultivate strange crops, gather resources and gradually transform an untouched patch of land into the retro-futuristic farm of your dreams.
Your mech can be upgraded and customised with new parts, tools and mod chips, allowing it to plant, water and harvest increasingly ambitious fields without you ever needing to touch an ordinary watering can again.
Away from the farm, there is a large world to explore, alien wildlife to discover and distant colonies waiting for deliveries. You can also invite up to three friends along, because nothing tests a friendship quite like deciding who forgot to water the space cabbages.
Lightyear Frontier remains in Early Access, with its developers continuing to expand and rework its world and systems.
Haste
Price: R119 marked down from R199
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Haste is what happens when somebody looks at the end of the universe and decides the most sensible response is to start running very, very quickly.
This high-speed third-person action game challenges you to sprint, leap and soar across procedurally generated worlds while everything collapses behind you. Maintaining momentum is essential, with well-timed landings helping you accelerate, while one unfortunate stumble can send an otherwise promising run directly into the apocalypse.
The journey is divided across ten Shards containing collections of levels that must be completed before you run out of lives. Along the way, you can collect more than 90 items, experiment with different builds, master new abilities, battle bosses and meet a surprisingly lovable group of characters.
The entire adventure can also be played in online co-op. You will technically be working together to survive, although Haste still tracks everyone’s completion times, ensuring that friendly cooperation can immediately become deeply personal competition.
The JerryMaya Detective Agency
Price: R94 marked down from R145
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Based on the popular Swedish children’s book series, The JerryMaya Detective Agency is a family-friendly puzzle-platforming adventure filled with suspicious townsfolk, missing valuables and crimes involving stolen muffins.
Players explore the quirky town of Valleby as young detectives Jerry and Maya, interviewing suspects, gathering evidence and navigating platforming challenges as they attempt to crack each case.
In single-player mode, you can switch between both detectives to use their different abilities, while local co-op allows two players to tackle the mysteries together.
Its combination of light platforming, observation and puzzle-solving makes this an especially approachable option for younger players and families. The game also features different mystery combinations, adding some welcome replayability once you have exposed Valleby’s latest criminal mastermind.
Considering some of the cases involve baked goods, the stakes could hardly be higher.
Super Adventure Hand
Price: R31 marked down from R127
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Super Adventure Hand is a 3D physics platformer starring a disembodied hand searching for its missing best friend, Arm. Naturally, the prime suspects are a gang of evil feet, because subtle storytelling has no place in this particular handventure.
Across more than 50 handcrafted levels, you must scuttle, climb, grab and fling your way around saw blades, fires, explosives and other hazards. Your five high-friction fingers allow you to grip walls, crawl through pipes and manipulate objects, although controlling an adventurous hand is every bit as ridiculous and unruly as it sounds.
You can also ride skateboards and tiny cars or decorate your heroic hand with watches, rings, bracelets and nail polish. After all, being separated from the rest of your body is no excuse for abandoning fashion.
At just R31, Super Adventure Hand is one of those gloriously silly Steam Sale purchases that may be impossible to justify but even harder to resist.
Escape From Mystwood Mansion
Price: R80 marked down from R160
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Escape From Mystwood Mansion brings the satisfaction of an escape room to your computer without requiring you to lock yourself inside a suspicious building with several increasingly frustrated friends.
After becoming trapped inside the mysterious mansion, you must venture through its corridors, uncover hidden compartments and examine objects for clues. Each of its five main rooms contains codes, mechanisms and interconnected puzzles that gradually reveal more about the person responsible for your captivity.
A dynamic hint system is available should your detective confidence begin crumbling, while hidden areas, secrets and multiple endings reward players who inspect every bookshelf, drawer and suspiciously decorative object.
You can focus entirely on escaping or remain inside a little longer to uncover the mansion’s final mystery. Admittedly, hanging around the creepy house controlled by an unseen observer sounds like a poor survival decision, but secret endings are secret endings.
The Games Made in Sweden Steam Sale offers a brilliant reminder of just how varied the country’s development scene has become.
Among these five games alone, you can operate a farming mech, outrun the destruction of the universe, solve family-friendly crimes, parkour through obstacle courses as a severed hand and voluntarily explore a mansion designed by someone with an unhealthy enthusiasm for locked doors.
Whether you are searching for your next cosy obsession, a game to enjoy with friends or something strange enough to make your Steam library slightly more interesting, there should be at least one Swedish-made bargain here worth grabbing.