A squirrel stealing presents.

And here I thought my wallet would have a few weeks of rest before everyone starts up their Christmas sales. But with so many good games on sale, some of which were missing from the recent Steam Sale, its hard to say no.

GOG's Big Winter Sale will run from today to the 13th of December so expect pretty much their whole catalog to go on sale. The gimmick this time around is that you can earn free games by buying stuff on sale. Here's how it works:

So far there are only two games on offer though I don't doubt they'll add more as the sale goes on. If you spend $5 you will get Divine Divinity whose gameplay is a bit dated by today's standards but whose writing is a fun combination of cheesy humor and serious themes. Can't really recommend it for new players to the Divinity series but if you enjoy Larian Studio's games you'll enjoy this one as well.

However, if you opt to spend $50 on the sale you will get Blackguards, a more recent game. Blackguards is a bit of an odd one because on I absolutely loved it but I am hesitant to recommend it because the difficulty is downright unfair unless you restart your first character and build him "properly" your second time around. I wouldn't spend $50 to get it specifically but as a bonus I'd say its pretty solid.

A wizzard fighting a troll in the swamp

Blackguards is fun but brutal

Keep one thing in mind though, due to technical limitations your progress will be tracked by currency. So if you spend $49 in USD only to buy the last game with Euros you won't get the $50 gift until you spend that much with USD.

Besides the bonus games there is another big difference between GOG's and Steam's sale, and that is the random game purchase. While all of my instincts are telling me its probably not worth it, you are guaranteed to get a game between $10 and $35 in value for each $3 mystery purchase and since you can't get duplicates it doesn't sound so bad.

This mystery purchase isn't really for me because I have far too many games I "need" to play through as is but if you feel like throwing caution to the wind and trying out something new, well, there are worse ways to spend your money, that's for sure.

As far as the actual deals go there is a LOT to chose from so happy hunting!