Jigidi to celebrate my third year here (No giveaways this time, sorry)

Have no idea when I will have time to make everything so doing it in advance secretly. You seen nothing! yet

Ok, I lied. There are giveaways behind the Jigidi. Solve this one to get a chance of winning A Tale of Paper, DARQ, Catie in MeowmeowLand, Minute of Islands, Necrosmith, The Bookwalker: Thief of Tales or Rain on Your Parade. Yes, I like when it is stated what is behind the puzzle.
All games here (except Bookwalker, it locked to EU) are region free and available to anyone with level 3+. Giveaways will run till 20th of May.

I have beaten all these games and enjoyed them to some extent. They are not something outstanding but simply good - I do not regret playing them at all. So willing to win them with intention to play them is highly anticipated on my side.

Now’s the time to ramble on like a graphomaniac, to let my thoughts sprawl. What has SteamGifts become for me over these three years? Well, of course - it’s a certain form of addiction. Something halfway between gambling and doomscrolling. It doesn’t sound great, but it’s not as terrible as it seems.

For me, SG is still the primary source of information about games, especially older ones (the ones I missed during the ten years I practically didn’t play games at all). A side effect of SG? It cured my gaming impotence. I initially came here just to snatch up free games, but in the end, I found something far more valuable (there should be a separate paragraph here about SG’s game-centric community features like Play a Game You Won on SG, Play or Pay SG, Playing Appreciated, Playing Matters, Backlog Assassins Extraordinaire… but there won’t be one. Just know that everyone behind these and involved in it - you’re absolute legends and rockstars. You’re doing a great thing. Sending good vibes your way!).

So... What I was talking about? Oh, yes - SG as a primary source of information about games I missed. I was completely out of the gaming world - I barely knew what was happening in it. For example, I won Batman: Arkham Knight here in 2022... I genuinely didn’t even know this game existed until I joined SG (sounds unbelievable, but it’s true). Not only did I win it, but I actually played it, finished it, and then bought Batman: Arkham Collection, finished all games of the series then won Origins in 2023 and finished it too. Knight has become one of my all-time favorite games! One win led to a total of 100+ hours of enjoyable playtime. That is a miracle, non the less.

Almost the same happened with Metro Exodus, while I knew about the game - I never paid attention to it since I believed that they spoiled Metro 2033 that I actually played and liked in 2010. Open world elements for a game like that? Are you crazy? But in 2023 I won Metro Exodus - Gold Edition and gave it a try... Oh boy! Main game and all DLCs are so well made! The game is just epic! It also became one of my favorites of all time.

And once I played Exodus, I became more open minded. Like, for example, I stopped thinking that open world elements are necessarily bad. So I gave a try to win, won and played Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor GOTYE. Another 36 hours of joy! Can be also easily named as one of my favorite games

So yeh, SG cured my gaming impotence.

I just counted up, SG wins gave me 540+ hours of, mostly, enjoyable playtime! To give a perspective: I'm having my Steam account for 18 years and by now I have 2,477.7 hours on record in paid games. Heck, even taking into account all my playtime (3,149.3 hours on record) that is 1/6 of all hours are provided by SG! (still less, than Team fortress 2 with 629 hours on record, but it took me like 5 years to reach this height).

Actually SG "provoked" me to play even more, like with Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I had it in my library since 2014... And in 2023 it was chosen for me to play in Play or Pay event. 23 hours of pure joy. This game became one of my favorites as well, and I'm looking forward to try Mankind Divided. I have dozens of games, that are not SG wins, but were played because of SG.

Even more than that: I regularly buy games I saw here, on SG, like it was with, for example, Gunfield - a real hidden Steam gem discovered by me exclusively because I saw the giveaway on SG. Outside if SG I would probably never learn about this game

To sum up: Simply most of my playtime in last three years is the merit of the SG. It's a very impressive thing, if you ask me.

I guess that is all I wanted to tell at the moment. See you next year (not granted)!

However, I have a question to you: Can you recommend some nice short games that can be beaten under 4 hours or so?