The Steam Spring Sale is live

Game deals are here, alongside activities that encourage you to dig into your backlog.

The Steam Spring Sale—that is, the Steam Spring Cleaning Event—is now live, with Daily Tasks and Projects to complete, trophies and a profile badge to earn, and some pretty good deals on games, too.

This one looks a little more complicated than the previous activity-filled Steam sales we've seen. Instead of just blindly blasting through your Discovery Queue, you'll need to actually play some of those never-before-touched games in your backlog, including some chosen for you by Valve. To help make that happen, a number of games are being made free for the weekend, including Borderlands 2, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, Cities: Skylines, Tyranny, and Castle Crashers.

It's an interesting way to encourage people to actually try new games, rather than simply clicking through a machine-generated list as quickly as possible on the way to a new badge. Speaking strictly for myself, the only time I ever even look at my Discovery Queue is during a Steam sale, and once I've got the timing of the mouse-clicks nailed down I can sail through it without actually seeing a thing. (Sorry, Gabe.)

As is tradition, I have a few suggestions of my own to get you started:

• Crypt of the Necrodancer - $3 (80 percent off)
• Dirt 4 - $19 (70 percent off)
• Stellaris - $16 (60 percent off)
• Assassin's Creed: Origins - $36 (40 percent off)
• Borderlands 2 - $5 (75 percent off)
• South Park: The Fractured But Whole - $30 (50 percent off)

The Steam Spring Cleaning Event is a short one—it'll all be over on May 28.