The Bargain Bin is a weekly feature that helps out gamers in this tough economy. How does it help? Once a week, it offers a great and cheap game ($10 or less) to keep you going until your next paycheck.

A real treat for long-time fans of the point-and-click adventure genre was Steam’s recent influx of older adventure classics in their online store. Even better was the pricing of these games.

As far as classics go, Myst is one of the all-time greats right along with Zork and The Journeyman Project series.  For $9.99 on Steam, it’s a hard bit of nostalgia to pass up, especially considering the fact that it will run on just about any Windows-based PC you can find.

The Bargain Bin is a weekly feature that helps out gamers in this tough economy. How does it help? Once a week, it offers a great and cheap game ($10 or less) to keep you going until your next paycheck.

This week’s budget title is for all the MegaMan and side-scrolling space shooter titles. If that’s not enough, it also happens to be an indie title and makes full use of Steam Cloud and Steam’s achievement systems, and even offers full controller support.

For the low price of $5.99, Who’s That Flying?! promises intense battles as the main protagonist (“Guardian of Earth”) fights to keep Earth safe from the invading “Doom Beasts”. There’s plenty of unlockables, bosses, and leaderboards to waste the hours away. Cheap casual gaming doesn’t get much better.

The Bargain Bin is a weekly feature that helps out gamers in this tough economy. How does it help? Once a week, it offers a great and cheap game ($10 or less) to keep you going until your next paycheck.

Magicka, the Steam-topping hit from Paradox Interactive is the focus of our cheap recommendation this week.

The game’s brief description says it all: “Magicka is a satirical action-adventure game set in a rich fantasy world based on Norse mythology. The player assumes the role of a wizard from a sacred order tasked with stopping an evil sorcerer who has thrown the world into turmoil, his foul creations besieging the forces of good.” Grab the full game from Steam for $9.99, or grab the free demo if you’re still unconvinced.

The Bargain Bin is a weekly feature that helps out gamers in this tough economy. How does it help? Once a week, it offers a great and cheap game ($10 or less) to keep you going until your next paycheck.

Though some gamers would argue that the casual, point-and-click gaming genre is slowly dying off and regressing into the shadows, Big Fish Games disagrees, and they can prove it with one of their newest titles, Drawn: The Painted Tower.

In The Painted Tower, you slowly work your way through each of the tower’s cursed floors in an attempt to save Iris, a girl trapped at the tower’s highest level. Along the journey, you’ll face many challenging puzzles, interesting characters, and great 2D visuals, as one comes to expect of point-and-click adventure titles. If that sounds like your cup of tea, head over to Steam and drop your $9.99.

The Bargain Bin is a weekly feature that helps out gamers in this tough economy. How does it help? Once a week, it offers a great and cheap game ($10 or less) to keep you going until your next paycheck.

Since the classic days of coin-operated machines at your local arcade, 2D side-scrolling shoot-em-ups have been struggling to find their place in mainstream gaming. As such, it’s been even harder for fans of the genre to get their fix. Today, the Bargain Bin aims to help ease some of that laborious searching.

Zeit² is the newest game in the 2D side-scrolling market and it’s only $9.99 on Steam. What you get for that money are tons of levels, bosses, weapons and gameplay to keep any side-scrolling fan satisfied for many hours. The game even promises difficulty levels that will appeal to gamers of all kinds. Sadly, no multiplayer or co-op is available, but Zeit² does make use of Steam’s achievements and leaderboards, so you can still compete against your friends directly.

[Store Page]

The Bargain Bin is a weekly feature that helps out gamers in this tough economy. How does it help? Once a week, it offers a great and cheap game ($10 or less) to keep you going until your next paycheck.

Fans of tower-defense, casual gaming, and/or the unethical treatment of zombies will enjoy today’s Bargain Bin. Though, not part of any special deal or seasonal discount, Plants vs. Zombies is worth every cent of the $9.99 it costs through Steam.

It’s not the first time PvZ has shown up in the Bargain Bin, and there’s a reasone for that: It’s a fantastic game. Shockingly addicting and simple, but still offering a ton of gameplay and entertainment, it’s a hard game to beat in any aspect. Without a doubt one of the best time-wasting casual games money can buy right now. If you haven’t played it for yourself yet, grab it on Steam for $9.99.

The Bargain Bin is a weekly feature that helps out gamers in this tough economy. How does it help? Once a week, it offers a great and cheap game ($10 or less) to keep you going until your next paycheck.

Because there’s a chance that some of you still don’t know about this, and because Steam’s discounts are still completely embarrassing every other digital distribution service with these Holiday sales, we really had no choice but to remind you of Steam’s sales with this week’s Bargain Bin.

• Serious Sam HD: Gold Editio – $3.99
• Tom Clancy’s HAWX 2 – $33.49
• Killing Floor + DLC – $6.95
• Lost Planet 2 – $19.99
• Street Fighter IV – $14.99
• Machinarium – $2.99
• Victoria Series – 50% off
• Neverwinter Nights 2 Platinum – $9.99
• Cities XL 2011 – $19.99
• Eve Online: Incursion – $4.99
• Mirror’s Edge – $4.99
• Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic – $2.49

Don’t forget to check back every 24 hours, when Steam updates their sales page with a new batch of awesome discounts. There are even special deals on publisher packs that are available all week, if you prefer to buy in bulk.

The Bargain Bin is a weekly feature that helps out gamers in this tough economy. How does it help? Once a week, it offers a great and cheap game ($10 or less) to keep you going until your next paycheck.

This week’s Bargain Bin features a game that puts you in the seat of a major system admin. If system admins were built into servers, that is…

It’s a confusing premise, but it just might pay off. With some very colorful, bright, and illustrative visuals, System Protocol One puts you in the shoes of a system operator in some distant future. At its core, the game is an indie tower defense game that gives you tons of defenses and tools to keep your servers safe from attack. Downtime means death. Such is life as a system operator, even in today’s age. Luckily, there’s also a free demo on Steam, so it might be worth grabbing that first. Act fast though, the game is 10% off for a short time, making it only $8.99.

[Steam Page]

The Bargain Bin is a weekly feature that helps out gamers in this tough economy. How does it help? Once a week, it offers a great and cheap game ($10 or less) to keep you going until your next paycheck.

Flight Control is a wildly popular iPhone game by developer Firemint. Last Thursday, the game of epic plane-landing proportions hit Steam in the form of Flight Control HD. Read more about it after the break.

Flight Control HD is nearly identical to its iPhone brethren, but includes more levels and obviously better graphics, as well as Steam achievements and even an “exclusive stunt map where you can increase your score by flying through the gates before landing.” It’s available for both PC and Mac for the low price of just $4.99.

The Bargain Bin is a weekly feature that helps out gamers in the tough economy. How does it help? Once a week, it offers a great and cheap game ($10 or less) to keep you going until your next paycheck.

Remember that little game we told you about earlier this month that promised a relaxing zen experience coupled with physics-based puzzle gameplay and bundled with cute and appealing visuals? It released last week for $9.99. I think you know where this is going.

Just inside our budget sweet-spot, The Undergarden is the perfect $9.99 buy for gamers that want a nice and relaxing break between the big-name titles like Black Ops that totally consume your time. Rather than wasting your time with more words, we’ll just leave you with the Steam page and the demo download link, and let you decide for yourself.