007, Mina the Hollower – Games Release Roundup

Welcome to the Geeky Brummie Games Release Roundup!

This week, of mice and MI6.

Enter the Chronosphere is a roguelike where the world moves when you do. Giant cosmic spheres are devouring planets and it’s up to you to delve deep into them, reach their cores and reverse their destruction of reality. Developed by Effort Star and published by Joystick Ventures.

As The Sims increasingly costs the price of a real house to get the full experience, Paralives offers a cheap indie alternative. You know how The Sims works? Then you understand Paralives. Build houses, populate them with people whose whims and needs are entirely under your control and let the chaos unfold. Developed by the Paralives Studio led by Alex Massé.

Emerging from Early Access this week, Realm of Ink (PC, PS5, Switch 1, Xbox X/S) imagines what it would look like if Hades used Shinto mythology instead of Greek and, appropriately, looked like ukiyo-e paintings. Yes, it’s a roguelike, but I fully admit I’m a sucker for blade-wielding women and kitsune imagery (which is why I’m very excited about Tekken this week too) so it caught my attention. Developed by Leap Studio and published by 4Divinity.

Life Below (PC) is a city builder set on the ocean floor. Your goal is to reignite the ecosystem by building and managing coral reefs, all with a story written by Rhianna Pratchett. Developed by Megapop and published by Kasedo Games.

Map Map: A Game About Maps (PC) is a game about maps. You may have already figured that out somehow. You play a cartographer as part of an adventuring crew and your job is to chart the uncharted islands they’ve stumbled upon. Use real cartography techniques to lay out the landscape and enjoy the chill vibes along the way. Developed by Pipapo Games.

The sequel to Michael Brough’s 868-HACK, a game about hacking the mainframe and siphoning its resources, is out now. 868-BACK (PC) sees you accessing systems, absorbing abilities from nodes and trying not to die.

After great success with multiplayer favourite Peak, Aggro Crab are back with more chaotic multiplayer shenanigans (no I will not use the godawful term “friendslop”). Crashout Crew (PC) sees you and your pals as a warehouse forklift crew, trying your best to fulfil orders, keep the packages intact while meeting all your targets within the time limit.

I’m sure we’re all getting pretty tired of Soulslikes in grimdark medieval settings, so it’s nice to see something like Stonemachia (PC) which asks the bold question, what if chess was a Soulslike? It also sets it in a beautifully twisted world that could easily be from an obscure European stop motion animation, and I’m here for that. Developed by Crossfall Games.

Echo Generation 2 (PC, Xbox X/S) is the sequel to Echo Generation, where a bunch of kids in the 90s investigated a spooky mystery in turn-based combat. For the sequel, developer Cococucumber has implemented deckbuilder mechanics into its combat. This time, a father gets sucked into a mystery across time where cyberpunk futures and moody horror landscapes also come into play.

Yerba Buena (PC, PS5, Xbox X/S) is a puzzle platformer set in a quirky sci-fi version of 1970s San Francisco where a mysterious threat is looming. You are Barb, who has a device known as The Oscillator which can manipulate reality to your will, prompting a big puzzle platformer adventure. Developed by Mad About Pandas and published by Focus Entertainment.

Lumentale: Memories of Trey (PC, Switch 1) is yet another attempt by an indie team to do Pokémon better than Game Freak. Set in the land of Talea, a country populated with creatures known as Animon, creatures attuned to thirteen elemental types and human emotions. Beyond that, this is Pokémon. You wander the land, collect creatures, use them to battle and build bonds with them. Developed by Beehive Studios and published by Team17.

Another week with two Games of the Week? Just goes to show how much good stuff is coming out that once again I am picking an indie release and a big AAA release that deserve your attention.

Indie Game of the Week is Mina the Hollower (PC, PS5, Switch, Xbox X/S), a Zelda-inspired adventure from Shovel Knight devs Yacht Club Games.

You play as a mouse named Mina, a member of an Earth-studying guild known as the Hollowers, and you’ve been tasked with freeing an island from a curse. You’ll venture through a variety of locales, gathering an arsenal of weapons, battling foes and burrow your way through puzzles. It’s a mixture of the Game Boy Zelda games, a Soulslike and a platformer, with a bit of Gothic horror thrown in for good measure.

You have absolutely no idea how long I’ve been waiting for this game. It’s had a few false starts with release date announcements but now it’s finally here and it’s real and in my Steam library (I only bought it while writing though, so I currently cannot speak to its quality yet). Shovel Knight was an excellent game so another game from that studio is incredibly welcome, and the Zelda influence is so specifically targeted to the sickos who consider Link’s Awakening to be the best one. It also has a Jake Kaufman soundtrack, which is always a winner. And critics agree, since it’s currently the highest rated game on Metacritic so far this year. Now the question is, how many other games is Mina going to show up in from this point?

The big Game of the Week this week is 007: First Light (PC, PS5, Xbox X/S), the latest video game outing for everyone’s favourite MI6 agent, James Bond.

An origin story for Bond unconnected to any of the films (Bond is played by newcomer Patrick Gibson, just to make this clear), this is James Bond through the lens of Hitman developers IO Interactive. Described as a cross between Hitman’s social stealth and the big action sequences of Uncharted, this takes you through Bond earning his license to kill.

I’m not necessarily the biggest James Bond fan. I’ve seen some of the movies and I love several Bond themes (Garbage’s in particular) but other than that I’m largely indifferent to it. But First Light is exciting to me because James Bond by the developers of Hitman is such a no-brainer concept. I enjoyed Hitman 2016 (I still need to get round to the rest of the World of Assassination trilogy) but the gameplay systems were so dense and clever that taking that, making the protagonist a suave British spy and slapping some Aston Martin driving sequences in is such a cool idea that I know I have to play this. Reviews are reflecting this pretty well too.